Surprise! Brownies

Well, I missed last month's Surprise of pasta.  Or, rather, I made the pasta, ate and enjoyed the pasta, then never wrote my post.  Oops.  And I was well on my way to forgetting this month's Surprise, too, but I was reminded this morning, so was saved!  (Thank, Shell!)
This month we were encouraged to make brownies.  Yum.  I am married to a certifies chocoholic, and my girls seem to be following in his footsteps...  Don't get me wrong, I love chocolate.  But I am perfectly happy with non-chocolate.  Hubby?  If there is a choice, chocolate always wins.  Always. 
I found the recipe on the Sourdough Surprises Pinterest board and got to work.
The batter came together really easily.  I loved the way Eve looked going into the chocolaty gooeyness....

As I was putting the batter into the pan I realized that I had forgotten to add the vanilla.  Ummm...  oops?  So I added the vanilla to the pan...  It works, right?

Coming out of the oven things looked and smelled good.  I had thought the brownies would have risen more, but it looked fine.

Holy chocolate, gooey goodness!

These might just have been the best brownies I have ever made.  So yummy.  So rich, so chocolaty, so good.  I think we ate them in two days.  And that was only because I made us put them away before we finished them in one!  The sourdough tang was there, but very subtle.  It did just enough to enhance the chocolate.  So good.
So if you still thought that sourdough was only good for breads, let yourself be Surprised at the amazing things you will create with your starter!!

Daring to do it: en Croute

Another month, another fun challenge from another fun host!

Our lovely Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys, was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute and to bring our kids into the challenge by encouraging them to create their own en Croute recipes!

I love crust.  I am a bread girl, and crust falls into that category for me.  So this challenge was exciting for me.  Crust wrapped yumminess?  Yes, please!
As soon as I read the challenge and the recipes Monkey Queen gave us I remembered something I had made with my mom a year or so ago: Vegetables Wellington.  I knew that would be my contribution to the Challenge this month.  I used the recipe for puff pastry from the Mille Feuille challenge a few months back and made a yummy dinner.
The rolled out dough:

The veggies and beans, ready to fill:

Assembly - not the neatest job, but it worked:

Trying to make a pretty presentation...  trying being the operative word:

Flaky, vegetabley goodness:

Plated and ready to go:

We all loved it.  We all decided that we would love to try other things wrapped in dough.  Big Girl even said she wanted to be wrapped in dough!  While I didn't want to go quite that far, a few days later we did try something different: Veggie Burgers Wellington!
Fun little packages on a plate:

Yummy goodness inside!

Thank you so much, Monkey Queen, for bringing your flying monkeys out to play with us this month.  I loved this challenge, and I am so looking forward to wrapping lots of meals in dough in the future!!
Take a look here to see what my fellow Daring Cooks wrapped up!!

Daring to do it: Savarin

I know I have said it before, and I am pretty certain I will say it again, but I really love being a part of the Daring Kitchen.  It is so wonderful to be in a community where people want to work together and ave a good time.  Last month it was brought to the community's attention that the host for the April Daring Baker's challenge had gone MIA, and we were at risk for not having a challenge to do.  There were a bunch of suggestions offered by Bakers, and then one stepped up and offered to prepare and host a challenge with only a couple of weeks time to research, prepare and coordinate it.  Having hosted a challenge, I can tell you this is not a small undertaking!  Please, no matter who you are, stop by Natalia's blog and give her huge cyber-hugs for such an amazing job, especially in such a short amount of time!! 
Ok, now on to the regular post...!
 

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was something I had never heard of, but not something that was entirely new to me.  It was a lot of fun, a lot of work, and really yummy!
Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina challenges us to make a traditional Savarin, complete with soaking syrup and cream filling! We were to follow the Savarin recipe but were allowed to be creative with the soaking syrup and filling, allowing us to come up with some very delicious cakes!

I had never heard of Savarin before, but I have used a cake-soak for a plain cake, so the idea of it wasn't too intimidating.  The cake, though, kind of was!  The savarin recipe Natalia gave us was for a very plain yeasted cake.  One with a sponge, lots of egg yolks added one at a time, various rises...  then the baking, cooling, soaking and filling!  The hardest part of getting ready to make this challenge was finding the time to do it all!  Here are all of the steps, as best as I could capture them.

The sponge:

Mixing the dough:

The egg yolks:

Trying for the elastic,thready stage:

And now for the window pane test:

First rise:

Folding and shaping:

Next rise:

Proofed and ready to bake:

Out of the oven, risen quite nicely!

Cutting off the top - er, bottom!- of the cake to make a flat surface:

Making a vanilla cake soak (from my favorite Mark Bittman cookbook):

Soaking the cake:

Glazed with a simple powdered sugar/soy milk glaze, filled with dairy-free chocolate pudding, dusted with powdered sugar:

Sliced and served:

My mother-in-law hit the nail on the head when she said this tasted a lot like a chocolate eclair.  And that is totally a good thing.  My biggest complaint was that the cake soak did not soak all the way through the cake - the top and bottom were saturated, but the middle of the cake was still rather dry.  (The plain cake was very much like a light brioche, which is yummy, but rather plain.)   Were I to have the time, I can see making this again.  It was delicious, and it is so versatile!  It is just very labor, and time, intensive, and I am not sure I would go for it again without a special occasion.  That being said, should a special occasion arise, this is an AMAZING treat!
Thank you so much, Natalia, for stepping up and teaching us about this wonderful dessert!  I an in awe of the hard work you put in, and of the generous support you offered all month long.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the Daring Bakers created!!

Daring to do it: No Bones About It

This month's challenge was hosted by a blogger I like.  I like her food, I like her style, I like her.  Sadly, though, I didn't find a way to "like" this challenge enough to do it...

 For the April Daring Cooks Challenge, Lisa from Parsley, Sage and Sweet has challenged us to debone a whole chicken, using this video by Jacques Pepin as our guide; then stuff it, tie it and roast it, to create a Chicken Ballotine.

Yeah. I wasn't going to de-bone a chicken.  I could have done it - we were in Florida for Passover, and my parents don't have a vegetarian kitchen.  And there was a whole, bone-in chicken in the freezer which I was welcomed to use.  I just couldn't do it... 
I tried to think of a vegetarian alternative...  Some way to take something with structure, remove the "bones" and stuff it.  But I couldn't think or anything.  And then it got to be the 13th of the month, and that meant that time was up to try something. 
So, sorry, Lisa!  I totally get how this is an amazing challenge, and an awesome skill for Daring Cooks to learn, I was just too much of a wimp. 
Take a look here to see the delectable dishes the braver Cooks created!

Daring to do it: Hidden Veggies!

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

 

I really like Ruth.  She is a lot of fun to read, and I love her style.  But this challenge was an interesting one for me.  See, as some of you might know, I worked at a bookstore for a long time.  And I loved it.  I was working when the "Deceptively Delicious" craze hit, so I saw a bunch of people learning to hide veggies in their kids' food.  Part of me loved the idea of making sure that kids got their healthy foods, and that their treats could be more healthful.  But a lot of me really doesn't like the idea of lying.  Because that is what it kind of feels like to me.  Yes, I know there are picky eater out there who won't eat certain foods.  Heck, my father is one of them!  (He won't eat asparagus.  He hasn't tried it.  He saw it once, and he doesn't like it.  Really?!)  But hiding the foods just feels...  I don't know... like I am lying.  I try very hard with my daughters to introduce them to foods as they are, and to honor what they say then don't like.  So far I have been very lucky and I have two kiddos who still think broccoli and cucumbers make great treats!

But this challenge had me thinking.  How can I make something with the veggies hidden?  I then remembered that I had one lonely beet in the house.  I seem to be the only one in the family who likes them.  So I decided to use it in a chocolate cake.  A chocolate sourdough cake, actually.

Step one: cook and mash the beet:

Step two: add the mashed beet to the bowl, look at the pretty color:

Step three: mix, ooh and ahh again:

Step four: add the chocolate, and some red and black chocolate chips to help disguise the texture of the beet that didn't get mashed as smoothly as I might have liked:

Step five: bake, enjoy the yummy smell:

Step six: glaze:

Step seven: cut.  I was a little let down that the cake didn't retain nearly as much of the redness as i had hoped, but it was all good.

The cake was moist, chocolaty and yummy.  You couldn't tell that there was a beet in there, but I knew that the secret ingredient added a little to the sweetness, a lot to the moisture and a good dose of health.  (ok, a little dose of health...)  And my dad, who was visiting, and who doesn't eat beets, either, had no idea.  He thought the secret ingredient was cherries...  Nope!

This was a fun challenge.  It might not be something I will do regularly, but it was fun to have done it either way.

Take a look at some of the great recipes Ruth gave us for inspiration, then check out the amazing desserts created by my amazing fellow Daring Bakers!

Surprise! Cake

It is kind of unbelievable what one little sourdough started can do.  I was so excited to create Eve for the Daring Kitchen, and it amazes me that she is still going strong almost a year and a half later.  And I am having a blast with her.  Not just the things we bake, but getting to share her with friends and family, too.  I love it!
This month's Sourdough Surprise was something fun and yummy - cake!  I have made cake with Eve before, and I was excited to do it again.  The biggest problem was deciding what kind of cake to make.  There are so many yummy recipes out there, and narrowing down the list became almost discouraging.  Finally I decided to look at what I had on hand and let that lead the way.  I had lemons, strawberries and blueberries.  Fruity would be the way to go...!  I found this recipe which I adapted to suit my needs. I don't' need vegan substitutes, so I used real eggs and my usual margarine.  I also skipped the lemon glaze and simply sprinkled the top with cinnamon sugar.
I normally find ways around recipes which call for using different bowls for every step, but I decided it might be worth it for this one:

Mix, mix, mix:

Into the pan, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar:

Fresh from the oven, smelling SO good:

Sliced:

And served for Hubby's birthday:

This was a great cake.  We all liked it, and when Ishared it with coworkers they were thrilled! 
I hope you made a sourdough cake of our own.  If you did, link up and let us know!  And if you didn't, I hope you're inspired to make one now, and to share it with the people you love!

Daring to do it: Getting Cheesy

Ok, I might be telling you too much here, but there are times, when I can't fall asleep, when I will think about what might make a cool challenge for the Daring Kitchen.  Cheese has crossed my mind, but I kind of thought that was a joke my mind was playing on me out of exhaustion.  Well, the amazing Sawsan is braver than I am, and she had this challenge in store for us...

Sawsan from chef in disguise was our March 2013 Daring Cooks hostess! Sawsan challenges us to make our own homemade cheeses! She gave us a variety of choices to make, all of them easily accomplished and delicious!

Wow.  Cheese.  Really? 
Yup, really.  Sawsan gave us a variety of recipes to choose from, and was so super supportive of all of us trying new things.  I knew this would be an odd one for me.  Between my lactose intolerance and Little Girl's milk allergy, I wasn't looking forward to lots of playing with milks.  We already keep skim (cow), soy and rice milks in in the fridge, was I really going to have to bring in more?  Well, as I looked around at both the recipes Sawsan provided and others on the web, I decided that, yes, a fourth kind of milk would be making its way into the house.  Raw, whole goat milk.  I had decided to make goat cheese.
First, the supplies -
goat milk:

a strainer over a bowl:

cheese cloth, which I don't have, so an old, somewhat worn, clean pillow case:

candy thermometer:

lemon juice:

Once the goat milk reached temperature (well, once it looked right - my thermometer decided it didn't want to move...) the lemon juice was added to the milk, then it was left to curdle.

Straining out the whey (gotta love the "fancy" straining mechanism I hooked up...):

Drained cheese!

I think I might have drained out more of the whey than I intended to, as the finished cheese was rather crumbly.  But it was really good!  I added some salt, black pepper and nutmeg, which complimented the lemony taste.  I think a drizzle of honey would have made this amazing, and I am planning on making it again!

 

Having made the goat cheese, I really wanted to try one of Sawsan's recipes.  So I decided to make labneh - a strained yogurt cheese.  But, as usual, I couldn't manage to quite follow the rules.  The recipe calls for Greek yogurt, which is thicker than "normal" yogurt.  But I didn't have the time to go ot to the store. What I had on hand was regular yogurt, and vanilla at that.  So a dessert cheese was in the works!

Vanilla yogurt, mixed with a little salt and a bit of vanilla sugar, set in my fancy straining set up to drain:

Look at all of that whey...

Mmmm....  creamy goodness!

This cheese turned out amazingly thick, creamy and tangy.  So good.

I decided to make some dessert balls of this yogurt, and rolled them in a cocoa-cinnamon-sugar mix.  Yum.



 

Thank you so much, Sawsan, for pushing us to learn so much this month!  I hope I can find some vegetarian rennet one of these days and try some of the other cheeses you taught us about.  This was amazing.
If you want to be amazed at what you can make at home, check out the cheeses made by my fellow Daring Cooks!