My First Daring Bakers' Challenge

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!

This was my first Daring Bakers' challenge and I was excited. I would have rather baked something, but making chocolates was fun, too. For my two candies I did two different types of truffles. Both were dipped truffles, one is a Hazelnut Coffee Truffle (Frangelico liqueur and instant espresso on the inside, and rolled in crushed chocolate covered coffee beans) and the other is an Amaretto Truffle (Amaretto liqueur and rolled in toasted, chopped almonds). 

The main challenge of the challenge was tempering chocolate. This ended up being difficult for me because I didn't have an appropriate thermometer. I'm sure my tempering technique wasn't perfect, but after dipping the truffles in the tempered chocolate I rolled them in the toppings so any imperfections were hidden =) Here's how they turned out:

I like the Amaretto Truffles the most because I really like the Amaretto and almond flavor. Also, with the Hazelnut Coffee Truffles I used instant espresso, which I think made the chocolate bitter (and I wasn't using a very sweet chocolate to begin with).

Overall, I liked doing this challenge and I'm looking forward to having something new to try every month.

Baked Not Fried

Trying to find healthier alternatives to fried food can be a difficult feat. Some things are just meant to be fried. While baked alternatives may not ever be able to emulate the deliciousness of their fried counterparts, I've been trying out some recipes in hopes of finding some suitable substitutes.

In the past, I've tried baking buffalo wings, fries/sweet potato fries, zucchini, many attempts in vain, but some more successful. The most recent and most successful attempt was buffalo wings. Using Alton Brown's method of steaming the wings before baking produced a tasty result that was *this* close to fried buffalo wings.

Tonight for dinner, I attempted making a baked version of chicken taquitos. Taquitos are a celebrated fried snack food, making them an ideal target for the "baked not fried" challenge. The results weren’t exactly amazing, but at least they tasted good. The corn tortillas split open while baking, something that happened when I tried baked taquitos before. I think it has to do with the tortillas drying out in the oven because there is no oil (just non-stick spray) to keep them moist.

For the chicken, I baked off a chicken breast then mixed in the adobo sauce from canned chipotles, leftover yogurt dip (greek yogurt, chipotles, garlic, lime), mozzarella cheese, and spices including cumin, coriander, garlic and smoked paprika. I wrapped them up in corn tortillas that I got from a Mexican grocery store in Oakland. After spraying them with non-stick spray I baked them at 425 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

I added a side of homemade refried pinto beans. To make these I just sauteed half a jalapeno, one shallot and one clove of garlic in a little bit of olive oil in a small pot. I drained half the liquid from a can of pinto beans and then using a fork smashed and mashed them up in a bowl. I added the beans to the pot along with a little salt and pepper plus a bit of cumin. The beans cooked for 10-15 minutes on low until some of the moisture had evaporated. Before serving I added some cheese to the pot and put the lid on so it would melt. Even though I was trying to cook healthier I ended up with a meal lacking in vegetables besides onion and jalapeno so I added some tomato on top of the beans.

Here's a picture of the result.

Overall, it was a tasty and satisfying alternative to the fried snack, but I want to play around with ways to make the taquitos so they don't split open during baking.