Christmas Cupcakes

I've been kitchen-bound for two days baking vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, orange cupcakes, banana cupcakes and corn muffins to give as gifts this Christmas.

Baking can be time consuming and super tiring (thank heavens for kitchen aid!) but I'm not one to complain. I am happy :)

Thanks to Tans and Beth for helping me out and for being my "tasters".

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

(sans the frosting)

(banana cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, vanilla cupcakes, orange cupcakes, corn muffins)

(first batch of frosted cupcakes)

(christmas cupcakes)

( tanya's snowy pine forest)

(love cupcakes with white frosting)

(tanya's ideal "wedding" cupcake: orange cupcakes with white buttercream and gold dragees)

Kitchen Adventures02 - Truffle Brownies

I love brownies. I love them gooey, moist, fudgy and dark as opposed to dry or cakey. There's nothing like a bar or two (or three or more) to snack on during blah days.

I have yet to meet a person who hates brownies.
Normally, I would grab a box of brownie mix, add butter or oil, eggs and water and mix,mix, mix until my arms ache. Then I fill a pan with brownie batter, stick it in the oven and lick my spatula clean while waiting for the brownie to bake. Nothing wrong with doing that right?
Then I realized I did not have a decent brownie recipe. How on earth did that happen? What if the store runs out of brownie mixes? This can't be!
So now I'm on the search for the best brownie recipe and I started with truffle brownies.
These brownies are dense, dark, and rich. I made mine with ricoa unsweetened chocolate and they turned out okay. Still, I regret not buying that bar of Valrhona. Imagine if I used good quality chocolate! Chocolate bliss!!!

If you want the recipe click here.




PS

I tweaked the recipe a bit by adding coffee to the ganache.
Thanks to Beth for lending me her camera.

... and Capt Jack says " more rum.... (cake)!"

I look forward to Manila sojourns because:

• i get to go to the mall and do some window shopping;
• i get to spend endless amount of time at FULLY BOOKED;
• i get to go to groceries and peruse aisle and aisle of goodies totally alien to CSI, National, etc.;
• I GET TO DO SOMETHING I LOVE- BAKE

There was a time when rhum cakes were all the rage. Almost all cafes carried it and I don't blame them. Sometimes I love having my cake and my liquor too.

With HBO showing reruns of Pirates of the Caribbean, I woke up early two weeks ago and baked a batch of rum cake.

I tried to document everything by taking snaps of the process using my cellphone Yes, I don't own a digital camera. (I'm that cheap eeep haha! but that's another story).

I began by preheating my oven to 300F and i kept my fingers crossed the whole time because the last time i used my oven I couldn't get the temperature right and the heat up.

After what seemed like eternity (30 minutes),the thermometer read 300F. Yey!

I began the process of measuring the ingredients and dumping the ingredients into the bowl of my kitchenaid (making sure that I follow the procedure while taking pictures). I slid my mini cake pans in the oven and waited 50 minutes.

While the cake was doing its magic inside the oven, I worked on the rum syrup. Took out my saucepan and added sugar, water and butter. When the butter was melted, I added the rum that I poured into a measuring cup but the image of Capt Jack Sparrow kept flashing in my mind so I added an extra splash of rum, then another before letting the rum syrup cool.

Fifty five minutes later (an extra five minutes in the pan to cool), I coaxed the soft, tender, yellow cakes out of the pans and doused them with the rum syrup. It was only after i excitedly wrapped them in cling wrap and foil and placed them in the fridge did it hit me that I failed to take some more pictures.

These [pics] will suffice for now. Who knows, I might be able to buy a decent digital camera by then.