Chocolate Dome Cake

I got the idea for this from Foodie Magazine vol. 2 no. 6 called "Chocolate Holiday - give the gift of pleasure". The original recipe is by Tricia Ignacio-Fragante of Sacocina Catering, but as almost always with me, I tweak the recipe a bit...

melted butter, for brushing
1 340-gram pound cake loaf, purchased or homemade (home made in my case)
1/4 cup brandy
1 cup milk chocolate
3 cups whipping cream, chilled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup chocolate covered almonds (like Nestle Almonets)
cocoa powder, for garnish
additional whipped cream, for garnish

So first i baked a standard butter cake on a square pan. Let it cool then cut the square into 4 triangles. My triangles are about 4 inches on all sides and 2 inches thick, so i had cut it crosswise to make it 1 inch thick. As for the length of the sides, it really depends on the bowl you'll be using to shape the dome, so just adjust according to how big your want your dome to be (the original recipe used a 1 1/2 quart bowl).
Put cling wrap on the insides of your bowl so it'd be easier to remove the cake later on. Brush with melted butter, then arrange

..arrgh i don't have patience with this lol.. it's hard to describe lol..

Breaded Chicken and Potatoes

For the breaded chicken:
500 grams chicken thigh fillet
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
garlic powder
breadcrumbs

Marinate the chicken in all the sauces combined, then chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Roll the chicken in breadcrumbs. When I was at the supermarket I saw two types of breadcrumbs, one was more fine, almost powder-like, while the other type is a lot more coarse. I chose the coarse one, but of course you can choose any you like, depending on how you want your chicken breading to be like.
Then it was shallow-fried to perfection. I have to credit my mom there, for a while I was cooking the chicken not well enough, until she intruded haha. So thanks, Mom!
For the boiled potatoes, we just submerged the potatoes in a pot of water, brought it to a boil until the potatoes are soft and the skin is cracking. Put a generous slab of butter on top of it while it's still hot, then serve with the chicken.

I saw this recipe in a Yummy magazine, but I did some changes.

Cheesecake

Grandma said this was the best I have ever done so far. Woohooo! haha... But I think that just means she likes cheesecakes.
I followed a recipe from the internet, and then did a lot of major changes. At first I tried to follow the recipe, but since I only had one tub of cream cheese (while the recipe calls for five!), I had to cut all the other ingredients on the list by 1/5. If I did that I would probably make a cheese slice, not a cheese cake. So I decided to change some things :). You know, add a little more cream, a bit more flour, more eggs, etc. I totally was just following my gut feeling, no measurements, no anything. Just throwing ingredients here and there and hoping it would turn into something a person could recognize as a cake.
The recipe said to put it in the oven of 275 degrees Celsius for 10 mins, lower it to 200 for an hour, then turn the oven off and leave it there for another hour. Well after 10 mins in 200 degrees the cheesecake started going brown and dry at the top that it started to crack and even get some.. err.. pimples lol (see picture below). There might be something wrong with my oven, I don't know, so I took it out, let it set, and served it. It's not like the usual cheesecakes that are very soft like a mousse. This one turned out more bread-like probably because of the added flour, but it was still very sort and creamy. Everyone liked it! :)

Say Cheese!

Dark Chocolate and Mango Cookies

BURN, BABY, BURN! One look at the picture and you'll know this was a disaster. I followed the recipe (though I lowered the temperature very slightly), but after the time was done, the cookies were still very soft.. and so I decided to leave it there for a couple more minutes. Alas, wrong move. Too bad, it tasted really good while they were still in batter form, and they looked super cute when spooned to the baking sheet, but they lost their form, and err, got burned. lol
But on the bright side, I can trim the burnt edges and we're still okay! Surprisingly, people still thought it tasted good! So next time, I'll try this again, properly I hope.

I guess I should be happy I didn't burn the kitchen instead.

Trim the burns and.... tadaaaa... not so bad after all. :) (Yes I am very optimistic haha!)

Coffee Marble Cake

This is my second try on doing a marble cake, and I must say, this one's a huge success. On the taste category, this one's a 9.5/10. Mom, who is hard to please with these things, thinks it's excellent. Dad, who is easier to please, thinks the butter cake part needs a bit more sugar, but once he had some of the brown part, he realized the sweetness was there. I probably should have mixed it more. I used a package of Kopiko 3 in 1 and mixed it on part of the batter, hence I had no control on the sugar. But for me it was alright, I think maybe different people like their cakes on different sweetness levels, so I really can't please everybody haha.
    For decoration I had melted nougat and almond candies I found. It burnt a little, not my intention, but it actually looked nice when i spooned it on top of a cake slice... sweet and slightly bitter.
  

Brownie Gunshots

Brownies with chocolate-covered almonds (Nestle Almonets) and chocolate covered malt balls (Maltesers).
Well I called them gunshots because the Maltesers burned at the surface and looked like gunshots haha. It didn't taste burnt, but neither did they taste like malt lol.

Apple-Raisin Crumble

Oh wow.. This one is definitely one of the biggest hits I've made. Simply sensational, but maybe just a bit too sweet. Peeled and chopped apples, cooked until soft with sugar and cinnamon. Mixed with raisins, then topped with the crumble, which is simply flour, butter and sugar.

So easy to make and yet soooo good!
Will definitely do this again sometime, maybe using dried and fresh cranberries next time, if they're available.

Chocolate Cake with big choco bits inside

Simple chocolate loaf/cake, embedded with Belgian chocolate bits. The bits were quite large and I had thought they would melt and be molten chocolate in the center, but turns out it didn't. It softened, at least lol.

After a few taste tests, I realized I hadn't put enough sugar... So in vain effort to sweeten this a bit, I grated the remaining Belgian chocolates onto the top. The chocolate melted easily on top of the still warm cake, it looked so delicious it was deceiving! haha
I think, over all, it's not so bad. =)

Sausage Roll

What I was aiming to do was a Sausage Wellington. Unfortunately, where I am right now, puff pastries are hard to find. So I improvised. I used layers of lumpia wrappers brushed with butter. Then used it to wrap pork sausages with liver filling (liver spread, potatoes and carrots - disaster haha, the potatoes were still a bit raw, the liver spread tasted like.. liver spread.. maybe buy better quality ones next time, or use chicken liver, as is in the recipes). I cooked the filling (not enough, apparently) and sausages first, then cooled them up, wrapped them in my improvised puff pastry, the off to the oven. Oh, I'd put egg wash on top too. Hmm, I wouldn't really advice this to be done again haha, look for real puff pastry next time!

Chocolate Marble Cake

Chocolate marble cake... hmm, but by the looks of it, it didn't resemble much of a marble cake in this pic. I am not sure if I had mixed it a little bit too much, which is why the chocolate got all "diluted" like this, or if it was because I used some sort of chocolate cream (Choco Stix??) instead of melted solid chocolate bars... or both. Well I'll try it again sometime, hopefully it will improve the next time. :)

Tea Cake with Custard

 

Now I'm particularly proud of this one, no matter what other people said haha. Well, they like it too, but they claim they didn't taste the tea part so much. But I know they just didn't realize it. They were probably looking for a strong taste of the tea. But I am sure that the nice, subtle taste of the tea made all the difference why they liked it. The custard sauce on top was also a superb partner for the cake.. I used cream for this instead of milk. I just love how it turned out to be so moist and creamy inside.

I used two packs of Twinings English Breakfast Tea, brewed in just a small amount of water.

The "Carrot Cake I love" has found a contender!

Coconut-Corn Cake

 

So this is my coconut cake.. with corn. Is that a weird combination or what. But it's not bad, if you're familiar with binatog (Filipino), I got the idea from there to add corn in this coconut cake.

I simply replaced regular milk with coconut milk to make this cake. We squeezed out the milk from fresh shredded coconut. You could also just buy canned coconut milk if you prefer not to burn the extra calories hehe.

 

Piri-piri Chicken

 

Oh this was so good... I just wished I had put more cayenne pepper to make it really spicy. These are grilled chicken breasts marinated in piri-piri sauce: cayenne pepper, garlic powder, black pepper, salt, parsley bits, bay leaf, some lime juice:

  

I left it overnight.. then grilled!

Carrot-Pineapple Yogurt Cake

This was the same recipe as the Carrot Cake I previously made, with little tweaks here and there... For instance, I used non-fat pineapple flavored (I couldn't find non-fat plain ones) yogurt instead of the all-purpose cream. Then instead of ordinary crushed pineapples, I used Del Monte Fit 'n Right Pineapple Fruit Snacks (it's got 300mg of L-Carnatine per serving!). I added two pots of these pineapple chunks, with the sweet syrup too. So I didn't have to put sugar anymore! The result? A healthier version of the carrot cake I made earlier, only a lot more mushy at the center, so it turned out to be more like a pudding than a cake haha. But it's quite crispy on the outside, wow. It turned out unexpectedly good!

Melong Tagalog with gatas

Probably the simplest entry ever in this blog- melong/milong tagalog with evaporated milk. I didn't add sugar as I am trying to cut calories (hehe), not to mention, Grandma has diabetes. But the evaporated milk turned out to be quite sweet already, so it was already good without the sugar. I added a sprinkle of Lifemax Mila chia seeds (Salvia hispanica), initially for aesthetic purposes lol (so it's not just plain white with lumps), but it's health benefits are tremendous-> http://www.theperfectgrain.com/, and it doesn't affect the taste at all.

Bacon wrapped Enoki Mushrooms

 

I got the idea for this from Teriyaki Boy restaurant, so I'm assuming it's Japanese... This is extremely easy to make, and oh so yummy. Just wrap Enoki mushrooms in bacon then fry! But I think the one from Teriyaki Boy is grilled.. oh wow, I have to try that...

Mixed Seafood and Veggies

I was surprised how yummy this one turned out to be. I think it was because of the seafood. The seafood- squid, shrimp, crabsticks and mussels, made the dish simply bursting with flavor.
I sauteed onion and garlic as usual, then added the seafood, seasoned it with a bit of soy sauce and pepper, then added beansprouts. I had blanched the green beans and carrots, drained it, then reheated with a bit of butter. Mix them all together and you're done.

the Carrot Cake I love

Carrot Cake... but without the cream cheese icing. Should this be called Carrot Loaf then?
Well anyway, Carrot Cake or Loaf, I can say that this is the best dessert I have ever done so far. I know I haven't made many, but I have done some things, most of which are not in this blog since they were made long before I decided to make this.
The batter is made out of grated carrots, crushed pineapple, flour (I used Maya Cake Flour), eggs, sugar, butter, cinnamon and cream. I might have missed an ingredient or two, but the important thing I want to note was the cream. This was the first time I used cream on my cake, and it turned out better than the previous ones I made where I just used milk. But of course, I cannot be sure if it really was the cream that made the difference, but it probably was. So, yup. That is now my secret ingredient- cream instead of milk. Although, not so secret now that I have written it here... (as if other people are reading lol).

 

For err.. garnish, I used the leftover cream with a hint of vanilla, and the leftover crushed pineapple, and a piece of cinnamon stick. But I preferred the plain carrot loaf, yum!

Creamy Beef Lasagna

 

I am so proud of this dish. Not entirely perfect, but I'm happy it turned out edible. It was actually good! There were two sauces- red and white. The red one is the meat sauce, made out of minced beef, tomato sauce and fresh basil, with sauteed onion and garlic at the start of course. The white is the cheese sauce, made out of butter, a bit of flour, milk and cheese, a dash if salt, then heated and stirred until nice and thick. According the the box of the lasagna I used, there is no pre-cooking required (I used San Remo Instant...). But I still soaked the pasta sheets in water for a few minutes, to soften them a bit.
Then it was onto the layering.... red sauce-pasta-white sauce- red- pasta- white.... until you run out of an ingredient. Just make sure the topmost layer is the cheese sauce so you'd get a lovely top of melted cheese, slightly brown on some parts. Careful not to burn the top layer! If you're worried, cover the top with aluminum foil to prevent the top layer from blacking out and just remove the foil at around the last 5 minutes to give it a nice brown finish.

Croque Monsieur

Croque Monsieur... a very nice name for melted cheese (I used mozzarella) and ham on butter toasted bread. Basically a ham and cheese sandwich. But I'd like to call it croque monsieur. Makes me feel like a professional French chef just mentioning the name.

Honey Garlic Lamb

Hahaha.. I just made this one up. Totally. Quite disastrous lol.
Honey-glazed lamb, pan fried in garlic and olive oil. Seasoned with salt and lots of pepper. Served on carrots and onions (because that's all i had left in the fridge).
Well I probably won't be doing this again lol.. Or if I do, it won't be lamb. I realized I didn't like lamb too much, or maybe it was just the way I cooked it... Maybe I'll try this next time with something more familiar.. like chicken or beef...

Fish and Chips

Now this one here is the primary reason why I'm not advertising this blog to anybody I know. In fact, I'm not advertising this blog to anyone at all! The recipes here can get silly, and it would be embarrassing if mom sees I'm "playing with my food". Okay, let's use the term experimenting rather than playing. You'll see what I'm talking about.



Well this is Fish and Chips. Or at least, that was my goal when I started cooking this. So for the fries, it was just deep fried potatoes. I should've covered them with flour to make them crispy, or cooked them a little bit longer, because they turned out quite soggy. The fish I used was cream dory, then for the batter I used one egg, flour, grated parmesan cheese, salt, and err.. crushed Nestle Fitness Cereals. Don't ask why. I like to experiment, that's all. LOL. (Well actually, the recipe I found said Japanese bread crumbs, or whole wheat cracker crumbs, but as I had neither of those, and as I am itching to cook this, I found the alternative lol). I had put pepper directly on the fish. I realized it probably would have been better if I had put the pepper on the batter so that it would be spread evenly, no black patches here and there.. like in the picture. Well anyway, I served it with a bit of low-fat mayonnaise on the side, and halved calamansi to drizzle on the fish. I crumpled half a page of a spreadsheet newspaper, then I found some brown tissue papers from Starbucks, which I had put on top of the newspaper. Put everything else on top of the pile of crumpled papers and viola... Fish and Chips.

Simple Grilled Chicken Salad

 

Simple, easy to make, healthy and yummy! Chicken breasts marinated in soy sauce and a bit of lime, add a bit of salt and lots of pepper, then grill! Toss in a bed of fresh lettuce, bit of tomatoes and cheese, and drizzle with thousand island dressing.

Chocolate Tapioca Pudding

 

Yummy and very easy to make... just follow the instructions in the box! haha... yup, I used the instant stuff.

To give it a huge chocolate flavor, I added a powdered tablet of cocoa in the tapioca mixture. If you do this you might want to add a bit more sugar than usual, as the cocoa is quite bitter, but of course this depends on your personal preference.

Yorkshire Pudding

A classic, but no, I am not British. haha... I just generally love cooking and want to try different things, no matter the country of origin. But I admit, I am a bit biased to the British, so you might see lots of other British foods here. haha
Well anyway, for this Yorkshire Pudding (pronounced York-sure, or York-sha, I dunno, depends on your accent probably lol), I used the recipe from here:
http://www.hub-uk.com/tallyrecip03/recipe0124.htm

I used cake flour and added a bit of sugar too. And I have to say, it was such pleasure to watch the pudding rise... my heart was rising with it. haha..

Well it's my first time to bake a Yorkshire pudding, and probably only the 4th time I used the oven by myself. So, for me, this is a big accomplishment! :D