briciole

coffee cake con cioccolato e nocciole / yeasted meringue coffee cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. On this page, you will find the details of the recipe, including various suggestions for the filling. I really like the description of the recipe source: "Jamie found this recipe on a piece of yellowed paper in her dad’s collection of clipped out and hand-written recipes from the 1970’s, no source, no date, and she tried the recipe and it was brilliant!" I struggled a bit to come... Read more →

panna cotta al tè verde matcha e biscottini / green tea panna cotta and cookies

a pastel green panna cotta The February 2011 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies. If it weren't for the DB's challenge, I don't think I would have ever tried making panna cotta. How come?, you may ask. You are Italian, you should love panna cotta. Let me explain. Panna cotta is a dessert typical of Piemonte, a region quite far from Umbria, where I grew up — panna cotta-less, as it happens. The first time... Read more →

Stollen di Natale (dolce tedesco) / Christmas Stollen

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book... and Martha Stewart’s demonstration. The recipe Penny provided for the challenge can be found on this page. The second week of December, we visited my father-in-law and his wife in Atlanta. My father-in-law loves challah, so I made a five-braid one the day before we left and brought it with us (the recipe I use is in Peter Reinhart's Artisan... Read more →

due crostate / two tarts

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. Yes, you read correctly: this month I had the honor of hosting the Daring Bakers' challenge. The required part of the challenge was to make pasta frolla (sweet short crust pastry, or sweet tart dough, made with flour, butter, sugar and eggs) using either of the two recipes provided, and then... Read more →

Project Food Blog, Weekend Herb Blogging and Daring Bakers

I certainly had a busy weekend, between tasting variations on the theme of salsa created by local schoolchildren (more on this in the future), making macaroni and cheese for the first and second time in my life, preparing three different kinds of soup for a dinner with friends (more on this in the future as well), making a new kind of cheese (no other detail available for sharing at this time), and writing posts for various events. I also had an extremely busy Monday, and, as a result, I have been away from my blog on a day in which a... Read more →

frollino

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of What the Fruitcake?! Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking. The recipes Mandy provided for the different elements of the challenge can be found here. What I made looks different from what you see on the Daring Bakers web site due to our household's dietary needs. Before I move on to describe what I did and why, I'd like to say a few words about icing. The Italian expression that corresponds to the English "the icing on the... Read more →

zuccotto gelato

layers of delight The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home. The recipes Sunita provided for the different elements of the challenge can be found here. What I made looks different from what you see on the Daring Bakers web site for a couple of reasons: our household's dietary needs and less than satisfactory results of two preliminary... Read more →

profiterole / pièce montée

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a pièce montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri. Information on pièce montée and recipes for the different elements of the challenge can be found here. In her introduction to the challenge, Cat explains: "The classic pièce montée is a high pyramid/cone made of profiteroles (cream-filled puff pastries) sometimes dipped in chocolate, bound with caramel, and usually decorated with threads of caramel, sugared almonds, chocolate, flowers, or ribbons." According to my dictionary, in... Read more →

dolce al rabarbaro (cotto al vapore) / rhubarb steamed pudding

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet. Our DB's host introduced us to two important elements of traditional English pudding: the ingredient, suet (sugna), and the cooking method, steaming (al vapore). Information on pudding and suet, and various recipes for pudding, both savory and sweet, can be found here. To start with, I decided to look up the work pudding in my dictionary, and this is what I found: 1 a dessert with a creamy consistency... Read more →

gelato al biscotto / ice cream sandwich

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. This challenge was interesting for me for two main reasons. One is that graham wafers (a.k.a. graham crackers) were on my list of to-try recipes. The second is that I had never tried to bake anything gluten-free. The recipes for the Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars are here. In our household, we cannot eat the Nanaimo Bars as described in the... Read more →