Crostata Time DB'ers!

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

Things just always seem to work out.  Simona announced that the Daring Bakers would be doing crostata this month and what was my mother doing for her book club this month and needed to bring a dessert?  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert giving me the perfect excuse to foist an Italian dessert off on my mother.  Another of her book clubbers is married to an Italian so we were kind of worried she would do something Italian as well, so I went with the more savory crostata.  Pear, walnut, and blue cheese were the winning combo. 

The basic crostata recipe consists of a short crust pastry sweet or savory, with your choice of filling; the most often being jams, fruit, custards, or more savory things such as cheese.  Whenever I have to work with chilled butter for crusts or scones or what have you I use my food processor, pull the dough together with a little liquid, then throw it in the fridge or freezer as soon as I can.  Everything is cold, cold, cold and works out perfectly.  Like others mentioned, pasta frolla was fairly forgiving to work with, although a little crumbly.  Having made shortbread I knew to persevere.   I found that it wasn't as tender as a regular pie crust, but it was still very good.  Two words of caution though is not to use too much blue cheese.  The pears don't have a huge pear taste, so the cheese could overpower it easily.  The other being that it probably would have been better to blind bake the crust.  Although it wasn't terrible, it would have been better if I had blind baked it. 

It went over very well (her friend having made tiramisu) and my mother only brought back two pieces which are being frozen for a later tea date.   I will be posting photos to accompany my post, but the camera and laptop they are on is in Maui at the moment.  It always seems to be the case...

UPDATE: I have added a photo of the final product.  Mmmm tasty business!

There's something about the smell of fried sugar.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Growing up in Canada it's pretty much a given that you've eaten your far share of doughnuts and timbits from Tim Hortons. You've probably been through that inevitable showdown of elementary school children who fight over who gets the chocolate timbits whenever someone brought a snack pack to school. You know the flavors, the glazes, the fillings, the sprinkles, and the seasonal flavours off by heart and you know which kinds you like best and those you won't let within licking room of your large double double.

As it is, my family is more of the yeast doughnuts kind of people (if your my father, the more sprinkles you have that you can drop throughout your car the better). So for this months challenge I made yeast doughnuts and topped them with glaze and sprinkles or rolled them in cinnamon sugar.

Making doughnuts is a fairly easy process. The dough was nice to work with (although I did halve the recipe and like others suggested, I did end up adding about 1 cup more of flour to get the right consistency). I fried them in vegetable oil and let them cool slightly before adding some sugary sweetness. That being said, the doughnuts themselves are not really sweet so if you are going to make them, be sure to add some finishing touches via glazes or sugar.

My mother, led by the siren song of fried yeasty sugar goodness, came and watched me while I fried them them promptly suggested that she should try one while they were still warm. So she ate a doughnut with cinnamon sugar and said "oh my god" then continued by eating a couple more timbits and I'm pretty sure another doughnut. And just to let you know, while my mother does enjoy her sweet treats, she does not typically mow down in such a way. She then took a bunch over to our neighbour who called back a couple minutes later to say they were amazing and that she couldn't stop eating them. (She and her husband finished them off later that day.)  Needless to say, the doughnuts were a success. They're best eaten when just fried and went south fairly quickly after a day or two, but they were well worth it.

Since Halloween was just around the corner and my family was in need of cookies since SOMEONE ACTUALLY BOUGHT OREOS (WTH, seriously) I wanted to make something a little festive, but I didn't have time to go all out as I got a new job which I'm training to be the manager of a new cupcake store.  I had seen these cookies in one of my bakebooks and thought they were cute.  Behold Candy Corn Cookies!

Cute non?  They're just sugar cookies that you divide the batter in half, dye one half yellow.  Then divide the other half in an uneven half and dye the larger half of that orange, leaving the last bit plain.  Roll them into long strips, stack them and press them into a pyramid shape before wrapping them and putting them in the fridge to firm up for a couple hours.  From there it's just a case of slicing and baking then you're on your way to candy heaven.