Recipe | Nutella Cupcakes

When I started learning how to properly use our Oven Toaster to bake cupcakes, I started checking so many cupcake videos on YouTube to know about different flavor combinations. One of the "easy" cupcakes to do is the Nutella Cupcakes, which I baked when my sister celebrated her birthday three days ago.


Nutella Cupcakes
{yield - 10 cupcakes}

Ingredients - Cupcakes

• 1 box Maya Butter Cake Mix
• 4 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 to 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (optional)

Ingredients - Frosting

• 2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon Nutella spread
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Let's bake!

> Cream softened butter and blend in the cake mix until well combined.

> Make a well in the center and add in eggs - one at a time - lightly mixing the batter in between eggs.
> Add the water and mix until well combined, making sure not to over mix the batter.
> Line muffin trays with cupcake liners and pour in batter, filling 2/3 of each cup.
> If using oven toaster, cover the tray with aluminum foil and bake in the oven toaster for 7 minutes.
> Take out the foil cover once it reached the 7 minute mark and bake further for three more minutes.
> Once the cupcakes are fully baked, cool them on racks and set aside.

To make the frosting, just beat the butter and cream cheese together until well combined, the pour in the vanilla, followed by the Nutella spread. Beat further then slowly add the powdered the sugar. Continue beating the mixture using an electric mixer until it becomes fluffy. As always, if it's too heavy, add milk (one tablespoon at a time) or if it's too light, add more powdered sugar. Top cupcakes with the frosting using a spoon or a piping bag, making sure the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting them. If it's warm, the heat will just melt the frosting. Drizzle the cupcakes with Nutella spread before serving. Also, you can also bore a hole into the cupcakes and fill it with Nutella spread, if you want to. I didn't do this as I don't want to overwhelm myself with the Nutella flavor.

As you can see, I made two kinds of cupcakes. When I checked YouTube for videos, most of the videos used chocolate cupcakes, but one used vanilla cupcakes because chocolate cupcakes might drown the Nutella flavor. To find out which I prefer, I decided to make two different kinds.

I just made the batter and made five cupcakes using the basic mix, and for the second batch, I added a tablespoon of cocoa powder and half a tablespoon of water into the remaining batter. Personally, I preferred the chocolate one more maybe because adding the cocoa powder made the cupcake less sweeter compared the butter cupcakes. My sister and mother loved it, and I was a happy baker.

This Christmas, we will certainly make our own cupcakes, but of all the ones we baked, we loved the Carrot Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting the best, so that would be part of our Noche Buena menu.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Imbento Istapegi

My blog wasn't updated regularly since last Friday because I am actually struggling if it's "right" for me to post about food - when I know thousands of my countrymen were in dire need of food and water after super typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) hit the country, causing massive destruction on all the provinces along its path.

Still, I feel the need to update this blog, so for today let me just share something that is not really insensitive.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Have you ever felt those moments when you can't think of anything to cook? We do feel that every now and then, and last week... while thinking of what to eat, we just had the sudden cravings for spaghetti. Knowing we have spaghetti noodles, hotdogs, and ground pork, I decided to cook spaghetti for brunch, but I was faced with a little setback when I realized we already ran out of spaghetti sauce.

Like what they say, "necessity is the product of all inventions," and using what we have in the fridge, I came up with this dish.

Obviously, I started cooking the spaghetti. We all know spaghetti noodles take a lot of time, so to save time and fuel, we at home boil the noodles until halfway through then cover the pot and let the residual heat cook it. Of course, this meant checking on the noodles few times to make sure it doesn't overcook. If we are to eat it right away, I drain the water once it's al dente... but if we are to serve it to guests and dining time is uncertain, we drain it just before it's cooked, so the heat remaining would further cook it. Quite a tricky thing to do, but we've mastered it already. Also, we don't run cooked spaghetti under water after cooking because it washes out the starch on the surface of the noodles.

Anyway, while waiting for the residual heat to cook the noodles, I sauteed finely chopped onions and garlic on lite butter, before adding ground pork. I sauteed all together until the meat turns opaque and season it with salt and ground pepper. I then added the hotdogs, tomato sauce, sour cream, and a spurt of McCormick bread spread (herb and parmesan) to add more flavors. Simmered it until pork was cooked and mixed it with the spaghetti noodles, and topped it with grated cheese before serving.

This was the first time I used sour cream with our spaghetti sauce. It provided an interesting twist, which blended well with the bread spread. For an uncertain dish, this turned out to be okay, and since I didn't receive any violent reactions from mom and sis, I knew I did well with this dish.

Thank heavens for creativity.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Recipe | Whole Wheat Carrot Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting

I have cooked several cakes using the steamer - Banana Cake, Banana Cupcakes, Sweet Corn Puto-Muffins, and Bibingka, all using different Maya Cake Mixes. When I attempted to create pancakes using the Butter Cake Mix, I didn't get the result I wanted, but instead of throwing the batter away, I decided to line the muffin pan with aluminum foil and bake it using the Oven Toaster, just to give me an idea how it would be - making this my guinea pig, my sacrifice batter.


It wasn't a successful experience, but not a failure either. When I use the steamer, I fill the cups with the batter, which was what I did here, and as you can see it overflowed. The bottom right one I only filled halfway, and it turned out to be okay. The taste was good, and this moment, we knew we prefer the taste of cakes baked using the oven toaster compared to the ones cooked using a steamer. Baking the Rocky Road Brownies may be another not-so-successful experience... but I am very much willing to try and try until I get it right.

We still have several boxes of Maya Cake Mixes at home - three of which were boxes of Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Mix, so last weekend, I decided bake some cupcakes for us three girls. I decided to go with Sour Cream Frosting for no special reason... it just came out of my mind that I wanted to go with sour cream for the frosting.

Whole Wheat Carrot Cupcakes 
with Sour Cream Frosting
{yield - 12 cupcakes}

Ingredients (Carrot Cupcakes)

• One box (230g) Maya Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Mix
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 tablespoons water
• 1 medium egg
• 1 cup grated carrots (loosely packed), approximately 100g.

Ingredients (Sour Cream Frosting)

• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup) softened
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 3/4 teaspoon lemon juice
• 4 to 4 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Let's start baking!

> Preheat your oven toaster. Our oven toaster is the most basic kind - it only has a timer and not the kind that you can set the temperature. I just set it to its longest time, 15 minutes.

> Combine all ingredients for the cupcakes. Mix until there are no lumps, but be sure not to over mix or over beat it.

> Line your muffin pan with paper cups or if you don't have paper cups, brush the pan lightly with butter.

> Pour batter into the cups, leaving 1/3 space. You can also use an ice cream scooper or a measuring cup to make sure the amount you put in the cups would be uniform.

> Cover the pan loosely with aluminum foil, careful not to touch the surface of the pan to allow the batter to rise.

> Pop in the oven toaster and bake for 10 minutes.

> Cool each cupcakes for a few minutes before frosting.


Our oven toaster is small and it can only accommodate a cupcake pan with 6 slots, meaning I baked two batches of cupcakes. This is still a trial and error stage for me, so I experimented a little. For the first batch, I let it bake covered for 5 minutes, and baked it uncovered for another 5 minutes. It produced this kind of cupcakes - slightly toasted at the sides, but with a pretty dome shape at the center. The second batch, I baked covered for 7 minutes, and baked it uncovered for 3 minutes. It produced a batch of pointy shaped cupcakes, kinda like a mountain. The inside was also still moist even after 10 minutes, so I cooked it for 3 minutes more. Next time, I will just go with what I did with the first batch, but will add more batter into the cup.

Next, the frosting.

> In a mixing bowl, beat butter and gradually add sugar. Beat until well incorporated.

> Add vanilla, lemon juice, and milk, and continue beating until fluffy. If it's too dense, add milk (one tablespoon at a time). If it's too liquidy, add more sugar.

> Refrigerate for about 30 minutes before spreading or piping it on top of the cupcakes.


I don't know what the heck I was thinking that I could make a good frosting without the help of an electric mixer. I thought I could make it with just a hand held whisk, beating as fast as I could. It only melted the sugar and even if I used our blender, it still didn't look good. As is, it tasted good, because it had a nice balance of tang and sweetness, and was a good pair for the carrot cupcakes.

We were kind of prepared to just spread a little frosting on top of our cupcakes before eating it, but the next day, we were lucky to find an electric mixer at the mall sold for 50% off, and bought it just to complete this trial and error stage of our baking life.


The sugar has already melted and the butter wasn't creamed at the start of the process, so even if the electric mixer did wonders to the frosting, it still didn't look the way I hoped my frosting to look like.


Still, I could say this was 90% successful. Now that I tried different things, the next batch of cupcakes would definitely be much better.

Now, I am trying to locate a shop to buy disposable piping bags because the cake decorator I bought was a little small and quite difficult to work with. I need to learn how to pipe awesome frosting, so by Christmastime, we don't have to buy cakes at the bakeshop, we will just bake it.

I do love the cake mixes of Maya. Each and every product we tried tasted good, and as a person who's just trying to learn the ropes of baking, using the mix helps a lot. Of course in time I also would like to bake cupcakes "from scratch," but for now, I am quite satisfied with this. Even without the frosting it tasted great as it had the goodness of the cinnamon that goes well with carrots, and I am sure you will like it, too.

Next time, I will bake Banana PB&J cupcakes. :)

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Recipe | Sinampalukang Manok

It's been a long time since I last posted a recipe here on the blog... so allow me to share one, even if this dish is a basic Filipino dish that anyone can cook.

Sinampalukang Manok is Chicken cooked Sinigang style, but what made this different among the other sinigang dishes is that this uses young tamarind leaves as a souring agent, whereas other sinigang dishes used different kinds of fruits - calamansi, young tamarind fruit, guava, santol, kamias (bilimbi), and batuan.

I was able to cook this dish when I passed by a market and saw a vendor selling young tamarind leaves for 20 pesos per 1/4 kilo. Quite expensive, but then again, we don't have any neighbors who have tamarind trees in their yard, so I just have to go with it. There are so many ways to cook this dish, but this is how I cook mine.


Sinampalukang Manok
{serves 6}

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo chicken, cut into serving pieces
• 1/4 kilo young tamarind leaves
• 1 bundle string beans, cut 1-inch long
• 4 medium pieces taro, quartered 
• 1 small white radish, cut diagonally (1/4 inch wide)
• leaves from 1 bundle kangkong
• 1 big tomato, quartered
• 1 medium sized red onion, sliced
• 2-3 pieces finger chilies
• water
• salt (or patis)

How to Cook

• Place the young tamarind leaves in a cheesecloth and boil it in a pot of water with salt for about 5 to minutes. Take out the cheesecloth and squeeze out the water from the leaves. If you don't have cheesecloth, you can just boil the leaves in water and just use a strainer to take out the leaves.
• Add tomatoes, chilies, and onion into the pot and bring it to a boil.
• Add chicken and taro and continue simmering it until it's half cooked. Add the string beans and simmer further.
• Once the vegetables are cooked to your liking, adjust the seasoning and add the kangkong leaves. Stir lightly and cover the pot for few minutes, allowing the residual heat to cook the leaves. Serve hot.

Sinigang and Sinampalukan are flexible dishes, and it can be altered to go with one's preferences. Optional vegetables to use include eggplants and okra, and one can also add lemongrass or ginger to take out the "lansa" from the chicken (as well as adding flavors, too). Other people also saute the onions, tomatoes, and chicken in oil before adding the tamarind infused water, but here in our house, we don't go with that procedure because the chicken skin already gives the oil to the dish, we don't feel like adding more oil into it. What else? Oh... others also use rice washing water (the water you used in cleaning the rice before cooking it), although I don't really know the logic behind it, I do go for it once in a while. 

If young tamarind leaves is not available (as this is not widely available in markets), people also use the young tamarind fruit, as well as the store bought tamarind cube, powder, or paste. Since the objective of the dish is to have a bowl of hot, sour chicken soup, anyone can use whatever ingredients are available.

As for me, I enjoy my Sinampalukang Manok with hot steamed rice and a saucer of my favorite condiment - patis, calamansi juice, and mashed bird's eye chili. Hot and spicy. Yum.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Excellent Barbecue Recipes With Great Flavor Makes For Perfect Barbecue

Most people have a misconception about Barbecue and often used to define something that is cooked on a grill or oven with ideally a tomato sauce as a marinade. But in reality it is not a dish. Instead, it is a cooking technique that is most commonly used by the South Africans. Gradually with the passage of time, it has now been admired by people across the world, due to the authentic wooden aroma that it adds to the food that is being baked.

Barbecuing is not the same as grilling and includes cooking of food at low temperatures for prolonged periods. Barbecue is the procedure of cooking and smoking the meat over the wood or the charcoal and is usually carried out in an outdoor environment. They remind you of that good and pleasant countryside life along with that peculiar rustic smell of the fresh air and the simplicity associated.

If you are innovative within your kitchen than you definitely can try some tricks with regards to the barbecue foods as well. Different varieties of Barbecue recipes are easily available on the web world with each one being absolutely different from other in taste. Also, there are plenty of ingredients available these days apart from the simple sausages for barbecue to add variety to the food cooked. Strawberries, pineapple, corns, honey, raspberries, mustard and veggies are just a few examples of elements that are used to add extra to the meal.

Most barbecue admirers have a personal barbecue grill and make use of it at least once in a week to savor their appetite as well as to spend quality time with their family and loved ones. It is not only that peculiar taste of the Barbecue recipes that make it simply standout but also the fun that is associated with the same that has made it the favorite cuisine of people. While the meat is being cooked, you have ample amount of time to spend leisure time with your loved ones.

If the step by step guideline for Barbecue recipes is followed, you are sure to end up something utterly delightful on your plate, which is sure to make your relatives completely spellbound. There is no limit on the different dishes that can be prepared over a barbecue. The various spices and ingredients used in the various recipes add that tinge of unique flavor to the meat cooked, making it utterly mouthwatering. The smell of the meat cooked on to the charcoal, coal or softwood itself is enough to arouse your appetite.

Whether it is the steaks, hamburgers, chickens, ribs, hotdogs and such cooked over the Barbecue, they can be very well served with salad and glass of wine. Your guests are sure to love the unique taste of the meat. Try a different recipe every time to break the boredom in your kitchen by spending some good time with your loved ones for a change from your busy modern lives. Barbecue is not only about the food but it is way beyond that.

Thomas Rhodes hosts a site that is dedicated to barbecue recipes and offers some excellent barbecue tips as well. To learn more about barbecue recipes , feel free to checkout our website for some mouthwatering recipes and look quality coal, charcoal and soft wood and more products on our shop.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Impress Your Breakfast Guests With Healthy Muffin Recipes

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It provides energy and nutrients to your body for the day ahead. It also helps to kick start your metabolism. Most experts believe that men and women who eat breakfast regularly are more likely to lose and maintain weight when compared to individuals who skip their breakfast. It is, however, important to get a healthy start to the day, and well-balanced and nutritious breakfast could be your first step towards overall health and well being. Your healthy breakfast menu should include significant amounts of fiber along with lean proteins and carbohydrates for instant energy.

Creating a healthy breakfast menu can be challenging. The task is greater when you have guests at home. While you want to make something special for them and make them feel welcome, you do not want to make unhealthy doughnuts and pastries. Muffins are a great choice. You can use healthy muffin recipes to create exotic yet nutritious choices for your guests and family members. With the healthy recipes, almost everyone can enjoy a second serving without feeling guilty about the calories.

You can go online to find several healthy muffin recipes. You can also visit the local book store to find breakfast cookbooks with healthy muffin recipes in them. Popular choices include:

Yamberry Muffins - These consist of cranberries and sweet potato. You can also use barn or whole grain flour to increase the fiber content. The recipe is rich in vitamin A and C, and other essential nutrients.Lemon-Raspberry Muffins - Another one of the healthy muffin recipes, it includes whole grain flour along with vitamin-rich lemon juice and raspberry fruits.Banana Bran Muffins - These are rich in fiber, potassium and other important nutrients. You can add nuts rich in omega fatty acids to increase their nutrient value.Cornmeal Muffins - Individuals looking for healthy muffin recipes will also enjoy cornmeal muffins made from whole cornmeal flour. You can add spices such as cinnamon and ginger which have the ability to reduce the risk of cardiovascular illnesses.Buttermilk Muffins - These contain whole wheat flour, essential fatty acid-rich walnuts and pecans along with spices.

Your choice for healthy muffin recipes will essentially depend on your personal preferences. You can also consider the choice of your guests, especially if you know them well. Do not include ingredients that you or the guests may be allergic to. Most healthy muffin recipes are easy to make. You will find most ingredients at a grocery store near you. You should also prepare certain things ahead of time to save time and effort in the last minute.

You can also buy recipe mixes from regular or online stores. Make sure everything is made from highest quality ingredients. The recipe should be easy to make as well. Many bakeries also serve and sell healthy muffins in their menu. You can simply pre-order, and have them deliver the muffins to your home. Most products will stay fresh for two to three days.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Recipe | Kinunot na Pagi

There's this one vendor at the nearby market that sells fish that are quite different from the usual ones. Sometimes she would sell parrot fish or surgeon fish, and my mom would sometimes buy from here, just to try out different kinds of fish. Last weekend, she bought half a stingray.

I have eaten this seafood before, but there's only one way I knew how to cook it - with coconut milk and some moringa leaves. I am not familiar of the process how to cook it, though, so I had to consult the Internet and ask people how to do it.


Kinunot na Pagi

Ingredients:

• Pagi (Stingray)
• Water
• Vegetable Oil
• Coconut Milk
• Sliced Onions
• Crushed Garlic
• Ginger
• Finger Chili or Birds Eye Chili
• Vinegar
• Salt and Pepper (to taste)
• Malunggay Leaves (Moringa Leaves)

How to Cook:

• Blanch the stingray in some hot water for a few minutes. Scrape off the skin, and boil another pot of water with a little ginger, onion and garlic, and cook the skinned stingray until it becomes soft. Drain water and allow the stingray to cook. Debone the stingray and flake the meat.
• Heat a pan with little oil and saute garlic and onion until fragrant and sweaty. Add coconut milk and allow to simmer, then add vinegar. Don't stir for a few minutes, then add the flaked stingray. Stir, and cook for a few minutes.
• Adjust the seasoning, then add the moringa leaves. Simmer until the coconut milk curdle a little. Serve hot with rice.

Sauteeing the onion and garlic in oil is optional; if you want, you can skip this one and start with pouring the coconut milk in the pot followed by the garlic and onion. Personally, I love this one with super thick sauce, which will need some coconut cream to achieve such consistency. Unfortunately, my mom like the sauce a little thin, so we didn't add coconut cream anymore.

It was the first time for this dish to be cooked at home. We didn't go for the spicy kind (even if coconut milk and chili goes very well together), so for brother, we just had some chili-garlic sauce served on the side. Now that I know how to properly cook stingray, I know for sure this wouldn't be the last time we would cook and serve this at home.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad