The Daring Bakers -Milan 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 am super excited about this..... its my first Daring Bakers challenge! I joined the Daring Bakers a few months ago but either forgot or was not able to participate. I managed to squeeze this in before i started to pack up my baking things. I made these last week and brought them with me to a playdate...... huge hit! I did want to make the Mallows too but ran out of time.


Everyone who tried these really liked them, i had none left! The changes i made to the recipe were to use orange extract instead of lemon. I don't have lemon extract and don't want to buy anything right now. Once we move i can start stocking up on ingredients again.

Piping the cookies took a while to master. A little messy but i just about got there in the end :)

Thanks Nicole for a great challenge!

CEIMB - Aromatic Noodles with Lime Peanut Sauce

I haven't participated in CEIMB in ages. I did actually make the Vegetable Cheese Strata a couple of weeks ago but it was such a disaster i didn't blog about it.

I've been looking forward to making this dish for a while. I made two substitutions, red wine vinegar for the rice vinegar, and baby corn for the snap peas. The sauce was very easy to make and very quick. I was sure the chilli flakes i used weren't going to be spicy enough so i put quite a bit in (yes i do have very spicy noodles now).

Apart from my veggies being a bit to undercooked, i really liked this. The sauce is great, maybe a little less chilli next time though ;)

Great choice Beth! Please check out her blog Supplicious and here for the recipe.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Brioche Plum Tart

This will probably be my last TWD for a while. We don't move until the end of the month but I'm starting to panic that time is running out! Thankfully Malaysia is very close to Singapore so our belongings going by sea will reach us two weeks after we leave. When we moved here from England it took almost two months for our shipment to arrive.

Some friends held a barbeque for us on saturday and i thought it was a great excuse to make the plum tart and have it for dessert. I made a batch of the brownies from last weeks challenge too.

The tart came out really well (well better than i expected) although a little darker than i would have liked. I should have covered it with the foil tent much earlier. The brownies went down really well, lot's of people asking for the recipe, and they were finished before the meat was even served! There was one slice of the tart left which i quickly grabbed so i could taste it. Delicious! I'd love to make this again using different fruit.

Halfway through the barbeque the heavens opened and it poured with rain. Everyone was huddled under what little covering we had except for a dear friend Dudley who carried on cooking the meat. What a trooper! Eventhough we were all soaked (especially Dudley), everyone had a great time. Good food, great company and a rainstorm to remember our last barbeque in Singapore :)

This weeks challenge was chosen by Denise from Chez Us. Thanks for the great pick Denise!

Tuesdays With Dorie - Katherine Hepburn Brownies

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind and i've barely had time to participate in TWD or CEIMB. I also joined the Daring Kitchen but i've yet to bake or cook along with them yet. We've been traveling back and forth to Kuala Lumpur as we have recently been told that my husbands job has been impacted by the global recession. So we will leave Singapore at the end of this month and move up to KL and stay there for a while until we figure out our next move. I've been spending my time trying to decide what will go into storage and what we bring with us. Anyone that knows me well, knows i am not very quickest of people doing this sort of thing as I tend to mull over everything.

I'm glad i was able to make these. I did have all the ingredients so there was no excuse not to! Very easy to make and very yummy, rich but good. I got 16 squares, ate one and gave the rest away to neighbours.

Thank you for the great pick, Lisa of Surviving Oz.