has it been a year already?

hard to believe but it has been a whole year since my first post for the daring bakers. last year for my first challenge, i made a flourless chocolate torte for valentines day. we had dinner with the girls and this year, we did it again.

BLOG-CHECKING LINES: The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

over the years, i have made many batches of tiramisu. i have made my own mascarpone and my own ladyfingers too. for my first book, skyhigh, i even designed a wedding cake made of tiramisu and for that cake, i made the layers with sponge cakes. i have perfected the method for whipping zabaglione by using a hand held electric mixer which some would say is cheating. but when you work in a restaurant and have to make batches of tiramisu to feed several dozen guests at a time, you find a way to make it happen...

since i was serving this to my girls, i used coffee rather than espresso and i left out the rum altogether. i didn't have any in the house and i really didn't want to buy a bottle for just this recipe. i made the mascarpone using a 40% cream because it was the only one i could find that wasn't pastuerized and it was a bit firm but it worked out fine. one other thing i did-omit the lemon; i do not like the combination of coffee/espresso with lemon at all. would i made tiramisu again, you betcha! would i use this method again, no. the addition of pastry cream was not necessary and i didn't care for the consistency of the cream-way to soft. we ate, we enjoyed and we had a nice valentine's day dinner.

thanks ladies for a wonderful challenge!

busy, busy

work work work. even at home i am working...sorry for the absence but if you are really curious, check out my new project by clicking on the loveless cafe logo above. that's where you will find me.

saw this at work and thought i would share it . now i am not a walking atlas but even i know that there is something amiss here. look at the logo, longboard surfing and a claim that the onions come from "every pacific point". so why are they in florida??? the box did indicate that the onions were from peru so i guess they are accurate in the "pacific" claim. but longboard surfing in florida? who are they trying to fool?

sick day

i hate being sick. i have a nasty cold that is keeping me from things like the gym and chores. even the cat was sick. i had to take little ginger to the vet today. she is having urinary issues. time to take some cold medicine and head towards bed. see you tomorrow, i'll be the one doing the rudolf impersonation...

snow day!

yeah yeah, i know i know...it's just some snow, get over it already. but this is nashville and we don't do snow here, at least not that often and generally not this much.

photo #1, 11am on friday

photo #2, 1pm on friday

photo #3, 6pm on friday

photo #4, my crazy husband shoveling the snow as it still falls around 8pm on friday.

the view this morning at 8am and it is still falling! so far we have about 6 inches which may not seem like much to many but really, we just don't get much snow here. that 6 inches is probably equal to all of the snow we have had since we moved into this house 6 years ago! if we are lucky, we will be able to get out of the house later today when some other brave nutjobs have driven around on our street and cleared a path for us-we do not have four wheel drive or a snow plow handy!

birthday bread baking party

with everything i have going on, i found time to make some bread for this month's bread baking day, #26. the theme is to bake a loaf of bread to take to a birthday party. well, what kind of bread does one take to a birthday party? being a mom, i can see that this would not go over well with the kids; what kid wants a loaf of bread rather than cake or cookies? however, i can see making a couple of loaves of good sourdough bread, grilling a steak or some fish, tossing a salad, opening a nice bottle of wine, sharing it with friends and calling that a birthday party. add a few presents and some cake and i'm set and ready to par-tee. but this is a party for jamie of lifes a feast and i can only hope she approves of the menu!

with this challenge in mind, i decided to multi task. a coworker, stevo, has taken an interest in baking bread and he has been asking me questions, lots of questions in an effort to learn as much as he can. a week or so ago, i gave him some of my starter and a list of websites and cookbook titles but this week we had the opportunity to work together for two consecutive days. out of the fridge came the starter, we fed it and started two separate batches of sourdough bread. today we made two loaves of bread so that stevo could see just how easy it is to do.

on the left, a whole grain loaf and on the right, one with some semolina. i was looking in the fridge where i store all of my flour and discovered that i had more than a dozen varieties of flour so we could have made any number of combinations. we also started some rye sour so that we could make rye bread at some point.

here are the two loaves rising in bowls on my work table. since this is such an easy recipe to use, i was able to do this as i worked on stocking the restaurant for the day.

here they are in the oven

the finished loaves, this is the whole grain which is really only about 35% whole wheat and a few tablespoons of multigrain hot cereal mix. it was a good combination and a great learning experience for stevo since he wants to make whole grain breads at home.

the semolina loaf. both were wonderful while they were warm.

pretty loaves!

thanks to jamie for inviting us to this wonderful birthday party, we had fun!

and for those of you wanting the recipe, it is actually up on my blog already because i love this recipe and when something works, why change it!