Daring Bakers Challange March 2011 - Meringue Coffee Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Now this kind of challenge is right up my alley. I LOVE making bready stuff. There's something about the kneading and how it changes consistency and then it rises and it's like magic and then there's the smell.... *sigh* I could go on and on...

I figured that two massive wheels of this would be too hard to share out to people so I decided to make a wheel with half of it and treat the rest like chelsea buns.

The dough as I put it aside to rise.

 

The dough once it was risen.

 

The fillings all ready to go.

 Dough rolled out and meringue ready to go.

 meringue spread out

Topping in place and rolling started. I went for the traditional chocolate, pecans and cinnamon-sugar.

 I can't resist a macro shot and it all looks so pretty!

Dough rolled up.

I rolled my dough onto baking paper and a flexible cutting board.

Ring closed up.

I cut with kitchen scissors.

The finished result. It was flatter than I'd expected and I think it was in about 5 mins too long but it still looks good (I think).

For the chelsea bun versions I cut the log into sections with a knife.

I greased and floured muffin tins and put the segments in in various ways.

The buns after the second rise.

Another gratuitous macro shot.

And this is one of the buns cut in half. Yummo!

And this is a segement from the wheel. The texture, although a little dry (must watch the clock!) was really great and something new for me. I will definitely be trying this recipe again with variations in filling. It was a great hit with everyone who tried it and I have requests for Easter.

The Return to Daring Baking

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

Well I have had quite a while off from Daring Baking- the easiest way to word my hiatus is to say that life got in the way. And when I finally returned, what did I get? Panna Cotta. Oh dear.

I'm vegetarian so have stayed away from anything with gelatine in it and have also bloused out from gelatine substitutes but my pride wouldn't let me take a pass on my first month back the the bakers so I just had to do it and I must say, I think it was a bit of a fail. Don't get me wrong, the flavour was great and the texture was smooth and creamy but, due to insufficient experimentation with galtin substitutes, my panna cotta, although firm, would not hold its own shape. Consequently, I got all snitty and didn't take as good photos as I could have.

The florentine went better but took a bit of experimentation to find just the right amount of time to cook them so they were an relatively even brown and not just brown at the edges (I was worried about them burning) because if they don't brown all the way across the buscuit, all you have a floppy florentines.

So. The panna cottta. I made a vanilla one with a mixed berry gelee and used Xanthan Gum instead of gelatine because I am vegetarian.

This was my great innovative presentation idea which failed abysmally. I put shot glasses inside poaching cups and poured the panna cotta around it. The intention was to pull the shots glasses out once the panna cotta had set and put in the berry gelee. Unfortunately my panna cotta didn't set enough so when I pulled the shot glass out, it all just kinda slopped in on itself. Very demoralising.

And so I pinned all my hopes on the florentines. These turned out to be trickier than I had expected. I'm glad the mixture makes to many because it took me several goes to work out exactly how long they had to cook to set properly. It seems it really is very important that they are brown all the way through but it's a fine line between that and burning. The ones below are an example of my first ones- these aren't cooked enough to set properly.

This is what they had to look like to set properly.

I draped some over a rolling pin to curve them.

Curved Florentines drizzled with dark chocoalte.

Flat versions also covered in dark chocolate. These are amazingly addictive!