Daring Bakers Challenge

My first Daring Bakers Challenge is completed! Yeah for me! It was definitely different than what I am used to, so it was a good challenge and a good learning experience. This challenge was brought to us by Natalie from Gluten A Go Go and Shel, of Musings From the Fishbowl and they chose a vegan and/or gluten free recipe for us. We were challenged to make Lavash Crackers from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and then we had to come up with a salsa, dip, or relish for the crackers...Vegan style, of course! There are so many variations of what you could do with this challenge so be sure to see what other Daring Bakers did with it this month!

The crackers were kind of fun to do. After the dough had risen and I rolled it out super thin and then baked it as a sheet before breaking them into bite size pieces. And because I can only think about desserts I covered the crackers in cinnamon and sugar before baking them and made an awesome caramel sauce to dip them in. My finished product had a fun little photo shoot too!

The recipe for the Lavash Crackers can be found here.

Vegan Caramel Sauce

2 C granulated sugar
3/4 C soy milk, rice milk, or other non dairy milk of choice
3/4 C sucanat (this is a dark, rough sugar that still has a lot of the molasses left in it; almost comparable to brown sugar)
1/3 C maple syrup or brown rice syrup
1 T water
1 T arrowroot (this is a starch, or thickening agent; 2 tsp arrowroot=1 T cornstarch)
2 T vegan margarine
1 tsp vanilla

In a small saucepan, place the soy milk, Sucanat, and maple syrup and whisk well to combine. Cook over medium heat, while whisking occasionally for 3 minutes. In a small bowl, combine arrowroot and water and then whisk the mixture into the saucepan. Cooke the mixture, while whisking constantly and additional 2-3 minutes or until it thickens. (Cornstarch will thicken at a higher temperature than the arrowroot will) Remove the saucepan from heat and whisk in remaining ingredients. Ready to serve, or store in airtight container in the refridgerator and reheat as needed.

I don't think I'll ever make this again, but I was very grateful for the experience to learn as much as I did.

Thanks for the challenge!