The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.
I know I said it wasn't likely I was going to make the June Challenge, but BC disagreed with me and was determined we were both going to get it in, even if it was a little late.
My family gathered at her house this week with most of her family, for a wonderfully tasty meal (BC, what did you do with those beans? I loved them!) And while out kids played together, she and I got baking, making a gluten free version of the Bakewell Tart.
I admit (and I'm sorry Jasmine!), this challenge did not appeal to me at all. I'm not a huge almond fan, unless there is toffee involved, and jam desserts don't do a thing for me either. Which is why I had put it off and put it off, and then family and life happened, and I ran out of time. I'm really glad that BC made me do it though, cause this was actually quite good. Not at all what I expected.
We made a gluten free version and blind baked the pastry abit, but otherwise left the recipe alone. We could have put a bit more jam in it, but I take responsibility for this as I was doing the jam while BC measured the almond meal up, and I could have been a bit more generous with it. And better at making it smooth.
As a mark of how this was enjoyed, this was my plate. But could easily have been one of the kids, from either family. At least one kid asked for more.
Many thanks to our hostesses for this challenge, which proved to be a challenge of a different direction, as well as to BC for helping me get through it.
Want to know more about the Daring Baker's Challenges? Head on over to the Daring Kitchen where you will see alot more than Bakewell Tarts.
Daring Bakers: Bakewell Tart, better late than not at all
Daring Cooks: Its premier time!
For the past few years, I've proudly been part of the Daring Bakers. Heck, I'm proud that I was a Daring Baker before we became the Daring Bakers. Sure, I've had my complaints about the challenges from time to time, but I've gone along with all of them, and done them regardless of whether or not they were sweet or savory.
So when Lis and Ivonne announced that we would be having a second group, independent of the Daring Baker's, a group that was about cooking instead of baking, I was in. I like to think I'm a decent cook. Not a chef, but a cook. I have the occasional disaster, but mostly I do fairly well and get good reviews from my meals.
Still, if the Daring Bakers made me conquer my fear of melted sugar, what could the Daring Cooks do?
For their first month, they sent me somewhere I would not have gone on my own, making ricotta gnocchi, (from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook.) I'd have made gnocchi eventually (it is still on my to-do list), but I'd have never thought of making ricotta gnocchi. It just does not seem like something that would appeal to my family. Which was my first thoughts upon reading the recipe, "Oh boy, they are not going to like this."
Still, I pressed on. And learned something important.
I suck at hand forming a soft ricotta gnocchi.
Does that look like something even remotely edible to you?
Me either.
Which is why after butchering 9 gnocchi, I pulled out some spoons thinking, "I can't possibly make them worse."
Which was a good idea. I continued dropping a small amount of the dough into the flour, then would pick one up gently and essentially roll the gnocchi from one spoon to the other, over and over again, until I had a nicely shaped gnocchi that wasn't too floury. 
A major improvement, but they still do not look very appetizing to me.
Nor did they appeal to my guys, but being true Daring Baker testers, they stepped up to the plate, literally, and became good Daring Cook's testers.
My little guys tried one gnocchi each, served very simply with just the butter 'sauce'. No go, they didn't really like them.
My 'big' guy, the hubby, actually tried three of them. He and I agreed: they taste much better than they look, but they didn't appeal to either of us. I doubt adding in more of a sauce would have done it, it was more a textural dislike than a flavor. 
Like my comparison photo? Don't mind the wrinkles, I'm testing out my homemade light box still, made with the help of my father-in-law and brother-in-law, and had not yet gotten lights or broken out my iron to clean up the fabric when I took this picture. It's an ongoing project right now.
So my first Daring Cook's challenge is over (phew!) and now I get to wait for the next one to show up in a few days! Which reminds me, I should get moving on my Daring Baker's challenge, which I am still participating in.
If you are surfing around the blog worlds today and see a mountain of little white gnocchi, don't worry, you aren't crazy, you have just stepped into Daring Cook's land. Stop in, leave a comment, and then head over to the Daring Kitchen, pull up your Daring Kitchen mug (Lis and Ivonne, I know we have t-shirts and aprons and underwear, do we have a mug?) and sign up to join us for the next challenge.
Big thanks to Ivonne and Lis for inspiring us, pushing our boundaries, getting us cooking, all that fun stuff! You can find this months recipe on their sites (okay, not Ivonne's yet, but when her pc is feeling better, it'll be there.) Don't forget to tell them I said hi if you go visit!
Daring Bakers: Feeling uninspired
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
I admit it, I was totally unmotivated and uninspired by this months' challenge of cheesecake. Nothing personal to either Jenny or Abbey, but I was bored. I've made many cheesecakes before and sometimes I have a problem, but usually if I do it is because I sped through it or forgot it in the oven.
I didn't do either of those things for this recipe. I simply threw it together the night before company was coming and then sliced it and served it.
Until today I hadn't even taken a picture of it. That is very unlike me.
Oh I admit, when Jenny said we could be creative, I did think of an idea or two that was creative, but required time. Something I have not had much of lately, so my ideas will have to wait.
I kept pretty close to the written recipe for this, using chocolate cookie crumbs instead of graham for my base because I had those on hand. I did not use a liquere, or the lemon, and did use a fresh vanilla bean. For my three packages of cream cheese, I used one light cream cheese and two regular (I like it better with light, not because of fat or calories, but because light has more of a tang to it, which I happen to enjoy.)
No tang, no vanilla flavor. Hoo hum, that's about it for me, though my youngest suddenly has become a fan, and my guests loved the mellow flavors and the creaminess of the cake.
Can you see the vanilla beans in this? I should have had a big hit of vanilla from each bite!
I've seen a few pictures of other people's cheesecakes and I applaud them for their creativity. I guess inspiration just didn't hit me this time.
Oh well.
On to next month's challenge, on to my Daring Cooks' challenge and on to the Daring Kitchen to see the other cheesecakes for this month!
Want to learn more about me?
The head on over to the Daring Kitchen and read my "interview" with Lis for On the Spot. I'll be highlighted for the next week.
And in case you are wondering, I'm still looking for that "sponsor."
(This, btw, is my kitchen window, looking at it from my porch. You can't see much of my kitchen, but can see my huge basil plant and the pretty flowers that I see each day.)
Daring Bakers: Savory in layers
The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.
Yes, you read that correctly - this month, the Daring Bakers made lasagna. From scratch. With a spinach pasta.
The challenge itself presented three different elements for a traditional, Italian lasagna: the fresh made pasta, a homemade ragu, and a bechamel sauce. The required component was the fresh made pasta, either sweet or savory.
I chose to go with the traditional recipe, making a "normal" lasagna rather than a sweet variation, and was not disappointed with the results.
I had an slight advantage over some of my other Daring Bakers, however. Not only have I made lasagna from scratch before, but I had one of our hostesses, Mary of Beans and Caviar, nearby if I needed to call for help. And I did call!
My pasta started out just fine: my well of flour, my well dried, chopped spinach, my eggs. Everything weighed out and ready to go. I rose my eyebrow a bit when I read the weight for the eggs: 60g or more, but also saw it said 2 jumbo eggs. Well my eggs were the large variety and one of them weighed 57g. Still, I used two and started mixing with a spoon, as per the instructions.
The spoon, btw, was a bad idea. More egg and spinach mixture stuck to the spoon than wanted to stick with the flour. After trying to patiently coax everything together, I ended up with this:
It was dry and most of the flour was still on the counter, not coming together. At which point I called Mary.
And she wasn't home.
I fired off a rapid email and then did something I don't normally do on a Daring Baker challenge: I cheated.
I scrapped the entire mess into Bob's mixing bowl, attached the dough hook and started to mix. It was too dry, so I added in a tablespoon of egg whites. I mixed some more, added in another tablespoon, and watched.
And was rewarded with some dough.
I did finish the kneading by hand, not letting Bob do it for me, as tempting as it was. This stiff dough would not have been good for Bob, but sure gave me a good arm work out.
Covering the dough with plastic, I gave it the maximum rest time and checked my email. Adding the extra egg whites was approved by Mary, who had gotten my message and heard my panic.
My next message to her was not as panicked, but not very happy either. I was really disliking this entire recipe by this point. I'd already emailed her earlier in the week about the ragu, finding and grinding the meats for it (we live in the same city, so I needed her shopping advice.) In the end, I made the ragu but used only Italian sausages as my meat, skipped the red wine entirely, and threw in the rind of a chunk of parmesan cheese. 
Now despite the fact that I read and reread a recipe before I start, I still end up missing things along the way. This time I missed the rolling pin aspect of things, somehow. Not sure how, but I did. And I do have a lovely pasta machine, so using a rolling pin for my sheets didn't even occur to me.
One thing to remember about this dough, however, is that it is a bit sticky. When I'd made fresh lasagna dough before, I had been able to fold the sheets back on themselves to rest while I finished rolling the rest, using them without drying them first. So I didn't hesitate to do it this time either. Which means I rolled out the sheets of dough twice each. The second time through, I cut them to about the right size for my pan, and either hung them on my cupboard door while I rolled more, or threw them into the pot of water that was ready and waiting.
Roll, cut, boil, drain, dry, roll, cut, boil, drain, dry, roll, cut, boil, drain, dry....
At some point I reread the assembly instructions and fired off another email to Mary: 4 sheets of pasta per layer of lasagna? Are they kidding? Is that a typo? Sure my sheets rolled reasonably thin, but they weren't that thin after boiling and four just seemed wrong.
I went with two. But I did make 4 layers before I ran out of pan, bechamel and ragu. Nice how that all balances out.
At this point I have to say, I still had very little faith in how this was going to turn out. I'm not a huge lasagna fan to begin with, and my ongoing irritation was not putting me in a favorable mood for the end results.
My next email to Mary began like this: I take back everything I said.
This was good. Not overly heavy, though still a bit rich, with good flavors, a nice bite to the pasta and tasty. Both my children ate it (and they like lasagna less than I do - that's why there is garlic bread, so that we have something we do like to eat while the hubby happily eats his lasagna.) Since I didn't have any garlic bread or salad with this, they had no choice, it was this or nothing, but they still ate it, happily.
I even had some left overs the next day. And I never have left over lasagna.
Another Daring Baker challenge, completed with "success". I usually define my DB successes when I've learned something, and this challenge was no exception, I learned a number of things from it and will likely make it again sometime.
Thank you ladies, for your choice for this month, and for giving us a break from the sugar. I needed that break!
Now you may now be noticing the lack of our Daring Baker mountain, or our lovely siloutteta in this post, but now see the new Daring Kitchen badge instead. 
Well unless you've been living in a blog free hole, the new Daring Kitchen site was revealled this month, along with the introduction of a parter for the Daring Bakers, the Daring Cooks. There is still time to sign up and be part of the first ever Daring Cooks challenge, and even if you don't want to do that, there is lots of information available to everyone over at the Daring Kitchen. So head on over and check it out!
Once again, many thanks to this months hostesses, as well as to our leaders, Lisa and Ivonne for yet another wonderful Daring Baker month.
Onward and forward - let's see what April brings!
Daring Kitchen and a cookbook review
Goodmorning beautiful people!
Just a quick invite to pop on over to the Daring Kitchen, if you don't already read there regularly now, and have a read of my cookbook review.
And while you are there, why not register and join the Daring Cooks?
Introducing...
The New Daring Kitchen site!
If you are a member of the Daring Bakers, well, then you should be there already, registering. If you aren't a member but want to be, here is the place to go to learn all about how to join the Daring Bakers.
And even more exciting, to learn how to join the Daring Cooks, where we will be having a monthly cooking challenge as well as our monthly baking challenge!
Plus we have such cool new logos and badges to display.
Even if you are just a blog reader, and don't want to participate in any of the Daring Kitchen groups, feel free to visit and join in on the public forums, read some cookbook reviews, or use the resources.
A big "WOW!" and Congrats to Lis, Ivonne and all the behind the scenes helpers on the debut of the new site. Do we get a head office next?
