make life sweeter!

On the last day of the year I bring you this month's Daring Bakers challenge :) A challenge much to my liking I must say: making of a gingerbread house. A tradition that is not Dutch (or Croatian) at all. I very much enjoyed making the model, and decorating and constructing the house (even though my dough didn't roll out very well as it kept cracking and I burnt my finger during construction with caramel).
After reading on the DB forum that one of the given recipes turned out very dry I checked the cup and metric measurements. There was a big difference between the amount of flour in cups and grams. I went with the cup measurements which was 200 g less flour than the metric measurement. Even though the dough was not really dry it didn't became a whole. Could be because part of the flour I used was not very finely ground. An hour after making the dough I realized that I forgot to add the baking soda... oops! Didn't think it would be a problem and maybe even an advantage as it wouldn't puff up. Rolling out the dough (after another knead to make it come together a little more) couldn't be done without the dough cracking. After baking the texture/look of the gingerbread was a bit odd and besides that it shrunk but the cookie was sturdy and kept its shape beautifully.
For decoration I went with natural items like almonds, pink peppercorns and pumpkin seeds. The icing is an egg white free icing that I've used before and like working with. It doesn't dry up rock hard but hard enough imo.

Instead of decorating the roof after baking I used a small circular cutter to imprint the tiles for the roof. The imprints stayed exactly like they were after baking.
I assembled the house with hot caramel...always tricky to work with without burning oneself ;)
I loved doing this challenge and will be making a gingerbread house next year as well :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

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.

Today is the first day of World Breastfeeding Week and like last year I'm organizing a food blogging event to celebrate. Joining is easy, just make a sweet dish that contains milk (either dairy or non-dairy). Could be as easy as making muffins :)



I'm currently on holiday in Croatia and between the kids and the heat I didn't feel like standing in the kitchen too much so I'm reusing a recipe I blogged about 18 months ago ;) You too can use a dish you already blogged about as long as you repost the recipe and link back to the event. You have until next Saturday...looking forward to your entries :)

Ginger and orange semolina pudding with blood orange sauce

serves 6

400 ml (1 ⅔ cup) milk
100 ml (3 ⅓ fl oz) whipping cream
1 tbs grated fresh ginger
1 tbs (blood) orange zest
50 g (1 ¾ oz) semolina
40 g (1 ⅓ oz) sugar + extra
6 cut out blood orange segments

Heat the milk, cream, ginger and orange zest until nearly boiling. Turn off the heat and let it steep for 15 minutes. Strain the milk and cream mixture and fill it up with milk until you have 500 ml in total.
Mix the semolina and sugar. Add the mixture to the hot milk whilst stirring. Bring to a boil and allow to cook. Cook and stir for 3-5 minutes. Rinse a non-stick muffin pan with cold water and pour the mixture in 6 of the cups. Sprinkle with sugar to prevent the forming of a crust. Allow to cool to room temperature. Chill in the fridge for a few hours.
Unmold each pudding by turning the pan upside down and massaging it in a circular motion. Let the pudding slide onto your hand and place it on a slighty wet soup plate. Correct the position if necessary. Place an orange segment on top. Pour blood orange sauce around it.

Blood orange sauce

225 ml (1 cup) blood orange juice
25 ml (1 tbs + 2 ts) lemon juice
1 tbs ginger syrup
5-10 g (¼ oz) potato starch

Bring the blood orange juice, lemon juice and ginger syrup to a boil. Mix the potato starch with a little bit of water until lump free.
Add the potato starch water mix to the juice whilst stirring. Allow to cook for 1 minute. Allow the sauce to cool down completely, stirring occasionally.

Good thing to have stuff in the archives when you lack inspiration ;) And this recipe even fits this month's SHF theme of spices :)
I made this tartlet a few month's ago with some apples I got from my friend M's mother's garden. Didn't even know that apples were already ripe at the beginning of August. Though ripe they were pretty tart, making them perfect to use in pies and tarts imo. Instead of making a more ordinary apple pie or tart with cinnamon I added some crystalized ginger instead to spice it up.
I used cream cheese pastry for the crust but didn't like it too much. Next time I'd definitely use a sweet shortcrust instead. Even though I added powdered ginger to the dough, I couldn't taste it at all. It could work in a sweet shortcrust as sugar tends to enhance flavours.

Apple tart with crystalized ginger

makes a 15 cm (6 in) tart

⅔ recipe of cream cheese pastry (this is what I used but wouldn't use next time)
300-350 g (11-13 oz) tart apples, diced and 'lemon juiced'
15 g (½ oz) butter
25 g (1 oz) sugar
10 g (⅓ oz) crystalized ginger, chopped

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
Press the pastry dough into a 15 cm (6 in) cake pan or springform pan. Line it with aluminium foil. Fill with uncooked beans, rice or pie weights. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the aluminium foil can be removed without it sticking to the crust. Lower the temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake for another 5 minutes. Transfer the crusts to a wire rack to cool completely.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F)
Sautee the diced apples in the butter for a few minutes and add the sugar the last minute.
Fill the partially baked crust with the apples. Bake for about 35-45 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

I always thought that I knew what palm sugar was. Somehow I thought that Indonesian gula djawa is palm sugar but it turns out that it is actually a mixture of palm sugar and cane sugar. This new found knowledge made me curious about real palm sugar. I managed to find some at an Asian grocery. It was much lighter than gula djawa and also harder. It had sort of the same taste as cane sugar but more intense, I would call it sugar candy :)
Palm sugar was to be the main ingredient for my entry to this month's Asian themed SHF hosted by La Petite Boulangette.
The recipe for these cakelets is a basic pound cake recipe. The Asian touch is the palm sugar and also the ground ginger that I used for flavouring and the sesame seeds that I used for decoration. I wanted to take these cakelets to my friend Y. who doesn't eat wheat so I used spelt flour instead.
The cakelets were a bit denser than regular pound cake. Probably a combination of the spelt flour which is a bit heavier than wheat flour, and the palm sugar. Contrary to regular sugar, palm sugar is much finer (when you've beaten it with a meat tenderizer) more like coarse confectioners sugar.
I loved the ginger taste of the cakelets, the amount was just right in my opinion. The sesame seeds looked nice enough for decoration but texture-wise I didn't think it was that good. It kind of interfered with the whole cakelet eating experience. Wouldn't add it next time.
Besides making these very small cakes, I also made some bigger ones. One of those was lucky enough to receive a pretty marzipan decoration which you can see in the previous post.



Palm sugar cakelets with toasted sesame seeds

makes at least 36 small or 18 medium cakelets

140 g (5 oz) spelt flour
1 ts ginger, ground
140 g (5 oz) butter
140 g (5 oz) palm sugar, beaten to (more or less) a powder with a meat tenderizer
2 eggs
2-3 tbs sesame seeds, lightly toasted

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Line one or more mini muffin pans with paper cups.
Sift the spelt flour together with the ginger.
Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Mixing well after each addition. Mix for another few minutes. Add the flour and fold it in until just incorporated. Spoon the batter into the cups until about ¾ full.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

When I think spring, I think flowers so it wasn't difficult coming up with this cupcake to enter Spring Funny Cuppy that is hosted by La casserole carrée and Les gourmandises d'Isa.
Also today is my sister-in-law's birthday so Happy Birthday S! She will be getting this little cupcake :)

I used a basic recipe for pound cake (creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and finally flour) instead of using regular sugar I used palm sugar and instead of using regular flour I used spelt flour. I flavoured the cakes with ground ginger. Will be posting this particular recipe in the coming week. Decoration is - as usual - made of marzipan. The frosting is made of white chocolate ganache. The ratio was supposed to be 1 part whipping cream and 2 parts white chocolate but I sort of missed a chunk of chocolate so I ended up with a ratio of more like 1:1. I had to thoroughly chill the ganache to stick the marzipan in it. Hope I will be able to transport the cupcake to S. without the flowers falling...