Saturday, August 27, 2011

Daring Baker's: Candylicious!

I've been waiting for weeks and weeks to post my August Daring Baker's Challenge and here it is: 'Candylicious'

Bakers Challenge blog checking lines: The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I opted to make cut/dipped bon bons, two flavours of truffle and a bark candy. Here's what i did:

1) Dolce and Banana Homemade Marshmallow Dipped Chocolates: I made homemade marshmallows, infused with caramelized banana tea and then sliced the marshmallows in half and filled them with caramel before dipping them in dark tempered chocolate

2) Chamomile Lavender Milk Chocolate Truffles: I infused milk chocolate and cream with a chamomile lavender coconut tea and then dipped in tempered dark chocolate
3) Coconut Curry Milk Chocolate Truffles: I infused milk chocolate and cream with a curry and added toasted coconut before dipping in tempered dark chocolate. Surprisingly yummy!
4) Strawberry lime pistachio and sea salt tea biscuit bark: Say that 20 times! I tempered white chocolate, added a bit of strawberry puree, lime zest, honeyed pistachio's and sea salt. I then took every day tea biscuits and poured boiled butter and white and brown sugar over it before baking for 9 minutes. Once removed from the oven I poured my chocolate over it, spread it and froze it until it could break into bark. Next time I would wait for the cookies to cool completely before pouring the chocolate on top. I think the heat of the cookies took away from my tempered chocolate look. Otherwise delicious!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

5 AM Muffins

Is it correct to say '5 AM'? Or, should it be '5am' or '5 am'? This is probably one of those times when Google would come in handy. What did we do before Google? Did we just ask each other (kind of like I'm attempting right now)?

It's 9:21 AM on Thursday, August 11th. I have been up for 4 hours and 21 minutes, after about 6 hours of dream filled, fitful sleep. This is actually not bad for me these days. My belly is really big and my body can't stay comfortable for more than 45 mins, max. As a result, I've built a pillow fortress, which helps, but needs major adjusting each time I shift positions. When i woke up this morning to shift, I was so hungry that I just had to get up.

Getting up so early definitely has it's perks: the house is nice at 5 AM. Plus, there is no real rush to do anything. Time takes on a slower quality, which feels rare these days.

To fill my slow moving time, I decided to make muffins. Spelt hemp apple walnut muffins. They were good and baked sort of quickly, which was nice since I was so hungry.

I woke Charlie up with the promise of a hot muffin if he would come downstairs and hang out with me (it was almost time to get up anyway). He seemed to be fairly game, without much convincing. So downstairs we went and muffins we ate.

Here is the recipe, which i found online and adapted by adding the hemp and oil:

Dry (mix in one bowl):
1 1/2 cups of spelt flour
3/4 brown sugar
1/2 cup hemp protien powder
1/3 cup ground flax
1 tsp soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg

Wet (mix in other bowl):
1/2 cup yogurt
1 cup almond milk
1 diced apple
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp vanilla
walnuts

Mix until just blended and scoop into muffin papers. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Bake for 25 mins at 325 (or until knife comes out clean).