Adam's Birthday Cake

It's Adam's birthday today and although he never asked me to bake him a birthday cake, I know it will make him really happy if I made one. I had been a real lazy baker all year, and most of the time, I would bake and would not be able to take a picture.

So today I made a Chocolate Cake from my dear Sarah Phillips, and with Chocolate Ganache. Adam's family is coming over today for his birthday so I had to make sure I have dessert. I also made a Raspberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake filled and topped with Raspberry Jam. It's a good way to eat cake right? Chocolate and Raspberry. It was yummy!

The Jungle Birthday Cake

This was supposed to be Adam's cake, it was his birthday last Saturday, but this one ended up as a kiddie cake for Abelito's birthday. Abelito is Adam's youngest nephew and he is turning 4 today. This cake is a 3-layer cake of chocolate and orange butter, filled with orange buttercream.

Not my usual toned down simple cake, but the kiddo loved it!

The Fancy Cake Balls

I do think that photography and baking go hand in hand. It's a different genre but they do compliment each other. And I'm in love with both. I love taking nice photos of my baking. I think photography makes me creative, it makes me think of wonderful baking ideas that could turn into nice photos.

I had been thinking about making cake balls for sometime already, and I decided to make these last night. They are pretty easy to make, but glazing the balls is tricky. If you look at my photos of the cake balls, they're not perfectly round and smooth. But I'm fine with it. They're still pretty. The chocolate recipe is from my baking mommy Sarah, and it's the best chocolate cake recipe. I have tried other chocolate cake recipes but I always go back to her Ultimate Chocolate Butter Cake recipe. So after crumbling the cake, I just added a little chocolate frosting to make the balls.

Now the fun part, I melted some of the Ghirardelli bars that I got from Jojo as birthday present (it was from May!). I still have a lot of unused chocolates because I stopped baking for a few months. I enrobed the balls with those yummy melted chocolate. I can't stop licking the melted chocolates too! Once the chocolate coating settled on the balls, I melted some white chocolates, colored with pink coloring, and then piped it on top of the balls, then I just decorated it with some sugar flowers. I'm so thrilled with how it turned out!

It does look pretty, but it was also so tasty! Adam was just so thrilled with all the chocolate overload. Can't wait to make more with different designs!

The Gourmet Cake

I had been thinking about making a layered sheet cake for some time, and I finally bought a new 13x9-inch pan to do the layers. With all the moving that I did the past 2 years, I have lost some of my stuff and I don't know where my 13x9-inch pan went (among other stuff).

I needed a sturdy base for the cake, so I made Sarah's Cream Cheese Pound cake. It holds, yet it is soft and moist. I first baked that on the sheet pan, and after about 20mins, I have my first layer. Then I made the Chocolate Cake. While I was baking, I made the Swiss Buttercream, halved it and flavored each half with Raspberry and Vanilla. I also made the Dark Chocolate Ganache.

Assembling the cake was so much fun, with all the variety and the colors! I cut the cakes lengthwise in half and I used the first half of the pound cake as the bottom layer. I still have some homemade raspberry jam, and I frosted the bottom layer with it. Then the next layer was the Vanilla Buttercream, and then the Chocolate cake layer. After the chocolate cake layer was the Raspberry Buttercream, and then the other half of the pound cake. It was tall enough without using the the 2nd half of the chocolate cake. I glazed the top with the chocolate ganache (which by itself is to die for!).

After putting everything together, I was thinking of what to put on top of the cake. I had always wanted to do sugar candies, spun sugar, or something like that. I think it makes desserts look fancy. I just never tried making it because it is messy! I made a simple sugar syrup for the sugar decoration. While I was boiling my syrup, my fire alarm came off! I was so scared that it went off since it was already in the middle of the night! It scared the wits out of me! After figuring out how to turn off the alarm (think Phoebe in Friends, lol), I continued with the sugar syrup. After much ado, I had my very first pretty sugar candies with only two burnt fingers to boot. Haha.

My First Mini Cupcakes

These are my first mini cupcakes. Yup that's right. I have never made minis before because I don't have any mini cupcake pan. When I started to bake again a couple of weeks ago, I bought some new stuff, one of which is a mini cupcake pan. I love the sizes, they're just about the right bite sizes.

Here I made the UCBC recipe by Sarah Phillips. This is my staple chocolate cake recipe, loaded with chocolate because of the powder and the melted chocolate combination. Whenever I crave for some chocolate cake, I whip this up.

I made these for Jojo's Despedida Party.

The Garage Sale

I went to a Garage Sale yesterday with Lyra at the QC Circle Mabini Hall. The stuff being sold there were mostly clothes and baby stuff. She invited me to bring over some cupcakes, and give out fliers to people. I decided to decorate a few pieces and put in individual boxes as samples for weddings and occassions.


I made 2 flavors of cupcakes, the Chocolate and the Vanilla to sell and as samples, both recipes by Sarah Phillips. The sample of the boxed cupcake below got sold to a couple who is planning their wedding. She said that it's their color. This is a Chocolate Cupcake with Mousselline Vanilla Buttercream.


This boxed sample is a Vanilla cupcake also frosted with Vanilla Buttercream. This has got to be my favorite flavor of cupcake. Too bad I can't make the White Chocolate Ganache with it because it will be too expensive to sell!

This last sample is a classic black and white on gold box. I need to get better at this photo thingy. :) And only after taking all the pictures and keeping the camera did I realize that the ribbons are not yet tied on the boxes! The final products had ribbons tied to the boxes.

The Garage Sale was a wonderful experience. It was fun talking with people and introducing the products. Plus I had fun selling Lyra and Mia's stuff! I wonder how much they've earned? LOL! It was also always fun to see Baby Sam because it is very easy to make him smile and laugh! :)

Here's the flier that I gave out yesterday. Nothing fancy since I just had to print it out in the morning of the sale. I should be working on fancier flier. :) It will be coming out soon!

Buche De Noel

I made this for Ate Jen before I left Israel. I had this left on my drafts for the longest time and I'm posting now. This is to let everyone know that I made it safely home and I'm waiting for my baking gears to arrive from shipment. Till then! :)

Very Chocolatey Cheesecake

I had been on a chocolate baking streak and this time I made Sarah Phillip's new Very Chocolatey Cheesecake Recipe. Before I started baking, cheesecakes were one of my ultimate indulgences so when I learned how to bake, I swore that I will learn how to make cheesecakes because they're expensive to buy!

I was initially intimated to make cheesecakes, just because it seems like a lot of work. I then found out that it's not if you find the best recipes that are easy to work with and almost fool proof. It's my first time baking a chocolate cheesecake and I'm quite excited. The steps were almost identical to that of the regular cheesecake, and I just needed to add chocolates and adjust baking temperature and time.



After mixing the batter, I baked the cheesecake for about an hour. It smelled wonderful in the kitchen. I let it cool completely at room temperature for about 2 hours and then chilled it afterwards, for about 24 hours. The topping was a dark chocolate ganache glaze and some homemade gumpaste flowers.

The cheesecake was so good! It tasted like Rocky Road Ice Cream and the chocolate crust was a nice contrast to the smooth filling. I brought some to the office and they loved it, and gave some to our friends at 1106. It makes a really delicious dessert and elegant at that!

Chocolate Overload

I have not baked anything with chocolates for the past month so I decided I will go over the top with chocolates. I baked the Ultimate Chocolate Butter Cake by Sarah Philips, filled it and frosted with Chocolate Ganache and then wrapped it with Chocolate Plastic. Everything will be chocolates.

Somebody asked me what I love the most about making cakes, is it decorating? Actually, no. I love baking the most, the part where you mix flour, butter and all other stuff, then put it in the oven and then have a pretty layer of cake or nicely domed cupcakes. I always strive for perfection on the height and edges of the cakes. I don't mind having imperfect icing or decorations as long as I have a good cake. That is why I get frustrated when I cannot get a recipe perfectly, I keep baking the same recipe over and over until I get it perfectly. Having said that, I baked my cake pretty nicely and that's what mattered most to me. I love stacking layers and not having to torte or trim edges. The chocolate cake was so moist and very decadent, because it has melted chocolates and cocoa powder on it. It's like those expensive European cakes in cafes loaded with chocolates. I then made the ganache and it was so rich and fudgy! Once the cake layers were cooled, I assembled the cake with the ganache filling and frosting.

It is my first time making chocolate plastic and it was easy. Putting it on the cake though is another story. I had a great time kneading the chocolate plastic, it was just like clay dough. I easily rolled it but I had a hard time putting it on the cake. I'm a total bummer with fondant and I think there is only one fondant cake that I had been happy about because I put the fondant nicely. The others had a lot of issues from folds, creases or cracks. As expected, I was not able to put on the chocolate plastic without issues. I had to do a lot of smoothening of creases after I put it. However, I think I produced a decent cake. I just topped the cake with a single rose and lined with a tiny lace at the bottom.

So here's my chocolate overload cake. We will have it for dessert tonight, I bet it tastes good! I should know, I've tasted the components individually while making it. :)

Our Weekend Get-Together

We were busy the entire week and we never had the chance to celebrate Manny's birthday so last weekend, we decided to invite our friends over for a small get together. We haven't had a get together in a long while since most of the guys here went back home. We had our mini get together last Friday.

The past week, the earliest time that we get home was at around 9pm. We were never able to do anything else because we were so dead tired, and once home, we do get work calls from the night shift. We planned on going to the supermarket Thursday night so that we'd just be preparing come Friday. But then again, we were able to go home very late Thursday so we had no chance to buy stuff. I woke up very late Friday (at around 12noon) and we still needed to go to the supermarket. So we got moving at around 1pm, and I went to the dirty market for a while, and then went to my "suki" baking store (which I need not go to that day, but I can't help it!) and then off the the supermarket (which is a good 30mins drive from where we live). We were back at my place at around 4pm, and I invited people to come at 7pm. It's 3 hours away, and I have nothing edible yet (except for an unfrosted chocolate cake). And crammer me did not start cooking right away. I sat for a while, ate pistachio nuts, watched the olympics and before I knew it, it was almost 5pm. Hehe.

We started cooking at 5pm, Iron Chef style because of the time constraint. After 2 and a half hours of chaos, we started plating our dishes just in time for our first guests Daniel and Edsel to arrive. I was not yet done though. I needed to frost the chocolate cake and since I had no time, I ended up dumping the mocha buttercream just on top of the cake, hence the cake above. :) I was planning on frosting it nicely with pipes and sugar flowers but I never got the chance.

We had a wonderful dinner of spare ribs, mashed potatoes, pizza, fried dumplings, crab salad with desserts chocolate cake and cream cheese cupcakes, all homemade! We had a really hearty dinner! Afterwards, we just chatted the night away, had some wine and played xbox. Here's all of us.