Special thanks to Kelly from Sass & Veracity and Ben from What’s Cooking? for hosting this month’s challenge!

medjool dates

Growing up in a Middle Eastern home, dates were something my family always had around.  The medicinal properties that my grandmother claims this humble fruit holds are endless, but I was never one who needed any sort of convincing to eat these sweet, chewy nuggets.  I did find out, though, that there is archeological evidence of date cultivation since 4000 BC,  to which my grandmother simply responded with the Arabic equivalent of, “I told you so.”  I want to dedicate this entry to my grandmother because I drew inspiration for this challenge from her date-stuffed semolina cookies that I grew up eating.

mise en place

I didn’t tweak the recipe for the pastry too much.  I used the zest of a lemon instead of an orange because I thought it would go better with the lemony undertone of the ground cardamom.  I also didn’t use vanilla beans because, let’s face it, even though I already graduated, I’m still living on a college student budget. 

1, 2, 3, 4, repeat.

The recipe for the dough was great.  I loved that cardamom was already included in the recipe because I felt that it went well with my Middle Eastern theme.  

tiny specks of cardamom & butter

This is a shot of the dough after four turns and I absolutely loved how you could see the specks of cardamom and the laminated butter running throughout.   

filling the danishes

Of course, the braid part of the challenge flew right over my head and so I opted to make individual portions by cutting out disks using the rim of a small drinking glass.  This was not a great idea when it came around to eating the little things because I never felt guilty about having one more piece.  In fact, as I’m writing this, I’m munching on a piece and telling myself that a visit to the gym will be necessary tomorrow.

for the picky eaters who don’t want date-filling

Since I know that dates might not be everyones cup of tea, I used the scraps to make star-shaped pastries with a strawberry jam center.  Because I know EXACTLY how it feels to be that kid unpacking the “weird food” during lunch while Timmy gets to build his Pizza Lunchables and enjoy his chewy chocolate chip cookies. Anyway, I digress.

strawberry stars

The star-shaped pieces tasted good, but I had my eyes set on the prize – the medjool date, Danish-inspired pastry.

Middle Eastern Inspired Date Danish

The secret to the date filling is to throw in a couple teaspoons of butter so that the filling doesn’t dry out in the oven.  Other than that, the filling is nothing more than pure dates that have been pulsed in the food processor.

breakfast with friends

One of my best friends from high school, Yuliana, was visiting this weekend so I was happy to share the fruits of this challenge with her (and my roommates, of course). Raquel also went to high school with us and so we all had a fun weekend talking about how OLD we all are and how crazy it is that high school was so long ago.

Special thanks to Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell for hosting this month’s cheesecake challenge from Jill O’Connor’s cookbook, Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey.

For me, cheesecakes fall under the small category of mystical foods. It might just be my over-indulging tendencies, but it seems like I can never say no to a slice of heavenly cheesecake, no matter how full I am. Of course, in order to make myself feel better before taking part in one of the seven deadly sins, I always preface my request by asking for a tiny slice (adding more and more diminutive adjectives relative to how stuffed I feel at the moment).

This is my second challenge for the Daring Bakers and, at first, I was ambivalent at the idea of making cheesecake. Upon reading the challenge, two annoying voices consumed my thoughts – one asked me to double the recipe while the other insisted that I halve it. Of course, there was no getting past the evil snicker behind the little devil persuading me to double it, so I fought my temptation and decided to half the recipe.

As a college student, I cut corners wherever I can. In fact, I’m the student who will buy used text books not to get extra booze money, but rather to buy myself Crate & Barrel’s hottest serving platters. By admitting to my (sad, but true) weakness, I hope you will all understand why I had to cut out the middle stick: buy me!

mise en place

When I was given the liberty to create my own flavor combination (so long as I preserved the basic recipe) I started imagining a whole range of possibilities and decided to go with the classic orange-chocolate duo. The chocolate, of course, is brought to you by yours truly, the ubiquitous Oreo cookie.

3-step mini Oreo crusts

Muffin tins are one of my favorite pans because they lend themselves perfectly for a variety of hors d’oeuvres (e.g. tapas), desserts or other tiny edibles. They also drastically cut down baking time, which I’m always a fan of. 

candied orange zest on top

After inverting them, I decided to garnish each cup with a basic cream cheese frosting (1 part cream cheese, 1 part powdered sugar, 1/4 part butter, dash of pure vanilla) and sugared orange zest. To make the sugared orange zest, all you have to do is rub the zest of an orange with some sugar until the sugar turns orange and the air around you begins to smell like an orange grove.

Cheesecake Cups

This entry is dedicated to all Daring Bakers for making the challenges and the group itself lots of fun!! Special thanks to Morven for hosting this month’s challenge.

At first I was a bit skeptical about this cake challenge since it was pushing me far away from my culinary comfort zone. The horror stories I grew up around were terrifying enough – threatening all of us about how even granules of sugar in either direction can ruin the precise scientific integrity of a cake. However, when I got around to reading this month’s challenge in further detail I realized that the possibilities for executing the cake were literally endless; so I took on the daring baker attitude and approached the task with an open mind (and a chocolate heart).

mise en place

In order for the cake flavors to go well with the newly introduced chocolate, I made some minor changes in the flavor department by substituting the lemon zest with orange zest and the lemon extract for orange liquor. The chocolate-orange combo is a classic and was fantastic in the cake. Otherwise, I prepared the cake as intended and folded the chocolate additions towards the end.

and the chocolate makeover begins

Once the chocolate batter was complete, I baked the cake for only 8-10 minutes because I used a sheet pan rather than the 9” cake rounds (which I don’t own).
Since this was my first Daring Baker Challenge, I wanted to make these cakes extra special by decorating them with piped chocolate designs. They’re a lot easier to make than they seem and they add a nice touch to the finished product. All it is, is melted chocolate piped onto a chilled sheet tray lined with parchment paper.

pretty chocolate

I was not too happy with the way my buttercream turned out, but that may just be the psychological side effect of knowing that there were 3 sticks of butter in it. Once all the pieces were ready, I assembled everything into individual cakes and covered each with a thin layer of fondant for decoration.

cakes are meant to be eaten