Daring Bakers July 2009 - Marshmallow Cookies

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.


I will send you to her for instructions, because in this moment I'm on vacation, touring Europe on an RV, with little time to spend writing, I'll merely upload the pics of my marshmallow cookies, to show that I met the challenge.
July has been a very busy month, but it was just my luck that the challenge was considered complete with just on kind of cooky baked.

Having no light corn syrup in Italy, I used this recipe for a substitute, as suggested by the almighty Audax Artifex:

* 2 cups granulated sugar
* 3/4 cup Water
* 1/4 tsp. Cream of Tartar
* dash of salt

Directions
Combine all ingredients in a heavy, large pan (stainless). Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and put cover on it for 3 minutes to get sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. Uncover and cook until it reaches soft ball stage, 238 -240 degrees F.

Cool syrup and store in a covered container at room temperature. It will keep for about 2 months.


Also, I substituted two tbsp of rose water for the same amount of cold water in the recipe.

Here we go with the pic parade:















As for the Milano cookies, as I said July has been a very busy month, and I didn't make it.
The funny thing is that Milano is my hometown, and in all the things I did in July, one was to go there to visit my parents.
So I'm posting a couple of pictures of our recently restaurated cathedral, the Duomo, because it's kind of in topic ;-)







Milan's coat of arms, in a mosaic on the floor of our beautiful covered Galleria:

Daring Bakers Challenge April 2009 - Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This was my first Daring Bakers Challenge, and my very first cheesecake to make (I’ve had it once or twice before, though).
The recipe called for graham crackers for the crust, and they are nowhere to be found in Italy, where I live.
So, I checked in my teenage memories, back when my exotic bake researches stretched as far as United Kingdom and Ireland. I remember that cheesecakes there and then were made with a crust of Digestives, and as they have been my favorite cookies for a very long time, it was natural for me to use them.



So I mixed 12 crumbled cookies with 4oz (115gr) of butter and two tablespoons of sugar.



As for the actual cheese part, it went on pretty easily: I just mixed the cream cheese (24 oz/ 720gr) with 1 cup of sugar (200gr), 3 large eggs, 1 cup (240 ml) of heavy cream.
When it came to the flavor, there was no doubt: a few weeks ago I opened a rose water bottle, one that I had found last year in an International Food store in Las Vegas and that I was keeping as a big treasure, being it so difficult to find here.



The point is, how precious can a thing be, if you don’t use and enjoy it? And so now, we smell and taste a lot of rose, in this house!
I skipped the liquor that was in the original recipe, I kept a tablespoon of lemon juice, because lemon scent takes out rose’s one best, and went with 1.5 tbsp of rose water.



The baking was to be made in a water bath, but I didn’t trust my springform pan, so I followed a suggestion by Jill of Jillicious Desserts that I read on the Daring Kitchen forum. I used a normal pan, and after the cake cooled, I froze it. Once the cake was frozen, it was easy to pop it out of the pan (although it was not completely solid, even if it had stayed in the freezer overnight).

As a decoration I used non-treated roses and petals. This was a lot of fun for my kids, for when they saw me spreading petals around, thought that if Mommy was doing it, it must have been the right thing to do and “helped”.
The cake was very good, and the taste of roses was much stronger the day after the baking.

I know that many other Daring Bakers went down the monoportion/cupcakes path. It is a very good idea, and I wish I had it. I’ll keep it in mind for the next times.