July's Baker's Challenge- Milano Cookies

You can tell that the weather has been hellatiously hot when 80 degrees feel comfortable. I was able to make a pizza last night without passing out in my stifling kitchen, so finally decided I might actually be able to come back upstairs to do some baking. At last, I can work on July's Baker's Challenge!

Because it's still rather warm, I chose to do the Milano cookies. I still intend to do the marshmallows, but am afraid that they and their chocolate coating will melt. For reasons that make no sense to me, the husband doesn't seem to think I need an extra refrigerator just for keeping my baked goods cool.

Thus far, I've made up the batter and am baking off the cookies. I've been reminded of why one should leave 2 inches worth of space between cookies. Out of habit, I piped them about an inch apart (as I do for lady fingers) to get more on the pan, and of course now I have long ribbons of cookie.

My first thoughts are that the batter is much too loose. Did I over cream the butter and sugar, or is it still just too warm? I've now put the batter in the fridge to see if that'll stiffen up the butter and get me a better cookie.

My other thought is surprise that I actually had lemon extract. Wonder what in the heck I bought that for, and whether 2 Tablespoons was really necessary. Guess I'll find out soon.

While waiting for all the cookies to bake, I decided to make up a batch or peanut butter popcorn, the recipe for which my sister Jennifer gave me: http://thedaringkitchen.com/forums/daring-bakers/-daring-bakers-challenges. One batch is obviously not going to be enough. I left all of the sugar out, since I use Jif peanut butter (the husband and daughter do not recognize the unsweetened variety as being actual peanut butter), and used half of the honey. This produced a deliciously gooey treat, but one which will not set up into crunchy goodness. I'm pondering adding a little sugar for the caramelizing effect. Perhaps half of the honey and half of the sugar?

But I digress. Back to the Milanos.

I'm not going to put any orange in the filling. The husband doesn't like fruit with his chocolate, especially orange, so these will be plain chocolate. The next batch I make, I plan to leave out the lemon extract and add a little peppermint oil to the filling.

After baking up pan after pan of disappointing cookies, I decided to peruse the ingredients again. Did I skip something? Well....perhaps actually using the powdered sugar instead of the granular sugar that I used would have been helpful. I'll try again tomorrow.

Perhaps I should name my Blog: How Not to Bake.

My Very First Blog Ever

As a member of the Daring Kitchen, I'm supposed to do a blog each month about how my project went. I opted at first not to blog, since I haven't ever done this before, but today I decided to take the plunge. Look at me! I blogging!

So the challenge was actually June's that I'm going to write about. It was the Bakewell Tart. In culinary school we'd have called this a Frangipane tart I think.

I made the tarts with my sister Jennifer, who is the reason I got involved with the Daring Baker to begin with. We made the strudel "together"- me in Washington, she in California. When we got together for our annual Sister's Weekend (this year at Jennifer's house in Sacto.), she and I decided to make the tarts before our other sister, Heather, arrived. (She's not so much into cooking for some reason.)

The recipes were very well written, straightforward, and easy to follow. Jennifer is way into making jam and preserves, so we had a plethora of jammy options. We made a double batch of both the dough and the frangipane, then filled the tarts with plum jam, peach-blackberry-strawberry jam, Nutella, chocolate chips, fresh peaches, apple butter, and lemon curd.

Overall, I'd say that I enjoyed all the tarts, but my favorite was the one with the chocolate chips. We put way too much frangipane on top, and not nearly enough jam. Were I to make those again (and I probably will), I think I'd do stronger flavors, a thicker layer of jam, and most likely I'd add some almond paste to the frangipane.