la velvet rouge cheese cupcake

la velvet rouge cheese cupcake

Cupcakes are on this exciting trend of sweet yummilicious dessert delicacy. Everywhere you travel, they have these small boutiques specializing in sweet delicacies.  Cupcakes of all different flavours decorated in frosting of various themes.  How can one not pause and be in awe of this edible craft?  If you think about it, it really is the ideal dessert.  It’s the perfect size.  It’s individualized and if you have great self-control, one cupcake is enough to satisfy your sweet tooth.  :D

I call these cupcakes a delicacy because, let’s face it, they are pretty expensive! Up to $4-5 for a single cupcake!  All because they are sooo damn cute and pretty that you just have to have one!  I’m a total sucker for cuteness.   Had it not been my mr holding me and my wallet back, I would have gained an extra 30 pounds and would have to hold a second job just to fulfill my wants.  I must admit, once in a while, we do treat ourselves to such delicacies but the problem is, I always feel sooo guilty afterwards!   Firstly, many of the cupcakes we buy are overly sweet, especially with the frosting.  Secondly, we all know it is pretty easy and inexpensive to bake a batch of cupcakes!  So why don’t I?  I didn’t want to make just any ordinary cupcake; it had to be different and had to stand out in flavour.  The wow factor had to come in play. 

Months ago, after some research, I combined several recipes, twit some ingredients, making it my own.   I would call this la velvet rouge cheese cupcake.  Yummmm.  The reason for me to make this type of cupcake actually started off 3 years ago, when mr and I had a slice of Cheesecake Factory’s red velvet cheesecake.  It was sooo yummilicious.  Problem is, the closest location is across the border in Buffalo! So we been looking and tasting for the next best thing locally.  Only St. Phillips, a very well-known Italian bakery, with their plain cheesecake, strawberry topped comes second best.   So the very first time I made a batch of my la velvet rouge cheese cupcake, I was pretty impressed.  The texture and flavour was exactly what I wanted; the cake was soft and moist and the flavour was distinctive built by the cheesecake component of the cupcake.  For those who got to try my first batch all agreed.  My favorite compliment was from someone who said he preferred my cupcake over St.Phillips.  Winner! Winner! 

A week ago, I got a chance to make a second batch of the cupcakes.   I was excited because the first time around, I was unable to take a decent photo of the cupcakes!  My frosting skills were soooo poor that it was an embarrassment!  Sad thing is, I consider myself to have decent drawing skills!  So I made sure the cupcakes were somewhat decent looking.  I still got a long way to go with my frosting skills!  My piping bag kept air bursting.  Oh dear! This time, we shared the batch to mr’s and my coworkers and boy was I giddy with the compliments I received. :D  Some have said they will order from me for their next occasion.  Winner!  

I am super proud of how this recipe of mine turned out.  It had taken quite a bit of research to make this recipe right; lots of patience, attention and love.  As a lot of people say, love is the secret ingredient. J  Even though it was been quite some time that I have put a halt to my textile design work for the  corporate world with a stable Monday – Friday salary, I found another outlet to be creative, with food.  J. 

Do your research, know your ingredients inside and out and you will be amazed what you can put on your kitchen table.  Best part is, you’ll be amazed just how much money you save. :D

detail of la velvet rouge cheese cupcake :D

Bulalo - Filipino beef soup

Last year, when mr & I went to Tagaytay, Manila, we had Tagatay's famous bulalo soup.   Imagine this; driving for just over 2hr on slightly unpaved highways from Manila to Tagaytag, past small huts selling mangoes, bananas, nuts on the road side, small make shift wooden homes to a small street of local restaurants all selling what they claim to be the best bulalo soup.  As a tourist myself, I wonder, just how do you know which restaurant really does serve the best?  Mr keeps talking about this bulalo soup, which by the way, is his favorite soup.  To me ..its just beef broth soup with vegetables!! Just how good can it be?  How can a simple beef soup claim to be the best here in Tagaytay?  Well lucky for us, Mr.'s dad, who owns a beach house in Tagatay knows exactly which restaurant delivers the best bulalo soup.

We drive up to this restaurant, kinda like a hole in a wall style setting... plastic chairs & tables, buffet style setting of selective filipino dishes with flies all over the place, men in sleeveless undershirts sitting on steps fanning themselves..... ummmm... this place serves the best bulalo soup?  seriously?  We don't even see a big pot anywhere!! Well, no matter, we sit ourselves at the table, men with sleeveless undershirts suddenly disappear. 10 minutes later....2 simple looking bowls of soup come out, placed upon us.

Tagaytay's bulalo beef soup

I take all my skepticism back.  Just one sip of this glorious, yummi-lious beef soup, had me hooked and my perspective of a beef soup changed entirely.  To this day, I still think about this soup. It's clean & pure simple style beef soup with less than a handful of ingredients to put together.  I knew, back there in the hole in the wall restaurant, sleeveless shirt men watch over huge potful of roasted beef bones, covered with water, slowly simmering for long hours to flavorful perfection.  I thank you, sleeveless shirt men, for this wonderful experience.

A while back, while shopping at Loblaws, Mr came acoss these huge chunks of marrow bones, and he pointed out, "These are the bones used to make bulalo soup! Lets get some!"  These bones were the size of your head and at $2 each, I couldn't say no! So with Mr guiding me with the ingredients involved, I attempted to make this bulalo soup.

Ingredients:
1 large marrow bone
4 large chucks of ox tail with bone in
1 white onion, few medium size chucks of ginger, 6 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 tbsp of whole black peppercorns
1 1/2 potato
1/2 head of cabbage
splash of fish sauce
salt

Directions:
1.  In a large pot, put the marrow bone in boiling water and boil for 5mins. After, take out marrow and discharge water, clean the pot thoroughly.
2.  Rinse the marrow briefly to rinse of any scums and unwanted blood.  Be carefully not to wash away the marrow!!!
3.  In the cleaned pot, on medium heat add oil, once heated, add chopped onions, ginger, garlic and black peppercorns. Cook for about 3 mins.
4.  Next, add ox tail with bones to pot and brown all sides. Afterwards, add a splash of fish sauce (approx. 2-3tbsps)  Cook for another 2 mins after you add fish sauce then cover with water, bring to a boil, then allow soup to simmer on low heat for 2-3hrs. During the last 1/2hr of simmering, add your potatoes.
5. Turn off heat and allow to cool before putting this pot in the fridge.  If you are watching your calories, your cholesterol, do not attempt to drink this fresh!  Once you cool in fridge overnight, you will know why!!
6.  Next day, take out pot of soup from fridge and skim off all the fat.  You will be surprised all much fat come out!! and reheat.  Once the soup is heated tthrough, add how ever much cabbage you intend to eat for the meal, cook vegetables and salt to taste.
7.  Once veggies are done, serve and enjoy with a bowl of rice! This is the traditional way of eating this dish.  :)

Meat, bone, veggies taken out from soup (pls excuse the gloves:P) 

Close up of marrow - yummmm.. mr's favorite part, spooned over top of white rice :)

bulalo soup :) not as good as Tagatay's soup, but it'll do :) 

A splash of this over the veggies, marrow, meat ... = yummm:)  you can get this in asian groceries

Pork Bone Soup a la Maangchi

Maangchi - I've spent hours analyzing her blog, her korean dishes, her videos,  her Gamjatang - Pork Bone Soup hits a craving cord.  Struck was I in wanting to try her recipe.  Struck was I, who lived no where near a korean grocery.  Struck was I who waited so long to be able to make her recipe.  Struck was I who one time went into H-Mart (korean grocery) and found they ran out of pork bones!!  Sadden and depleted, I waited and waited for another few weeks.  Until finally, upon another trip to H-Mart, they had full stock of pork bones! I strucked gold!! The excitement I felt running around the grocery, piling our basket full of ingredients needed to make Gamjatang!. Sesame leaves! Sprouts! Perilla powder! Oh the fun I was going to have the next day making this!

I remember this day clearly.  It was a Friday night.  A night where I am usually exhausted from a full week's of work and commuting, I was exhilarated! Just before we left to go out for dinner, I soaked those pork bones in water, letting time extracted the unwanted, irony blood. 
After we came back from dinner, I  rolled up my sleeves, cleaned all ingredients  and followed Maangchi's instructions step by step.
http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/gamjatang

Now imagine my excitement throughout this making of Gamjatang to realize in the end, when my Mr. tried it, I made it too spicy!!!  It still tasted like Pork Bone Soup mind you but apparently it was too spicy to really enjoy the flavour of the soup! Let's clarify this point, amongst our friends, ppl we know, we can tolerate alot of spice as compared to them, so when I say this soup was too spicy... it was too spicy!  But we ate it regardless! 

After analyzing what I must have done differently than Maangchi, I realized several things.  I brought the wrong soybean paste, (i brought the seasoned soybean paste instead of the regular, straight up soybean paste) add more red pepper power than asked for, add extra dried chili in stock.  I've learnt my lesson.  Never under estimate Maangchi.  :)
The following are my photos as I attempted the Gamjatang.

Vegetables - washed and cut up

Prep for stock base

Ingredients needed to make paste

Paste and Maangchi :)

Stock simmering

Pasted added to stock

Vegetables added to stock

Final dish ! (spicy!)

The Ultimate no beans Chili Stew

         Yes I have been neglectful of this blog. Its been two months since the last post and I absolutely have no excuses.  I mean, I've been cooking day after day. I have been taking really rough photos as I go along.  See, THAT's the easy part! But having to archive dishes onto this blog, requires extra time.. which lets face it.....not alot of us have! So, for the sake of time, I shall post up several dishes today.
        I delicate this post to all those chili lovers who constantly complain there are way too much beans in chili stews.  Guilty has charged, my mr. and I are the complainers.  Yes, we know beans are relatively inexpensive, mostly used as a filler to extend the stew for extra health benefits, but there is only so much beans we can take in one sitting!  We've had many chili stews from restaurants, fast food chains and consistently, there is a 6:1 ratio of beans to meat.  Lets face it, its the MEAT that provides the flavour of the stew! So after some research, I've settle on a recipe I found through a blogger "Lick My Spoon."  After the first time following her recipe, I have altered the recipe to make it spicier and of course, I omitted the beans.:)

Chili Stew after simmering.

The no beans Chili Stew
Ingredients:
3.5 - 4 pounds of ground meat; beef & spicy Italian sausage without casing (your choice to mix other meats too:)
10-13slices of applewood bacon - diced
1 & 1/2 carrot, 1 large Spanish onion - grated
6-7 cloves of garlic - diced
4 roasted sweet red peppers (I used the ones in store brought jars for convenience)
7 whole roasted jalapenos
1 796ml can of tomatoes (san la marazano brand:))
1 796ml can of homemade tomato sauce (you can find a recipe of the homemade italian tomato sauce on my blog, just omit the meatballs)
approximately 1/4cup ketchup
2 tsp of chili powder (optional)
3-4tbsp of sugar, worcestershire sauce, sriracha hot sauce & dark melted chocolate
if you just happen to have some rind of parmesan cheese left, throw it into the pot, if not, don't sweat it :)

Directions:
1.  Have a large pot where you will be stewing the chili ready.  In a separate pan, on medium heat, cook your meats separately until brown.  Place cooked, brown meat into large pot.
2.  While your meat is cooking, roasted your jalapenos and set aside.  grate your carrots, onions; set aside.
3.  Once all the meat has been cooked, saute your carrots, onions and garlic separately until almost cooked.  By cooking each item separately before combining into a huge pot is that the flavour will retain itself and add dimension to the overall dish. (Something I learnt from Korean cooking.:) )
4.  Once all items above are combined into the large pot, cut off the stems of the jalapenos and puree in the food processor along with the roasted red peppers.  Add this paste into the large pot and mix everything together.
5.  Now to heat to medium high and begin to add the tomato sauce, can of tomatoes, sugar, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, sriracha hot sauce, melted dark chocolate & the optional chili powder and or parmesan rind
6.  Mix well add a little bit of water if necessary.  Once stew begins to bubble, turn down heat to low and simmer for 4hrs.

The best way to eat this is ... if you have any patience... leave it overnight in the fridge.  The next day, heat it up and trust me, it will taste mighty good than if you were to have this right after simmering for 4hrs.   Below are some photos I took along the way. This may help you.! Enjoy!!!

Saute your meats :)

All ingredients in pot:)

vegetables added :)

Homemade sauce

add your can of tomatoes!

melted chocolate yummm.

ALL ingredients mixed prior to simmering.

 

Junior New York Cheesecake

The urge to bake was really brought on by a friend who said, "let's make cheesecake this friday!" Lucky for us, cream cheese just happened to be on sale ! and lucky for me, I didn't have to stress over what to bring to a thanksgiving dinner on sunday.  Cheesecake was it.  Now I didn't want to make the simple no bake cheesecake so I did my research.  In 5 mins, after comparing several recipes, I found the winner!
http://www.momswhothink.com/cheesecake-recipes/juniors-new-york-cheesecake.html
I wanted something complicated and delicious.  This was it! Click on above link for recipe and directions.
Note, because I did not have lemon extract, I simply grated 1/4 of a whole lemon zest.

This is how it looks out of the oven, rested.  :D

And because I had a bar of Lindt 72%dark chocolate bar, I decided to melt it in a double pot simmering method and glaze the cake.  As you can tell, since this is the first time I glazed a cake with chocolate... it did not look very nice.  But I learnt. :D

Top view of cake with chocolate glaze.

Size view of cake.

Tadum! Light and fluffy.

Spicy Beef Marrow Stew

Spicy Beef Marrow Stew

     Months back, we brought these dried serrano peppers from Kensington Market and we've been wacking our brains wondering what to do with them.  Last week, I decided to sit down and do some serious research on mexican/cuban beef stews and I swear, not one single recipe of the same dish is identical.  One used red wine, another used water.  One had sausages, another used only beef chunks.  Some were ready in 30 mins, others were ready in a few hours. Not wanting to follow one particular recipe, I noted down some key ingredients and went off to our local grocer to further inspire me.
    Amazingly, I found these sausages labeled as "Extra Hot Mexican Sausage." (raw) Bingo!  Next, I found beef shank still attached to its marrow! Bingo! Bingo!  This two meats will spend some quality time with my beloved dutch oven pot.  One pot wonder!

Prior to simmering for 2.5hrs.

Ingredients:
3 Sausages (decased) of your choice
1 beef shank with marrow (about 1 large steak size)
5 pieces of dried serrano peppers
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1/2 spanish onion, roughly chopped
1 chicken bouillon
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 1/2 cup of can tomato with juices
2 potatoes, peeled & chunked
paprika, salt & pepper, chili powder

Prepare beef shank: Pat dry beef, salt & pepper both sides.  Spinkle paprika & chili powder on both sides.  Next, lightly apply all purpose flour on both sides.  This will crisp and brown beef easily.  Set aside.

Directions:
1.  Medium to high heat, brown sausages, cook out most of its juices. I added paprika to meat to cook with.  Your choice to do the same or not. (approx. 5mins) Take it out and set aside.
2.  Sauted onion and garlic with 5 dried serrano peppers. (approx. 5mins)  Take it out and set aside.
3.  In the same pot, brown beef shank with marrow, 2 mins each side.  Take it out and set aside.
4.  By now, your pot should be burnt at the bottom.  Still on medium-high heat, de-glaze pot with red wine, a splash of worcestershire sauce, & chicken bouillon.  Be sure to scrap all the goodness from the bottom of pot.
5.  Once all brown bits from pot has been scraped off, sauce stirred, add your ingredients previously cooked back into same pot, add your potatoes  & 1 1/2 cup of can tomato with juices.
6.  Add stock or water to barely cover ingredients.  I added about 1/4cup of water.  Just to give you an idea.  I also added one stick of celery to stock just because I had it.
7.  Add a dash of paprika, chili powder, salt and pepper for good measure.  Once sauce comes to a simmer, turn heat down to low, cover pot and simmer for 2.5hours.

If you want to enjoy this dish at its best, eat it the next day!  The potatoes overnight will thicken the sauce naturally.  Its great with pasta or rice.  Mr. ate 3 plates of this in one sitting. :D

Bolognese Sauce

I truly admire Italian food.  Their complexity of favours made up of a few simple ingredients.  Of course, time plays a major role. It was the episode where Anthony Bourdain travels to Maples, Italy that made me really appreciate true Italian food.  Italians care about their food! They care for their tomatoes! Their wide variety of pasta! Their local ingredients!  They pride themselves in their simple tomato sauce, homemade mozzarella cheese, fine extra olive oil, sprinkle of backyard grown basil, > woodbaked pizza.  Oh, just a note, they don't have pre-grated parmesan cheese that come in plastic bottles ready to spinkle over dishes! True Italians use the freshest of the freshest ingredients.  That's why, as simple as their dish can be, its also quite complex in favour.

So this weekend, with company over, I shall make Italian Bolognese Sauce served overtop of gluten free pasta.  A trip to our locate grocery, a few simple ingredients, a well used, well loved dutch oven pot sitting nicely on the stove, I will attempt to bring Italy to our home.  This recipe is adapted from Chuck William's "William Sonoma - Cooking at Home" with a few twist of my own.

Bolognese Sauce
Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
60g of smoked pancetta, diced
1/2 large yellow onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk all diced finely
1 pound of lean ground beef, 1/2 pound of ground veal
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cup milk
1/8 tsp of freshly grated nutmeg
1 can of top grade Italian plum tomatoes with juice (450g) (I used a bit more tomatoes than 450g since I did add more meat than original recipe)
Salt

Directions:
Over medium heat in a dutch oven pot, heat up olive oil, butter, garlic.  Add in pancetta 1 min later.  Once pancetta renders off some fat, add in onion, carrot and celery and saute until soften.
Next, add beef and veal. Break up meat in pot, stir, mix just until meat is no longer pink.  Do not allow meat to brown or harden.
Add in wine and simmer until it evaporates.  Then add in 3/4cup of milk and nutmeg.  Simmer until the milk is absorbed.
Add can of tomatoes with juice, salt.  Break up tomatoes, stir.  Bring sauce to simmer then turn heat to very low, cover pot and let it simmer for 4hrs.  Stirring occasionally.
In the last 45mins, stir in the remaining milk in 3 additions, to allow the sauce to absorb the milk.
Simmer for another 20mins for extra measure.  Serve over your favourite pasta :D..

Veggies & Meat simmered in milk & wine prior to tomatoes.

Magic happens 4hrs later. :D yumsss.. though I think it was longer than 4hrs .. for good measure :D