The Big Day (Not!)

It's my birthday today and during the days leading up to it, we were once again too busy at work. However, one thing I am certain of, I never wanted to bake a fancy cake for my birthday because there's only the two of us here anyway. I just decided to bake something small and yummy! So here it goes, I baked myself a Hot Sponge Milk Cake with Caramel Frosting. Nothing fancy but totally yummy! I don't have a party anyway.
My day actually started on the dot of 12AM, and I was still at the office at that time, having only eaten 1 meal the entire day and having been buried with tons of work. A few minutes after, the shift leader of operations called to tell me that there were food downstairs and he knows that I am hungry already. So we went downstairs to the cafeteria and saw the same food that we had for lunch. There were tons of pans with cold Beef Asado, grilled chicken, meatloafs and all sorts of salad leftovers. We took some and heated it then had our "dinner". With the thought of going home soon, I finished my food and went up again to my cube only to find out that there were problems in the jobs in the test floor that I need to fix. So I spent another hour again trying to fix all of the errors. I need to finish all that I'm supposed to do today because May 7 is actually a holiday here. It's their memorial holiday so therefore no work on the daytime and we need all the jobs running before we go on a long holiday. Afterwhich, I needed to patch my TP again to be released. I am also waiting for input files from a guy also working over time (and still had to make a 2-hr drive to Tel Aviv) so while waiting I was chatting with Roy (who was the first to greet me from back home) and I also decided to call home. That's funny eh? My mom wants me to call her on my birthday! Anyway, even if I am still at the office on such an unholy hour, I was still up and about. I even heard Creamy burp! LOL! I was finally able to go home at 3AM.
After getting some much needed sleep, I woke up at 11AM with a very empty stomach. And to make matters worse, I don't have any groceries anymore (no rice!) and I don't have much options for a meal. Since technically it's still my breakfast (and I don't have any choice anyways) I prepared some cheese pancakes, sunny side up eggs, and fried a few bacon pieces (the last ones). I also made some hot chocolates a la Max Brenner with boiled milk, vanilla and melted dark chocolates. After having a hearty meal, I took a nap again with the oven pre-heating. Haha. Afterwards, I started baking my cake and it took around 2 hours including baking time until I have the final cake for blowing. :) I also cooked some pasta for dinner. Dinner time is my "happy birthday" time with the candle already lit on my simple cake.
May 7 being a memorial holiday here meant no programs on TV (even cable), all malls and groceries were closed, no making noise and no transportation. Bummer eh? Well not really, my day is perfectly fine as it is and at 9PM, they started the fireworks outside because it's now Independence day! Israelis normally celebrate their holidays from sundown to sundown. Fireworks lit while we were eating dinner and we went out to my terrace to watch. My apartment is on the prime vista point for the fireworks being at the 13th floor facing the sea. The fireworks lasted for a good 20mins.
Just when I thought my day was going perfectly, with all the sleep that I got and the fireworks, we started watching the Rome Master Series and saw my boy Nadal, who never loses on clay, lost to Ferrero. Bummer.
So there goes my day, totally better than last year when I was on the plane going to Arizona and people greeting me were random immigration people who would see on my passport that it is my birthday!
Thanks to everyone who greeted and remembered me today. I wish you all had a taste of the cake, it was so good! :)

Peanut Butter Chewy Cookies

These are chewy Peanut Butter Cookies that I made a few days back for breakfasts with coffee. When I was growing up, I never like Peanut Butter, I guess it is one of those things which I acquired (like eating vegetables, Japanese, etc). Now, Reese Chocolates are even one of my favorites! I bought my Peanut Butter a few weeks back after craving for the Ultimate Peanut Butter Cake by Sarah. I made it and I was surprised that people liked it. And I also feel guilty about never asking people if they have peanut allergy when they took those cupcakes. Same thing now with the cookies. I never bothered asking if they have allergies! LOL

Apple Spice Cupcakes

Before the cupcakes, it's happy birthday to my cousins Mommy Myleen (today, May3) and Buboy (May1). I'd make some cupcakes for you when I'm back home. :) There are a lot of us in the family celebrating our birthdays in May and when I was younger, I still was not yet over the feeling that it's my birthday, and then it's someone else's birthday already! But when you grow up (or old!), you start to hate the fact that it's going to be your birthday again. Hehe.
Anyway, on to baking. These are Apple Spice Cupcakes some topped with Swiss Meringue Buttercream and others with my leftover Cream Cheese Frosting. For sometime now, I'd been wanting to try out the spice cupcakes that I keep seeing in cupcake forums and blogs (like chai latte, green tea, honey spice) as I am intrigued by how it will taste like. I keep a Ginger Spice cupcake recipe and I could not imagine ginger being in my sweet and lovely cupcakes!
We are already almost out of groceries and we need to have one soon. However, we can't go out today as it is Shabbath, and as I was rummaging through my fridge and cupboards for something to cook, I saw this jar of unopened Applesauce that I remember buying ages ago. I immediately checked on the expiration date and it says 9-10-2010 so it would still be very good. I decided that for today, I'd be making some cupcakes using the Applesauce.
I have a recipe of Apple Spice Cupcakes and upon reading through it, I have all of the ingredients to make it. On top of the regular cupcake recipe, it needed some brown sugar, nutmeg, cloves and the Applesauce. After mixing the batter, I popped the cupcakes into the oven and it was done at 18min mark.
The cupcakes turned out to be nicely domed and fluffy, and the color was slightly gold/brown. It was perfectly baked and I let it cool on the racks. After it cooled, I topped it with some Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I made, and some of the Cream Cheese Frosting leftover that I had from the Lemon Cupcakes that I made. It turned out to be so good! It's the first time that I tried something like it and it was yummy.

Cheesecake Poll

I have posted the cheesecake poll here in my blog because there is an upcoming cheesecake making contest in our office. The deadline for submission of entries is on May 18 and I'm thinking of joining. I'm still doubtful however because the only cheesecakes that I made (and you'll see it here in my blog) were Strawberry Cheesecakes, and the mini cheesecake cupcakes. I have very good recipes but I'm not sure if I could handle making a cake to be judged by someone else.
Anyways, while I'm still contemplating on it, let me know what your favorites are and vote on my poll! :)

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are Sarah's Thick With A Chew Chocolate Chip Cookies. I baked these last night with the intention of having something to munch until the weekend, or have something to go with coffee. However, it was all gone by the day's end today. For some reason, people kept coming to my cube today to ask something just about the test program that I just released.
The cookies, as the name says, were thick and chewy. I had always wanted my cookies to be like this way, that when you take a bite, you'll have something to chew. It turned out just the way I love my cookies to be!

Lemon Pound Cupcakes

These are Classic Lemon Pound Cupcakes frosted with White Cream Cheese Frosting. I made the cupcakes using Nick Malgieri's Basic Pound Cake recipe, and halved it to make only a dozen of cupcakes. The full recipe would yield one 9x5x3 cake or about 24-26 cupcakes depending on the size of the liners. I added some lemon zest and lemon extract on the pound cake to make it lemon flavored. If you may have noticed, lemon cakes (or lemon cupcakes for that matter) are my favorite together either with a raspberry ganache or cream cheese. I bake chocolate cupcakes most of the time for other people. I try to intentionally avoid making these lemon cupcakes as I eat too much of it. I normally cannot resist it! At the office today, I brought a few pieces for breakfast and to share. However, we decided to skip lunch and just ate the cupcakes with coffee. So now, I haven't had a decent meal the entire day but I'm still full because of the cupcakes.

Dulce De Leche Brownies

These are Dulce De Leche Chocolate Brownies with chopped nuts. This is my first time making brownies because I had always been addicted to making cupcakes and cakes. However this time, I need to make something fast because I cannot afford to spend much time in the kitchen with all my office work. This recipe is by Sarah Philips and that in itself has already a stamp that says it is very good. I made these because Manny and I finished the cinnamon rolls that we're supposed to bring to the office as breakfast (which sometimes could be lunch and dinner). So we brought the brownies 8 pieces at a time to the office so that we'll have something to go by because we were so busy. However, each batch that I brought ended up being finished even before lunch because our officemates who drop by either mine or Manny's cube would take one. And they loved it, one of them even went back to take another piece and another one dropped by my cube the next day looking for some. :)

Pecanbons

I made these pecanbons about a week ago but was just unable to blog because I was dead busy at work. I baked these last weekend with the thought of having something to eat during the busy days but then, we finished the cinnamon rolls over the weekend!
These are cinnamon rolls topped with caramel sauce and garnished with chopped pecan nuts. These were to die for. Last Saturday, we were so busy working that we ended up eating the rolls for lunch and dinner.

Happy Birthday Iya!

My favorite little girl here Iya turned 4 last April 15 and she can't have a real kiddie party here in Israel because first, there are no kids other than her, and second, there are now only five of us here to party. Thet and Mike decided to just have a small get together for her. I made her some cupcakes with sugar flowers because she loved the valentine cupcakes that I made back then also with sugar flowers. She told me to make her pink cupcakes with yummy chocolates and flowers. See, she's only 4 but she knows what she wants already!
I had always planned on making her cupcakes anyway, regardless of whether she will have a real kiddie party or not, and whether they'd buy her a birthday cake or not. However, as the day drew nearer, I got busier by the day at work and the eve of her birthday was the busiest day ever in a long time. I made the sugar flowers and dried it up two days earlier so it had been done already but I still need to whip up the chocolate cupcakes and the vanilla buttercream. So on the eve of her birthday, I planned on going home early to watch Tennis and make her cupcakes at the same time. But lo and behold, that did not happen. Moore's law is really true. I was home at around 11pm, but I cannot stop working yet because I was fixing the test program for my night jobs. I stopped (but not finished) working at 2am, and started working on Iya's cupcakes. I was too sleepy already, but when I started Blacky (my kitchen aid mixer), I seemed to have gotten a boost of adrenalin. Chocolate cupcakes are one of my more comfortable recipes so I finished pretty quickly and while the cupcakes were in the oven, I made the buttercream just in time until the cupcakes were ready to be frosted. By 3am, I was already taking photos of the finished cupcakes. You could imagine that I was so groggy the next day at work.
So these are Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes, topped with Vanilla Buttercream and decorated with hand made Sugar Flowers from a stored home made fondant that I have. My recipe yielded 12 regular cupcakes and 2 mini-cakes.

Cinnamon Rolls

Back in the days when life was simple, Fridays were normally dinner in Makati, cinnamon rolls and lemonade in Cinnzeo and Hot White Mocha in Starbucks to shake of the sleepiness. I remember us Intel jologs with our heavy bags and office laptops scouring through Greenbelt just for that and have those long talks and make fun of each other. I also had very good Cinnabon memories always having the classic rolls at Podium, always bringing something for my mom as I used to always drive by it back then before going home to Antipolo. The last time I had cinnamon rolls was a month ago at Cinnabon in Mecca Mall in Amman. Since then, I had always been craving for it and there is nowhere here in Israel where I could find anything like it. And as always, I braved to make it myself.
I was not able to find a definitive recipe in the web so I again combined what I feel is the best out of each recipe. There are three components to the rolls, first is the bread roll, second is the cinnamon filling and third is the cream cheese frosting. Making the bread is tricky, I kneaded to combine yeast, sugar, salt, milk and flour, then knead it for 10mins and let it rise until the dough has doubled. It took about an hour for the bread to rise to double its size. After which I rolled out the dough into the square 9x13 baking baking, then covered it with generous cinnamon filling (brown sugar, melted butter and lots of cinnamon), then I folded it into dough rolls which I then cut into serving sized breads. And then I let it rise again until each rolls doubled up which took about another hour. After that, I just baked it for 18mins until it is golden brown, took it out and smudged it all over with cream cheese frosting. It was sooo good! I even amazed myself at how it tasted! We have not even finished it yet and Manny wanted me to make new batches already! But as they say, eat it today, wear it tomorrow. Holy smokes, there goes my diet.

Butter Pound Cake with Lemon Fondant Glaze

Pound cakes are traditional American cakes and are called as such because it requires a pound of each of the ingredients like flour, sugar, eggs and butter. These cakes are lighter but has a burst of butter which provides a very rich taste and denser feel to the cakes.
This is my first time to bake a pound cake. I had always wanted because I had been keeping a good Pound cake recipe from Nick Malgieri (of the Institute of Culinary School NY) but as usual, I don't want to bake anything excessive that we will not be able to finish.
Last Thursday, Thet asked me to bake a Pound Cake and I was excited just because I now have a reason to bake a Pound Cake. However, I was too busy to be able to work on it as soon as I wanted to. I even had to go to work on a weekend because of too much work load because of my impending test program release. Thet requested me to bake a Flo Braker recipe which I assume when she saw made her crave for one. LOL! Flo Braker is also a very respected and popular baker but this is my first cake recipe from her. I always had mine from Sarah Phillips, Rose Levy Berenbaum, Nick Malgieri, and from my fellow baking911 members. I finally got to bake last Saturday night after dinner and finished up before midnight. I know I'm such an addict, considering I'd be going to work again the next day.
Preparing the batter for this recipe required sifting the cake flour three times to achieve a fine texture for the cake. After creaming the sugar and butter, and after mixing with the eggs, I had to just fold in the flour delicately to avoid overmixing. I also don't have a loaf pan that is normally used for Pound cakes so I had to just resort to my 8X3 round pan and in doing so had a little extra batter for a pint sized mini cake. The cake baked for 40mins, and I took it out and cooled it in a rack for another 30mins.
While the cake is cooling, I prepared the fondant glaze (imagine those sugar frostings on top of a krispy kreme donuts or even dunkin donuts). Once the glaze is ready, I drizzled the hot onto the cooled cake for a first coating of the entire cake. Then after the glaze has slightly cooled and the consistency had slightly thickened, I poured the second coat on top of cake in the middle and let it spread by itself. I took the photo while the cake was still on the drying pan, and then transferred it onto another clean pan and covered it ready for handling. Not without saving a mini cake for me to try if it is good though. And now I can blog about it because we ate the small piece from a leftover batter and it was all praises from Manny's discriminating taste. ;) It was very luscious and rich without being overpowering and the hints of lemon on the cake and glaze provides a good flavor kick on the cake.

Happy Birthday Creamy!

Happy 3rd birthday my big baby boy Creamy! My boy is growing so fast, and I'm missing on his growing years! Hehe. He had his indulge day on his day, he ate some pancit and lumpia and ice cream!
Tomorrow, he will be back again on his meat stew, no-salt, no-carbo diet because he is obese at 125lbs. LOL. He probably is getting sick of the food he is eating, I would imagine it does not have any flavor to it because it is just a little meat, vegetables and water stewed for about an hour. It does not have any salt or spices to it.

Mocha Buttercream

I had originally planned on working this weekend but after having had a very early meeting yesterday, I ended up sleeping through the entire day. And because I had a lot of sleep during the day, I slept very late already, and woke up very late today! It does become a vicious cycle! Haha. As always during weekends, I plan on baking something that would get us by the breakfasts in the office. Breakfasts here in our office are european/mediterranean. I always bring my own breakfast because I am not really into eating bell peppers, fresh olives, tomatoes and cream cheese in the morning. I want my fried rice, egg and daing!
Anyways, I made some Yellow Vanilla cupcakes topped with Mocha Buttercream today. The Yellow cupcake recipe that I used turned out to be slightly crunchy and dense making it very filling. It is my first time making some Mocha Buttercream which turned out to be very rich and yummy!
I swirled the frosting on top of the cupcakes and I topped it with a few pieces of silver and pearl dragees. I will be meeting up with Thet and Ate Jen later so I'll bring them a few pieces.

I Got Featured!

I was thrilled that the girls of the most popular cupcake blog "Cupcakes Take the Cake" featured My Blueberry Cupcakes on their blog. I was so excited that they took notice of the blueberry cupcake photo and they posted a link of my blog in their blog together with a full entry. Cupcakes Take the Cake is a blog created by 3 cupcake loving friends from NY. It features cupcakes from all over the world. I read from their blog that they will be in the Martha Stewart Show tomorrow. :) Please check out the link above for their entry on my cupcakes.

Blueberry Mud Cupcakes

I found a blueberry pie filling in the grocery and I bought it with a cheesecake in mind. If you noticed in my previous entries, I had been thinking of making cheesecakes for weeks but I never get to doing it because it is hard to make in small quantities and if I make it in full cake size, nobody will finish it. When I saw the pie filling sitting in my counter, I decided to open it and try to taste it and I was amazed at how good it tasted. The pie filling will be able to hold a flavor on its own because I was initially thinking of kicking up the flavor by heating it with some sugar and fresh lemon juice. Since the blueberry itself was very tasty already, I thought of making topping it on a plain butter cupcake.
So I then made the vanilla butter cupcakes which were out of the oven after 20 minutes of baking. As for the frosting, I made made some white chocolate mud icing and folded with it half cup of the blueberry filling. The resulting emulsion turned into a slightly violet/bluish mixture and the texture was like a mud. I then topped the cooled cupcakes with the frosting and decorated it with white sugar sprinkles for some color contrast.
The photo does not do justice to how the cupcakes tasted like! It was bursting with flavors from the blueberry and the slight whisper of the white chocolate. It's now one of my favorite flavors and definitely a keeper!

My Pandesal

If I were in the Philippines, it would be very impractical to bake my own Pandesal because it is sold in every corner. Pandesal sa Pugon was just very near our house and regardless of what we had for breakfast back home, there would always be Pandesal. Even Creamy (my dog) has his share of Pandesal every morning (but he's on a diet now, so no Pandesal for him in the meantime).
I had been craving for Pandesal for ages and I had been looking for a recipe so that I could make it on my own. I found several recipes, but since all of these recipes uses evaporated milk, I would always just ditch it because I cannot find any evaporated milk sold here in Israel. I decided to try replacing the evaporated milk with regular whole milk and see what will happen. There's no harm in trying. So last night, I made sure that I had all the ingredients at hand so that I would make Pandesal first thing in the morning for breakfast. But lo and behold, I woke up at 1pm! Technically, it would still be my breakfast since it's my first meal so I still decided to bake the bread. After much ado, I went to my kitchen and started preparing the dough. It's just a combination of very small amounts of milk, sugar, butter, yeast and flour plus other leaveners. After combining the ingredients, I left it on the stand mixer on kneading mode for 15mins. After kneading, I left it for another 15mins again so that the dough would double up in size. Once the dough was double its size, I used an ice cream scoop to make the individual Pandesal. My small recipe yielded 15 pieces. After baking it for 10mins, I have my freshly baked, golden brown Pandesal! I opened a Spam, made some fluffy scrambled eggs and opened a can of Reno to go with the bread. I know it's too much but I just had to taste all of it all at once! :) Manny and I never got to finish everything though, it was very heavy and filling. The Pandesal tasted like a real one (but it's real anyway! :D), and it was crunchy on the outside but soft inside.

Cuatro Leches Cake

Every time I bake a whole cake, I would always plan on taking a picture of the cake after it gets sliced for serving and I would either get lazy or forget about it. This time, I made it a point to take a nice photo after the first slice.
After a day of wondering what to bake, Manny thought that he wanted a Cuatro Leches cake. I have baked it before but it was rather improvised because I did not have all the ingredients back then. As I have learned from baking911, this cake is called as such because of the four types of milk used. It's basically a Vanilla Sponge Cake soaked in a four milk sauce, covered with Swiss Meringue and drizzed with some Caramel sauce.
After assembling the cake, I left it to settle for a while and we went to grill some barbecue for dinner. We were so excited with the barbecue so we set the table and then I immediately cut the cake without realizing that I have not taken a photo of the whole cake!
Anyway, Manny cut a clean and picturesque slice of the cake and I plated it, wedding style. I have always loved how sliced cakes looked neat and elegant at Martha Stewart's website. Here's a photo of my imitation. My cakes will never get nowhere close, but what the heck :)

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I had been contemplating on making some cookies but I don’t have a cookie sheet and when I finally got one, I let it sit for weeks in my cupboard. Having seen a good oatmeal cookie recipe in baking911, I decided to try making one. I wanted to try few flavors all at once, but again, no one will finish it! The recipe that I got was very easy and quite healthy because of the oats.
As always during weekends, I immediately turn on my oven when I wake up (this time at around 11am) to bake something, and normally, I get started at around 2pm. This time around, it was already 3pm but I have not decided to bake anything yet. I had thought of baking some cheesecakes for today but it will take us forever again to finish it! As much as I wanted to eat it, as I got older, I realized that I cannot just eat anything without gaining any weight! So anyway, while I was still thinking of what to bake, I decided to bake something quick in between and decided on popping some cookies in the oven.
After 5mins of making the batter, and 12 minutes of baking, I have freshly made oatmeal cookies. Ate Jen went by our house today to have her laptop installed with some softwares and she initially did not want to eat anything because it was Good Friday. But then I tempted her with some cookies (and some beef with oyster sauce and broccoli meal) and she gave in! :) The cookies were soft and chewy, and smelled really good! We had some after dinner (cookies for dessert, weird eh?) and I forgot to send her some when she went home. My bad!

Chocolate Revel Bars

Today is my first free day after 2 weeks. I had been very busy at work for the past 2 weeks, and then we went to Jordan for a quick 3-day vacation last weekend. We drove to the border, then took a taxi going to Amman where we stayed for the entire time. Then we went to Petra for a day trip. I was tired after going back here in Haifa! As they say when you take a vacation, "you need to take a vacation to relax after your vacation!".

I spent the entire day today fixing things around the house. I have a 3-week laundry load that I started to do today (and at 11pm, I have one load of beige/cream colored clothes left). Then there's the sheets that I needed to change, bed that I needed to do, dust the entire house, clean the bathroom and cook meals for my hungry tummy! I pretty much did everything today, and when I was standing at the middle of the living room, I saw one big something that I forgot to do...remove the Christmas tree! It's already March and I still have it in the middle of the room! :)

Anyway, in between all of those things, I managed to take a nap, and bake something just to satisfy the sweet tooth craving. While cooking tapsilog for brunch (which is more like a lunner, or dunch...because it's at 2pm already), I prepared the batter for the Chocolate Revel Bars. I remember talking with Lemon in YM a few months back and she said she loves Revel Bars. I thought I haven't tried one yet and I googled it and found that it was how it is called! I have tried it already after all! I started looking for a recipe back then. However, I can't find a decent one. I tried looking again today (with the laptop in the kitchen counter while cooking) and I failed to find that perfect recipe. What I just then did is to take 3 recipes from the web, and interlace it based on my very short baking career. LOL!

I did the mixing of the batter in parallel while I was frying the beef tapa that I made, and by the time that the beef was done, I was starting baking the Revel Bars. After finishing our lunch, the Revel Bars were also done. It baked for around 40 minutes. We had it for dessert and it was very good. Not too sweet, chocolatey, soft and crunchy because of the oatmeal. It was very good for a quick baking fix. Let me know if you'd like some! :)

Rolled Fondant Cake

There really is no occasion this week to make a whole cake and fancy at that. I normally make cupcakes only just to be able to bake and to try out new recipes in small quantities. This is the first weekend that I had a free weekend so I decided to try out making fondant. Or this could be my Tita Len's belated happy birthday cake! :)This is my first successful attempt at making rolled fondant from scratch. The recipe for the rolled fondant is Toba Garrett's which I got from baking911. It's made up of gelatin, corn syrup, vanilla extract and confectionary sugar mixed and kneaded together to form the dough like consistency. The final fondant was slightly on the dry side, so I had a lot of creases and folds on the cake which I cannot straighten out because of the dryness. Creases were more obvious on the bottom part of the cake.
The cake inside is also something that I made for the first time. The cake recipe is Rose Levy Berenbaum's All Downy Yellow Cake. It was very good (based on the crumbs that I got) and very... yellow (but of course! LOL!). I frosted and coated the cake with some Vanilla Buttercream.
After assembling the cake with the fondant, I topped it with some sugar flowers, sugar pearls and silver dragees on top. I would have wanted to make the flowers from gum paste (which would have made it thinner and more realistic) but since it's a no-occasion cake, I just settled with some fondant sugar flowers. After having the final cake done, I can't wait to make another one again! :)