Daring Bakers August Challenge!

I've been taking part in Daring Bakers for a few months now but until now as a non-blogging member. For anyone who hasn't heard of it basically on the 1st of every month a recipe is posted. We all bake the same recipe and then post the results on the 27th of each month.

This month the challenge was to make two chocolates/sweets including trying tempering chocolate.

I decided to make chocolate truffles and chocolate bark. Half of the truffles I dusted in cocoa and the other half I dipped in tempered milk chocolate and drizzled with tempered dark chocolate. For the bark I swirled tempered dark chocolate into milk chocolate and decorated with roasted hazelnuts, squares of fudge and white chocolate chips.

The best dinner ever?

I saw on Twitter that @mistertruffle had some English summer truffles in stock and as I had never cooked with truffles I thought it was worth a try.

The truffles come vac packed to keep them fresh and the delicious smell just hits you when you open the packed.

I wanted the truffle to be the star of the show so I decided to make a simple truffle pasta dish.

I started by making pasta. For anyone who hasn't made pasta it's a simple as a pile of flour, a pinch of salt and an egg cracked into a well and quite a lot of elbow grease! Once you've cracked the egg in just use a fork to gradually incorporate the flour until you get a good dough

Then knead until smooth and elastic and roll very very thin (translucent if possible) make sure you flour it really well to prevent any sticking

Fold in half, slice into thin strip and you're done. Jus point in plenty of salted boiled water for a few mins.

I then rubbed the bottom of my pan with a piece of cut garlic and gently heated slices of truffle in some good olive oil.

Added the cooked pasta, plenty of grated parmesan and a little of the cooking water. Served up and topped with some more truffle and parmesan. We both agreed it was absolutely delicious.