Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 Results

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blogging challenge, Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday Challenge, Fiesta Friday Challenge Results

44 entries, 41 participants, 23 days, 14 countries, and at long last, here we are finally! Winners of the Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 have been selected and Catherine and I are ready and pleased to make the announcement.

Big thanks to all who participated. You have made it fun and exciting for everyone involved with your unbridled enthusiasm and genuine willingness to challenge yourself. In the process, you have encouraged and inspired one another to embrace yeast into your cooking repertoire.

Selecting a handful of winners from such an impressive pool of entries was not an easy task. Catherine and I looked at every entry closely and considered the following criteria in determining the winners: creativity, originality, integrity of technique and soundness of recipe. We each came up with our selections independently and it became clear immediately that we were exactly on the same page.

Without further ado, the winners of Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 are:

First Place

Kulebyaka from Mila@milkandbun. This is one astoundingly beautiful creation. A unique Russian pie that is so elegant and sophisticated we can’t believe it hasn’t gone global in popularity. This is the first time I’ve heard of its existence, despite the fact that it’s been served in Russia since the 17th Century. Thank you, Mila, for bringing this to our attention, and for showing meticulous, detailed step-by-step illustrations on how to put this outstanding and out-of-this-world pie together.

Egg Hoppers | Fiesta Friday #17

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appam, egg hoppers, hopper, Indian cuisine, recipe, roasted tomatoes, Sri Lankan cuisine, yeast recipe

Egg Hoppers. The name alone should intrigue you. It worked for me. But if that didn’t do it, the mere mention of eggs should. Oh, no? Not an egg person, huh? You don’t have to have eggs in them, but then they would be called appams, instead. To be more accurate, appams or hoppers can be used interchangeably for these.

Fiesta Friday #16

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bread, Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday #16, Fiesta Friday Challenge, fougasse, recipe, sweet fougasse

Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 Update

We have received 6 submitted entries to the Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 so far. Please check them out. Hopefully that will prompt more ideas. There’s also been an update on the kinds of yeast allowed in the challenge.

I made a blunder of including nutritional yeast as an acceptable yeast, but luckily Catherine reminded me that deactivated yeast, which includes yeast extract, is not part of the challenge. Since nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast, it won’t be accepted. The idea of the challenge is to work with live yeast that would breed fermentation. That is the big part of the challenge and therefore, the fun.

I apologize if it caused some confusion. You see, even hosts and judges make mistakes and definitely can use a few reminders. This is why you have a co-host. Two heads are always better than one.

I am submitting my own first entry to the challenge, Fougasse. I might enter more. Any entry that Catherine and I submit will be excluded from consideration for prizes, of course. We just want to share our experience with you.

Fiesta Friday #15

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Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday #15, Fiesta Friday Challenge, moscato, moscato santero, moscato strawberry

Our Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 is off to a great start. We have 45 participants so far, including Catherine and me. (Yes, we’d like to participate, too.) Everybody is truly excited about it. There are talks about conquering the “Yeast Beast” and putting on a hugely humongous “Creative Cap.” That’s always an encouraging sign.

Catherine and I have been brainstorming for ways to make Fiesta Friday Challenge even more exciting. We have been busy trying to get sponsors to provide prizes for the winners and we got one. She would like to remain anonymous, but I just can’t let a generous gesture such as this go unnoticed. I won’t tell you her name, so I won’t get into trouble, but I’ll give you a few hints. Please revisit the Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 post to find out what the prizes (and the hints) are.

In the meantime, you can start conversing with each other. Record your trials and tribulations in your yeast quest, and share them with us. Yeast has the tendency to have a mind of its own. Those of you who have not worked with it will see. I expect a lot of laughter to come out of this.

Please feel free to add your comments and thoughts on the FFC post. Interaction with one another may be the best part of being in an event. You’d never know what you could come up with when two or more heads get together.

For instance, when I started talking to a co-worker about it, I found out that there are many kinds of yeast, the obvious being the ones used for baking and brewing. But, there’s also the kind that is used to make tempeh. Tempeh starter is sometimes also called tempeh starter yeast. It may be a misnomer to categorize tempeh starter as yeast, since it’s really a mold, but for the purpose of this challenge, we will allow it. I have updated the Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 post to include this as well.