Traditional English Pudding

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

I was kinda weirded out by the suet. Yes, yes, I know that I'm Chinese and have eaten way worse things than suet, but for some reason or another, I was not interested in using it in baking. Go figure why my brain can't comprehend this.

Anyways, steaming is no new thing to me since I've made many-a-Char Siu Bao in my day, but since this pudding goes into a deep bowl, I couldn't break out my bamboo steamer. I just used a pot of water and put some forks in the bottom of the pot and put the bowl on the forks. I actually didn't really like the end product since it had a bit of a grainy texture and didn't really taste like anything. I think I'm going to have to redo it and try out some other flavor combos. But until then, here's my traditional English Pudding with bananas and butterscotch.

Banana and Butterscotch

Yes, the bananas turned kinda pink in the process.

Still tasted good though. Yum!

Missed March but back in April!

Ok, I missed the March Daring Baker's Challenge. Like totally missed it. Like totally utterly completely missed it. But I'm not going to dwell in the past. I'm going to look towards the future (err... or now I guess) and say that April is a new month and I'm ready and raring to go! In fact, I'm so ready that I've already done the April Daring Baker's Challenge! Woot Woot is right my friends. The only problem is... well... it didn't turn out so great. So what does that mean? It means I have the rest of April to sort my dessert out and get with the program. Was it really that bad that it warrants another try? Oh...you bet it does. But don't worry, I'll post it all up later once I've redeemed myself with a winner. Yes folks, a winner.

Daring Baker's February Challenge

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession. Bakers HAD TO make our own savoiardi / ladyfinger biscuits and mascarpone cheese with the given recipes. And we also had to make the zabaglione and pastry cream using the given recipes. Each one of these parts took oodles of time, so you can only imagine where my patience went (~~~~out the window~~~~~).

Yes, I realize that its almost time for the March Daring Baker's Challenge reveal date and I have just posted my completion of the February challenge. If it makes anyone feel better, I actually had my challenge completed before the 27th, but I never got a chance to post it. As it goes, I got engaged last month (the 21st to be exact) and it has been a whirlwind since then. Work has increased (more and more clients) not to mention the budding of wedding planning. Oye, there is no time to sleep!

Needless to say, I am the worse keeper-upper of anything right now since my brain is going all over the place. I think I'm barely able to brush my teeth with toothpaste (although I did try to use it as shampoo one morning). Anyways, here are some pictures of this very labor intensive dessert.

Lady fingers looking all lady-like right out of the oven

The zabaglione looking like a big-hot-mess. It tasted good although I don't think it set the way it was supposed to

 I think out of all the parts, I was most proud of myself for making this mascarpone cheese. Look at how pretty and cheese-like it is *pats self on back*

It's not dessert without the whipped cream

And the final product: Tiramisu made from scratch (I might as well have milked the cow)

  The tiramisu had a really lemony taste to it since so many of the parts included lemon zest, so I offset it by adding more chocolate in the form of semi-sweet mini chips. The chips also added a nice crunch to the very soft and silky texture of the cream 

Nanaimo Bars Late Revealing

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

I realized that I've already failed at my new year's resolution, and late is sometimes not better than never, but I figured I might as well give it a go. I think the hardest part for me was actually looking for all the random ingredients and then realizing that these bars take more than just a couple of hours to make (overnight needed). I also realized that I should've read the Daring Baker's forum first so that I could've saved myself from scraping up one of my very nice baking pans with a spatula trying to pry these suckers out. Sigh. One of these days I'll actually find 25 hours in a day to do everything that I want. Until then, here's the best I can give you.

Nanaimo Bars with Gluten-Free Graham Crackers

Freshly made and still gooey

New Year's Resolution

I know. I haven't been back in a very long time. I have no excuses. Well... actually I have a lot of them, but I'll spare you the sad sob story and get straight to the point.... I'm tired. Yup, lo and behold - this baking fanatic is actually tired. And what could be the cause you wonder? The joy of my life and the bane of my existence all at the same time: WORK. Seriously, it's such a godsend that I was able to find a job in this market, but damn, it really puts a damper on my baking.

But to stop myself from being the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song, I made myself a new year's resolution. And if you know me well enough (probably not since I've only been blogging for a few months so I might as well just tell you), I don't like making resolutions. I think they are just empty promises with short term benefits. Now I know I'm most likely treading on some very heavy toes at the moment, but this blog isn't about me and my disbelief in resolutions, so I'm going to move on with my story and hope you keep reading.

My resolution this year is to try, and the operative word IS try, to bake at least once a week and to blog about it. I think this will help all the hungry coworkers at my job site AND fulfill some deep, carnal desire inside me to create fabulous tasting goodies. Great right? Fantastic idea huh? So what's stopping me already as this new year has just only begun? Well I'm realizing that I get stuck in what I want to bake. It's nice to be a part of the Daring Baker's ring since they mandate what I make each month for challenges (and boy are they challenges), but what about my regular weekly baking excursions? BF told me I should just get a cookbook and bake all of the recipes in it, but then that would be SO Julie and Julia and that's not what I'm about. There's also the fact that I'm fairly picky about what I want to bake and really only want to bake what I think is interesting to try out. Silly, yes? Can you see how I've just put myself between a rock and a hard place?

Anyways, this issue is still something that I'm working out, but at least for the moment I've got a list of things that I need to bake as you can see to the right. So with all of that, New Year, here I come (Insert War Cry Here).