Daring Bakers 12: Tuilles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I'm a little last minute in getting this posted - I completely forgot about it until this morning and have rushed doing it today so they aren't as good as they could be.

Tuilles



Ingredients
65 grams / ¼ cup / 2.3 ounces softened butter (not melted but soft)
60 grams / ½ cup / 2.1 ounces sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar (7 grams or substitute with a dash of vanilla extract)
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
65 grams / 1/2 cup / 2.3 ounces sifted all purpose flour
1 table spoon cocoa powder/or food coloring of choice
Butter/spray to grease baking sheet

Recipe
Oven: 180C / 350F

Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed) and cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it).

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as the butterfly. Press the stencil on the bakingsheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter. Leave some room in between your shapes. Mix a small part of the batter with the cocoa and a few drops of warm water until evenly colored. Use this colored batter in a paper piping bag and proceed to pipe decorations on the wings and body of the butterfly.

Bake butterflies in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from bakingsheet and proceed to shape/bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. (Haven’t tried that). Or: place a bakingsheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.

If you don’t want to do stencil shapes, you might want to transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip. Pipe the desired shapes and bake. Shape immediately after baking using for instance a rolling pin, a broom handle, cups, cones…


Check out how the rest of the DBers did via the blogroll.

In other news I found my camera that I had lost with the photos of last month's daring baker's challenge so here it is....

Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

As part of my pledge to make at least 3 of the recipes I bookmark in magazines each month I have now made my third recipe, again from Easy Food Magazine.

This month's magazine featured the winners of Easy Food's Country Market Awards with a great recipe for Birthday Cake by Dunfanaghy Market. I couldn't help but try out this birthday cake and last week was Stewie, my wee pup's, birthday so I had a birthday to celebrate anyways!

I'm glad I made this a real easy cake and beautifully delicious. I'm sure though it would be more delicious with the butter icing but I had to leave it out seeing as hubby and doggy aren't keen on it.



Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
little milk (optional)

Butter Icing
75g butter or margarine
225 g icing sugar, sieved
2 tbsp milk
food colouring (optional)
sweets/hundreds and thousands to decorate (optional)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease two 17cm cake tins
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
3. Mix in eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour. If the mixture seems dry add a little milk.
4. Bake for 25 minutes until form to touch and golden.
5. To prepare the icing, beat all the ingredients together until fluffy and light.
6. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack, then ice and decorate.


PS Don't forget to check out bookmarked recipes on the new blog.

Taste and Create: Naan

I love Taste and Create, I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's just fantastic! The idea is you sign up for a month and get paired with another blog then you recreate one of the recipes on that blog and they do one from yours! Simple and so much fun.

This month I was paired with Pavani from Cook's Hideout who has a great blog with recipes full of healthy fruit and veg. If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know that hubby has "issues" with things that sprout from the ground so it was tricky deciding what to do until I found a recipe for naan bread something that I have been wanting to try make for a loooooooong time! How could I resist?



Indian Naan Bread
Sourced from Cooks Hideout
Makes 6

Ingredients
4 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 x 7g active dry-yeast packets
1 tsp sugar
2/3 cup milk, lukewarm
2 tbsp oil
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1 egg, beaten (optional)

Recipe
1. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir in the yeast and sugar. Make a well in the center. Pour in the milk, oil, yogurt and beaten egg (if using). Beat well, gradually incorporating the surrounding flour to make a dough.
2. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with oiled plastic wrap and set in a warm place for about 1 hour, until doubled in bulk.
3. Put a pizza stone on the lowest rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 475°F.
4. Knead the dough lightly again and divide into six pieces. Roll each piece into a tear-drop shape, brush lightly with oil and slap onto the hot pizza stone.
5. Bake the naan for 3 minutes, until puffed up, flip and bake for another 3 minutes.

Rob's 'Lasagna'

I've said about a million times on this blog... well maybe not a million but a lot anyway.... about how my hubby, Rob, is a picky eater. He's not a fan of pasta, cheese, vegetables, fruit, sausage, cream and much more. The last time I posted about making lasagna in Gordon Ramsay's cookalong I mentioned it too. However, it got me thinking about how I could make lasagna for myself and still have a dinner for Rob so I experimented in substituting some sliced par boiled potatoes for the lasagna sheets and leaving the cheese out of the white sauce.




I'm glad I did this cos hubby liked it meaning when I make lasagna I'll do a real one and Rob's one. I suppose I'll have to keep thinking of other tricks to use in future.

I've been nominated!

Last year I was a finalist for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards and this year I've been nominated again! The longlist this year is a huge one with some incredible blogs included - check them out....

Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments: http://justaddeggs.blogspot.com
Well Done Fillet: http://welldonefillet.blogspot.com
Sour Grapes - An Irish Wine Blog Covering Wine In Ireland, Wine Tasting, Wine Facts And Wine Recommendations: http://sourgrapes.ie
Italian Foodies: http://italianfoodies.wordpress.com
Forkncork: http://forkncork.com
Cheapeats.ie: http://cheapeats.ie
Ifoods.tv: http://ifoods.tv/blog
Food Culture West Cork: http://foodculturewestcork.wordpress.com
Food And Drink: http://foodanddrinkireland.blogspot.com
Bubble Brothers - Cork Wine Merchants: http://bubblebrothers.com/blog
Ice Cream Ireland: http://icecreamireland.com
The Good Mood Food Blog: http://thegoodmoodfoodblog.com
The Daily Spud: http://thedailyspud.com
Curious: The Curious Wines Wine Blog: http://curiouswines.ie/blog
Messy Chef: http://messy-chef.com
A Food Journey In Korea.: http://macs-foodkorea.blogspot.com
Olliesplace: Organic Food, Farming, Research, News & Views With Oliver Moore: http://olivermoore.blogspot.com
Little Bird Eats…: http://littlebirdeats.wordpress.com
Cookzors: http://cookzors.com
Messy-chef » Recipes And Reviews: http://messy-chef.com/blog
Robert Francis Wine Review, Wine Newsletter, Free Newsletter, Wedding Wines: http://robertfranciswine.ie/wordpress
The Other Black Stuff: http://theotherblackstuff.ie
Tast.ie: The Spicendipity Irish Food Blog: http://tast.ie
Bibliocook: All About Food: http://bibliocook.com
Lidl Treats - How To Shop And What To Buy In Lidl Ireland: http://lidltreats.com
Eater’s Regret: http://eatersregret.wordpress.com
Cully And Sully - Super Soups And Pies!: http://cullyandsully.ie
Vals Kitchen: http://valskitchen.com


You can see the rest of the nominations for each category here

Bookmarked Recipes 37

The round ups are now being hosted over at the brand new Bookmarked Recipes Blog. Check it out!

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry

I'm sure like most other food bloggers I love getting a new cookbook. I've been longing for Nigella Lawson's book Nigella Express so when I spotted it in the January sales reduced from £25 to £7 I just couldn't resist!!!!

As soon as I got home I got my little post its out and tabbed every recipe I want to try, which ended up being almost every recipe in the book.

I've made and tried her pancake mix and loved it. It's handy having the mix sitting ready to use and actually knowing what's in it compared to what you get in a shop.

The second recipe I've tried from this book is the flourless chocolate brownie one only instead of adding walnuts I added sliced strawberries which turned out delish! I spread the batter into a bigger pan than Nigella suggested and ended up with 24 thinner brownies that the 16 that would have resulted from using the proper sized pan so that I was able to take the brownies to youth group where they were pretty much swallowed whole!



I was able to save one for bringing home for myself to have with ice cream and chocolate sauce and I'm so glad I did because it was simply fabulous!

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry
Sourced from Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Express'
Makes 16 squares

Ingredients
225g dark chocolate I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate
225g unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
150g ground almonds
100g chopped walnuts 10 big strawberries, sliced

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 170˚C.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat
3. Take the pan off the heat and mix in the vanilla and sugar. Leave to cool a little.
4. Beat the eggs into the mixture then stir in the ground almonds and strawberries.
5. Spread into a 24cm square baking pan.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top is set but it will still be soft in the middle - but it will firm up as it cools.

Maple Syrup and Mustard Chicken

As part of my effort to make at least 3 of the recipes I bookmark in food mags each month this is recipe 2 for January.... maple syrup and mustard chicken.

This was so tasty and VERY easy. I'll definitely be doing this again.



Maple Syrup and Mustard Chicken
Sourced from Easy Food Magazine Jan 09 p 21
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
4 bacon rashers
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsbp wholegrain mustard

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 190˚C. Mix the maple syrup and mustard together.
2. Wrap each chicken breast with 2 rashers of bacon - one across the width and one lengthways.
3. Place the chicken breasts on a roasting tray and cover by brushing with the maple syrup/mustard mix.
4. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes then serve.


This is my entry for this week's bookmarked recipes.

Bookmarked Recipes 36

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but I'm hoping next week's round up will be hosted there.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....



Chris starts the round up for this week with caramel baileys chocolate truffles from Real Epicurian



Navita Hakim has made Khasta Kachori by eating several kachoris and guessing all the ingredients and the dish was very forgiving and tasty.



Holler is getting back into the swing of blogging again by making brownies with dried fruit from Lisa's Kitchen



Usha has recreated curried black eyed peas (chawli curry) from Lisa's Food and Spice.



Ashwini joins the round up with Egg Puffs from a cook book for her hubby who was asking for them.



Susan is new to the round up with Hazelnut Financiers using a recipe from Patricia Well's Bistro Cooking.



Dell has made moroccan pasta from family circle mince recipes.



And I've made fragrant asian chicken curry from the January 09 Easy Food Magazine.



Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry

I regularly fold pages over in my Easy Food magazines, but so often forget about the recipes. I'm trying to make a bit of a resolution to make at least 3 of the recipes from the magazine for the month that it has been published.

The first one I've made from the January 09 issue is "Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry". It was an easy recipe to put together, with lots of different flavours in it. I couldn't help but add in some of my own additions to the recipe too.



Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry
Easy Food Magazine, January 2009, p 43
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
1" fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 red chilis, deseeded and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, finely diced
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tsp hot curry powder my addition to the recipe
4 chicken drumsticks (I used diced chicken breast and reduced the simmering time)
1/2 tin coconut milk
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp fish sauce my addition to the recipe

Recipe
1. Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the ginger, chili, garlic and shallots for 3 minutes
2. Stir in the ground spices and sauté for 1-2 minutes
3. Add the chicken and fry for 5-8 minutes until sealed, stirring to coat in the spices
4. Pour the coconut milk in with the lemon juice and fish sauce. Simmer until the liquid has thickened.
5. Season, garnish with fresh coriander and serve with noodles or rice.

Bookmarked Recipes 35

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

Only one person has volunteered to help with the hosting yet since this new format was announced, so pretty much every Monday is still available for guest hosts.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but will be in the new year.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....



Becke kicks off the round up with kartoffelsalat mit wurstchen from East Meets West blog.



Elizabeth recreated ricotta leek pie from Dee's blog "choos and chews".



Navita Hakim has sent in Cheesy Herb Challah inspired from a cookery show on Discovery TV.



This week I've made Turkey Fricassée from the Cooks Academy Cookbook



Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Turkey Fricassée

Early September I got an email asking if I would like a "review copy" of a cook book put together by the Cooks Academy in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. Of course my answer was yes!!!! The book arrived in the post the day before we went to Egypt and was forgotten about until a couple of weeks ago (oops!!!!). So here I am blogging about it now.

I liked the idea of this book because it's a collection of recipes that Academy uses in their teaching that have proven to be popular with the students. It's also full of down to earth every day recipes and a lot of the great basic recipes like mac and cheese, lasagne and the one I'm blogging about here - turkey fricassée. However my only complaint about the book is the lack of photos: I always like seeing a photo of each recipe as part of the temptation to making it and also to know what it should look like instead of my attempt!

With so much surplus turkey over Christmas I couldn't help but make this a few days afterwards to use some more up. The only thing I did differently was to leave out the mushrooms for fear that the hubster would be poisoned.

Since I've still not found my camera I had to take pictures with the phone! If only I'd lost it before Christmas and could have asked for a new one as a gift from someone. Ah well - maybe I'll find one in the sales.



Turkey Fricassée
From Cooks Academy Cookbook by Vanessa Greenwood
Serves 4

Ingredients
600g cooked turkey
3tbsp olive oil
(250g button mushrooms, sliced)
3 smoked rashers of bacon, cut into small squares
1 medium onion, diced
200ml white wine
250ml chicken stock
25g butter
1 tbsp flour
400ml milk

Recipe
1. Prepare the white sauce by melting the butter in a small saucepan then stirring in the flour. Cook for 1-2 minutes then gradually add the stirring to avoid lumps. When the sauce thickens and bubbles remove from the heat.
2. Heat half the oil in a pan and sauté the bacon (and mushrooms) for 5 minutes, remove to a plate.
3. Heat the rest of the oil in the pan and sauté the onion for 5 minutes. Add the wine and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the turkey, bacon, (mushrooms,) stock and white sauce. Season and simmer on a low heat for 20-25 minutes.