The Daring Kitchen- Sans Rival

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.


I decided to use Catherine's recipe for the heavenly cake as my basis, with a few changes to the cake overall. The actual cake part or meringue was easy to make and bake, but the hard part came when melting the sugar for the buttercream. I messed up once and came close the second time(faulty candy thermometer...).

But in the end it paid off with a truly fantastic cake that my whole family loved, too bad i gave half away to my grandmother.

The Daring Kitchen -- Cooking with Tea

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

I decided to search the Internet for other recipes for my project and found where several people use tea for smoking meat. I did a smoked chicken breast using Assam tea, brown sugar and wild rice in a homemade foil stovetop smoker. The breast ended up with a really dark brown outside with a very smoky flavor that was unique. For plating, a light sauce was made using the same tea, raisins and brown sugar.

My pictures will uploaded later. Having technical difficulties.

Daring Kitchen -- Povitica

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!


This months challenge is done and posted by Locke "The Boy" Parrish. I thought this was a great recipe and truly worthy of being called Daring. I made two loaves, one with the traditional filling and another with just a basic cinnamon sugar filling, using the posted recipe and as you see, they came out great, although the traditional lacked the integrity to be cut thinly. All in all it was fun to roll and bake.

The Traditional on the right and the Cinnamon-Sugar on the left.

The Daring Kitchen - Moo Shu Pork

This months challenge was done without "The Boy" due to schedule issues but I had guest sous chef Nancy over to assist.

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

To be honest, I was not all that excited about this challenge. I like Moo Shu pork but really had no desire to make it. Which is a good think about the Daring Kitchen website, it definitely makes you get out of your box.

Making the dough is really easy with the only hiccup on the first pancake which wasn't rolled thin enough. I found you had to almost make them see through to get a decent pancake. Just eating the pancake was not all that exciting but could get a sense of potential.




Sous Chef Nancy did all of the chopping of the vegetables and pork while I made the sauce. I did not put any hot sauce into it to begin with. A couple of taste tests indicated the need. Probably could have put in a little more but it tasted okay. Still wasn't getting a sense that the whole thing was going to come out and was seriously thinking about getting a pizza on the way.




Stir frying everything was incredibly easy and didn't take long. I don't own a wok but a heavy cast iron shallow pot worked very well. Taste test were showing the need for some garlic which was added. Either hunger was getting to us or this stuff was starting to taste pretty darn good. Plated and took pictures than dug into a dish that really works well together. The combination was really better than the sum of the parts.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Asbury St,Houston,United States

Wicked awesome salad

So the previous dinner was not all that but the starter salad was crazy good. Made some home made dressing that better than anything store bought and then made the salad with fresh greens, cherry tomatoes, manchego cheese and my favorite, bacon. Some cauliflower should up a little later as an impulse. I will definitely be making this again.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Houston, Texas

The Daring Kitchen -- Croissants

Blog-checking lines: The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

"The Boy" did the croissants on his own and we served with a meal for his grandparents. They took alot of time to rise but the taste was very good. I would have liked them to be fluffier but over all a very good bread.

My part however was a disaster. Cornish hen with roasted vegetables was terrible. One of the worst things I ever cooked. I hope it was just a bad day for me.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Houston, Texas

The Daring Kitchen -- "Stock to Soup to Consommé"

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

I was really proud of how this project came out but again I am posting late and hopefully I can start getting more cooking projects posted now that my travel schedule is lightening up.

I have been making stock for some time but I have to admit I learned some tricks from this project and the stock is getting better every time. I am planning on using bones from rotisserie chicken next time. Technically, I probably skipped the soup phase because I put my chicken and vegetables in the food processor and ground them up. When added to the stock it made soup but it was not pretty. However, the Consommé came out really nice. One thing I did was strain it through a paper towel which took out all the solids and any stray oil.

"The Boy" made a nice herb brioche which had a "whatever he could find in the pantry" filling. The pesto was okay but the brioche was outstanding and the posted recipe has made into our keeper file. So enjoy the pictures.








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Houston, Texas