Simple Pleasures

I had two easy days this week thus allowing me to do two activities that I love doing. I was able to cook and bake. Thank you Lord.


Tuesday was lasagna day.

I was checking out the cabinet, looking for something to cook when I saw the box of instant lasagna. Perfect. I don't have to boil water to cook the lasagna sheets. All I had to do was make the meat sauce and the bechamel sauce. Except for the bell pepper and milk, all the usual suspects for the sauces were in the cabinet. I asked Kuya Allan to chop the onions and garlic for me. Ate Cory bought quickmelt cheese and bell pepper while I scurried off to CSI for some other grocery items and the milk. Before that I dropped by my dad's office and had lunch with the parents.

At around 4 pm I began preparing the meat sauce. In the pan went some butter, olive oil, chili flakes. I added the chopped onions and garlic. I added about half a kilo of ground pork and then some chopped red and green bell pepper. Salt and pepper and paprika followed suit before I added the tomato sauce, some sugar, herbs, a dollop of heavy cream and a handful of quick melting cheese. At the last minute I decided to add some stewed tomatoes that I rough chopped.
I then checked if the sauce was seasoned properly then I let it simmer a bit while I began the bechamel sauce.

For the white sauce, I melted some butter (like Ina, I'm not afraid to use butter!) and added some flour. This is called a roux. After a couple of minutes of whisking, the roux had a consistency similar to cake frosting. I then added the milk slowly and slowly whisked the mixture until thick. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and nutmeg. I also deviated a bit and added some grated quickmelt cheese.

Everyone knows how to assemble this dish right? Ladle some of the red sauce onto the bottom of the pan then arrange the pasta on top of the red sauce. Ladle some of the bechamel sauce this time then add another layer of pasta. Alternately layer the sauces onto the pasta. Onto the last layer of pasta, I ladled some of the red sauce and some of the bechamel sauce. Then I sprinkled the top with some grated cheese. Since I used instant lasagna noodles I had to bake it in the oven 30 to 40 minutes. Reduce baking time if using fresh pasta or pasta that you cooked in boiling water.

Wednesday was cookie day.




Two weeks ago, Kate (she's the one in the white shirt) and I were chatting on YM and we we got to talking about food and chocolate chip cravings. About two days later she gave me a ziplock bag full of almonds, dates and a bottle of pho base which I will use on Vietnamese Night (heaven knows what that will be).

Last Wednesday, I decided to make use of the almonds and made some chocolate chip cookies using Melissa Murphy's recipe.

Here are some slices of cookie dough. I had to roll and chill the dough. See the specks of chocolate chips and almond?



After 15 minutes in the oven, the slices of raw cookie dough looked like this. Aren't they pretty? I also made some plain ones using half of the batter for my sister Tanya. Then I made some chocolate cranberry cookies as well. Please see previous posts for the recipes or better yet buy the Sweet Melissa Baking Book.

After cooling on the wire rack, I packed some cookies in 3 separate containers. One for Kate. One for my grandma and one for the family.

I hope they enjoyed munching on the cookies as much as I enjoyed baking them.

Till the next baking session :)

Be safe.

SMS Double Chocolate Cherry Cookies

I have a question.

Are these cookies suppose to like spread out a little? The reason I'm asking is because my cookies stayed exactly the same size.



They didn't spread out or have that sort of dome like top like the chocolate chip cookies I make. Maybe there's something wrong with the baking soda? Maybe it's because I used regular cocoa instead of the dutch processed kind. I dunno. I rolled them into small logs thus giving me bite sized cookies (think quarters) and placed them 1 inch apart on a lined cookie sheet to bake. Alas, they didn't "grow" in size. Not even a centimeter.




Don't get me wrong. These are yummy cookies. Moist. Like brownie buttons and I loved how the chocolate complemented the cranberries (sorry no cherries). I bet they would go well with a tall glass of cold milk.

I followed the other SMS bakers advice and I baked them no longer than 13 minutes.

Thanks so much Megan of My Baking Adventures for choosing this for the SMS challenge.

Do check out The Sweet Melissa Baking Book for the recipe, as well as my fellow bakers on SMS.

:)

There are no skeletons in my closet :)

Go ahead and take a peek.

Only clothes and shoes and bags

And linens and magazines and books.

Lots of magazines and books.

We had our house renovated two, maybe three years ago and what used to be our garage is now my bedroom. It's the biggest bedroom in the house and I opted to have open closets with lots of shelves to hold not my clothes but my books, cookbooks and magazine collection.




You see, I used to collect Gourmet and Bon Appetit and Martha Stewart Living but not anymore. The price is outrageous! At 400 to 500 pesos an issue(almost $10), no thanks. I can always go to epicurious.com and download the recipes hehehe (Yes, I'm cheap that way!).



I now buy local magazines like Foodie and Yummy. Sometimes though, back issues of Bon Appetit and Gourmet (50% off) find their way into the shelves.

My books and magazine collection used to occupy one column (5 shelves) of my closet but not anymore. They now occupy 8 shelves!

Have you met my friends?

Say hi to Julia, Ina, Giada, Tessa, Diana, Nigella, Caprial, Ursula, Maida, Gale, Dorie, and Martha. Boyfriends Jamie, Tyler and Ming and grandaddies Wolfgang and Nobu are somewhere in the mix.




The Kite Runner, The Alchemist, The Bonesetter's Daughter and The Book Thief are just some of the many who are in there either reading the Memoirs of a Geisha or cracking the Da Vinci Code while waiting for A Thousand Splendid Suns to rise East of Eden. You don't believe me? I swear on my pink devotional BIBLE ( Do you see it?).




I was in Manila last week and I bought 2 more cookbooks. Sad to say that I am now 3 books over my " 5 COOKBOOKS A YEAR QUOTA" which means that next year I can only buy 2 cookbooks. COOKBOOKS GIVEN AS GIFTS DON'T COUNT THOUGH!!! I'm also waiting for Dan Brown's new novel. I just want to make that clear.

I told you there are no skeletons in my closet.

SMS Posting Late

Life is way too crazy at the moment.

I will try to post my completed SMS challenges next week *keeping my fingers crossed*
I'm hoping things will get better by then:)

Please click here to check out how my fellow SMS bakers fared with this week's challenge.

Till then, be safe :)

the cupcake project!

It was my dad's birthday last June 10. My sister turned a year older last June 2 and her T, last June 13. Since we were not able to celebrate with my sister last June 2 for reasons that I could not divulge, we decided to host a joint birthday celebration for the June celebrants last June 12.

One of my many tasks was to bake cupcakes for the party. My sister initially wanted orange vanilla cupcakes but she settled for chocolate cupcakes instead. Whew! Imagine how many oranges I'd have to squeeze to make 10 dozen cupcakes!!!

The night before the party, my sister Gelli and I worked on the cupcakes.

After mixing the ingredients for the cake (thank heavens for my kitchen aid mixer), I emptied the batter into a pitcher for easy pouring. This is faster than scooping batter into every cup.

Just one of the many batches headed into the oven. Less mess, no stress!

We made 10 dozen moist chocolate cupcakes before sleeping.

I love the dark color of the cupcakes. Dark brown to black, the cupcakes were rich, moist and yummy.

When I woke up at around 9 AM, I started working on the pasta sauce with my sister Tanya. When we were satisfied with how the sauce tasted, I started working on the buttercream frosting. It was too hot that day that I couldn't get the frosting to set properly. C'est la vie!

I was in charge of piping swirls of frosting on the cupcakes.

I pipped some light green swirls...

and some pink and blue ones too!

Pink, green and blue cupcakes. Aren't they cute?

I think I should take up a Wilton course in cake decorating so that I can learn how to make those cute designs using a piping bag and the tips that come with it.

Birthday girl Tanya tinted the frosting pink, green and blue. She also did the lettering.

She then decorated one cupcake this way!

Gelli sprinkled cupcake toppers onto some of the cupcakes.

Cupcakes ready to be transported to Lola Zita's house !
(The tray came back empty.)


*thanks tans and gelli for the pictures and for helping me with the cupcake project*

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Almonds

THE MELISSA MURPHY chose Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Almonds for last Sunday's challenge. Boy! am I glad that she did!

For the longest time, I've been using the Toll House Cookie recipe and I love it but I've been trying to find ways to cut down on the sugar content. I don't like sugar free stuffs because, well, most of the time they taste like blah!!! So when I read Melissa's recipe, not only did it call for lesser amount of sugar, it also called for less salt. Wee!

I think the only down side to the recipe is that the dough must be refrigerated for an hour. I can be very impatient. I hate waiting which is why I consider baking bread and making pie crusts my Waterloo.

The recipe also calls for the dough to be rolled into logs. I find this step to be really helpful. I didn't have to scoop the dough and drop them by rounded teaspoonful. All i had to do is slice the logs and lay the cut slices onto the cookie sheet. No more messy fingers and it saves you time.



I divided the batter into two portions. One portion I left plain for my sister.




I added more than a handful of chocolate chips to the other portion.I omitted the nuts because my dad prefers his food without nuts (but he likes pesto. go figure!). I baked the cookies for 13 minutes and then arranged them on a wire rack to cool.

I'm glad that I tried out Melissa's recipe. The Toll House Cookie has finally met it's match. If you want the recipe you can check out the Sweet Melissa Sundays website. Melissa Murphy was nice enough to post it there or better yet buy her book, The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. :)

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Bear's Peach Cobbler

I know! I know! I was suppose to post this last Sunday but I've been so busy with work (I've been uhhh "detained") and preparing for the joint celebration of my dad and sis that I just could not squeeze two challenges in. I'm grateful that our leader over at Sweet Melissa Sundays is so understanding and nice. Thanks Lorelei.

Now on to my first Sweet Melissa Sundays Challenge, Bear's Peach Cobbler. I've never had cobbler before. I've never made cobbler before but it was surprisingly easy to make.
The recipe calls for fresh peaches which I of course didn't have so I used canned peaches instead.
I had to drain the syrup though and reduced the amount of sugar called for in the recipe.
After baking in the oven for an hour and thirty minutes, I let it cool a bit and then dug in with a spoon. The filling was moist and you can taste the cinnamon but my favorite were the biscuits.
The biscuits were delicious and tender. Very tasty thanks to the addition of the lemon zest. Maybe I can use the cobbler topping as the base for my lemon bars.

I can see myself making this dessert again. If only I could get hold of fresh peaches here in the province. :)