AUGUST 2010 DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE

~ Nutty and toasty meets cool and creamy...

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.







This was my first Daring Bakers challenge. I decided to make both the Baked Alaska and the Petit Fours, so after doing the calculations I made one quantity of the Brown Butter Pound Cake and the Vanilla Icecream and was able to make 10 Petit Fours and two Baked Alaskas .

There was quite a lot of process and freezing time required in this recipe so I made the cake (froze it) and icecream one weekend and then did the assembling the next weekend.

As this was my first challenge I stayed with the recipes given by Elissa and they worked out perfectly. It's easy to make icecream without an icecream maker, just requires being around to do the stirring every 30 minutes.

Since reading other daring bakers' blogs for this challenge I've realised that I probably should have taken more photos of the baking process to post with the recipe - next time







The Baked Alaska served






The Petit Fours served




Check out the Daring Bakers site to see some of the other DBs creations and download the recipes.

It's winter down here in New Zealand, just the weather for enjoying the all time favourite comfort food - fruit crumble. I've been making this recipe a lot lately and have also substituted tamarillos for the rhubarb. The recipe is from Al Brown and was in the New Zealand Cuisine magazine - issue 141 July 2010.

Rhubarb & Date CrumbleServes 6-8

For the rhubarb
600g rhubarb, cut in 2cm pieces
3 large apples, peeled, cored and cut in 2cm pieces
½ cup apple juice
1 cup pitted dates, halved
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground ginger

Place all the ingredients in a large saucepan, mix together and place on medium – high heat. Simmer for about 15 minutes until the fruit just starts to break down. Pour into your favourite ovenproof dish. The fruit should be 3cm – 4cm deep in the base.

For the crumble
¾ cup rolled oats
½ cup soft brown sugar
¾ cup flour
1 cup roasted unsalted macadamias, coarsely chopped
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes
300 ml cream, whipped to soft peaks

Place all the ingredients except the cream in a large mixing bowl. Rub together by hand until the mixture begins to come together, but is still quite course. There should be no visible chunks of butter. Spoon the crumble evenly over the rhubarb mix then refrigerate until required.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC then bake the crumble for 20 minutes or until the topping is golden and crisp. Dish out the crumble into bowls and serve with lashings of whipped cream.

Enjoy !