Sesame & Vanilla Sugar Challah (Daring Bakers' Challenge)

It's time for the May's Daring Bakers' Challenge post!  I'm really enjoying these challenges.  They force me to bake things I'm not familiar with, and both challenges have yielded really tasty results.

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Challah is a celebratory Jewish bread, and can be braided with three, four, or six strands of bread.  While deciding how many braids to try, I had a brief flashback to the summer I unsuccessfully attempted to learn to french braid hair.  That summer taught me one thing: braiding is not a great strength of mine.  Therefore, for this challenge, I stuck with the three strand braids.  Maybe someday I'll get brave and try four or six.  I decided to try two flavor variations - sesame, and vanilla sugar.

Black Sesame & Red Bean Macarons

My husband and I go to his grandmother's house for dinner almost weekly.  She always prepares several elaborate, delicious dishes for us, and we always leave with leftovers.  Unfortunately, Grandma doesn't speak very much English, and I don't speak Mandarin, so it's hard for me to express my gratitude for these excellent dinners in words.  I've learned the Mandarin word for "thank you", but it never seems like enough.

This week, I decided I was going to bake something for Grandma.  She doesn't bake herself, and she usually seems to like the things I make for her.

Black & White Sesame Cupcakes with Sweet Bean Filling

Last week, I saw a blog post about a cupcake with black sesame buttercream.  Immediately, I began to plot my next cupcake.  I love sesame.  I sometimes have weird cravings for it.  I started to envision a lightly sesame cupcake with sweet bean filling and sesame buttercream.  At this point, I realized I was scheming to create a cupcake version of my favorite dim sum treat: Jin Deui.