It seems that the Daring Bakers has taken another step in its evolution. The group has a new website and a new concept: Daring Cooks AND Daring Bakers. I love how it is evolving, but I don't think I'll keep participating in the challenges. Spring is finally hitting Ottawa and I would rather spend my time outside than re-orienting myself with the new setup.

It's been a blast DB!

I guess it's true what the interwebs are saying: cupcakes are recession proof!

Through a favourite cupcake blog, I had heard about the first ever Capital Cupcake Camp. Essentially, the event brings together cupcake bakers and cupcake lovers for a day of sugar high goodness (with your small entry fee going to charity). To quote the original organizer in San Francisco "CupcakeCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and eat cupcakes in an open environment."

I was signed up as a taster --as opposed to a baker. I arrived at the community hall about half an hour before the first cupcakes were due to make an appearance. Good thing too! When we left later, there was a huge line down the stairs and outside of prospective tasters waiting to be allowed in!

I wasn't sure what to expect, but there was a huge continuous table-structure set up in a U, and then a separate judges' table. Every 15 minutes --though it felt more like 20-- volunteers would emerge with a platters of cupcakes and the tasters would descend.


There was also some sort of people's choice type award thing going on too, but that was just way too complicated --and not scientific enough-- for me. There were four judges: a drag queen impresario type, two local CBC personalities, and the Ottawa Citizen's food critic.

It was quite a homogeneous group today. I would say the majority were white and female. I think the make up of the crowd has a lot to do with the cultural significance of cupcakes in white female culture. (*hee* that sounded so pompous) In particular, I think most of those in attendance love cupcakes because they were a staple in childhood birthday parties. Birthday parties = good memories, therefore cupcakes at any age = awesome.

Free cupcakes on a large scale is always awesome, but here are my suggestions for next year:

Instead of having volunteers emerge with mixed platters of cupcakes and encouraging tasters to absent themselves after they had had their fill, I would have preferred a more 'craft fair' set up for bakers and a stamp card quota system for tasters.

As it was, I was looking forward to talking to the bakers about their creations. That was not happening in this setup though. Today people just sort of took the nearest cupcake, seemingly regardless of if it actually appealed. (My terrible, terrible imagination popped the image of food lineups in communist Russia into my head. You never know if there will ever be more!)

As an alternative, if each taster had a card with space to write the names of up to five cupcakes, the number of cupcakes per taster would be regulated somewhat. Plus, people would know which cupcakes they had tasted so they could vote for the correct ones. If you didn't have any more space on your cupcake card, you couldn't try any more (but seriously, who could eat more than five?!). Once you had eaten your fill, you could look at your card and accurately fill out a ballot for your fav.

All in all, I can't emphasize how much I would have liked to be able to view all of the cupcakes entered and talk to the bakers about their creations. Also, to be able to taste the ones which appealed to me the most would have been nice.

My usual breakfast smoothie = 1/2 cup plain low fat yogurt (usually Liberte), 1/2 cup 1% milk, 3/4 cup frozen strawberry pieces, and 1tbsp raw honey.

The problem being of course, once the honey is added it just sticks to the blades and sides of the blender.

Today I tried something new. I put my 1/2 cup milk in the microwave for 30 seconds. Next, I added the 1tbsp. honey to the warm milk. I stirred using my tablespoon until the honey was completely 'dissolved' (about 30 seconds). Then, I added the milk, yogurt and strawberries to the blender as usual.

The results = perfectly sweet smoothie and no wasted honey!

(Also, for those interested, I chose raw honey because the pasteurizing process that other honey goes though kills the enzyme which can help our bodies to digest/absorb (?) calcium. Any temperature above 'luke warm' will kill this enzyme before our body gets to take advantage of it. I think the warm milk is still cool enough that the enzyme is not killed when I dissolve the honey in it.)

Late in 2008 I was perusing The Mayo Clinic Williams-Sonoma Cookbook, when I came across a delicious looking recipe called Basil and sun-dried tomato fettuccine. Since then I've made it at least half a dozen times. It's healthy because the 'sauce' --but it's more like a dressing-- is based on vegetable broth and the sun-dried tomatoes are the variety not packed in oil. I love finding healthy pasta recipes!

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Chocolate Valentino is a flourless chocolate cake in the shape of a heart. Luckily, I made this while at home in North Van and my Mom had the requisite heart-shaped pan. Unluckily, my creation didn't last long enough to be photographed in all its heart-shaped glory.


Although the official challenge was to make a vanilla ice cream, the hosts did give us some flexibility to substitute it for whipped cream. I took them up on that offer as well as adding some thawed strawberries in light syrup from Safeway.


I'm sorry to be offering such a blurry photo.

After ducking out of the December challenge, I'm back for January!

This month we were challenged to make something nice and light: Tuiles!

Traditionally, Tuiles are thin, crisp almond cookies that are gently molded over a rolling pin or arched form while they are still warm. Once set, their shape resembles the curved French roofing tiles for which they're named.

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


I'd never made Tuiles before, but with a dollop of Liberté strawberry yogourt I thought they were pretty great. (Except I made mine without the almonds.) That being said, won't be making them again. They're just not my thing.

I had to cleanse my palate. I just had to! I mean the sting of those [vegan] Chocolate Ginger cupcakes wouldn't leave!

So I made [vegan] Chocolate Cupcakes w/ Vanilla Buttercream & sprinkles (I have no idea if the Sprinkles were Vegan-rific).

The Vanilla Buttercream passed muster from both my current and former roommates, but I thought it tasted suspiciously like Safe Way, Save-On, Loblaws, Loeb, etc., etc.'s buttercream. Ew!

Regardless, the Chocolate Cupcakes themselves were delish!

Cellphone photo:

Sorry, no photos here. (My digital camera is in the emergency room back in Van.)

However, I do have a story to tell about a batch of Chocolate Ginger Cupcakes I made yesterday. I had some left over ground ginger and dried, crystallized ginger from making a batch of (magnificent) Ginger Cookies from The Barefoot Contessa at Home. Knowing this, I made the ginger variation on Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World's Chocolate Cupcakes.

So.

When you make the ginger variation on the Chocolate Cupcakes, either use old --and therefore weak-- ground ginger or just use less ground ginger. As it is, my recipe turned out tasting like an old pharmacy (yet I followed the variant recipe exactly)!

Since I saw Nigella Lawson's recipe for a type of cookie called Snickerdoodle, I've wanted to see if it could possibly live up to the name. The cookies have a pleasant undemanding flavour (butter, sugar, freshly ground nutmeg, salt, and cinnamon) however I probably won't make them again.

I normally don't buy from Second Cup, however Maureen and I were studying there yesterday and the latte art on my hot chocolate kind of made my afternoon. That being said, the hot chocolate wasn't spectacular.


Speaking of new discoveries, I tried a recipe called Tortellini in Broth with Escarole from Martha Stewart today. The escarole is healthy, the chicken broth is comforting, and the cheese tortellini is filling. I would recommend it for sure --especially because it takes less than 10 minutes from start to finish.