The Daring Bakers make doughnuts!

As soon as this challenge, chosen by Lori of Butter Me Up, was announced, many of her fellow Canadian members of the Daring Bakers came out of the woodwork and enthusiastically talked doughnuts. My favourite childhood doughnut memory is of pulling out my mother's deep fryer and making a batch of nutmeg scented cake doughnuts after school with my brother. We would roll and cut out a few, then give up and fling blobs of dough into the fryer. They were usually too big and uncooked in the centre, but we didn't care. We just tried to make and eat as many as possible before my parents got home. I'm sure they had nightmares about us burning the house down.

Ode to Tim Horton's: maple brown butter glazed cruller

Many folks also talked about Tim Horton's, and how they miss it when they're away from Canada. Tim Horton's is ubiquitous here, with outlets from coast to coast (but not coast to coast to coast, like the CBC), selling doughnuts, coffee, soup and sandwiches. You can actually plan your journey across Canada and map out all the Timmy's. Weird. Many people look down on Timmy's, but I have been known to have a cruller and a coffee. In fact, I had done just that the day this challenge was announced. My strangest encounter with this Canadian icon was walking down the road in Belfast a few years ago and seeing a giant Tim Horton's ad. Turns out that some gas stations there sell plastic-wrapped doughnuts and frothy 'cappuccino' out of an automated machine, kind of like what you'd see in a hospital waiting room. Well, not in a Canadian hospital, because they all have Timmy's outlets. :)

That irresistible custardy interior!

I really wanted to make crullers, as they are my favourite kind of doughnut, so I made these on Thanksgiving morning. They are made with the same dough used to make cream puffs, and they came together really quickly and easily. They did not hold their ridged shape when fried, but that was my fault, as I didn't let the dough cool enough. I am famously patient in my family, but not that day! I glazed them with a mixture of brown butter, maple syrup and icing sugar, and they were fantastic. I took a plate to my brother and his family, and my 2-year-old nephew ate 2 and started zooming around, yelling 'YUM!' and rubbing his and everyone else's tummies. Then he refused to have a nap. That's what aunts are for, right? Anyway, the cruller recipe was not one of the challenge ones, so I had another date with the deep fryer.

The amazing spherical doughnut!

I invited a couple of friends over for brunch and made the yeast doughnuts from the challenge. Marcellina had made some gorgeous cardamom doughnuts filled with raspberry jam, and I wanted some, but she lives in Australia, so I made my own half recipe and replaced the nutmeg in the recipe with cardamom. For the filling, I used the plum jam I had made for a Daring Cooks' challenge. Rather than inject the jam in the fried doughnuts, I rolled the dough thinly, cut it with a 2½" cutter, filled with a teaspoon of jam, covered with another round of dough, and cut the filled doughnut with a 2" cutter. I then left them to rise while I prepared the rest of the brunch. They didn't rise that much, but when I put them in the oil they puffed right up, becoming this bobbing ball of energy that was impossible to corral and turn over (kind of like my nephew on doughnuts). Anyway, cooking these was a team effort, and lots of fun. We let them cool while we ate brunch, being a bit wary of eating super-hot jam.

I kept taking bites, looking for the perfect shot. I never got it,
but this one looks kind of happy, and I got to eat 2 more doughnuts.

These were good too! They were a touch warm and not too sweet (mostly because I wasn't running the sugar shaker), and not greasy at all. Being an Ottawan, I really really wanted to make Beavertails, but I just didn't get around to it. I'll try to do one come winter, when I can do a full post on it and show you how to make a perfect Killaloe Sunrise. Check out the Daring Kitchen main page to see a slideshow of everyone's doughnuts. 

Blog-checking lines: The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Recipes and full challenge PDF after the jump

Plum and cardamom sweet bread

Do you have a recipe that you return to every year? This is my September cake. That's when Italian plums are available here and I look forward to this recipe for the other 11 months. I've never tried it with the imported plums that are available all year round, and I don't intend to. This is so good that it's worth the wait. I've made it twice this month already, and may try to make it again before the local plums disappear. When you are putting the thick batter in the pan, it will seem like the heaviest cake ever, but the cake bakes up sweet, with a soft crumb and pockets of tart fruit.

This cake has cardamom, and I think cardamom and plums are the best match ever. I may be biased, though, because my friend Judy says I think cardamom goes with everything. It does. It goes with everything I like, so there! I made a small loaf and a few large cupcakes with the first batch, and a 9" cake with the second batch. As you can see, I didn't get much fruit in the cupcakes, but the loaf had lots.

Okay, there are only 10 days of September left--go make this cake! Here's the recipe:

Plum and Cardamom Sweet Bread

from In the Sweet Kitchen, by Regan Daley

Makes one 9”x5” loaf

¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

¾ cup tightly packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground cardamom

¾ cup full-fat sour cream

2 cups diced Italian/prune plums

1.     Preheat the oven to 350℉, grease the loaf pan and line it with parchment. I have also made this in a smaller loaf pan, with a few extra cupcakes, or in a 9” round pan.  Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla.

2.     Reserve 2 tablespoons of the flour and sift the remaining with the baking powder, soda, salt and cardamom. Add this mixture to the creamed mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the sour cream in two additions. Toss the plums with the reserved flour and fold them into the batter, mixing only until the plums are evenly distributed. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

3.     Bake the loaf in the centre of the oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then remove it and cool completely. This cake keeps well at room temperature for a few days, but I doubt it’ll last that long.

Daring Cooks put things in jars!

This month's Daring challenge was to preserve some of summer's bounty, in jars, or by freezing. What a great idea, as I know lots of Daring Cooks had been eager for just such a challenge. The theme was selected by John of Eat4Fun, who is a longtime member of the Daring Kitchen. I have been canning and preserving things since high school, but I loved this challenge! I made 10 things in a 3-day preserving spree, which coincided with a 33℃, high humidity heat wave. I think I may have contributed to that, with all the boiling pots. Above you can see crabapple jelly, the prettiest of the lot, I think. I had never made this before, and it turned out very sweet, but will be perfect for glazing tarts, or just eating on bread...

This is how many crabapples it took to make 5 x 250ml jars:

Next up was plums, of which I had a veritable windfall. My aunt's neighbour's tree was covered in fruit that nobody knew what to do with. I got about 5 kilograms and made 5 small jars of of plum-cardamom butter and 12 small jars of plum jam. 

The plum jam:

The plum-cardamom butter:

The difference between butter and jam is that a butter has less sugar and is cooked longer, to a thicker consistency and darker colour. I think cardamom and plums are perfect together.

I also made a jar of peaches, spiced with rum, tonka beans, mace, sapote and vanilla. The extra syrup from this was great with yogurt:

On to the savoury things. I helped my mother to make pickled beets (5 kg worth) and chili sauce (25 kg of tomatoes). Next, I saw a recipe for a beet and horseradish relish using roasted tomatoes. I don't usually love relish, but I really wanted to try this recipe. It's from The River Cottage Preserving Handbook, and you'll find it after the jump. I got my orange marmalade and rhubarb jam recipes from the same book. This book does not often recommend processing jars in a boiling water bath, but is reliable, I think. There was a lot of discussion on the forum about processing and it seems to US recommendations are much stricter than in other parts of the world. I usually always finish my jars in a boiling water bath, but I was surprised to learn that my mother and all her relatives do not, even when working with low acid foods. To quote her: 'nobody's died yet'. No, but I still boiled my jars. :)

This stuff is fantastic--sweet and tangy. It called for fresh horseradish, which I found growing in my mother's backyard, but you could use prepared. Here's what the fresh looks like:

Here's a fairly bad picture of everything but the plum jam lined up on the windowsill:

Left to right: chili sauce, rum peaches, bread and butter pickles, pickled beets, orange marmalade, beet relish, rhubarb jam, crabapple jelly, plum-cardamom butter, pickled horseradish

The orange marmalade was made this winter, for a Daring Bakers' challenge, and the rhubarb was made this spring.

Blog-checking lines: The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Daring Cooks explore the world of pierogi!

This month's challenge was to make pierogi dough and fillings from scratch, using local ingredients when possible. I made 2 savoury varieties and  1 sweet one, though I didn't get any pictures of the sweet one. All in all, I made 72 pierogies, and it took a long time, rolling and cutting, filling and sealing each one by hand. I would much rather fuss over something sweet, though these were delicious.

This picture shows the rolled out dough with its filling of mashed potatoes, cheese curds, sauteed onion, butter, salt and pepper. You can see the cheese curds in the bottom left corner of the first picture. They are bits of fresh cheddar, before pressing, and are fresh, mild, salty and squeaky. When I was a child, they were the ubiquitous road trip snack, and it is all too easy to eat about a pound of them. Look out for them if you have a cheese factory in your area. I garnished the boiled pierogies with lardons of my uncle's smoked bacon and more sauteed onions. The dough I chose, from the Gourmet cookbook (the yellow one), was easy to work with, but the pierogies needed to be boiled for 15 minutes and they were still a bit chewy. 

This is the second savoury filling: ground pork sauteed with onions and mixed with an equal amount of fresh sauerkraut, seasoned with fresh thyme and pepper. There is a local store that makes wonderful barrel sauerkraut, which is so much better than the stuff from a can or jar. After boiling, I turned these in a pan with browned butter and fresh dill.

As a reward for making 71 of these, I made myself a treat: one large pierogi filled with German plum butter (from a can, found at the sauerkraut store) and cardamom. I love plums and cardamom together. After boiling I fried it with some butter and sugar and ate it with a big blob of mascarpone on top. Can you understand why I didn't get any pictures? Here's a gratuitous flower picture from the backyard instead.

This was a fun challenge, and while I have eaten many pierogies, I had only made them once before. It was a lot of work, but these were so much better than the ones you can buy frozen at the supermarket. Head over to The Daring Kitchen to check out the slideshow of all the other takes on this challenge. 

Oh, and even though I don't love potatoes, they were my favourite, well, after the cardamom-plum one. Maybe wrapping them in dough is the trick. After making the pierogies, I made a kind of shepherd's pie with the leftover fillings. It was delicious!

Blog-checking lines:
The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

PDF of challenge and recipes after the jump!