The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Funnily enough, I’ve never been excessively interested in macarons. I appreciate their beauty and the degree of difficulty involved in their success. As many people have said before, it’s amazing how complex a process it is to get right, considering macarons consist of merely three ingredients. So I have all the respect in the world for bakers out there such as Helen, Aran and Julia who love these sugary treats and manage time and again to present perfect and creative versions of them.

With regards to this month’s challenge, I had every intention of attempting Claudia Fleming’s recipe, but my brain was unfortunately asleep the day I stepped into the kitchen. It was only when half way through the process that I realised I had been baking on autopilot, and had somehow managed to whip up a batch of my normal macaron recipe, as opposed to the one provided for the challenge!

So I’m not sure if my contribution really counts towards this challenge, but here it is anyway. I made some bite-sized macarons flavoured with black sesame powder and paste, with dried seaweed (nori) garnishing the shells before baking. The combination worked well together, in my opinion, also because I quite like adding savoury elements to things that are quite sweet (as we all know macarons can be).

To keep things interesting, an impromptu dessert macaron was also cobbled together from items I scavenged from the fridge and pantry. Chocolate sauce, ganache, cake, cherries and vanilla cream formed a little nod to my obsession with Black Forest flavours.

Thank you Ami, for bringing macarons into the Daring Bakers repertoire!

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.

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus : Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I’m going to keep this one short because I feel like I’ve been having one of those weeks. The kind of week where you find yourself surrounded by things whipping and whirring around you while you stand, staring into a bowl of soaking gelatine leaves, wondering, oh crap, what was that meant to go in to?? Also the very same week when you accidentally spill something in the walk-in freezer, which, I must say in total hindsight, is one of the most nightmarish things to have ever happened to me at work. Picture this: the spilled liquid freezes immediately to the floor of the freezer, and every little bit of water you pour on the spill to scrub it off, freezes on top of it. Scrubbing only further widens the frozen area in question. I was in that freezer for 20 minutes and could have cried, except the tears would have frozen to my face, further compounding my problem.

Things have been extra busy of late and lest you think I have fallen into the deep end, I must say that I’m still loving work. Yes, it’s tiring and sometimes it makes me want to reach for the Cooking-Purposes-Only Frambwahse. But it’s all good. I’m busily happy and happily busy.

That said, I’m pathetically grateful that this month, Angela and Lorraine have chosen a fairly easy and straightforward challenge, that yields cake. I have never made a Dobos Torte before, but know of it, because a Hungarian friend of mine used to expertly whip up magnificent versions of them, with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. My version required both hands and all my faculties operating at full alert, and I think the end result is nothing spectacular, but a respectable version of Dobos Torte.

This torte is what I am now going to sit down to, before throwing myself back into the fray.