May Challenge

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

Ok, so I was soooo nervous about this one- the idea of stretching that dough out in a kitchen with two very interested cats was not a fun one. Luckily the cats were obliging enough to sleep through the whole process. I'll be updating with pictures once I've had a chance to edit them (no process, unfortunately- turned out my camera battery was D-E-D dead when I started), but I just wanted to go ahead and post about how it went.

I only did a half recipe, since my mother baked a cake last night and there's only three of us to eat all these lovely sweets. The dough was a snap- I did it by hand, since we don't have a stand mixer, and it came together into a rough ball with just a little stirring. Stretching it was complicated a little by the fact that we don't have any tablecloths I was willing to rub flour into. In the end I used a large scrap of clean muslin out of the Scrap Box of Doom, which turned out to be just the right size for my counter and the amount of dough I had. I bypassed the apple filling and went with a simple cream cheese filling (8 oz of american neufchatel, 1/2 cup of sugar, and some vanilla bean), which turned out to be delish.

Unfortunately, I forgot to slash the top so that steam could escape (oops), so one end kind of… exploded a little, as you'll see when I get the pictures up. Still, the end product is very tasty, despite its cosmetic imperfections. Making strudel was so much less scary than I thought it would be- in fact, it was so easy that I expect I'll be making it again!

With the slashes this time ;).