The Daring Bakers’ December 2014 Challenge

Oh goodness. Somehow it seems I've not written a blog post since October. And Christmas has somehow come and gone too! 2014 has hurtled past at an alarming rate.

And it is indeed Daring Bakers' posting time again.

This is possibly the most pathetic DB post I've done in a long time. In an attempt to be lenient on myself, I'm giving myself quite a few points for effort. I baked my challenge recipe almost as soon as it was released way back at the start of December. I took a photo of it too… and then it went downhill.

Can I find the photo - nope! Can I find the scrap of paper that I jotted down my modifications on - nope!

So we have a challenge post with neither a photo or a recipe - and for that I apologise profusely!

"For the month of December, Andrea from 4pure took us on a trip to the Netherlands. She challenged us to take our tastebuds on a joyride through the land of sugar and spice by baking three different types of Dutch sweet bread."

Of the three recipes given in the challenge, I chose to make the first recipe: 'Peperkoek' cake, as it didn't need any modification to make it dairy-free.

It called for 1 tbps cane sugar syrup, and I wasn't sure what that was, so I used treacle - given the spices involved and the dark colour of the cake, it seemed the right sort of thing - admittedly unlikely to be 100% authentic. I was also a bit scant in my spice mix, and went without cardamom, coriander and anise as I didn't have them in the spice rack. I did have cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, mace and ginger and I chucked in a pinch of allspice too.

I also had no whole-wheat flour - so I used 200g plain white and 50g rye.

The cake smelled fantastic whilst cooking and infused the house with the scent of Christmas which was a lovely way to start off December.
It tasted pretty good too, and was very easy - yum - I'm glad to be able to add this one to my baking repertoire :-)

So my personal challenge for January is to go for the triple - bake, photograph and blog… wish me luck!

And so - to finish off, I shall leave you with a picture of my sous-chef Mini-M preparing another festive treat… magic reindeer food on Christmas Eve (aka carrots, glitter and crushed cereal!).