POTATO-CHEESE PIEROGIES WITH SAUSAGES AND FRIED ONIONS 

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! 

Now, I have been a Daring Baker for a few years now and the reason I chose to be a baker and not a cook was because I could not resist making all those sweet baked goods. I have participated almost every month since I started – some dishes have come out well, others were excellent, and there were a few miserable failures as well. But I've learned many new things.

So for the challenge, I could have tried out a bake I had never done before, or gone back to one that had failed. But I decided to put aside the sweets this time and try out a Daring Cooks challenge. 

So I am making pierogies (August 2010 challenge hosted by LizG of Bits n' Bites and Anula of Anula's Kitchen) for the first time and after the whole process, which has several steps, I ask myself, "Why?" Why is this the first time I am making pierogies?! They're wonderful!

 Use the water after boiling the potatoes for the filling to make the dough

For the filling, I went with a traditional Polish/Russian one of potato and cheese. With the dough, I'd read that the water used to boil the potatoes is a good binder instead of eggs, and I also used sour cream. Apparently, low-protein flour makes a softer dough, so I used Chinese pau/bao flour. I like the texture of the dough, and it is easy to work with.

No doubt about it, pierogies are stodgy, so don't eat too many of these before doing something that requires moving about a lot. I had seven in one go – couldn't resist! – and had to have a lie-down after that.

Fry the onions, then brown the boiled pierogies in the same pan

Potato-Cheese Pierogies

Makes 30 pieces

Filling

300g potatoes, (about 4 medium) peeled and halved

4 rashers streaky bacon (optional)

1 medium (about 70g) white onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

50g (about ½ cup) shredded sharp cheddar (or other cheese)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Dough

300g (about 2 cups) pau/bao flour (low-protein flour; or use all-purpose)

2 tbsp sour cream

175ml (about ¾ cup) warm potato water, plus extra

To make the filling, heat a pan and fry the bacon without any oil. Once the bacon is crisp and the oil is rendered, remove the bacon and crumble or chop. Sauté the onions in the bacon grease and cook until golden. Add the garlic and fry briefly. Set aside.

Boil the potatoes in plenty of lightly salted water until tender. Drain, retaining about 1 cup of the water.

Return the cooked potatoes to the pot over low heat to dry out slightly, 1 minute. Take pot off the heat and add the crumbled bacon, onion mixture and shredded cheese. Mash the potatoes, then let the mixture cool.

To make the dough, place the flour in a bowl. Stir in the sour cream. Make a well in the centre and add almost all the potato water. Bring the mixture together, adding more water a tablespoon at a time if necessary, until a soft dough forms. It should not be sticky. Cover and rest for 15 minutes.

Pierogies: boiled and frozen. They may look bland, but these little half-moons pack flavour - and comfort.

To assemble, roll out the dough to about 2mm and stamp out 7cm circles with a plain cookie cutter or drinking glass. Turn a dough circle over so the moister side will now be on top, and place a teaspoon of filling in the centre; press the opposite edges together firmly to form a semi-circle. The edges do not need to be crimped as they stick together well but for a bit of decoration, crimp away! Place the half-moons on a lightly floured plate.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil; salt lightly. Boil the pierogies in batches. When they float, leave them in for 1-2 minutes longer, then transfer to a tray lined with greaseproof paper. If desired, the pierogies may be frozen after they cool. Freeze them in one layer, then transfer to a freezer-proof plastic bag. 

Serve them with sour cream, or lightly fry them on each side and serve with fried onions and good-quality sausages.

* * *

And on the Bakers' side...

The August 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was pound cake. I chose to use it in a Baked Alaska.

COFFEE ALMOND COOKIES BASED ON STRAZZATE 

Here's a cookie that I find intriguing: strazzate – "traditional crumbly cookies from the Basilicata region of Italy... flavoured with Strega, an Italian herbal liqueur", says Saveur.com.

What I find interesting is that the cookie, made primarily from almond meal, is not bound together by butter or eggs, but by the Strega (or alternatively, Galliano) and coffee, the beverage. 

I didn't have any herbal liqueur, but I did have Kahlùa. So I made some substitutions for a strazzate-like cookie flavoured with coffee liqueur.

I can only imagine what the real thing must taste like, but I don't understand why Saveur calls them, in English, chocolate-almond cookies. These cookies may contain chocolate, but it hardly features. I have a feeling the creators of the cookie were very much focused on the liqueur and its herbal flavour, as well as a taste of coffee rather than chocolate. Mine has the tiny bit of chocolate called for in the original recipe but I've left it out of the name of my cookie.

The Saveur recipe says to bake for 30 minutes, but for my wayward oven, that's too long. But then ovens are not all the same, and we will know how our own works. I give my cookies 20 minutes at the most, and then turn off the oven and let them crisp up inside. They form a crisp shell and have a chewy crumb. I think of the cookie as an almond macaroon (and perhaps even macaron) without the egg white. 

To answer the question posed in the title of this post, no, you can't get drunk on these cookies. Not after they're baked anyway. You can probably tell there's Kahlùa in them, and the cookies go very well with a cup of coffee.

The raw cookie dough, however... now, that is potent!

Crisp shell and chewy on the inside

Coffee Almond Cookies
Makes 18. Based on the strazzate recipe from Saveur.com

120g almond meal

10g (about 1 tbsp) chopped almonds

110g all-purpose flour

110g caster sugar

20g (about 1 tbsp) mini chocolate chips

3g (about ½ tbsp) cocoa powder

Pinch of fine salt

½ tbsp neutral-flavoured oil

¼ tsp baking powder

½ tbsp lukewarm water

60ml water

40ml coffee liqueur (or use espresso)

Grease a large baking sheet. Preheat oven to 170ºC.

Combine the almond meal, chopped almonds, flour, sugar, chocolate chips, cocoa, salt and oil in a mixing bowl. 

Stir the baking powder into the lukewarm water. It will bubble almost immediately. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients together with the 60ml water and liqueur, and stir everything together quickly into a wet dough.

With a one-tablespoon-capacity ice-cream scoop, place mounds of dough 5cm apart on the prepared sheet (or form into balls with hands). They pretty much keep their shape so for flatter cookies, press the tops lightly to level them. Bake until set and light brown, about 20 minutes. Turn off the oven, prop the door open slightly and leave the cookies inside to crisp up, another 10 to 15 minutes.

CINNAMON ROLLS THAT JUST DON'T ROCK 

Meet my sourdough cinnamon rolls chums, Blah McBland and Hock E. "The Rock" Puck.

Sure, they may be dolled up in cream cheese bling and filled out with cinnamon sugar padding, but underneath it all, they're flat and unexciting.

I used this recipe from The Fresh Loaf for the dough and cream cheese icing, and Ciril Hitz's recipe for cinnamon bun filling from his book Baking Artisan Pastries & Breads. The dough was perfect – it was quite wet but I used the slap-stretch technique of kneading and it was manageable. So in no way do I fault the recipe! Others have made these cinnamon rolls as billowy as their name suggests.

Let me just describe the rolls without too many details. I made two batches of rolls on different days. The first one is on the left in the picture. They rose a little in the oven, but they just would not colour and came out with a light crust! Also, there wasn't enough filling so they were anaemic and tasted insipid.

The ones on the right were more elegantly formed into rolls and had more filling. They looked like they were taking on good colour in the oven, but didn't rise and ended up as dark river rocks with the texture of dry rusks. Oh dear, oh dear.

That's my chums for you. I may try this recipe again in the future, but for now, I'm just going to admire what the other bakers on Sourdough Surprises did.