Daring Bakers September Challenge - Empanada (with baked apples)

Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!

I can't believe it's already october - and that I'm posting a challenge so late ... But after my two-week 'summer' vacation in september (and all the preparing that comes with a hikig trip), days with lots of work and another lucky condition I'm it I just feel tired. My energy level has been very low during the last months and it costs me a lot of effort to stand in my kitchen for a longer time and prepare food. 

Normally I cook dinner at home, but lately I eat at work because of my overwhelming hunger attacks at noon. Also I have to stick to a bunch of food restrictions (nothing smoked or raw, soft cheese, alcohol) so I feel a little bit limited in my cooking too. I guess some of you know what I'm talking about right now. 

So I feel pity I'll maybe miss my favourite season of the year. The story of Patri about her grandmother's kitchen in Portugal inspired me (I could literally smell the flavours coming from that kitchen), and I rembered my favourite smell of fall - warm/baked apples. Usually I would make a cake with apples in fall but as we were allowed to use a sweet filling for our empanada too, I chose to make a baked apple filling. Baked apples are something mostly eaten around christmas time, but I have a really bad craving for them right now (made even some for a BBQ yesterday). The filling is my own creation I usually use for the baked apples, but which also makes a nice layer of an empanada.

 

Fridays with Beatrice - Apricot tartlets with honey and olive oil

It was my time to chose again, and I decided for something sweet. I hadn't made a tarte in a while, so I wanted to give it another try. This recipe sounded interesting, and as I had the luck tu get some goog quality apricots, it should be this one. My biggest fear is always the crust, especially when it comes to rolling out and transferring the dough without it falling apart. I was a little bit sceptical about the flour and olive oil combination. I finally got some quinoa and amaranth flour so I can try the gluten-free stuff, but unfortunately I am still searching for xantham gum; so I had to replace some flour (in this case millet) with some all purpose flour. Rolling and transferring was easy this time. The sugar-almond-lime mixture you put on the crust before adding the fruit was new and suprisingly enhancing the taste of the fruits. I recommend  using the red currants as supposed in the recipe, they go really well with the apricot flavour. The only thing I dind't like at the finishet tartelet was the strong olive oil flavour coming throuch every bite - maybe that's just my opinion, it took a long time before I could get used to olive oil and its flavour and started using it into my kitchen...

Lena had her troubles too (which started with buying apricots) -  I think apricots and red currants taste great 'cooked through' in this case but I missed a special something about this recipe.

Roundup: Nice flavour- and fruit combination, but next time I'd prefer another crust.

Daring Bakers August Challenge: Filled Pate au Choux Swans

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

Today I'm just leaving a small note: I haven't been in the mood lately for some kind of baking or cooking, that's the reason I skipped the last month's challenges. My thoughts got distracted lately by something (or better someone) else ...

The swans were easy (as promised) and it was a quick challenge - so you should really give it a try (like Kat says).