a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
Usually when I have bananas that are reaching the end of their life I make banana bread or a banana cake but this time I wanted to do something different. I also was in the mood for making some scrolls and knowing that Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction has some amazing scrolls (or rolls as they are sometimes called) on her website, a quick search resulted in a recipe which met my needs.
So for your viewing and eating pleasure, I present Banana Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Scrolls.
Passionfruit is yet another of my favourite flavours. I always loved drinking the Pasito soft drink growing up, and now the hubby makes a more adult drink by making passionfruit liqueur. If there is an option for something passionfruit, I will generally take it, including the fruit itself.
When we recently had friends over for dinner, I wanted to make something with passionfruit and given B said she liked créme brûlée it was decided I would make Passionfruit Créme Brûlée.
I was a little late this month checking out what the Daring Bakers Challenge was for June, but I am sure glad I checked as this little number turned out to be super delicious. Thankfully we were having visitors this weekend which meant I could make this dessert to share so the hubby and I wouldn’t have to eat it for the next week, not that either of us would have minded I suppose.
We were asked to create either a Charlotte Royale or a Charlotte Russe. A Charlotte Royale is made in a bowl lined with swiss roll cake slices (similar to the Southern Bombe) where the Charlotte Russe is assembled in a loose bottom pan lined with ladyfingers. I decided to go for the latter as when looking for inspiration I came across an all chocolate version which was just calling my name.
Quite a while ago, 2nd July 2012 to be exact, a very cute post appeared in my feed reader for some cupcakes. The post was by Steph from Raspberri Cupcakes, who inspired the Fruit Tingle Macarons, for her Milk and Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes.
I tend to decorate my cupcakes quite basic with my favourite rose swirl piping technique, but there are quite a few different cupcakes on my Pinterest board decorated with mini pancakes, various flowers, cream puffs and mini versions of baking equipment that I hope to try. These cupcakes are quite cute and really easy, plus you cannot beat this classic combination so I present these Milk and Cookies Cupcakes for your viewing pleasure.
I don’t know if I could live in a world without bread. Whether it be the smell of freshly baked bread or admiring the endless shapes and flavours it can assume, bread really is one of my favourite foods. And I must confess, some days you still really can’t beat butter and vegemite on a piece of fresh white bread, which in winter I usually enhance by putting it in the microwave for 20 seconds to get all warm. Mmmmmm….
But back to this months Daring Bakers Challenge which was to take bread and shape it into something a little fancy. If you follow me on Pinterest, you will see on my bread board I have a few fancy shaped breads which are on my “to do” list. For this challenge, I stuck with one of the provided recipes which was for a cinnamon sweet bread as you know how much I love cinnamon.
After making my first ever batch of crème pâtissière, I obviously needed something to use it for. My first thought was to make my own version of the toffee choux pastries from our local patisserie which is a favourite of the hubby and I, but I decided I didn’t want to play around with hot sugar on this particular occasion so that idea was scrapped. I did want to stick with making choux pastry as I haven’t made it for quite some time so I settled on making éclairs instead.
I was watching an episode of the of the Great British Bake Off recently and one of the challenges was to make a Fraisier Cake chock full of crème pâtissière, or pastry cream as it can be known as. Not long before I saw this episode, I came across a recipe for crème pâtissière on The Little French Bakery so all signs were pointing to me making some.
Crème pâtissière is obviously French and features in a number of pastries such as profiteroles, Napoleons, éclairs and tarts and although it is usually vanilla in flavour, you can mix it up with addition of liquors, infusing the milk whilst it is heating with ingredients such as cinnamon, dried (culinary) lavender or coffee beans. If you are interested in a chocolate version, you can add some chocolate near the end of the cooking whisking until it is all melted.
I was in a biscuit making mood recently and although I initially thought of something chocolate, I recalled a cinnamon flavoured biscuit with a funny name and was pretty sure I saw a recipe on one of my favourite blogs.
So I headed over to Sally’s website, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and did a search for Snickerdoodles and a number of recipes appeared. The one I ended up choosing was the soft and thick snickerdoodles, because let’s face it, they look amazing (as does everything on Sally’s blog)!
For this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, it was time for me to try something that I had been wanting to for a while now. Whoopie Pies are an American treat which you don’t see much of here in Australia, well at least in my part of the world and are a cross between a cookie and a cake with two of them being sandwiched together by some kind of sweet filling.
For my Whoopie Pies, I originally thought of red velvet given my obsession but as it was the silly festive season I decided to make some Christmas Candy Cane Whoopie Pies instead using a recipe from JoyofBaking.com.
A few months ago I finally signed up to be a Daring Baker, which is something I had been hearing about via some of the blogs I follow. The main reason it interested me was so that I would make something I might normally not have made as I tend to stick with what I am comfortable with.
This month was no exception. I had heard of a “three milk cake” a few times recently and it definitely intrigued me. When I saw that September’s challenge was for Pastel de Tres Leches, I had the reason I needed to finally make this cake, even if I didn’t get to eat it myself.