Barefood Bloggers: Not so real meatballs and spaghetti

Since I'm a vegetarian I can't really pull off eating meatballs, so I picked up some grassington farms ones and gave them a good fry up. The sauce was really tasty (despite me using white wine-- as I had no red in house). It was simple to put together and made a very tasty Friday night quick dinner. I suppose for me it was more a nostalgia meal as typically I have more roasted veggie type pasta these days.
Feel free to check out the recipe yourself at barefoot bloggers!

TWD: Floating Islands

This weeks recipe was not something I'd usually pick of the 4. I mean I have been dying to make the cover cake since getting the book. Strangely I'm going to NOT make it as I think a) i don't need any additional cake around as I try and slim down before our wedding and b) If I am making cake its going to be trial wedding cake. So since the fiance loves custard I thought this would be a great choice. The creme anglaise was no problem (mine was quite a bit yellower than the picture in the book, but very tasty)
However the islands were a huge disappointment. Basically they resembeled poached egg whites and were not appetizing. After putting them in the fridge to cool I googled a few other recipes for the islands and there were the key words. beat until stiff. Dori only mentions satiny glossyness. Thats when I stopped and well yeah it was more like floating rubber life rings than islands.
I thought about re making the islands but time as always was an issue so I hoped the caramel would help.
Here they are looking all rubbery

Now with some decorative carmel?!

Oh well its actually a good thing that the dessert doesn't make me want to eat more of it!

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD group and see there (probably more successful) attempts at this dessert.

Daring Baker's Tuiles!

Chocolate Tuiles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day! and Zorra of 1x umrühren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Here's my mom measuring out the almonds... she was promoted to daring sous chef.. but soon demoted when we discovered that the first toasting of almonds was rather black! haha just kidding!

Here's another action shot of my mom spreading the tuiles out. We just used a silicon baking sheet and that went fine.

After a busy week of wedding dress shopping, I've just managed to squeeze in making these Tuiles. Keeping that in mind, I choose the chocolate ones, as the 15 min cooking time really appealed. They were nice but basically still a chocolate bar with toasted almond.

Barefoot Bloggers: Bananna sour cream pancakes

Bananna Sour Cream Pancakes!

Karen of Something Sweet by Karen has chosen Banana Sour Cream Pancakes. I realized that I've posted in the wrong order this month! oh well i suppose that mixed up is better than not at all!

These were pretty easy to put together and made a very tasty lemony/vanilla batter that bubbled up nicely in my christmas present (to myself) orange pouring/mixing bowl. I had earmarked this precisely for pancakes so it was pretty cool to break it in with these special pancakes as opposed to the usual bisquick.

I found this great griddle with cheater pancake rings so I buttered it up and got ready. These were really easy to make and while I'm not a huge fan of bananna I did really like the addition of lemon zest and vanilla

YUM!

TWD:Berry Surprise Cake

Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen chose Berry Surprise Cake. I choose it because I'm entertaining ideas of making my own wedding cake and since that means some practice with chocolate cake it nixed making next weeks chocoalte gingerbread which was really really enticing.

A lot of people had troubles with the batter as Genoise cake is basically some sort of play on whole egg meraingue. and trust me i was pretty nervious about the whole folding thing as i seem to always whip up some great stuff then mess it up with my bad folding skills!

The only thing i can think might make a difference is fresh eggs. Since we have our own hens the eggs are rarely older than 7 days maximum (depending on how many omlets we've been eating!)

I made this in a 9" springform as I didn't have the 8" required. As you can see it still baked up pretty tall. I was lucky as well in that the top sliced off nicely so all I had to do was put it back together and ice!

While not the prettiest thing when cut it was a lovely cake (perhaps better suited to summer/spring as at this time of year i used thawed frozen berries which i was not about to try and display on top of the cake!)

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD bakers efforts and if you're looking for nice cake reminescent of strawberry shortcake and oh so light try this one!

Barefoot Bloggers: Easy Sticky Buns

Posting a bit behind for this recipe- but I'm glad i did get around to it, as these were very easy to make and pretty tasty as well!

Its really as easy as the picture shows; unroll some puff pastry sprinkle sugar, cinammon and raisins; roll up and cut and bake

and then eat!

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper muffins

This weeks recipe was choosen by another blogger that I often read and follow with excitement, Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake. These muffins barely got made in time for me.. but a quick trip to the store had me sorted out. These are fantastic.. spicy and light. I must admit I did cut the sugar in half as I don't like

sweet with my hot and spicy!

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD blogroll!