December Cooking Challenge : Char Sui

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

I was super excited about this challenge, I love Dim Sum. These were absolutely delicous and actually relatively easy to make. I made the Cha Sui with the red food coloring. I try and limit our food coloring around here and I was so glad that Sara gave us that option. I did the method of searing the meat first on the stovetop to brown it then finish it in the oven. When making the Cha Sui Bao I did the oven method since I currently don't own a steamer, but I think I may have to put one on my Christmas list. The only thing I would change for next time would be to add more filling. I didn't put enough in mine so each one was a lot of bread with just a little bit of meat. Other than that, delicious!

November Baking Challenge

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

I know, I'm running a little behind. Now I actually did attempt to make this challenge, but I had a little problem with my meringues for my San Rival cake. I don't think I cooked them long enough so they never got firm they stayed kind of gooey. I could see that this would have been a delicious dessert though.

I did make the Bibingka and it turned out really good, much better than I would have expected after just reading the ingredients. I even took a picture as you can see above :) The only thing was they tasted warm out of the oven but after spending a day in the fridge, the texture became must heavier and not as appealing. I guess it's a good thing I ate two right away! :)