The Daring Bakers’ December, 2014 Challenge: Dutch sweet bread (Ontbijtkoek)

For the month of December, Andrea from 4pure took us on a trip to the Netherlands. She challenged us to take our taste buds on a joyride through the land of sugar and spice by baking three different types of Dutch sweet bread.

Sourdough Stollen for the Sourdough Surprises

The Sourdough Surprises challenged us to bake a German stollen, a special bread-like cake that is often made around Christmas time with candied and dried fruit, nuts and spices and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Well, I do not know about this having its roots in Germany, as this seems pretty similar to a typical Slovak sweet bread baked around Christmas as well but well, ok :) 

I love baking with my sourdough starter, so why not to try it? Well, maybe the reason for not trying might have been that as soon as I started measuring ingredients for this, my scale did broke. I do not like using "cups" unit for sourdough recipes but what could I do?

Banana-Coconut Bread

Yet another great recipe by Nigella Lawson. And once again it is super easy to make. I think that the simplicity of the Nigella's recipes combined such a tasty results is what draws me to her :) For example, in this case, the bread is very moist and the longer you let it sit, the better it gets. I do not want to exaggerate but I think this is the best cake dough  I have ever eaten. Just look at the ingredients list: banana, coconut, butter - all my favourites.

Nigella use the dried cherries which I didn't have the second time I baked this, thus I replaced cherries by dried apricots. And I have to say, it tasted better, The apricots combined with coconut make really interesting and exotic combination.

Gingerbread Muffins with Surprise

As Christmas is here again I decided to experiment a little bit and make a Christmas variation of the basic recipe for muffins. i have to say even I was surprised how yummy these gingerbread muffins are.

Zebra Cake

I have recently found my old notebook in which I began to collect recipes when I was 15. Going through it, I have found this I would say a "Slovak classic". If you like a coconut-chocolate combo, which is so so so very sweet, then you should really try this.