I am now halfway through the year … week 26 done of my US National Food Day challenge complete. It’s been a roller-coaster adventure and I’ve learnt a lot of new techniques and flavor combinations. Leave a comment to let me know what you think of my quest!
December 3 – National Apple Pie Day
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This was kind of a success, kind of a failure. I made an apple crumble pie, using my ugly crust recipe (here), topped it with fresh apples, applesauce, brown sugar and some cinnamon, then the crumble from my apple crumble recipe (here). The taste was great, but I originally wanted to try a different crust (which failed) and I needed more apple filling to make it really great. And I needed to not eat most of the crumble when I was making it …! Lessons learnt here! |
December 4– National Cookie Day
| So many choices … I thought I’d try to adapt this challenge to make it not so sugar-laden (hah!) and made my chickpea peanut butter cookies (recipe here). I love these cookies, mainly because they are made of all-natural ingredients so you kind of feel healthier when eating them. I took the batch to work and gave my colleagues another mystery ingredient challenge – first person to guess the mystery ingredient in the cookies won a batch of homemade cookies just for them. Well, no one guessed it, so I get to keep (and eat) my own homemade cookies! |  |
December 5 – National Sacher Torte Day
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A day requiring some research again. A Sacher Torte is a German chocolate cake with apricot jam sandwiched between the cake part and the ganache part. I was up for the challenge … but had to adapt it slightly to Abby’s tastes (she doesn’t like apricot jam). So I followed the recipe, used strawberry jam instead of the apricot jam, and, well, was kind of disappointed. I think I’ve made nicer chocolate cakes, and it certainly wasn’t worth the effort … |
December 6 – National Gazpacho Day
Not a big fan of gazpacho, so had a rest day.
December 7 – National Cotton Candy Day
I have never really liked cotton candy …
December 8 – National Chocolate Brownie Day
| Again, my attempt at turning these national days into something a little more healthy. I made my healthy brownie bars, using dates instead of using refined sugar (recipe here). And my goodness, these were yummy. Trust me, try them. You won’t believe they don’t have any added refined sugar in them! |  |
December 9 – National Pastry Day
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So another failure/success combination. Pastry could have meant any number of desserts, but I chose to make a chicken pie, using my ugly crust recipe again (recipe here), and then making some aji de gallina chicken (the shortcut recipe on this page). The taste was awesome (Grant loved it!). The photo didn’t work very well … but at least now I know how to make pies with a crust on top as well! And it was awesome reheated the following day (and stayed together better then too … maybe I should have taken the photo that day!) |
Coming up next week:
- December 10: National Lager Day
- December 11: National Noodle Ring Day
- December 12: National Cocoa Day
- December 13: Ice Cream and Violins Day
- December 14: National Bouilabaisse Day
- December 15: National Cupcake Day
- December 16: National Chocolate Covered Anything Day
Stay tuned to see which ones I choose to make/eat and how successful (or not) I am!
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