The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

After seeing quite a few amazing DB gingerbread houses recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that mine actually looks rather spare. Lucky I had Steve the Stormtrooper to pimp my house a little. Darth would’ve joined the party too, but he happened to be overseas at the time (true story).

When Anna first told me what she had picked for this month’s challenge, I thought I could approach it in one of two ways – either go the whole hog and decorate it with every single bit of candy possible, or play the minimalist card, and make it plain and simple. Plain and simple won.

This is my second time ever, attempting a gingerbread house. The first was a good many years ago when royal icing was not my friend, and a collapsed house led me to swear off ever making them again. (Hence the beauty of being a member of the DB group, where challenges can often take you outside of your comfort zone.)

As stated in the forums, I chose to use a Scandinavian recipe from a book I love by Beatrice Ojakangas. Although her recipe for the dough isn’t very sweet and lacks the moisture of typical gingerbread recipes, I believe it’s a good recipe for this sort of thing where sturdiness is important, and less sweetness means you don’t overdose on sugar once you consume the gingerbread combined with the royal icing and candy decorations. I did however confuse quite a few people with my conversions for the flour content of the recipe, and for that I truly apologise!

Still I hope everyone managed to have as much fun as possible while attempting this challenge, and thank you again Anna, for allowing me to be your co-host. 🙂

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year everyone!

As December looms, I’m thinking of spices, family, Christmas shopping, baking, heatwaves, and baking in heatwaves with ice-cream and chilled watermelon.

Something about this past year, has changed.

Now the year is almost at it’s end, it’s my conclusion that this year has been nothing at all like I had expected. For various reasons, this is both a good and a bad thing, and for similar reasons, it has caused me to wonder more about where I want to be heading. People who know me will recognise this as being highly unusual, as I am typically a very directionless and under-planned kind of person. I operate rather laboriously along the lines of hey, let’s pick a path and then see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, I simply backtrack and choose a different adventure instead.

Fortunately, apathy doesn’t seem to wash past a certain age, and there are at least a few more things I wish to accomplish before the lower back pain eventually takes over. Something has me wanting to aim for new things. It’s true I may never realise them, but I’m excited simply for the fact these ideas are blowing away the dust from the attic in my head.

So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea, and a mince tart or two (I made so many of these! Big ones, small ones.. they’re all going to good homes soon). I promise I’ll be telling you more in good time.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Until now, I’ve never bothered to make puff pastry at home. I am a commitment-phobe when it comes to long processes. If I’m baking at home, I usually like the simple things – a handful of cookies, and the odd cake; maybe with some icing, or maybe not.

Not to make it sound too daunting of course. Baking puff can be quite a rewarding experience. Watching it bake is as mesmerising as the hypnotic tumbling of a front-end loading washing machine (or am I just too easily amused?). It is a performance piece which you put into the oven, draw back the kitchen towel curtains and watch rise to applause.

Even though it took me almost a month to finally start this challenge, the process itself only took a few hours. During that time, I mulled over what I would fill my end product with. When I saw this, the indecision was immediately over. An encapsulated tarte tatin? Yes please!

For the puff pastry recipe, please visit Steph’s blog. For the encapsulated tarte tatin, fill the vols-au-vent with caramelised apples and calvados custard. Top each one with a caramel disc, warming it gently to ensure it melds to the pastry. Serve with a vanilla sauce poured at the table.