Well it is that time of the month again! Time to announce the winners of this month’s Royal Foodie Joust!
Last month’s Joust was won by Heather of
Gild The Voodoolily . So she not only won her own personalized apron but she also picked this challenge’s 3 ingredients: Pork (or Barley), Citrus (any kind) and Pink or White Peppercorns. Every month this challenge gets bigger and better with the contestants bringing their best and most creative energies to the floor! If you are not familiar with this event – 3 ingredients are chosen by the previous month’s winner. All the contestants must use those 3 ingredients and any other ingredients to create a new signature dish. We have had some very creative entries each and ever month!

So if you have not joined us in the past, please stop by the forum today and sign up, so you can participate as well and get our chance to win the Queen’s Favor and your own personalized apron!

Now for the winners:

In FIRST PLACE we have Valli of
More Than Burnt Toast with her succulent and tender Citrus Spice-Rubbed Baby Backs Ribs.

Valli has been a participant in the Joust since its earliest days and came this month with a real knockout! Everyone’s mouths were watering with her entry! Way to go Valli! Well deserved indeed!

In Second Place we have Michelle aka Us vs. Food from Thursday Night Smackdown with
Five-Spice Pork Tenderloin with Blood Orange Gastrique and Carrot-Squash Puree

A real show stopper, with beautiful presentation! Great job!

In Third place we have Allen of
Eating Out Loud with his Pork Adobo.

Allen is new to the competition but wowed everyone with his use of the ingredients! Thanks for participating Allen and we’ll see you in the next Joust I am sure!

My thanks to all the participants – everyone did a great job and I hope to see everyone in the next addition of
The Royal Foodie Joust!
To see all the entries, click here.

Click here for more information on how you can participate in this month’s event!

I have to admit, sometimes being unprepared does have its charms and advantages. In regards to this challenge it caused me to be creative and not be afraid to play with my baked goods a little bit. As most of you have heard at one time or another, up until I joined the Daring Bakers, I didn’t bake – as a point of principal. Any recipe that had the words: Knead or Yeast or even really Flour and that was as far as I got, I wasn’t going to make it. Period. When I joined the Daring Bakers, I followed each recipe word for word. I did some modifications, sometimes, but nothing that really diverted from the recipe too much. I didn’t want to mess it up! But times change, you get older and wiser and all that good stuff. So here I am – it has been almost a YEAR since I joined this fabulous group of food bloggers, and I still don’t have a pie pan in my possession…therefore, it doesn’t take me long to realize there is no way I am making a big honkin’ pie. I just don’t have the equipment. This was going to give me a chance to play with my pie crust a little and do something fun. I decide to go all French and create mini tartlettes with my fabulous new muffin tin that I got for Christmas – (now a note to you DB purists, this was an allowed modification to the challenge)!

Not only that, but I also got to christen my new Cuisinart Food Processor, an early wedding present from my Dad and Stepmom, who were here last weekend THANKS GUYS!!!
AND, it is also my first DB challenge in my new kitchen. So this challenge for me was also full of firsts. The pie crust in this recipe is great. Very buttery and flaky. Roberto and I went to visit my mom this weekend and she was making a chicken pot pie and needed a crust recipe. I gave her the recipe from this challenge (minus the sugar of course) and it was perfect! So delicious!

I learned a lot from this challenge too – number one, I never knew what actually made the pie filling of lemon meringue pie yellow. I assumed that it was from the lemons, but no, the color is actually derived from the egg yolks that make up the lemon curd. Very interesting. I wonder if the inventor of this pie planned it this way, or it just turned out to be the proper color by luck?

I also got really creative with my leftover lemon peels. As those who have been reading my Farmers Market series know, I got some fabulous Meyer lemons, recently. I have been using them in a variety of dishes. They are just so tasty, I couldn’t waste even a peel, so I decided to make a lemon simple syrup to get ready for my next kitchen project – limoncello. As I was rooting around for the vanilla extract, needed for the lemon meringue recipe, I came across some dried lavender flowers I had, so I decided to make Lavender-Meyer Lemon Syrup. I also expanded my love of leftovers into the baking world. After I finished filling my tartlette crusts for the challenge, I still had more filling and more meringue. So I decided to play and have fun. I added some Lavender-Meyer Lemon Syrup to my leftover lemon curd to make meringue cookies filled with Lavender Lemon Curd. I think I enjoyed them even more than the original tartlettes. There is just something so spectacular about the combination.

I also was a huge baking geek and researched online ways to keep the meringue from weeping. Lemon Meringue is my mom’s favorite and I had to make the tartlettes on Friday, so they were going to have to sit in the fridge overnight. So I wanted to do my best to keep them from disintegrating, since the recipe states you should eat the pies within 6 hours. I also learned a technique for making the perfect meringue (see my cooks noted embedded in the recipe for these tips).

This was a great challenge for me. I really had a great time making a huge mess in my new kitchen and using some new toys. It was really a fun day and left me feeling so happy and renewed inside. I am not sure why – maybe the sunshine stored inside those lemons!

So without further ado – here is the recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie.

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Happy Yule Everyone!

Yule is a celebration of the Winter Solstice. It marks the longest night of the year and celebrates the re-birth of the sun and longer days to come after the darkness of winter. Christmas was transplanted onto winter solstice some 1,600 years ago, centuries before the English language emerged from its Germanic roots. The tradition of burning a Yule log is to celebrate light itself and the lightening of the days thereafter. Personal faults, mistakes and bad choices are burned in the flame so everyone’s New Year can start with a clean slate. You never burn the entire log, you save a piece for next year to start the next Yule Log. Traditionally on the eve of the Winter Solstice, at midnight, you turn off all your lights or candle lights and everyone takes a moment to sit in the dark and reflect on the darkness, then at 12:01 everyone lights their own candles, turns on all the lights and gives thanks to the sun and its life sustaining power.

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If you thought I hadn’t enough to post about this week, step in Daring Bakers Challenge!
This month the Daring Bakers Challenge had good company at my Thanksgiving table. I figured, while I was in the kitchen slaving away at the Thanksgiving meal, what was one more thing to make?
Plus I figured my family would really enjoy this month’s challenge: Tender Potato Bread.
I “unleashed the Daring Baker within” as encouraged by this month’s hostess: Tanna by adding roasted garlic and rosemary to my dough and forming the bread into rolls – which turned out to be the size of mini loaves. I also had enough leftover dough to make a small foccaccia. So it makes a lot of dough! The recipe was very straightforward and easy to follow. It just takes a long time to proof at various stages, like most other yeast breads.

The addition of mashed potatoes gave the dough a bit more body and a lot of softness – this dough is VERY soft. I have mentioned before my aversion to kneading bread and this was my worst nightmare – sticky dough ALL OVER MY HANDS – YUCK! But I was happy that it turned out so well. This recipe made 18 HUGE rolls and a small foccacia. The only problem occured when I went to bake the rolls and baked a few sheets on the bottom rack - the combination of the buttered sheets and the high temperatures, burned the butter and scorched the bottoms of some of my buns!

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My Daring Bakers Challenge post this month….I am so sad that I was not able to participate this month. Too much going on to spend much time in my own kitchen! Next month I am back on track! Great job to all the DBS who did participate this month!

It is hard to believe that the month of October is drawing to an end. My favorite month of the year. What this means though is that yet another Royal Foodie Joust competition is underway and you can join! Please post your recipe using Mushrooms, Cheese and Herbs of your choice on the Leftover Queen Forum. This month’s ingredients were chosen by last month’s winner, Brittany aka The Pie Lady. This is a very fun foodie event and the registration for entries closes on November 1st. So please join us today. I will make an announcement when you can begin voting for your favorite entry!

You will most likely recognize my entry from an earlier post: Mushroom and Yogurt Tart. I hate to post recipes twice, but this month has been so busy - with our trip to New England and now all the catch up that comes after a great vacation. I will be up to my normal posting activity soon with lots more on our New England adventure! So please stay tuned!

This Daring Bakers challenge proves that I am still a New Englander at heart. With this Daring Bakers challenge and fall here (I can feel it even if I can’t see it here in Florida), my mind was brought back to those wonderful autumn days in New England. Days filled eating products made with sweet, local, maple goodness, pastries enjoyed with Maple Lattes or very often a warming cup of steaming hot Chai Tea. I have been yearning for the tastes of fall and I guess I am feeling inspired since it is only a few weeks until Roberto and I head to New England to visit family and friends during our most favorite season of the year. So this pastry is an ode to Autumn in New England.

In this challenge: Cinnamon Buns and or Sticky Buns we were allowed certain modifications, like changing around the spices. I have always enjoyed cinnamon buns over the years, but it is not a treat I often allow myself to indulge. Therefore, I decided since I am being forced to make them for this challenge, I might as well do them up in total Jenn fashion.

I love Cardamom, so I knew that I wanted this to be the focal spice in my cinnamon buns. See anything wrong with that statement: Cardamom as the focal point for Cinnamon buns? So clearly I needed to add cinnamon to the spice mix – it is afterall in the NAME of the pastry! Anyway, this being fall and with me already in the Chai Tea/ New England mindset I thought if I add a bit of ginger then I am really doing all the spices that go into Chai. What goes so well with Chai in my mind? Maple. So a plan came together straight from my New England Soul: adding pure VT maple syrup to my fondant glaze and topping the buns with toasted almond slices. I hope you enjoy these!

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I think I am now officially a Daring Baker. I have to admit I was rather smug during my first two challenges – Bagels and Strawberry Mirror Cake, completing them with no real difficulty and having a great time while doing so…a kind of baking bliss. Before becoming a Daring Baker, as many of you know, I did not bake at all and was very intimidated to bake. So with two challenges under my belt, I was feeling pretty good about this whole baking thing – it wasn’t such a big deal. I was actually amused by the stories other Daring Bakers shared about their experiences, people who actually BAKE, about frustrating moments and culinary crisis, imagining that if it were I who were in those situations I would have kept my calm and remained cool. This baking thing wasn’t gonna get me, it was fun, and dare I say EASY. Well I was about to experience the mother load of baking karma!

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