June Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Baklava!

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Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge.  Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

Like always, I completed this challenge last minute. And since it was last minute, it was hurried, done with zero patience- thanks to the heat, and sans key ingredients that would have made a whole lot of difference to the end result.

By now, I am pretty sure you would have guessed that my challenge outcome wasn’t too great! I goofed up with the syrup as I was too lazy to measure anything for it and just made it with approximations resulting in less syrup to soak all the baklava. Also, I skimped on the butter – which I think resulted in slightly harder and drier sheet layers. The filling did not have pistachios (because I did not have any and forgot to pick them up on my last trip to the store), which I feel, would have definitely added to the flavors in the filling. The phyllo dough though was pretty easy to roll out thin, barring a few sheets that did get tears- but Erica said that’s ok as long as the top layer doesn’t have any holes.

It wasn’t too bad either. But, I don’t think I’ll be trying my hand at Baklava in the near future. This is my second not-so-great attempt at Baklava. The first one was almost a year back but that time I had used store bought phyllo. The Baklava then didn’t turn out too great. This time too the results were just average. Oh! How I crave for the baklavas I had during my Dubai trip!

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Jalapeno Cheddar Bread

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It’s that time of the month again- the Secret recipe Club time. Amanda from Amanda’s Cookin’ started this fun club as a way to try other recipes and help introduce bloggers to each others’ blogs. Every month, each member is assigned another member’s blog and he/she has to try and post about a recipe from that person’s blog. My assigned blog for this month was Heather’s Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks.

Heather has a great blog with a lovely collection of recipes. She is a special education teacher and loves reading and of course, cooking. Occasionally she also posts reviews of the books she reads as part of her book club. Though she likes cooking, but baking is where her heart lies, much like me. So it had to be a baking recipe of hers that I decided to give a try.

I haven’t made bread for the longest time ever- been too lazy- not too lazy to make bread but extremely lazy to clean up after the baking is done. I hate that part of doing anything in the kitchen. I do not mind the cooking or baking but hate the utensils that pile up after I cook or bake, and that makes me lazy to make anything. And, being careless as I am, I make a whole lot of mess in the kitchen while I am at it, so the clean up just puts me off before even starting. But Heather’s Jalapeno Cheddar bread caught my eye and I knew this was what I wanted to make. So out with the lazy bones.

The only change I made to Heather’s recipe is that I substituted a part of the bread flour with whole wheat and reduced the cheese used to 1 cup instead of 1 1/2 cups (I love cheese but sadly, my waist and hips don’t)

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Cherry Clafoutis

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So today V and I got locked out of our house. I hate these automatic locks. You have to be so careful when you step out of the house for even a second. And, when you are not careful, then you are stuck outside, hoping and praying that accidentally some window has been left open. Now our bathroom window was open- yay! or wait no yay!. The window was way up and we tried getting in through that, but couldn’t. We checked for any other window that was unlocked and luckily our bedroom window was open (now yay!). V was able to get in through that and once he was in, he let me in. Never thought I would be breaking in my own house. Like I said, I hate these automatic locks.

Now, for the last two weeks Foodgawker and TasteSpotting have been full of people posting about cherry clafoutis: a classic french country dessert. I have never eaten clafoutis before, but after seeing so many pictures and people raving about it, I wanted to give it a try. I also wanted to get rid off the cherries in the fridge. So for Office Thursdays I decided to make it.

The verdict: Its quite an easy dessert to make, if you already have pitted cherries. I did not, so the pitting took a little effort, though traditionally, the french leave the pits in, saying that they impart an almond flavor when baked within the custard, something no authentic clafoutis should be deprived of. But, I did not want people at V’s office accidentally breaking a tooth biting into the pits, so I pitted the cherries. As for the baked dessert- I did not care too much for it. I should have known that I would not like it even before making it because everyone said it tastes like custard and well, I am not a big fan of custard- in fact I do not like custard at all.

For an unbiased opinion I turned to V and asked what he thought of it and he liked it since he likes custard as well. But then his opinion isn’t completely unbiased. He never says he doesn’t like anything I make, which makes it really difficult to know what tastes good and what doesn’t. Anyway, it was polished off by his colleagues in office, so I am assuming it wasn’t that bad after all. But, as for making it again- I do not think I will be baking this until I try the real thing to know how it actually tastes and how close I was to the original thing.


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