Daring Bakers Challenge - Caramel Cake

Recipe: Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/), as published on Bay Area Bites (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/).

Hosted By: Dolores (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/) and co-hostedAlex (Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo: http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/), Jenny of Foray into Food (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/) and Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/).

This challenge sounded great to me. Not to difficult and something I wouldn’t normally try. I started about 3:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon and I finished the caramel syrup, cake (cupcakes), frosting and the optional caramels by 7 PM. Not too bad in my opinion.

The caramel syrup directions were a little lacking in my opinion, I am more exact than just a particular color, and I am not sure that I ever got this right. It smelled like molasses to me. I started working on the cake and the frosting next. I am not a huge fan of clarified/browned butter; the smell is just not appetizing to me so I wasn’t too thrilled with how my kitchen started to smell as I browned the butter. The cake went together quickly as I expected and I was able to make 18 cupcakes from this recipe. I probably should have gone with 14 for a more generous serving but I am not too concerned with the size. The cupcakes took about 26 minutes to bake.

Next I started the caramels, these took way longer than I expected, from before 5 until 7. I used corn syrup in place of the golden syrup because I wasn’t able to find the golden syrup. I have seen recipes for caramels using this so I wasn’t to concerned. I had a difficult time determining the difference between energetically and violently. Nevertheless, they sure looked yummy. Waiting for them to cool was definitely difficult. While the caramels were cooking, I finished the frosting. I wouldn’t say I am a huge fan but I think it’s due to my predisposed dislike of browned butter. The cupcakes frosted quickly and were ok. I put them in the freezer for future need.

Pictures tomorrow since I can't find the cord for my camera. I can read them at work tomorrow.

Daring Bakers Challenge - Pizza Dough

Ah, pizza dough a seemingly easy project, I've gotten pretty good at making challah so I didn't figure this would be an issue. Was I wrong, for a challenge I decided to use the stand mixer and dough hook attachment. This was seriously, the stickiest dough I have ever worked with, I added quite a bit of extra flour but it didn't get much better. I was interested in the cold rise as I have heard of using it with almost any bread dough to spread out the time dedicated to it. I have no idea what I did wrong (although in every bread recipie I make, I always use at least one extra cup of flour. Maye I should have gone with my instinct and added more flour.

After putting the dough together in a matter of about 20 minutes, I stuck two pieces in the fridge to try the following day. I didn't see much rising going on but it looked okay to me when I pulled it out to bring it to room temperature. The dough was still extremely sticky, I couldn't work with it at all. I think for the next go around I would use a lot more flour. I hadn't used my stone in a while so it was nice to bring that out and give it a whirl, it worked well and I might use the method again although not in the summer, 45 minutes at 500 degrees made my condo pretty warm.

Pizza went in with some difficulty, even the generous amount of cornmeal didn't help the stickiness and the transfer was not pretty, still the pizza cooked up and tasted ok, I can't say that there was much flavor in the dough. We shall see how the dough that's in the freezer works. If that works well, I might work on perfecting this recipe as it was pretty quick and tasty.

No pictures this month, I can't seem to find my camera right now. Looking forward to next month.