daring bakers and mofo prep!

Hey there! First up, Daring Baker’s September challenge:

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I love working with a laminated dough. Thin, puffy layers of buttery pastry- bring it on. Filled, topped, glazed, you name it, I’ll eat it. I made a lot of puff/danish/croissant dough while working on the book and the one thing I learned about making this stuff vegan is that vegan margarine is salty. Be warned and read your labels for sodium content.

Here’s my dough after a couple of turns. When making any sort of laminated dough the key is to keep it cold. The way it works is that, when introduced to a hot oven, the cold margarine melts, the liquid evaporates and flaky layers emerge.

Brushed with a little olive oil and ready to go into the oven. They looked like little, unfilled linzer cookies…

We were given the option to pick sweet or savory for this and I opted for sweet. Our temps have dropped and autumn is in the air, so this recipe called for a simple classic- cinnamon apples.

I made a simple mixture of peeled, chopped apple, water, sugar and cinnamon and let it simmer stovetop until the apples softened, released their pectin and started to slightly gel. I used Granny Smith so that it would retain a little tartness after cooking. Yum! I think this was Jim’s favorite DB challenge so far.

In other news, Vegan Mofo starts this week! For the uninitiated, Vegan Mofo is the vegan month of food, where vegan bloggers try to blog every day (5 days a week) for the entire month. The goal is to actively promote vegan food and to get everyone active on their blogs. After a very low key summer without much blogging (and a break from the cooking show), I figured this would be a great way to get back in the swing of things, so look forward to posts on all sorts of food related goodness… and some chances to win copies of my cookbook!

Be sure to check out all of the Vegan Mofo participants on Kittee’s blogroll. I’m excited to blog/blabber/bake for the whole month and to see what amazing creations come out of everyone’s kitchen. Plus, isn’t it fun saying “mofo”?