The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er...
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m jealous of my next door neighbors. No, not the fact they play thumpy music and it drives me insane or that the tree in the front yard is completely dead. I’m jealous of the fact that my very nice next door neighbor's mother comes over to look after their little boy. He’s a year older than Riley and is quite cute. Grandma is there almost everyday to take care of him and when she’s there the smells that come from their house. Oh my, they are wonderful. I wish she would chase me around the yard with some freshly cooked spring rolls just like she does to the laughing and smiling from ear to ear pre-schooler. But alas, she hasn’t and probably won’t… ever. That would just be strange. Anyways you could imagine my glee and excitement when I saw that this month’s daring cooks challenge was dumplings. Dumplings!!! Yippee!!! One of my favorite foods! When I go to Edo I make Tim get the bento box just so I can eat his dumplings with my Udon chicken soup. Yes, I know it’s not real Asian food and that it probably is not
The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.
I’d actually never heard of Ricotta Gnocchi till I saw it on the daring cooks message board. But now that I’m a daring cook I have to be up to try anything, right?! So in the true spirit of being daring I thought I would make the cheese as well. Which I thought was really easy and worked great! It made some of the richest ricotta cheese I’ve ever had. I don’t know if that worked against me though when I was making the Gnocchi. It was so rich I couldn’t eat a lot of it so we had it more as an appetizer before a birthday party rather than for dinner as I had planned. Overall I thought it was nice and would be a great appetizer but definitely not a meal. I made a light tomato sauce to go with it to try and cut the richness.
For Mother’s Day I wanted to be able to try some recipes that I’d been looking at for a long time and finally got the chance! Tim and I started off by making some of the most delicious pretzels I’d ever had. Smitten Kitchen has the best recipe and I recommend trying it if you ever have a craving or just want to give it a try!
We went from this...
to this...
to this happy boy in about a 3 minutes flat. I love my son dearly but sometimes he's a little over dramatic. He must get that from his father!
Yup, that's my wonderful little baby boy. 7.5 weeks old and already giving attitude just like his Mother! That a boy!
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.
Mmmm, two of my favourite things... chocolate cake and ice cream!
