Daring Bakers April Challenge: Maple Mousse and (sweet) edible containers

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

After being choosen as a finalist for the savoury was the bar set very high for the Daring Bakers Challenge too. But to my despair all my ideas for sweet edible containers were posted into the forum thread before I could realize them - so I had to say goodbye to chocolate and caramel bowls, and I don't wanted to make an ice or sorbet bowl again. 
There were lots of other creative ideas I never would have thought of, so I would like to share my (five) favourites before showing with what I came up finally.

The Flirty Blog - Pancake Vol-au-vents
Audax Artifex - Sour glazed maple syrup petit fours (he did 9! different versions and I love each one of them)
Anasbageri - Maple red flowers (raspberry tuiles)
Catalina bakes - Cookie egg shells
TxFarmer - Coffee jello (in a flower shape)

My idea was making candy bars because I have bookmarked lots of candy bar recipes recently, including making Twix bars and other sweet treats. I remembered some candy bars I liked to eat when staying in Norway. They are called 'Smash!' and consist of salted corn cores covered with chocolate. I liked the idea of creating a similar bar and used cornflakes with a version of my favourite salted caramel sauce as the base - call it a salty cornflake fudge. This was topped with the maple mousse and covered with chocolate. The remaining mousse was piped into some ice cube moulds from IKEA and covered  just with chocolate (what made really nice pralines). Thanks to my dear friend André I could use my new praline set  with a special rack and forks for that (this was a great birthday present indeed).


My brother- and sister-in-law were my guinea pigs this time and they loved those sweet treats. They dind't taste like 'Smash!' but this melting symphony of sweet & salty in your mouth was irresistable. The only downside was the calorie content ...
I had rarely used maple sirup before - the only recipes I did were in combination with walnuts like those muffins (should make them again soon) or donuts. The mousse was fabulous and really easy to make, so I think about making a swiss roll with walnut sponge cake and maple mousse filling. Maybe a maple ice cream with roasted walnuts wouldn't be bad either ;)

Maple Mousse Candy Bars

Daring Cooks April Challenge: Edible Containers - Lime & Mint Sorbet bowls and Pasta Cannoli

I'm late again this month and I apologize for that, but this time it's not about bad time managment but nasty visitors. I catched a stomach flu at work and was battling agains fever, chills and nausea the last two days. Not to speak of a big antipathy of food of all kinds - I even couldn't stand the taste and smell of my toothpaste. So I hope you don't mind me sharing late ...

Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

The  challenge was to make edible containers of all kind, so I went a little bit nuts.There were lots of suggestions, from bread bowls to noodle salad bowls and other nice things. The idea of fresh food, salsa and smoked salmon had been haunting my mind for a while and I tried to find a edible container suitiable for that dish. Than I had a look at my ice cream machine - and I thought 'I guess you can make bowls from sorbet too'. I used my silicone muffin moulds and some plastic drinking cups (the ones you can buy for parties) which I cut  to a height of about 4 cm and used as my second mould.