Daring Baker's March Challenge

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.


After having to miss the last two months Baker's challenges due to illness, I was so excited to see another cake.  I truly love cake and while I'm not a big fan of meringue I have high hopes for this recipe.  I halved the recipe because my family just doesn't need two cakes.  I also left out the recommended nuts, but that's just because I don't like nuts cooked into food.  Purely selfish.  :)

It looks just lovely as it's rising.

Rolling this out was fairly easy and I was so grateful that the dough didn't stick.  It was a joy to roll out compared to Danish dough.  After I used a spoon to shake the cinnamon sugar over the meringue I realized that I should have sifted it for more smooth, even coverage.

I decided that I really didn't want to make something so similar in design to the stollen I made in December, so I elected to take a traditional jelly roll design.   One end oozed a bit of meringue but all in all the gamble paid off, and it has turned out quite lovely.

 While the cake baked the house was filled with the delicious smell of cinnamon and I found myself checked the timer repeatedly wishing that it would be finished baking so I could photograph and devour before the family got home.

 For anyone who'd like to give this a try, Yeasted Meringue Filled Coffee Cake is absolutely delicious.

December Daring Baker's Challenge

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.


Stollen.  What can I say about stollen?  Well, the first thing would be to make certain that you have a lot of bowls and pans and dishwashing liquid before you start.  Seriously!  This has to be one of the messiest, time consuming recipes that I have ever tried. Was it worth it?  You bet.

The smell of the dough was overwhelmingly fragrant.  The kitchen smelled heavenly for hours.

I let it sit in the refrigerator for two days and gathered up the courage to roll it out and shape it.  This part was exciting for me because I've never rolled anything into a rectangle before.  I had a lot of fun checking the size with my tape measure.

I had one problem that I couldn't overcome.  I have a very small oven and none of my pans were large enough to allow the wreath to rise to it's full shape.  One side ended up kinda flat where it pressed up against the pan.  I can't be upset about that though because it was beyond my control and it really didn't harm anything other than my excessive desire for perfection.

Out of the oven, it smelled wonderful.  After I had dusted the stollen with the powdered sugar both my husband and my daughter begged to eat it straight away.  They were denied.  This little beauty was meant for the holiday table.

As the smell suggested, the stollen was delicious.   A labor but worth the effort