The Daring Bakers Visit Armenia

We were challenged to make one or two desserts this month, and I made both, as they sounded so good. I was not familiar with Armenian baking, so I was eager to see what was in store. The first dessert was a simple cake with a crumb base, flavoured with nutmeg and sprinkled with walnuts. I went with cardamom and pistachios instead.

As you can see, the pistachios migrated a long way from the top of the cake. The batter was very liquid and I watched all the nuts get sucked into a vortex in the centre of the cake and disappear. Remember that I haven't got TV reception. The flavour and texture of the cake were good, but it reinforced why I do not like crumb cakes. The base was too rich and sweet and greasy and I ended up cutting it off. I made a second version of this cake, halving the sugar, doubling the egg and mixing all the crumbs with the egg and milk and much preferred the result. The batter was thick, the nuts stayed where they were supposed to, and it baked in the suggested time, unlike the crumb cake, which took much longer for many Daring Bakers. No photo of that one, sorry.

The second dessert was totally unfamiliar: nazook. A rich, but unsweetened butter and sour cream yeasted pastry wrapped around a rich and buttery filling. I made mine small, so they were crisp but tender. I used mahleb (or mahlab), a spice made from dried cherry pits to flavour the pastry and I used the given recipe for a vanilla filling. The mahleb gave a faint cherry-almond taste. These were delicious with coffee or tea, but again I would reduce the sugar next time. The pastry was amazing though, and so nice to work with. I didn't want to stop kneading it, even though I hate touching sour cream. That stuff is nasty, even if it does do wonders in baking.

Thanks to Jason of Daily Candor for a great challenge! You can find the full challenge post here, with step-by-step photos and a great video of Jason and his aunt Aida making nazook.

Blog-checking lines: The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

Finnish Pulla: Braided and Chocolate Swirled

Oh, hello. Are you still there? I can hardly blame you if you've up and left. In fact, I left myself for a bit, but I brought you back the most delicious sweet bread with cardamom. This bread has long been one of my favourites, but I can't make it too often, as I find myself wanting to eat it for every meal, dessert and snack. It's a good thing I gave half of it away.

Here's the baked bread. I used the 6-strand braid, just because. I usually just do a simple 3-strand braid, but wanted the plumper loaf. The technique is easy. I watched this video, then found myself repeating the steps aloud as I braided. 

Here's the loaf before the egg wash, pearl sugar and baking. You can see the cardamom in it. I grind it in a mortar and pestle and never have the patience to make it really fine. Also, the cardamom I buy at a local Indian food shop is really powerful and I will reduce it a tad next time. If you're using pre-ground, definitely use the full amount.

I used half the dough for the braid, but had a bit of marzipan left over, so I filled this loaf with a made-up mixture of marzipan, butter and melted bittersweet chocolate. It was a bit too gloopy and rolling it was a mess, but the end result was pretty tasty. I used chocolate because I actually made this in February for Lisa's Bread Baking with Chocolate post, which I think was due by the first of March. Oops.

I used this pulla recipe from Julia at Melanger. The filling was equal parts of butter, marzipan and chocolate (about 100 grams each), but next time I will chop the chocolate instead of melting it. To make the swirl, I rolled the dough in a rectangle, spread it with the filling, then rolled it and cut it lengthwise before twisting it up. Joining the ends was tricky, as it there was chocolate everywhere by this point. It looked like this before baking:

Notice that I cropped off the really messy bit. Anyhow, see you next week with the Daring Bakers reveal. I wish I had made more of this to eat while watching Nadal-Djokovic tomorrow. Sigh.

The Daring Bakers' Challenge was Quick!!

Quick breads, that is. Now what is a quick bread? To me, it's a cake baked in a loaf tin. In my family, if something is baked in a loaf tin, it needs butter slathered on it, no matter if there is already butter in it. This was another challenge that wasn't very challenging, but I made 4 quick breads: pumpkin, lemon-yogurt, banana and Nutella swirl. 2 went to a friend, one was all mine and the last one went to my mother's. I didn't stick around, but I bet she put butter on it.

Pumpkin-spelt loaf

I based the recipe on this one, replacing the whole wheat flour with spelt, the olive oil with grapeseed oil, using my own frozen pumpkin puree, and replacing half the cinnamon with ginger. I should really type out the recipe...

Lemon-yogurt loaf

I made this one to take to a friend, so no sliced photos. We had trouble coordinating our schedules, so this sat, wrapped, on my table for 3 or 4 days before I got it delivered. I just unwrapped it and glazed it with a bit of lemon juice and sugar and it was fine. I used this recipe and pretty much followed it. 

Imagine!

Future Nutella swirls?

I like the yogurt cake linked above so much that I made it again, this time replacing the lemon with vanilla, adding chopped roasted hazelnuts and about half a jar of Nutella. I didn't get the swirls I wanted, as the textures were so different--the batter is quite thin. Next time, I would whisk the Nutella into a portion of the batter for better results.

The cake itself was delicious. It tasted rich and buttery without any butter. We ate it in thick slices with  coffee.

Thanks Lis for stepping in and giving us a fun challenge! Here is the challenge PDF, though once again I didn't use any of the recipes. 

Blog-checking lines: The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

Llapingachos and Pupusas: The Daring Cooks

Late again, that's me. The Daring Cooks' challenge this month was to make patties of some sort. I must admit, I wasn't too enthused at first, as challenges recently have been less than challenging. I kind of like looking for obscure ingredients and making time consuming dishes. Since that wasn't necessary, I challenged myself to make a dish I had enjoyed in Ecuador and another from El Salvador that I have loved for a long time but never eaten. And you know what? I loved the challenge. I would probably never have got to making either of these things without it. So thanks,  Lisa and Audax!

First up are the llapingachos. I had these as part of my first meal in Ecuador, in Quito and I also had them when I visited Cuenca. They were not common on the coast, but they really hit the spot on those chilly nights at high altitude. And they were fun to order too. Llapingachos are a kind of mashed potato cake, seasoned and coloured with achiote. Inside is melty cheese and they are topped with an interesting array of toppings. First was a warm peanut sauce with hard-boiled egg, pickled onions, tomato and salsa. You can also see the avocado behind, but it just wouldn't fit on top. Actually the llapingachos I had in Ecuador didn't have the peanut sauce but I quite liked the combination.

The melted cheese. Mmm.

Next up was pupusas, something I've been eating for years. Unfortunately they are hard to find here so I don't have them as often as I'd like. Now that I know how easy they are to make, I think they'll be making many more appearances on the table. Pupusas are masa cakes stuffed with any combination of cheese, beans or meat. The ones in the photo have leftover pulled pork in them, but my favourites were the cheese ones. 

The pupusas are topped with curtido, a slightly pickled coleslaw. I also like a bit of plain tomato sauce on mine, but I don't know if that's traditional. The ones in the photos are cracked because I refrigerated them overnight before cooking them, but it really should be done last minute. They only take a few minutes to form and 5 minutes a side to cook.

There's melty cheese in here too. Can you find it?

Thanks to Lisa and Audax for a great challenge. Here is the original challenge pdf, though I didn't use any of the recipes. Click on the names for recipes for llapingachos, peanut sauce, pupusas and curtido.

Blog-checking lines: The Daring Cooks’ February 2012 challenge was hosted by Audax & Lis and they chose to present Patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness! We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties!

Chocolate Chestnut Cupcakes

Yup, more chestnuts, and more chocolate too. I think they are a nice pair, much better than chocolate and orange. In previous posts, I seem to have implied that I hate chocolate, but that's not the case. I just don't find it very appealing in bar form. But a cake? Mmm. Oh yes,  and I love labour-intensive chestnuts. I am still working on using up the jars of jam and the candied chestnuts. I made these cupcakes one night when some friends came over for dinner. I had planned to make a layer cake filled with the mousse but ran out of time. In fact the cupcakes my guests got didn't look at all like the above. They got the tin of cupcakes, the mixing bowl of mousse and the jar of candied chestnuts in syrup. It was an assemble-your-own kind of evening. I saved this one for the next morning. A single photograph and it became breakfast. Magic.

Chestnut Mousse

Source: The Cake Bible

2 cups whipping cream, chilled

1 cup sweetened chestnut puree with vanilla

rum to taste, optional

1. Whip cream until soft peaks form, then fold in chestnut puree and rum. Combine well. Whip a bit more if you want stiffer peaks. Keeps chilled for a day or two.

For the cupcakes, I used half the recipe for the German Chocolate Cake, baked for 15-20 minutes at 350.  

To serve, top the cupcakes with the mousse and candied chestnuts, if desired. Makes 12, with a very generous amount of mousse.