Daring Baker Challenge - Chocolate Eclairs

One of the things I REALLY love about the Daring Baker Challenge is that I get to use the challenge as an opportunity for friends and family to get together. This month three of my best friends in the whole wide world came over to my parent's house in Virginia Beach, VA and cooked. I have such a good time with those girls (and baking too!!!!).

This month's challenge was chocolate eclairs. YUM! I think everyone liked the eclairs, but we did find that the next morning they were especially tasty!!! :)

This is Heather making the eclair dough.

Jess trying to get an early taste of the eclairs!


Alli :)


So we made a *little* booboo and burnt some of the chocolate filling.... almost ruined a pot! :)



another picture of the burnt chocolate!


before it was burnt, Jess wanted a lil taste


The eclair's fresh out of the oven. YUM!


Scout (my god-dogger) came over to help cook too!






YUM! They sure were tasty!


My dad was sneaking another eclair!





This was a fun challenge. I love sharing my love of food with my friends and family.

I can't wait until next month to get to do it again!

DBC - Filbert Gateau

This month's Daring Baker Challenge was the Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream. Holy cow, what a recipe! First of all, I was only able to find chopped hazlenuts in the store... this made it a bit difficult to remove the skins. But shhh... we won't tell that part of the story! ;)


I had two super helpers, Jessica and Alli! Yay! We had a great time just bein girls and cookin together!!! :)



This is my super stellar food processor that I love getting ready to chop up some filbert praline. (filberts are hazlenuts BTW) A filbert praline is essentially sugar and toasted hazlenuts.



This is my girl Jess manning the mixer!



Al tellin a story :)



My roomate Jason... he is loving all of the good food... oh, and the girls ;)


Trimming the tops of the mini cakes



Monty the bulldog just waiting (with tongue wagging) for us to drop him a crumb!!!



Pouring on the ganache glaze. HOLY YUM. There was only one cake with two layers (don't know where the third layer for this minicake ran off too... maybe Monte got it!!!!) but it seems most of my pics are of that one cake with two layers! hahaha :)



More glaze - YUM


Decoration time!



a cake for Alli



A swirly cake



TASTY!



The final cake. All in all, this was a fun challenge because I got to do it with two of my closest friends. The cake itself... welll... I don't think I like hazlenuts that much. I think if I had used almonds as some of the other DBers had done, I would have liked the cake much more.

I can't wait for next month already!!!!!!!!

DBC - Cheesecake Pops :)

OK, so here are a few of the pics I took of my DBC this month. Yes, I know I'm a late poster.

So sue me! hahaha :)

Here is a picture of my coworkers. We are all enjoying YUMMY cheesecake! :)
Back Row: (From left to right) Lauren, JR, Warren, Richard, Donny, Richard.
Front row: Sharon, Mika, Wendy

So pretty you could almost eat it... wait... almost??? ;)

I had to drizzle choco, because the cheesecake didn't really stick to the lolipop stick as tightly as I expected. The chocolate (once it hardened) really helped keep the cheesecake attached though.

I had to package the pops for transport to work.

My "cheesy" cheesecake transport system. haha... a styrofoam star from the craft store. It actually worked surprisingly well!!! :)

The girls, hoggin the cheesecake! :)

Not every cheesecake pop made the cut for the coworkers.... :(

Not every cheesecake pop even turned into a pop at all!!!! Some were SUPER sad.

Unwrapped.

I had a LOT of ideas for yummy flavors. Banana and peanutbutter, heath bar, caramel, coconut, slivered almonds, cinamon chip... because I had sooo much trouble getting the cheesecake to stick to the pops, I just kept it simple. There were a few heath bar pops and this one banana pop, other than that, plain choco all the way... maybe next time...

DBC - cheesecake pops

Ok, so i know the rules of the daring bakers, but i have had NO time lately I completed the challenge but i have yet to post. Im sooo sorry.

I made the pops one sunday evening and brought them to work for my peeps to enjoy there. : ) it was really fun, and my co-workers really seemed to enjoy the pops.

He cheeecake pops were super yummy, but that they werent as easy to handle as i expected. My pops never really adhered to the sticks and i spent a lot of time trying to gingerly hold em and add the chocolate/toppings. I ended up putting the choco topping in a pastry bag and piping it on. That seemed to be my only option if i wanted actual pops instead of a bowl of cheesecake flavored chocolate.

Anyhow... As usual, it was another splendid challenge. I heart the daring bakrs! : )

Ill post more lata once i get the pictures resized for the blog! : )

Caker Baker

This month's Daring Baker Challenge was Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. YUM! The cake is lightly lemon flavored with lemon buttercream icing. I made this cake the weekend of Easter, when my parents and other numerous guests were in town (13 ppl in all!!!!). I had a great helper, (ok, forced labor) Bryan. We are going to have to work on reading directions and ingredient amounts, but all in all it was a fun experience. The final product was stellar too, so that helped!!! :) I will definitely make this cake again! :)

This is Bryan turning plain sugar into LEMON sugar! Tasty! :)


I read that a lot of the other Daring Bakers had difficulty with their cakes rising. I will say I thought my cake looked a bit flat, but I think the consensus was that this cake just doesn't rise a whole heck of a lot. Despite its seeming flatness, the cake was moist on the inside. I will say I bought the square "goldtone" cake tins from Williams-Sonoma for this challenge, and I was VERY pleased with the results. The cake did not stick at ALL to the sides of the pan. I still used butter and parchment on the pan, but sometimes even those measures are fallible. I would totally recommend those cake pans to anyone!

The recipe we were given suggests using seedless raspberry jelly as a filling for the cake... well of course I didn't want to use just plain old raspberry jelly... I wanted to use raspberry, blueberry, cherry jelly, with seeds. When I was in the store, I thought to myself that I would just heat the jelly a bit and then run it through a sieve to get the seeds out before applying the jelly to the cake.... wellllllll... despite my best intentions, that was a really bad idea. First of all, the jelly I bought was more like a compote than a jelly. It was SUPER chunky. I doubt even if I had been able to get all of the chunks/seeds out of my jelly that I would have had enough remaining juice to put some on my cake!!! So luckily I had purchased some strawberries (to use for breakfast the following morning - whoops!) that filled the bill. All in all, this boo boo turned out really well. I was happy with the cake, its looks and its taste! :)

The finished cake


a lil' slice of heaven


my Easter houseguests! :) What a full house!


This cake was soooo goood, here is a picture of my dad sneaking an extra piece in the kitchen! The picture is blurry because he was moving so quickly, I could barely capture him on film!!! haha :)

This was a great challenge - I can't wait to see what next month has in store!!! :)

DBC - Lemon Meringue Pie

This month's Daring Baker Challenge was Lemon Meringue Pie.  YUM.  

I was just a bit "off" the night I tried to make this pie.  
Without Robby and Sara, the pie would have been reeeeeeelllly bad!  
Thanks to the help of my nice roomies,  the pie turned out wonderful.  

This is my crust... I wasn't thinking very clearly (remember I was a bit "off") and put in three sticks of butter.  Yup.  I doubled the amount of butter... the crust kinda melted into a blob in the bottom of the pie pan, but dang it tasted phenomenal! haha :)



Pretty, shiny meringue!



Robby with the torch for the baby pies!



Pie before the oven



Up close and personal with one of the mini pies






Yum.  Look at that yummy lemon curd!



My roomate Robby and the mini pies - - they were his creations!  He did a great job! Yum!



You can't stop with one forkful!



Cooked pie



My favorite pic of the pie.  The 'wave'






This is my house and roomies... from left to right:

me (in my new chef's coat!!! Thanks Alli), Joe, my bro George, Sara and Robby

All in all, this was a fun challenge.  I can't wait for February!  :)