Saturday, July 27, 2013

Daring to do it: Eenie Meenie Miney Moe


In many ways this was the hardest challenge we have ever had!

In a "celebration" of past Daring Baker and Daring Cook challenges, Lisa challenged all of us to search through the Daring Kitchen archives and pick any one we'd like! The REAL challenge was picking which delicious recipe(s) to try!

Lisa, the creator of the Daring Kitchen (and someone I am really honored to call a friend - who I can't wait to meet one of these days!), pulled this challenge together pretty quickly after the original July host was knocked out my an injury.  (What can I say - this is a really supportive community where we all work together.  I love it.)  You would think this would be easy - choose something that looks good.  Well, ALL of the challenges look god!  How could I choose?
But choose I did...  I went way back to the November 2006 Daring Baker's challenge - Hot Buttered Pretzels.  I love pretzels, but I have a soft spot for the sweet, buttery all pretzels.  My best friends from college and I used to get three pretzels and one large lemonade to share when we went out together, and we still do when we can, which isn't too often with all of us working, having kids and one of us living on the other side of the country!   So I decided that making these would be a nice trip down memory lane, and would help bring my friends closer in a little way.
What was really cool was that my Big Girl really wanted to be hands on through the whole baking process.  She really makes her mommy proud!  She wanted to do it all, so she did:
Measuring:
Pouring:
The dough she made:
Puffed up!
While the recipe indicates making eight pretzels, we decided to make 16...
Back to Big Girl! Rolling:
Shapes and baked:
Brown and yummy!
We made half of the pretzels salty and the other half sweet with cinnamon sugar.  All of them were amazing...  The one alteration I made was to use margarine instead of butter - allergies, lactose intolerance...  You know...  So they were really Hot Margarined Pretzels, but I would make them again any day!!
Now I challenge you - choose just one of these challenges from the past.   You'll understand why this was so hard!
Thank you, Lis, for giving us the chance to go back in time!  You are awesome.

And don't forget to check out what the other Daring Bakers made this month!

4 comments:

  1. Two salty and two sweet pretzels please :D They look soooo delicious!

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  2. I just made this recipe yesterday, but converted it to sourdough and stuffed the dough logs with chocolate. Yum! I think it's a good thing this recipe only makes 8 (or 16)!

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  3. Way to go, Big Girl! These look great, especially with the cinnamon.

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  4. These look great - it was fun to go back and give an older challenge a try.

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