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.

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Recipe | Banana PB&J Cupcakes

When I posted about the Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Cupcakes, I mentioned that I wanted to bake Banana PB&J Cupcakes next time. This has been something I wanted to do because we all know bananas go well with peanut butter and peanut butter goes well with jelly. When my sister and I once visited a pastry shop, they were selling this kind of cupcakes, and we tried it to give us an idea of how it will taste like once we create it at home. It was delicious, but there were things about it that we didn't like so we decided to tweak it. For this recipe, I once again used Maya Oven Toaster Cake Mix, because even if wanted to do something from scratch, we fear our oven toaster might not bake it good.


Banana PB&J Cupcakes
{yield - 12 cupcakes}

Ingredients - Banana Cake

• 1 box (3.11 oz) Maya Oven Toaster Cake Mix - Banana Cake
• 1 medium egg
• 2 to 3 pieces of bananas, mashed
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 tablespoons water

Ingredients - Peanut Butter Frosting

• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup), softened
• 1lb. powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• milk (optional, on stand by)

Other Ingredients

• Fruit Jelly
• Chocolate Bar Pieces

Let's bake!

Start with the cupcakes.

> Preheat your oven toaster.

> In a bowl, combine egg, water, and oil then whisk lightly. Add mashed bananas and mix.

> Sift the banana cake mix and combine with the wet ingredients. Mix or beat until well combined, without over mixing or beating it.

> Line your muffin pan with paper cups and pour batter until 2/3 full. Tap the pan once. Cover the pan with aluminum foil, without letting the foil touch the pan as the batter might stick to it while baking.

> Pop in the oven toaster and bake for 7 and a half minutes. Take the foil out and continue baking for 2 and a half minutes, or until the surface is brown and the toothpick comes clean when you poke it.

> Line cupcakes on cooling rack.

While the cakes are cooling, time to make the frosting.


> Cream softened butter and peanut butter until it turns light in color.

> Add powdered sugar slowly and beat for a while then add the vanilla extract. Continue beating until it becomes fluffy and light.

> If the frosting was too dense, add milk (1 tablespoon at a time). If it's too watery, add powdered sugar until you get the consistency you like.

> Place in a piping bag.

Once the cupcakes are cool enough, start piping the frosting. This frosting is a little on the rich side, so even if you love peanut butter, please don't over frost as the peanut butter flavor might over power the banana cake. There has to be a balance of all flavors.

Finally top it with fruit jelly.


I let my sister bake the cakes this time, but I did guide her with the aluminum foil and when to take it out (I made the frosting). Making 12 cupcakes, it meant us three girls have 4 cupcakes each, so the day we made this recipe, we only allowed ourselves to eat 2 cupcakes and I topped it with strawberry jam and pieces of Krackel chocolate.

Going back to the pastry shop visit we did, they presented their Banana PB&J Cupcakes by spreading peanut butter on the surface of the cake before piping the frosting, creating a well in the middle where they placed the fruit jelly. We found the strawberry jelly a little too tangy for our taste, so for these cupcakes, I decided to just drop a little strawberry jelly - just to provide flavor. It was tangy, but the peanut butter and Krackel chocolate balanced it all.


At home we have two jars of fruit jelly - strawberry preserves (the syrupy kind) and orange marmalade (from Good Shepherd). Whenever I make my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I always go for the orange marmalade because I loved to chew on the orange rinds. Seeing the bottle in the fridge made me go for it for our next set of cupcakes.

We all agreed that the one with orange marmalade tasted better.

With these cupcakes, as well as the whole wheat carrot ones, we are very sure that we won't be buying cakes this Christmas anymore, we will just bake it at the comforts of our own home.

Hmmm... what if I add oatmeal to this next time? :)

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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.

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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.

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Recipe | Fish Cakes Salad

There are so many ways to create your own salad, but I still haven't explored about it yet, so whenever I make my salad at home, I usually stay with the typical ingredients - lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and sometimes, tomatoes. Even if I go for these ingredients time after time, I do try to mix and match, so I won't get tired eating the same ingredients over and over again.

My mom cooked some Paksiw na Galunggong for lunch and this I used to create this salad for my dinner that day.


Fish Cakes Salad
{serves 1}

Ingredients - Fish Cakes

• Leftover fish from Paksiw na Galunggong - bones removed, meat flaked
• Finely minced garlic and onion
• Finely minced chili fingers (optional)
• Flour and/or Cornstarch
• Panko Breadcrumbs (optional)
• Paksiw sauce (as needed)
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• Oil for frying

How to Cook - Fish Cakes

• Mix all ingredients except for the oil. 
• Using a melon baller or a measuring spoon, scoop out mixture, roll it with the palms then flat it. Do this until all the mixture has been prepared into little patties.
• Heat oil and fry the patties until brown. Drain on paper towels, and set aside.

Ingredients - Salad

• Lettuce of your choice (I used a combination of romaine and lollo rosso)
• Carrots, julienned
• Cucumber, diced
• Tomatoes, diced 
• Green bell pepper, sliced thinly
• Red Onion, sliced paper thin
• Pomelo
• Store bought Thousand Island Dressing, mixed with ground pepper

How to Assemble - Salad

• Layer your salad ingredients in your choice of plate or bowl
• Top with the fish cakes
• Drizzle with dressing.

Things to know:

> If you don't have leftover fish paksiw, you can use any kind of fish you like - just cook it in water with your choice of seasonings (salt, pepper... with onions, garlic, and bay leaf if you like) then flake it. Or, you can just boil / steam the fish then flake it.

> If you want to go with the Paksiw, cook the fish with vinegar, salt, pepper, chili fingers, onion, garlic, and ginger. Set it aside for a few hours so the vinegar sauce would penetrate the fish meat.

> To bind the mixture, I used the vinegar sauce from the paksiw, but you can also use 1 egg as your binder. I decided not to go with the egg to lessen the calorie content of my meal.

> You can pan fry the patties or use a pan grill. The choice is up to you. Since the fish was pre-cooked, all that was needed was to crust the outer parts of the patty for added texture.

This salad tasted like sandwich minus the bread. The pomelo provided more tang into the dish, and now I can say that I love, love, love having fruit on my salad. This is one versatile dish and you can go with different choices. You can also go with your choice of dressing - the Mango Vinaigrette went well with this, too.

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Cooking with Leftovers

Last Friday, good friends from Jollibee sent us two Chickenjoy Bucket Treats. Each bucket contained 8 pieces of fried chicken, and because it's just us three girls here at home, eating all the chicken pieces was a little overwhelming. We did send some to our next door neighbors (the essence of eating Chickenjoy is to provide joy, and I think the kids next door were happy for the treat), but we still had too much to eat. Thankfully, one of the buckets contained all breast parts, so after we ate our share of the chicken, I decided to take out all the breading and skin from the breast parts, flaked the meat, and store it in the freezer for future use.

What we did to the flaked chicken meat?



Pansit Bihon
We typically use pork for our pansit bihon, but chicken was a great ingredient for this dish, too, so for dinner, mom and I shared this bowl of noodles. I truly don't know how to cook pansit bihon, so this was my mom's cooking, and because she mixed the veggie-meat toppings to the noodles, I had to fish out several vegetables and flakes of chicken.


Chicken Salad Sandwich
Whenever we have leftover roasted chicken, the very first thing we always do was to flake it and turn it into a sandwich spread. Typically, we just mix mayonnaise, chicken, finely minced onion, and seasonings (salt, sugar, ground pepper), but for this I also added finely chopped carrots and green bell peppers, just so we could eat carrots and green bell peppers, too! :) I didn't add any cheese to the mix to cut a little on the calorie count, but my sister would grate cheese into her sandwich before eating it.

To make the sandwich, I brushed the bread pieces with mustard, spread the chicken mix, and topped it with sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce (I used a combination of butterhead and lolo rosso).


Empanada
One weekend morning, I turned on the television and the network was showing a replay of one of their old shows. I wasn't able to watch the first few scenes, but the show was featuring a particular province here in the Philippines, with this empanada as it's one native delicacy. I miss cooking and eating empanada, so when I saw that mom didn't use all the cabbage when she cooked the pansit, I decided to try cooking it.

Chicken Veggie Empanada
{makes 12 pieces}

Ingredients (Filling)

• chopped cabbage
• chopped upo (bottle gourd)
• chicken flakes
• water
• little amount of oil
• minced garlic and onion
• salt and pepper to taste

How to Cook (Filling)

• Heat oil in the pan and saute onion, garlic, and chicken flakes. 
• Add the upo and cabbage and continue sauteeing it until the upo sweats. Add water as needed - you only wanted enough water to cook the veggies with less sauce as possible.
• Season according to your preference, and set it aside to cool.

Ingredients (Pastry)

• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 125 grams lite butter (cubed)
• 1/8 cup cold water
• 1 egg
• oil for deep frying

How to Cook (Pastry)

• In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients, including the butter.
• Using your hands, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks like crumbs.
• Add water and egg, knead until you form a dough.
• Dust a big wooden (clean of course) board with some flour and continue kneading the dough.
• Flatten the dough with the help of a rolling pin.
• If you have a dumpling maker, you can just use it to cut circle pieces of the dough. Knead the unused dough and repeat the process until you have used as much of the dough.

How to Cook (Empanada)

• One circle dough piece at a time, add about a tablespoon of filling into the upper half part of the dough.
• Cover the filling with the lower part of the dough and crimp the sides to seal in the filling. If you don't know how to properly do this, you can opt to use a fork to seal in the dough.
• Using a sauce pan, heat as much oil and deep fry the empanadas under low heat. Don't overcrowd the pan as the pastry could be delicate to work with.
• Take out the empanada pieces as soon as it turns golden brown and place it on a plate lined with paper towel to drain excess oil. 
• Serve warm or at room temperature, whatever suits your fancy.

The recipe for the pastry, I got from BusogSarap.Com because even if my siblings and I have cooked different kinds of empanadas in the past, I wanted to make a dough with definite measurements. You can head over this site to check step by step images on how the author created her version of empanada. I used half of the recipe she originally shared because we are only three people at home, we didn't need to eat that much in one sitting and I still don't know if I will like the taste because in the past, the empanada we cooked were usually like that of Chicken Afritada (chicken, potatoes, raisins, green peas cooked in tomato sauce) or what we called "Embananas," with filling made up of mashed bananas cooked in sugar. 

I did like how it turned out. I didn't know cabbage and upo can be a great combination, and even without the chicken, it still tasted good (I created a "slave empanada" without chicken). The original empanadas I saw on the TV show didn't really use any meat, it was just a combination of cabbage and upo. If only I know from which province this was taken. Anyway, my mom said that I might have used thick dough (still had to roll it more) and it was a little hard. Well, not really hard, hard... my sister said it was actually good as is and that the butter added more dimension to the taste of the pastry, but she did agree that it needed a little softness. How to do that? I still have to figure out.

Hopefully next time I can create this with the "kaliskis" dough. 

Three meals using leftover flaked chicken. Who knew cooking with leftovers can be fun and satisfying, too? Happy weekend, foodie friends!

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