Coconut Panna Cotta & Key Lime Gelee

This month’s Daring Bakers consisted of two recipes that I had never made before. In fact, these recipes had never dawned on me before. I’m not a huge fan of chilled desserts. I like my desserts warm from the oven, topped with ice cream. You will rarely find puddings, gelatins or flans in my fridge. Two factors of this particular challenge seemed serendipitous. First, I’ve been working with a lot of gelatin in the past few weeks. I had just stocked up on Knox gelatin before our February challenge arrived. Second, I actually had panna cotta, for the first time in my life, on January 28th.

Boyfriend and I were in New York City four weeks ago apartment hunting. After a long and fruitless day of looking at either mediocre apartments or overpriced ones, we headed to the Meatpacking district for dinner. It was the beginning of restaurant week and we decided to try Ajna Bar on Little 12th Street. The most recent snowfall had made crossing intersections (in cute shoes nonetheless) very, very difficult. Also, if you are familiar with this particular section of Manhattan, you know the streets are cobbled. Cobbled streets, covered in several inches of slush, are a cute shoe-wearing girls nightmare. Boyfriend also refused to carry me across the street. Bad boyfriend.

We made it to Anja bar and were greeted with a burst of warm air and dark corridor. Once we were seated we had to take a minute to absorb all of the things going on around us. The restaurant is huge, with an equally large wait staff. There are huge columns, carved into dragons, candles galore and what I’m pretty sure was an aquarium filled with jellyfish. All the crazy décor aside, the meal was actually pretty delicious. (I’d highly recommend their shrimp curry.) The perfect ending to the meal was their Thai tea panna cotta. Smooth and creamy panna cotta buried beneath a layer of cool whipped cream and chocolate crunch.  Perfect.

For my panna cotta, I decided to go a little more south, and less east, for my influence. Key lime is one of my favorite flavors and with this being the season of citrus I was able to get some good ones! Just don’t skimp on the fat in this panna cotta recipe. If you go with lite coconut milk you will likely wind up with a panna cotta that won’t set. Give this a try and enjoy a little summer on a plate.

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 Nestlé Florentine Cookies.  Since Giadas recipe called for honey, and I hate honey, I went in another direction.  The florentine cookies weren't anything to write home about, so I omitted the recipe.  You can find it on the Nestle website.

S’mores Cupcakes

I don’t know about everyone else, but these are the facts of my life. Once I moved out of the house, my parents got all sorts of cool toys. I’m not saying that I was a deprived child (other than my sad cable tv-less existence), I had plenty of things to fill my childhood days with fun. I played the flute and my parents bought me a fancy flute with open keys. I still have it and think about trying to play it once and a while. I was a baton twirler and went to competitions all over the country. My trophies are still in residence at the Wilde parent household. My brother and I spent summers camping out in the backyard and riding our bikes along the creek.

Look at that chocolate ooze!

What I’m talking about are the cool toys that would have made our childhood even more carefree. It started slowly, with the John Deere. Johnnie showed up when I was in College and he was my dad’s new best friend. They would ride around the lawn in the summer and plow clean canyons in the snow in the winter. What Johnnie didn’t know, was that he was taking someone’s place. He was replacing my brother and I, Johnnie didn’t complain when he had to plow two feet of snow from a very long drive-way. Dad just had to feed Johnnie some gasoline and away he went to chew up the snow or grass.

Then came the boat, the hot tub, the air conditioning. The current toy that I’m totally jealous of is a fire pit. I think that is what I was thinking of when I threw together this recipe. Spring is coming soon, I can feel it trying to sneak up on winter, and spring is when the fire pit comes out. My dad gathers the firewood, the dog breaks up sticks to make kindling and my mom gets the marshmallows. Sounds like a great evening and I don’t think my apartment building would go for one in my unit.

Orange Challah French Toast

The first time I ever worked with yeast, I decided I was going to make a braided challah. Talk about ambitious. It was in my fourth year of grad school, I had just moved into a new apartment and I was in the mood to cook. My roommate owned a breadmaker and she churned out loaves of bread with minimal effort. The apartment always smelled wonderful and she had warm bread to go with dinner. I thought that if a machine can make bread, then it can’t be that hard. Let’s say I was just a little naïve.

Back at this point in my culinary career I was the proud owner of about ten cookbooks. Leafing through the nearly pristine pages of my Bread Bible, I fell upon a picture of a braided challah. It was gorgeous. Golden, shiny and delicious looking. The instructions also seemed doable, some time to knead, a few rise periods and an egg wash before baking. I could definitely do this.

I just forgot to take a few things into account. First, I had no idea what I was doing. Okay, I guess that isn’t a very good first. Let’s start again… First, my kneading technique consisted of rolling the dough around on the counter, gently nudging it and poking it. This was after I added about one additional cup of flour, the dough just would not pull away from the countertop! Second, I had no idea how to tell when it was kneaded enough, I just went with what the book said, ten minutes. Third, it was winter. Wintertime in Wisconsin is a rather chilly time and our apartment was equally chilly. Gentle breezes also permeated the windows and doors, keeping my dough cool and preventing the proper rise. In the end I wound up with a braided challah. It was edible, but not the light and airy challah I was used to in New York.



My braid went a little crazy in the middle there...

Now, ten minutes of gentle nudging and poking most likely wasn’t enough to develop the gluten necessary for this bread. Lesson learned. Also, bread needs a little warmer environment than I had provided. These days I like to do laundry at the same time as I make bread, it heats up the apartment. Finally, I know to slowly add liquid ingredients, rather than try to bring the dough back with more flour. It’s been four years since my first attempt at braided challah and this recent attempt shows how much I’ve learned.