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.
Every month, an intrepid group of plucky bakers take on a challenge… yes, a CHALLENGE! It’s called the Daring Bakers Challenge, to be dared by only the daring-est of daring bakers across the land! Well, actually you just kind of have to sign up for it…. BUT STILL, it’s a chance for a lot of people to tackle the same recipe at the same time, and see what kind of learning and chaos ensues. In other words, if you’re a fan of food blogs, you may see quite a bit of strudel hit the interwebz today.
Most months require you to stick to the recipe exactly, but this month was a bit different. The mission? STRUDEL! And though the actual strudel dough is set in stone, the fillings – oh, the FILLINGS – are entirely up to us. Considering the plethora of beautiful bountiful berries hitting my supermarket shelves these days, I decided to throw a bunch of ’em in a strudel dough and see what happens! That and I love berries. No seriously, I lurrrve them. Like, one-day-we’ll-run-off-together-and-illegally-marry-each-other-and-those-normal-people-won’t-ever-understand-us kind of love. Berries are where it’s at. An ex of mine kind of hated many types of berries, because of all the little worrisome seeds (bah, humbug!). I like to think I left him because of the berries. It’s a better story that way.
But back to strudel. Or non-strudel, as the case may be. You see, it helps to bake strudel on a day not made entirely of FAIL! It also helps to not, like, make the recipe for the first time on the day the blog posts are due. Yes, my friends, I have been humbled today. My swollen culinary ego has taken a good swift kick-in-the-stones. This is probably a good thing, in the long run. Everyone needs to be taken down a step every now and then, right? Because I fully admit defeat today, and my foe, thy name is STRUDEL DOUGH. What follows is a true and harrowing account of my epic fail of a baking adventure today:
So remember those berries? Those scrumptious berries I’d been salivating over for the past week, imagining them in light, buttery, flaky strudel dough? Yeah, uh, I should have baked this a few days ago, because a good third of them were now slightly fuzzy and un-bakeable. Grumblecakes! Okay, so scrap two of the berries and go for pure blueberry! I love blueberries! I’ll put in a touch of cinnamon and some walnuts for texture. It will be beautiful. It will be a work of art! It will be the envy of daring bakers everywhere!
The dough, however, was also not-so-fortunate. The list of ingredients was so small, so simple. How could I fail, I thought. Well, for starters I wrote down the recipe wrong. NOTE TO SELF: 7 teaspoons and 7 tablespoons are two entirely different amounts. No really. I was so confused when I should have had a dough coming together and it was still a crumbly mess. I started adding more water to make up the difference, and have no idea whether or not I hit the right amount eventually. But I know dough – I know what it’s supposed to feel like! A bit of kneading, and into an oiled bowl it goes to sit and mellow out.
A few hours later, I assemble a scrumptious blueberry filling and then turn “to the dough. “It’s SO EASY to stretch,” they all said! “Worked like a dream… so stretchy and pliable!” Uh…. not so much. My FAIL of a dough refused to act with any civility whatsoever. It stubbornly fought me at every turn, causing a bout of cursing not often heard in the TLB kitchen. After nearly 45 minutes of gruesome stretching and pulling, I had a lumpy hole-ridden mess of dough that wasn’t anywhere near thin enough to even attempt rolling.
“ENOUGH!” I said. I may be stubborn, but I know when to throw in the towel. Strudel dough, you’ve won. I managed to salvage two tiny pieces of dough that were almost thin enough to work with, and used them to make two tiny little mini-strudels of dubious quality. The remainder of the filling, which still looked delicious, promptly got thrown into a casserole dish and topped with a buttery crumble to bake alongside the sad little strudel wannabes. I’ll be damned if I’ll let a perfectly good pile of blueberry deliciousness go to waste because I can’t manage to stretch a strudel dough!
So the results? Thick, lumpy misshapen logs of sadness that break my heart. Yes, they’re that bad. They look less like strudel than pale, bleeding dough-fetuses, curled upon their weeping berry centers. Case and point:
The crumble, however, is delicious!
This is a sad start to my Daring Bakers career, alas. Lets just say that from now on I’ll stick to making strudel with store-bought phyllo dough. But hey, at least I dared to… um… dare! I’m hoping next month’s challenge will be a bit smoother sailing?
11 comments
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May 28, 2009 at 8:27 am
JennyBakes
You always make me laugh. Strudel fetus, hehe.
This dough didn’t feel like bread dough to me, the billowy kind that you oil and put in a bowl and watch it get all poofy. It was sticky and stretchy like chewing gum. I’ve read several posts that said if you let it sit overnight (instead of 30-90 minutes) that it will be almost impossible to tear, so I’m tempted to try that.
May 28, 2009 at 8:35 am
Abbey T.
But you see, the thing is I *did* make it the night before… just didn’t have the energy to describe in detail when writing this up last night. I made it the night before, put it in the fridge, then took it out as soon as I got home from work. I let it sit for a few hours more to get to room temperature. It did nothing BUT tear. I’d try and stretch it and it would just rip – everywhere! It was like the stubborn, recalcitrant love child of chewing gum and pizza dough. Stretchy, but only to a point, and it would simply snap right back to where it started, unless you push further, at which point it would shear right off. GRRRR!
May 28, 2009 at 11:53 pm
isa
I am really sorry for you.
Unfortunately, we are not always satisfied with the result, I hope that you will have more success next month..
May 29, 2009 at 1:37 am
Audax Artifex
I was waiting for your posting!
Yes the spirit of the Daring Bakers is it is not a competition BUT what is respected is trying to do the challenge using your best efforts and you certainly did that. I encourage you to try the dough one more time a batch costs only 20cents or so to make and have another go at it. It might be a whole lot easier the next time. Wonderful effort and the berries didn’t go to waste. Unfortunaely the dough worked like a charm for me (I let it rest overnight usually) and it stretched and stretched and…..
Lovely pixs of the ‘strudels’ love the cat. Cheers from Audax
May 29, 2009 at 3:11 am
Ahmad
Streudel foetus LOL! Don’t feel bad everybody stuffs up a challenge every once in a while. You should check out my danish braid challenge HAHA.
May 29, 2009 at 9:17 am
Barbara
Your post cracked me up. I too had problems with a berry strudel. Good idea doing a crumble! It looks delicious with all that melting ice cream!
May 29, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Jenny Tan
Abbey, my mascarpone-cherry strudel exploded and leaked out too…except that I manage to scoop and toss the leakage before they got burnt! 😉 I’m sorry the dough misbehaved for you. Did u let it rest before tossing into the fridge? If not, the temperature in the fridge might have been the cause of the trouble. I do hope that you’ll give it one more try…and I must say, the blueberry crumble a la mode LOOKS REALLY DELICIOUS! 🙂
May 29, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Isolated Foodie
You have such a good attitude about the strudel failure and quick thinking to make it into a delicious looking crumble! And, of course, I’m assuming that the leaked filling probably, well, you know…mirrored in scent the name of your blog? That’s got to be worth something, right?
May 31, 2009 at 10:34 am
Kathlyn
Your crumble looks and sounds so much more delicious than my strudel! I didn’t have any problems with the dough, but the filling I made up (not from the recipe) was so boring I might have to throw the rest of it out (it’s still in the fridge – what’s up with that?). Congrats on your first challenge and welcome – very much enjoying your adventures and photos!
May 31, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Jenny
Your post made me smile, you have such a good attitude about your failure and your writing is very funny! LOL at the strudel fetus bleeding for me 🙂
Better luck next month!
And from a fellow berry lover: Your crumble looks so delicious I’m drooling here!!!
June 13, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Jo
Oh dear friend, feel free to subject me to your attempts ANY time. Looks absolutely delicious. *drool*
❤
Jo