Gevulde Speculaas (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

The first Daring Bakers' Challenge of 2013 was a traditional Dutch spice cake: gevulde speculaas.  The outside is a slightly crunchy pastry, full of all sorts of delicious spices, and the inside is a creamy almond paste.  Yum.  Excellent challenge!

Francijn of Koken in de Brouwerij was our January 2013 Daring Bakers’ Hostess and she challenged us to make the traditional Dutch pastry, Gevulde Speculaas from scratch! That includes making our own spice mix, almond paste and dough! Delicious!

Chocolate Mousse Mille-Feuille (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

It's October 27th!  That means it's time for another Daring Bakers' Challenge.  This month's challenge was to create something called mille-feuille, which means "thousand sheets" in French.  The reason this is called "thousand sheets" is because the buttery pastry part of this dessert is folded and rolled out a gazillion times (I may be exaggerating...a bit).  Typically, mille-feuille is filled with a vanilla pastry cream.  I felt like I'd just used pastry cream in the pâte à choux swans challenge, so I decided to use chocolate mousse instead.

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

Pâte à Choux Swans (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

I'm continuing to have a lot of fun with the Daring Bakers' monthly challenges!  This month, we were challenged to make filled pâte à choux swans (or, more generally pâte à choux shapes).  Prior to this challenge, I had no idea what pâte à choux was - I soon discovered that it is the pastry used for cream puffs.  I love cream puffs (here in Seattle, they're often served at pho places - is that the case anywhere else?) so I was very excited to get started!

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

Pecan Nazook (Daring Bakers Challenge)

When daydreaming about my next baking project, it is usually visions of cakes, cupcakes, and cookies that are swimming through my brain.  I'm not usually pondering Armenian pastries like nazook, which is a shame because it's delicious.  Last month, I stumbled across a website called The Daring Kitchen. Every month, it issues challenges - one for baking and one for cooking.  I saw an opportunity to expand my baking horizons, and signed on to become a Daring Baker.