August Daring Bakers! Chocolate, mmm

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

My torte is both vegan and gluten free. It is chocolate and lime flavour. I served it up with lime nougat and vegan raspberry ice cream. I used Karina's recipe for the sponge from her blog as the gluten free goddess and used substitutions for the original recipe elsewhere. Enjoy!

Making home made tofu

In my area it has become increasingly difficult to purchase silken tofu and I was getting very aware of not having had "cheese"cake in quite some time. My only options were to pay a fortune in the city or, of course, make my own.

So I began researching the process involved in making tofu and found further obstacles. Most recipes called for a product called 'nigari' (a natural coagulant) which I could only find online. Others used epsom salts which I found in my local pharmacy but after some research discovered that too much magnesium (the epsom salts) could be harmful to your health. Not keen to take that risk I opted for the less popular use of lemon juice which 'tends to produce a more sour taste'. This time I only made a small batch due to the uncertainty of my results. But it came out so good I will definitely be making more, and my nigari is in the post.

Here's a rough recipe with instructions below:

Scald 400ml soya milk
simmer for 5 mins
turn off the heat
add 150ml lemon juice
allow to sit for 15 mins
pour into cloth covered/pierced box
put weight on top
leave to drain for a while.

Voila!

This produces a silken type tofu and is ideal for cheesecake or other cheeses.

I decided to go savoury on this one. I am very used to making things from cakes and really wanted something to challenge this routine. The bread is made from a hand made loaf that I made earlier in the week. The rest are vegetables. The cross stitch is really threaded through some holes. I ate all this at the end. It was a very edible sewing box!