DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE #3

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Tiramisu this month.

MY GOD, what a bloody headache.

For February it was decided that the Daring Bakers would make a tiramisu completely from scratch. and when I say completely, I mean COMPLETELY. And baby it was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOG process too, make no mistake about that.Well, ok. It wasn't really that long. The length of the instructions scared me. Truth is, it's really quite a straight forward recipe, you just need to do a little advance planning and it comes together fine. So with a deep breath, I hankered down and read the recipe over several times.

Ok, maybe not several.
15 times
10 times
5 tim
once.
but it was a very thorough reading!!

Ok, maybe not.


I started with the cheese first. I read that the recipe required me to use a cheesecloth (and NO, ok? I DID NOT see that alternative cotton handkerchief option) So, wondering where on earth I would find some muslin cloth (a.k.a cheesecloth) I approached my darling mother.
Me: Ma, I need cheesecloth for this month's challenge.
Ma: Cheesecloth?
Me: Cheesecloth.
Ma: But.....why?
Me: My sadistic loving hosts want me to make my own marscapone cheese.
Ma: MAKE YOUR ON CHEESE?????
Me: Make my own cheese.
Ma: Can't we cheat and buy you a tub from Jaya33?
Me: What a splendid idea NO MA. Why don't we go now so we can pick up a pirated version of Avatar too? BAKER'S HONOUR!! I HAVE to do each part of the challenge FROM SCRATCH!!
Ma: *sigh* ok........ *light bulb flashes above head* Why don't you use one of your father's vaeshttis*?

And so it came to be that I would be making cheese with garment which dad usually reserves for going to temple. Gave it a good wash and ripped  cut it into managable pieces.

Of course dad protested. It's just that, we don't listen to him much. ;-) (LOVE YOU DADA!!)
So far so good, it was getting quite exciting now too.
Of course, things are never really straight forward with me, now are they?
In my haste to make the cheese, I ignored the first golden rule of Bakingdom. You know, the one printed in bold and written in CAPITALS that's right 
on top, triple underlined and surrounded by flashing neon coloured arrows?

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST.

Oh woe is me. Ignorant fool that I am, I lined a BOWL (instead of a sieve) with ONE layer of cheesecloth ( instead of 3). Good thing mum stopped me in time. Otherwise I would've had a mouldy, watery bit of creamy goo. Thankfully, the rest of the cheese making saga went well, And I had a lovely lump of wonderfully smooth marscapone.

After making the cheese I proceeded to promptly fall in love.
With the savoiardi biscuits.
These turned out NOTHING like my first attempt at making them. A little dense and a little moist but fluffy and spongy at the same time too. It had a lovely crunch on the outside, due to the sugar sprinkeled on before baking. They weren't even THAT eggy! I've always been a little afraid anything that smells really eggy since I encountered a raw egg during my early baking days...... but that's a story for another post.

The pastry cream and zabaliogne came together pretty easily. Ok, maybe not so much the pastry cream. I had to make a second batch cause the first came out lumpy ( high heat? BIG NONO). Anyways, I had all my components and proceeded to assemble them the next day. That went off without a glitch too!!

Then again.....not quite.

Inovative sentient being that I was, I thought it'd be cool to  mold the tiramisu in a chocolate dome which I would then cover with gold dust?

Pretty fancy, no? Yeap.
A pretty big pain-in-the-arse, yes? YOOOOOUUUUU BETCHA.

Nothing really went wrong with the tiramisu assembly, just the chocolate shell. I covered my metal bowl with cling wrap thinking it would make geting the tiramisu out easier.
BIG MISTAKE.

The clingwrap helped alright. But the chocolate got stuck in the folds of the plastic making it a PAIN to unmold. And it didn't come off completely too. Some plastic was still stuck in the chocolate shell . Everytime I tried to remove it, the shell started to crack so I had to leave it alone.I still covered it up with the gold and some cocoa powder.... but the plastic threat still lurked at the back of my mind. More so since dad decided to give some away to a friend of his which had 2 young boys in the family. I warned him, and the report that came back the next day only consisted of rave reviews so I suppose He wasn't given the plastic piece. Thank goodness.

All in all, this really was a huge challenge. I still like my tiramisu recipe better than this one ( I thought it was a wee bit too sweet for my liking), but I'm glad I completed it. I never though  would ever MAKE my own marscapone!! And I think i'll keep doing so, it's alot easier on the wallet and I know that it's peservative free. The savoiardi recipe has also become a new friend. I just made another batch and am wondering what to do with them.

And thus, another DB challenge was completed. If you want to try the recipe out for yourself, you can follow this link. =>  http://thedaringkitchen.com/recipe/tiramisu

Happy Baking!!

oh, and p.s- I'VE STARTED CLASSES AT MIB!! ;-D

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veshti#Styles_and_varieties

Happy Belated Valentines

 

 I don't think anyone could've said it better than a darling friend of mine :

Happy Valentine's Day Sayangs.

Whether you've got a special someone or you're singeling it up (that's the way),

I love you.

Believe in Vday or not, have a great day.

Quite frankly, I'm not quite sure what I feel about Valentines Day. 

And I don't quite care either.

All I know is that,

my dad still tries to sneak in roses every year,

my mum ALWAYS knows that the roses are coming,

and she acts surprised anyways.

We'll ALWAYS put those roses in either the blue porcelain or clear crystal glass,

and they'll ALWAYS be put on the same table,

after which,

they'll ALWAYS become manure for my dad's garden.

romantic, isn't it?

Anyways, in the spirit of the season I decided to make a cheesecake. The recipe comes from one of the previous Daring Bakers's challenges Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake.

I made a shortbread base, covered it with mandarin oranges and covered it with a 1/3 recipe of the cheese filling. The cake was baked in my ADORABLE 6-inch loose bottom tin and it turned out WONDERFULLY. The top is decorated with a bit of leftover strawberry coulis (a.k.a. fancy name for SAUCE) I had in the fridge.

Base :
~25 g cornflour ~75g all purpose flour ~2 tbsp ground almonds
~1 tbsp icing sugar ~50 g butter

Filling :
~ 3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
~1 cup / 210 g sugar ~3 large eggs ~1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
~1 tbsp. lemon juice ~1 tbsp. vanilla extract ~1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

also

~segments of 1 mandarin orange, rind and seeds cut away

Strawberry Coulis :
~300g strawberries ~2 tbsp castor sugar ~Juice of 1/2 a lemon ~4 tbsp water

*Again, I only used 1/3 of the recipe for the filling, but my tin was 6 inches in diameter, so it was just right.

Base:
Mix the dry ingredients together and cut in the softened butter. Use hands to squish together into a crumbly ball of dough. Flaten into base of cake tin. Bake in 180'C oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Take out and set aside to COOL COMPLETELY.

Filling:
Beat cream cheese and sugar together till smooth. Stir eggs in one at a time, being carefull not to incorperate too much air by overbeating. Fold in cream, lemon juice, extract, and if desired liquor.
DO NOT POUR INTO THE TIN YET!!!!!!!!

Coulis:
*If you're going to use this, it'd be a good ida to prepare it first. And really, it takes minimal effort on your part.

Clean and quarter the strawberries. Place all ingredients into a saucepan and stir to combine. Turn on the heat and let simmer, stirring often. When done, all the strawberries would have broken down. Let cool then push coulis through a sieve to remove seeds.

Cheesecake:
Preheat the oven to 180'C
Ok, so you have your base in the tin,but your cheesecake filling is still IN IT'S BOWL. Before you want to pour it into the tin, you want to cover the out side of the tin with tin foil to make it waterproof. Tear a piece of tinfoil that's TWICE the size of your tin. Fold it in half and use it to wrap the outside of your cheesecake tin. Make sure it's nice and secure with no holes showing through.
(What's all the fuss about making it water-tight? Well, we're going to be baking this in a water bath, but we'll get to that later.)

Tin is covered with tinfoil?
Check.
Tin is waterproof?
Check.
No holes peeping through?
None.

Ok, NOW you pour in the filling.You can use the coulis to decorate the cheesecake like I've done by putting blobs of the sauce on the top of the cake and using a toothpick to draw designs. Or not. Whatever you fancy really.
Ok, you're almost there. Take another sheet of tinfoil and cover the top of the tin. this is so your cake doesn't burn. Place the cheesecake tin into ANOTHER bigger tin. Place this HALFWAY into the oven. And finally, (and this is the LAST tricky bit. Promise.)  pour HOT water into the bigger tin until the level of water is about 1 inch high.
Alright, I might have lied a little about the tricky bit being over, cause finding out when the cheesecake is done is another fiddle all on it's own. Bake the cake for about 45-50 minutes. You won't be able to see when it's done because of the foil, but take it out and check at the 40 minute mark. You want it to be just set, but still jiggly in the centre.
Don't worry, it's not rocket science.
Just one thing to remember.
DON'T POKE YOUR CAKE.
It's pointless plus it'll make it crack.
When done baking, turn off the oven and let the cake cool in there so it doesn't crack. Take it out and put it in the fridge overnight.
Wake up in the morning and have a slice for breakfast. Screw the diet! You deserve it.

Happy Belated Valentines Day.

French lessons.

image courtesy of photoblog

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a french teacher who'll offer beginners lessons in the PJ area. Any ideas? Leave a comment please!
:-)

DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE #2

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

Oh boy... If it weren't for daring bakers I'm not sure I'd be posting at all! Atleast, I'm on time this time round right? :D

So.....Nanaimo.

I've officially gotten a friend's brother to completely fall in love with these bars. They really are quite addictive, I couldn't
stop at one myself. The challenge came at just the right time too, it gave me an opportunity to bring something a little different to my upcoming MAAN reunion. The guine- I mean, my friends seemed to really like them. Not something I'd make often, but it's a good recipe to have on hand for times you have to bring something to a pot luck party.

This months challenge consisted of 2 mandatory parts:
1) Make Graham crackers using the recipe provided.
2) Using the graham crackers, make the Nanaimo bar.

The challenge was hosted by Lauren of who has Celiac Disease. This means that she has a gluten intolerance. Her body can't digest gluten, meaning she can't eat anything with wheat in it.
Which basically rules out most pastas, breads, and commercially made foods...like KitKat.
Can you imagine not being able to eat KITKAT?
Life's tough for her, but that's what her blog's about.
It's about her finding a way to live with Celiac, and still keep eating great tasting food.
Following that vein, she thought she'd try to teach us DB people how to work it Gluten free. It was an option for us to make our graham crackers without gluten.
As much as I would've like to give that a crack, the flours ALONE would have eaten up my baking budget (which is a wee bit tighter than it used to be,now that SPM is over :-/ ) so I opted out for the gluten infested version.

Not that that made the cracker dough any easier to work with.
Bloody sticky difficult little bastard. I had dough under my nails, on my wrist, on my freakin' EYELID ok?
NOT pleasant.
In the end I just rolled it out between sheets of plastic and stuck it in the freezer overnight. That way it hardened up, and I could just plonk it on the baking sheet and be done with it. So elated was I at this seemingly stroke of genius, I forgot to take pictures of the baked crakers.
Nevermind, they weren't exactly the prettiest of things. But they tasted DAMN good. I had plenty of leftovers with the full recipe, so some I made into a cheesecake crust.
The rest I ate.
Smothered in chocolate ganache.
While watching Gordon Ramsey swear.
oh baby yeeeesss.

So, having made my crackers, it was time to move onto making the actual bars.
And of course, these provided their own fair share of drama.

The base is made by melting cocoa, butter and sugar over a double boiler, after which stirring in an egg to thicken it up.
Well, it was late, and I was tired so I thought to myself
"Double Boiler? At this time of night? pshaw... I don't need that. I'll just use the regular stove top."
Where?
Where were my God given brains when I made this decision?
Probably still thinking about Gordon Ramsey swearing.

Alright, so everything was going fine, until I added the egg.
Holy Mother of Cupcakes.
I've never seen anything clump so fast.

Imagine if you will, semi-solid brown objects, floating in a watery brown liquid.
My heart nearly stopped at the sight of this diarrhea reminiscent deluge, and for a full minute,
I whisked like a woman possessed.
Thank the powers that be, that just as my arm was about to give out it all came together in a beautifully smooth paste.
Which just goes to show really.
When life gives you crap, work hard and eventually it'll look good. :-)

So I thought that my troubles were over, and blissfully went about with the rest of the recipe.

Then came the middle layer. I put in one cup of sugar instead of 2 and added a teaspoon of vanilla to the original recipe, since people were saying in the forums that the middle layer was too sweet.
First time I made it, it looked curdled. I mean, REALLY curdled.But it was really late, so I just spread it on the base, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I took it out of the fridge the next day to check, and it looked EVEN WORSE.
So with a sigh, I proceded to scrape off the layer and start again. Same recipe, just using my electric mixer this time round. With caffeine buzzing through my system, I began to beat the buttercream again.
with a vengence.
and it still curdelled.
I swore.
LOUDLY.
And with the fury of a girl under pressure I increased the mixer speed.
And it was fine.
I'd insert another bowel dysfunction metaphor here, but I'm running out of ideas.


Infact, i think I can safely say that this could become one of my favourite buttercream recipe. It comes out soo smooth and buttery, a bit grainy, but we can't help that.
Stupid icing sugar.
At any rate, the rest of the recipe went off without a glitch
(A BIG SHOUTOUT TO MY LOVELY
SULEKHA CAMILLE SIVAPATHAM
FOR ASSISITING ME WITH THE FINAL CHOCOLATE LAYER.)
and it was a hit at the reunion.

Another DB challenge completed.
Delicious.

Pleased as PIE.

A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.
Edgar Watson Howe

There's something special about pulling a pie out of the oven.

Nothing can make you feel more deliciously competent and Domestic Goddess-y (or God-y) than pulling a well done pie out of the oven. And the beauty of this is that they're actually quite easy to make.There's not enough work involved for you to scream "AH, F*** IT!", but there's enough so you feel like you've accomplished something worthwhile.
I made this double crust apple pie a few days ago for my mum. Quite frankly, I don't really like apple pie, but my mum ADORES it. It reminds her of when she was studying nursing in England. She eats it the same way she used to all those years ago; a big wodge smothered in Birds custard. Before this, I've made little apple crumble pie-lets, but keeping in the spirit of 2010 I thought it was about time I attempted a double crust pie.

Not to say I was ever scared of making one.
Just...a little wary.

Ok, ok.... I used to be scared stiff.

I mean, you pour a WET fruit filling over a UNBAKED dough and you cover the whole lot with some more UNBAKED dough. Doesn't that just scream soggy and undercooked for you? Not to mention my demon oven (which I love to bits, no doubt) has a nasty habit of burning things.

Now, this is NOT me.I can already hear you thinking "a craftsman shouldn't blame his tools for shoddy work"
But this is NOT my fault.
Seriously.
I've timed things to the very second.
I've shifted the oven racks around to make sure the pan isn't too close to the baking coil.
I've CONSIDERABLY lower the temperature in any recipe I attempt.
My *darling* oven still burns things.
It's because of this 'tendency' that I often can't honestly give timing and temperature values in my recipes. My oven forces me to perform jazz-like improvisations on oven temperatures and timings every time I bake something, be it cake or bread. Often, I've only been able to get away with things because it only burns the top (so I can easily slice off the top and hide it under something.)
But this is different.
A pie needs to be just done top AND bottom.
But what was I to do? It was one of my New Year resolutions to make a double crusted pie, so either way I would at least have to make an attempt. I used Better homes and Gardens Oil pastry and winged the filling on my own. I must say, everything was going fine up till the baking part. I immediately got nervous as to my oven's little arsonistic habit. Not to mention, I'd run out of aluminum foil to cover the top with for the first 10 minutes of baking. So, as usual, I improvised.
~I baked it for 10 minutes with the heat only on the bottom at 220'C.
~Turned the heat down to 170'C and baked for 30 minutes with the heat on top and bottom.
~Bake for another 10 minutes at 170'C with heat only on bottom.

Sure it was a 'little fiddly', but the pie turned out FANTASTIC. Don't be scared away by the oven timing. I'll list the baking time and temperature according to the original recipe because I'm sure that your oven isn't as menopousal as mine. And really, it's a very satisfiying experience. And boys love girls who make them pie. ;-) (same concept applies the other way round of course)




Double-Crust Apple Pie (makes one 9 inch pie)

Oil Pastry
~2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
~ 1/4 tsp salt
~1/2 cup cooking oil
~1/3 cup cold milk.

Filling
~ 1/2 cup loosely packed brown sugar.
~ Juice of 1/2 an orange
~ 1 1/2 tsp allspice
~ pinch of salt
~ 1 tbsp flour
~ 4 cups worth of thinly sliced apples*
~ 1 cup raisins.

~9 inch pie plate

*I used 2 granny smiths and 2 gala apples. Not traditional, but you work with whatcha got.

The pastry is REALLY EASY.
All you have to do is measure out the flour and salt into a large bowl. Then, get your measuring cup, and measure out the oil FIRST. That way, you can measure out the milk in the same cup. Don't mix the liquids together, just pour it all into the bowl with the flour and salt. Mix with your hands, but don't overwork the mixture. When everything is combined, divide the dough into 2 balls, one slightly smaller that the other (that'll be the top of the pie) and put into the fridge to relax while you get on with the filling.

In a smaller bowl, mix everything except the fruit together until well combined. Toss the fruits into the mixture until completely smothered in the spiced liquid. I used jumbo raisins, so i had to chop them up a little, but the regular sized ones will be ok whole.

Preheat your oven to 220'C

Take the bigger ball of dough from the fridge and roll out into a circle slightly larger than the pie plate. The dough is quite soft, so your going to want to roll it out between two sheets of baking paper or plastic. take off the top sheet of paper or plastic and loosely drape the dough over the rolling pin. Unroll the pastry over your pie plate (the side with the other sheet of paper/plastic should be facing up). Remove the paper/plastic and ease the pastry into the pie plate. Cut away the excess. DON'T PRICK THE BOTTOM.

Pour the filling into the pie shell and smooth it out. Repeat the rolling out process with the secound ball of dough and drape that on top of the filling.Cut off the excess and seal the pastry around the edge of the pie, crimping as desired. Cut 8 slits in the top pastry to allow steam to escape.

Cover the edge of the pie with aluminium foil and bake for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, turn temperature down to 175'C and remove foil. Bake for another 30-35 minutes.
Cool on wire rack for an hour, then cut and serve. Mum likes hers with custard, and I like it with fresh cream.

:-)

Daring Bakers Challenge #1

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned joining this community and, well.... I'll just let the pros explain what I've gotten myself into.

As taken from the Daring Kitchen website:

In November 2006, Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice decided to challenge themselves to bake pretzels for the very first time using the same recipe. They each went ahead and posted about it on November 18, 2006.

Having enjoyed that experience tremendously, they decided to try it again the next month, this time choosing to bake biscotti. And to make matters even better, they were joined by a few more food bloggers.

As the months went by, their baking group continued to grow, until it was finally decided that this "little baking group" had to have a name and The Daring Bakers were born!

Today, The Daring Bakers span the world as bakers of all nationalities come together once a month to try something new in the kitchen!

Alright, the official reveal date was actually supposed to be on the 27th of December, but I've been away in India for the past 2 weeks ( a little scary, but fun all the same). Oh well, better late than never right? ;-)

When I first found out about my challenge I was ECSTATIC. I was hoping 'the powers that be' would make us do a gingerbread house since I've always wanted to make one but never found the guts to do it. I really wanted to start immediately, but the challenge was released during SPM, and I don't think the parents would have been too happy with their baby girl building houses out of cookies when she should be cramming for chemistry and physics. So I waited. Impatiently. Newbie that i was, I had big plans to make a grand ol' traditional Malay kampung house complete with window carvings, balcony and STILTS. Yep, you read right. I wanted this baby to be supported by STILTS. In case you've never seen one of these before, youcan see a few here

So, I did my reasearch (maybe I did it during SPM, maybe not) and realized that all the houses I saw had one thing in common. They were all FIRMLY attached to the board. Not a stilt in sight. I was to be the pioneer on making gingerbread houses on stilts. Consultations with other DB members occured (these people are fantastic by the way) and my excitement grew. I started drawing rough sketches (maybe or maybe not on my Chemistry paper) and thinking of support systems (maybe or maybe not during my Physics paper). I figured that could support the bottom with a gingerbread structure and make the stilts out of Rice Krispee treats. All systems were GO and i couldn't see any problems that could possibly arise. I was ready to start building as soon as my last paper ended.

And end it did. But plain and simple, I procrastinated.

Prom was the following week and my India trip 2 days after that. The house was to be given to a lovely friend of mine who was having a Christmas party that I wouldn't be able to attend due to the trip. After my last paper, I hate to say it, but I got LAZY. I was going out, reading books, hardly spending any time in the kitchen. Before I knew it, it was 3 days till the house had to be presented. Despite this, i still tried to forge on wih my original kampung house idea. How hard could it be?

Right?

WRONG.

Eventhough I simplified my design, I still had trouble. My pieces kept shrinking during baking. then again, everyone in the DB forums seemed to be complaining about how their pieces shrank. A LOT. I'm not quite sure what i did wrong, but I'm guessing i worked the dough too much (dough these days.... You can't work em' too much or they shrink on you and bake hard and funny. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting healthcare benefits and paid leave).

My walls also kept breaking. Well, ok not just the walls. The roofs broke too. Infact, they all broke soo many times that I had to keep remaking new walls. If I'm not wrong, I think only one wall from the original batch made it to the complte house. The rest of the pieces (Broken and crumbling) were fed to my very grateful dogs.Eventually, I had 4 passable walls and to somewhat solid roof pieces that could be used. By now, it was evidet that I wouldn't have time to carry out my Grand Kampung house, so i setteled on making a traditional 4 walled strucure instead. Darling brother went out and bought me M&Ms to use as decor. I made a batch of royal icing, and proceeded to build my house.

Boy was THAT a doozy.

The walls kept falling over, regardless of how much royal icing I piped to hold it together and how many glasses I used to support it while it dried. By the time it was ready for the roofs to go on, it was 11 p.m. the night before delivery (Coincidently also the night before prom). Oh, and for all you prospective Gingerbread architects out there, word from the wise.

DON'T throw away your templates.

You might need to make more walls, and if your new walls don't match up, it's gonna be hard putting your roof on. Whenever I tried, the roof would push the walls apart and the whole structure would collapse in on itself. A couple of stressful hours later though, my house looked....passable.

Ok, so it's not my best effort, far from it even. I feel a little guilty actually, seeing as this is my first challenge and all. But I did the best I could given my time constraints. At any rate, Su (my friend) seemed to like it, and at the end of the day, it was gonna be eaten right? ;-D

I used Y's Scandinavean gingerbread recipe:

Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)
from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas http://astore.amazon.com/thedarkit-20/detail/0816634963

1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup boiling water
5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.

4. [I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1/8 inch thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end.]

5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

I decreased the cloves to 2 teaspoons and the flour to 625g, as suggested by some fellow DBs. I rolled the leftover dough out nice and thin and baked it. That tasted really good, kinda like the spice biscuits we used to get from IKEA.

And thus ended my first challenge.This is something I'm gonna be making into a annual tradition for sure. I wonder what my next challenge is going to be?

Oh, and by the way:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Je t'adore

The sizing is a little off, it's not quite even yet and there's too much filling.
But right now,
I'm DEFINITELY in love.
<3