Daring Cooks: Edible Container (Flax cracker bowl and a yummy salad!)

At the Daring Cooks Reneta of Testado hosted this months challenge.  The challenge was to make a savory container and fill it with something appropriate.  I made a cracker bowl with salad inside.  These would be wonderful as appetizers.  We had them for dinner with maple glazed salmon added to the salad.  Recipes included below for Maple Glazed Salmon and the Cracker Bowl.  The salad consisted of a spring mix, carrots, burdock root, strawberries and sunflower seeds.  Then for the dressing a strawberry balsamic dressing.

Cake balls with a strawberry center

Strawberries were buy one get one free so naturally I made strawberries covered in cake then wrapped in candy.  Nice and healthy...

Daring Bakers: Coffee Cake and a Pizza Log...My new favorite dough.

This dough recipe was WONDERFUL! I started out making a sweet version of this but savory sounds amazing.  Giant pizza log = best idea ever. So there are several versions below.

1. Meringue with orange zest, cocoa powder, and 70% dark chocolate chips. (Next time I am just going with Nutella)
2. Manchego cheese, pepperoni and jalepeno. (His Favorite)
3. Ham and goat gouda.
4. Ham and Manchego. (My Favorite)

  

After the jump more pictures and the recipe for this yummy dough!

Daring Cooks: Papa Rellenas

Well ALMOST Papa Rellenas... The filling was quite different from the traditional but the process remained the same!  This ended up being a little ball of thanksgiving.  Next time gravy should be made.

First time canning and Some Marmalades

I am increasingly enjoying David Lebovitz's blog.  I have also wanted to try canning for quite sometime now.  So when I saw his recipe for Bergamot Marmalade and tons of citrus was in season it was a perfect opportunity.  Bergamots were not available but Meyer Lemons and Blood Oranges were.  The best part about all of this is I have never actually tried eating a marmalade or a blood orange so this was an interesting experience.  Overall I was quite pleased with the results.  I will link to the recipe for the Lemon Marmalade here.  The only addition was that I used the meyer lemons and let three vanilla pods cut in half steep in the liquid as it boiled.  I would also listen to his advice of adding the Kirschwasser.  It is a little pricey but it really makes the whole thing come together.  In the end it really turned into something visually pleasing and I think it would taste wonderful layered into a vanilla cake if not on a biscuit.  For the Blood Orange I didn't really measure anything but it turned out tasting quite good.

Banana Cinnamon Bread

Being impulsive results in seeing a recipe Wednesday and trying it on Thursday.  The best part was the leftover perfectly ripe bananas in the teacher's lounge at work.  I got the recipe from here, Serious Eats, and tweaked it only slightly.  If you decide to make it the only thing I changed was I added more vanilla extract (1 TB. instead of 1 tsp.)  since I have made my own and any time I get a chance to use it I get a little giddy.  Also I added less flour (1/4 cup less).

Daring Bakers: Panna Cotta and Florentine Cookies

I want to start off by stating I hate milk.  I do not like the smell let alone the taste.  This is most likely why I was not huge on the taste of half of this challenge.  It did however look beautiful.  I think with some tweaking it could be something I would really enjoy.  I also wanted to try making a fruit gelee which this challenge forced me to do.   The cookies were pretty decent and very simple to make.  It also makes me want to start working with Agar-agar.  I still drool over these pictures and am going to have to make some interesting creations of my own.