rum balls.

Actually, i don't remember when i made these cuteness, i found the picture in my old folders. To make rum balls is the easiest. You don't need a lot of kitchen or baking utensils, no need to bake them in the over, just use your hands and give a little love to it. It's so easy to make, even a 4 year-old can do this.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pack of milk biscuits (preferably Marie Regal) or wheat biscuits (preferably Digestive)
• 1/2 cup condensed milk (chocolate flavor)
• 1/2 - 1 cup chocolate sprinkles
• 1 tsp rum

How to make:

1. Beat biscuits using spoon or meat beater (layer them with a piece of cloth if you want to use meat beaters, do not overbeat).
2. Add rum if desired.
   
3. When biscuits are already beaten and has a form of raw crumbs, pour condensed milk in few parts until the biscuit has turn into a dough
4. Cut the dough into little pieces (probably a half-handful each) and roll them into small balls
5. Sprinkle biscuit balls with chocolate sprinkles

Serve then in a playful/ colorful mini cupcakes paper. A glass of milk will be perfect for an afternoon munchies session.

chocolate cupcake (more chocolatey).

April 25th, 2011.

Tonight i'm making one more batch of these chocolate cupcakes. I added the cocoa powder so the chocolate tasted thicker that the previous batch.

chocolate cupcake.

April 23rd, 2011.

Here we go again. I found the chocolate cupcake recipe from a random channel in Youtube. It tastes great, but i don't really like it, it's not that devilish. I guess in another time, i would search for more chocolatey recipe. So here is my first attempt in making chocolate cupcakes:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 - 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil or butter
  
• 1 cup flour
• 4 eggs (3 egg whites, 4 egg yolks)
• 1 tsp vanila essence
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cocoa powder (but i'm using 1 cup of cocoa powder)

Ingredients for icing:

• 1/2 stick of cooking chocolate (here i'm using strawberry flavour)
• 1/2 stick butter

How to make:

1. Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees Celcius.
   
2. Take a large bowl and beat together eggs and sugar. Add vanilla essence.
3. Into the egg mixturem add vegeratble oil/ butter. Beat with electric mixer.
4. Add white flour into the egg mixture.
5. Add cocoa powder and mix.
6. Pour cake batter into cupcake papers.
7. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted to the center comes out clean.
8. Let the cupcakes cool for half an hour or more.
9. To make the icing: double boil the cooking chocolate and butter, stir until soft and perform a thick liquid consistency. Let it cool for approximately 5 minutes, but don't forget to always stir it so it won't freeze. Put in a piping bag and decorate your cupcakes. You can sprinkle confectioners sugar afterwards.

While baking cupcakes in the pre-heated oven, let's make the chocolate icing.

lasagna.

April 22nd, 2011.

Making lasagna takes a lot of time and energy, so i need my assistant to help me while making it. Let's get into the business, ingredients you need:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
  
• 1 stick butter
• 1 box large lasagna pasta
  
• 3 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
  
• 1 tomato, chopped
  
• 1 litre fresh milk
  
• 6 ounces ground beef
• 2 tomato paste
  
• 3 sachets beef stock
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• spices: ground black pepper, dried oregano, dried basil leaves, salt

here's a step-by-step guidance on how to make it:

Heat the stove at medium heat. After a few minutes, pour olive oil and butter until hot and until the butter is melted.

add half of chopped onion and garlic and cook until light brown.

We're going to make the red sauce first. Red sauce means the meat sauce. Add ground beef in few parts so it'll cook thoroughly. Mix well, add two pinch of salt.

Add tomato paste. This brand (see the pic) has bolognese flavour in it. You can add tomato ketchup or chili sauce if you like. Depends on how sweet or how spicy you want the meat sauce to taste.

This is what the red sauce looks like when it's cooked.
Don't forget to pour the beef stock (you might want to mix the beef stock with hot water first).

In a separate pan, boil water (about half of the pan), and cook the lasagna pasta until soft.

In another pan, we're going to make the white sauce. You'd probably known the white sauce as carbonara sauce. Heat the stove, pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil until it's hot, and add the remaining onion and garlic until light brown, or until the beautiful scent of the onion appears.

Pour 1 litre of milk, stir.
Add beef stock, stir.

We want the white sauce to have a quite thick consistency. Add flour to thicken the sauce. Ass the flour by few parts. Add pepper and salt.

And now, we need to assemble all of the elements altogether.
Put the lasagnas at the bottom of the pyrex. Pour red sauce on top of them.

Now pour the white sauce on top of red sauce.

Sprinkle with grated mozarella cheese. Repeat the same order: pasta- red sauce - white sauce - grated mozarella cheese.

... until it looks like this...

Put lasagna in the pre-heated oven (180 degrees C) and let it cook for approximately 30 minutes.

And there you have it. Your awfully delicious lasagna.

carrot cake cupcakes.

31 March 2011.

I'm using the same carrot cake recipe for this cupcake. The only problem was the stove was broken so i think it didn't reach the exact heat that i wanted. As a result, the carrot cupcakes weren't fluffy enough. But still they tasted luscious.

the icing was made from cheese cream, icing sugar and butter. i decorated them with edible bits that i bought from baking store. the only problem was i didn't pour enough batter into each cupcake paper, so they look kinda disappointing as cupcakes.

fried rice with corned beef.

For the past week i didn't try to bake any cake, because i have so little time. But on a sunny Sunday morning in the middle of April, i went to the kitchen and got a little creative.

What you need:

• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 cloves of shallot
• 2 1/5 bowls of white rice
• 2 tbsp canola oil (or any vegetable oil)
• 1 small celery (not too much, you want the taste of the celery to be the accent)
  
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp of dried chilli
• 1/2 pack of corned beef

I also added additional ingredients. These are two crucial additional ingredients for this recipe. Some friends from my office sell so many things. Including these yummies...

They are a home-made corned beef, it's chunky, it's juicy, a bit salty, but oh so delicious.

The other one is what we call "abon cabe" or chilli floss (although it doesn't look like floss at all). Maybe it's best if we call it dried chilli.This one is a frickin' hot dried chilli, i'm telling you. If you like spicy foods (i mean, VERY spicy foods) you should get this Ninoy Abon Cabe.

Basically the idea of makin fried rice or nasi goreng is quite simple. You just mix everything up and put loads of spices to produce a tasty flavor.

In medium heat, pour canola oil into the pan. Wait until there's bubbles appear. Pour garlic and let it cook for 30 seconds. And then add shallots. Do not overcook.

Add the corned beef. Mix altogether.

Add rice.

Add the dried chili and celery. mix well.

super moist banana cake.

April 2011.

i love making cakes from fruits or vegetables, because they can moisten the cake beautifully. After sucessfully tried to make carrot cake, it's time go bananas!

here's what you need:

• 2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 4 ripe bananas (mashed)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

how to make:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F or 175 degrees C
2. Grease pan with a little bit of butter and sprinkle with flour
3. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in the mashed bananas.
5. Add flour to mixture alternately with buttermilk to the creamed mixture.
6. Pour batter into the pan.
7. Bake in the pre-heated oven fot 30 minutes, Remove from oven and cool.
8. After the cake is cooled, sift icing sugar and a bit of cinnamon powder ontop of the cake.

voila! not my best one yet, but i'm quite proud of the result.

look how moist the texture is.

serve a slice of it with a cold fresh milk OR a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

A useful advice:

• Ripe bananas are best for this recipe because they tend to make the cake sweeter. Maybe you can reduce some of the sugar if you like to use ripe bananas.
• You can use only 3 bananas if you desired the cake to be less moist
• Add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon powder for more deliciousness
  

second attempt in making red velvet cupcakes.

march 2011

Why do i post my second attempt in making red velvet cupcakes? Because the first one was such a horrible horrible nightmare, i don't have the heart to share it for you here. It was ugly. The ugliest. After searching for the right red velvet cupcakes recipe, i found a cupcake recipe book at a cooking and baking store (i forgot the title of the book) and it's pretty delicious!

Ingredients:

How To Make:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Blend in vanilla, vinegar, and red food coloring. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk. Beat until batter is smooth.
4. Spoon batter into cupcake papers, fill 2/3 full, and then cook for 20- 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. To make the icing, cream together shortening with milk until creamy, and then add vanilla extract. Gradually add sugar to shortening. Beat with an electric mixer until icing is pale, light, and fluffy. You might need to add more milk to reach the desired consistency. Cool in refrigerator.
6. When the cupcakes are already cool enough to frost, decorate them with icing or with edible ornament you can find in baking stores. Here, i'm using dark chocolate M&M's.

oopsie, they look a bit messy. I poured too much batter into the cupcake papers. my bad :p

here they are. simple decoration but tasty.

The icing might not look hard enough, that's because i didn't put it long enough in the refrigerator. I also didn't have the courage to put more re food colorings (you don't want to poison everyone in the house, right?) so they don't look as red as desired. But hey, they tasted really delicious :)