One Photo One Chance

How does it feel like to be one of the finalists of Leites Culinaria Photo Contest? I hardly thought I would get to experience it. From the onset, I realized the participants most probably would have come from a higher level of photography expertice (I mean look at the list of contest jury, wow... in the little dream of mine I had wished that once in my blog lifetime my photo would ever been viewed by Aran of Canelle et Vanille). Mostly I imagined I wasn't qualified enough to take part.





Therefore I wasn't thinking about participating. And during that one last week into the deadline I was so swamped with work at the office, plus trying to wrap up my website, and then came the DB Challenge and T.... T was hinting to me that I had been spending too much time on my work and website. As much as he showed he understood the situation, I had to put him back into one of my priorities..



So yes, I tried to make free time for T last Friday by not doing anything and comfortably staying by his side the whole evening. Just when the next day it happened that T had to go to work and suddenly I had free time in hand. I thought why not giving the contest a shot, got a few hours... so tried to make good use of them. And at the end of the day, if I did not pass the final, it was still nothing to lose cause I could use the material for a new post in my blog, right?



I quickly whipped up 2 recipes and as practical as I tried to be, both required time for refrigeration. So cut the story short, I managed to bake Mini Muffin Strawberry Financiers at lunch time and decided to just focus on one recipe instead of two. Next I frantically took photos like crazy and managed to get one photo sent after midnight (that shows how much time I had spent to shoot the right angle and selected the most appropriate photo, from like hundreds of them). And as I got the reply email informing my successful entry, I was relieved that I was officially taking my chance in the contest! One photo one chance!

And yes, my little wish came true. I made it to the final among other 9 finalists. I was so thrilleddddd! I actually shouted and quickly broke the great news to T!



Thanks to Deeba of Passionate about Baking for being the very source of information about the photo contest! Share the excitement with me by viewing the finalist photos here and at the same time you could also vote one of the photos to win People's Choice Award. Have fun!

So what was I going to do with my second recipe?... The batter was sitting in the fridge and I had to make time to bake it the following day and that is what I am going to share with you here. It is the recipe that I churned out from Leites Culinaria's recipe box that somehow did not make it to the contest due to my limited time.

Daring Bakers' Milan Cookies

This particular challenge reminded me of baking macaron. Well, the piped batter looked like macaron but the flattening effect and final result resembled baking lady finger.

Despite the early thought of baking just Mallows recipe, I ended baking both and felt totally pleased making the decision to bake this very special Milan cookies. The recipe is easy to follow and the process is straight forward. Don’t know whether anyone of you ever baked Hokkaido Snow White Cookies which are 2 very thin pieces of butter cookies sandwiched with a layer of white chocolate. The outcome is pretty close even though the latter is done by rolling and cutting dough instead of piping.



The blend of vanilla and lemon extract brought the best out of this cookies. Having said that I think you shouldn’t miss trying out this recipe if you ever think about baking for an afternoon tea. Thanks to Nicole from Sweet Tooth for selecting this simple yet fabulous recipe!

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This recipe is courtesy of Gale Gand. Have made some adjustments for my own convenience. The original recipe can be found here.



MILAN COOKIES
Makes 47 pieces

1. Cookies

Ingredients:
- Salted butter – soften in room temperature > 85 grams
- Icing sugar > 130 grams
- Egg whites > 3
- Vanilla essence > 1 tablespoon
- Lemon essence > 1 tablespoon
- All purpose flour > 94 grams



Method:
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Cream butter and icing sugar until pale.
- Add egg white gradually and then mix in vanilla and lemon essence.
- Fold in flour and mix well.
- With a small (1/4 inch) plain tip, pipe 1 inch sections of batter onto parchment-lined tray, spacing them 1.5 inches apart as they spread.
- Bake at 180C for 8 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on tray.



2. Chocolate Filling

Ingredients:
- Semi sweet chocolate – chop > 120 grams
- Whipping cream > 54 grams
- Orange zest > ½ orange



Method:
- Prepare chocolate in a bowl.
- In a small saucepan scald cream over medium fire.
- Pour hot cream into chocolate bowl. Whisk to melt chocolate. Add zest and mix well.
- Set aside to cool. The mixture will be thick.



3. Assembly

- Spread a thin amount of chocolate filling onto the flat side of a cookie.
- Press the flat side of the second cookie on top of filling.