Daring Bakers Feb. 2011 - Panna Cotta with florentine cookies

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.


I chose to make a vanilla panna cotta with layers of apple and banana puree, wish I did just by pureeing the fruits with a bit of honey and adding a bit of gelatin to be more consistent as suggested in the recipe. The layers in my panna cotta didn´t come out perfect, but it was delicious.
i was checking the other peoples pictures in the Daring Kitchen forums, and almost everyone turned out with giant florentine cookies. Mine actually came out in a decent size. I just decorated them with dark chocolate instead of making the cookie sandwiches. 


You can check out the base recipes here.

Daring Bakers Jan. 2011 - Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.


Not so easy, mine came out a bit faded actually. But the taste was wonderful! The print was suposed to be just simple diagonal stripes.
Inside I used a mango mousse and a coconut mousse. In the top and for decoration I just used some simple fresh mango stripes.


The recipe and indications to do the Biscuit Jaconde, you can find here.

For the Mango mousse:

200 gr of mango puree

1 tablespoon of sugar (my mangos where quite sweet so I just added a bit of sugar to beat the cream. Adjust accordingly)

100 mL of cream

3 gr of white gelatin powder

Hydrate the gelatin powder with enough cold water (2 or 3 tablespoons), and let it stand until swollen.

Heat the mango puree until it starts softly simmering. Dissolve the gelatin in the puree and let it cool down to room temperature.

eat the cream with 1 tablespoon of sugar until it starts forming peaks. Add the cream to the mango mixture until it is well mixed.

Pour it into the Entremet forms and place in the fridge to stiffen.

For the coconut mousse:


200 mL of coconut milk
1 egg yolk
2 + 1 tablespoons of brown sugar
100 mL of cream
3 gr of white gelatin powder.


Hydrate the gelatin powder with enough cold water (2 or 3 tablespoons), and let it stand until swollen.
Mix the coconut milk with the egg yolk and 2 tablespoons of sugar, place in a small pan and bring to heat whisking frequently until it thickens. Take from heat and mix in the hydrated gelatin, dissolving well. Let it stand to cool down to room temperature.
Beat the cream with 1 tablespoon of sugar until it starts forming peaks. When the coconut mixture cools down, mix in the cream until everything is well incorporated. Pour the coconut mousse on the top of the mango mousse (once the later has stiffen) and place in the fridge.


The ideal is to leave the Entremet in the fridge overnight. When serving decorate with some fresh mango.




PS: Got a new 50 mm lens that I tried out in this pictures. :)

Daring Bakers - Christmas Stollen

Been gone for a while for Christmas vacations, hence the lack of posting. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with wonderful food of course :)

This month challenge in the Daring Bakers was really on the spot, since i wanted to try to make a Stollen, the typical German Christmas bread with fruit and nuts. The recipe makes for a quite big stollen, or actually more than one. In my case the dough came out a bit dry, I would probably bake it for less time or add a little bit less flour if I do this recipe again. Otherwise the taste was fabulous, though I must agree it is not quite the typical recipe ;)

In my case I substituted the raisins by cranberries, since most of the people who were going to eat it don´t like raisins that much.

This bread reminds me a lot of the portuguese "Bolo Rei" also typical for this season.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

If you want, you can check out the recipe in the Daring Kitchen.