It's Daring Baker Reveal Day! French Kissing!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Macarons are the holy grail of baking, batch after batch is attempted often ending in epic fails. I was terrified of this challenge but they turned out better than I thought they would. The first batch I believe I over beat and the second batch was under beaten. I think if I try these again I will whip the egg whites to a stiffer peak which will hopefully result in nice shiny tops.

Here are some pics:

Pumpkin Spice Macarons with a Pumpkin Cream Cheese icing:

Red Raspberry Macarons with an Earl Grey White Chocolate Ganache

Daring Cooks October Challenge

The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

I chose to make the long version of this recipe which involved making the chicken broth from a whole chicken. You can find the recipe here: http://steamykitchen.com/139-vietnamese-chicken-noodle-soup-pho-ga.html

I really loved this recipe. I made a few errors, namely ordering sprouting beans from the grocery store instead of bean sprouts, and forgetting to toast the spices. I ended up with a very clear broth, but I think refridgerating the broth and skimming the fat off would have resulted in a crystal clear broth.

Here are the pics!