Chocolate and mango tart
The filling is rich, velvety and chewy after a little bit of chilling. The bright yellow balls of mango provide a wonderful contrast to the boring and monotonous chocolate brown. The lightly salted flaky crust adds a surprising twist in texture and gives a good balance to the sweetness of the filling and the mangoes.
The recipe that inspired this had pears instead of mangoes. The pears were cooked in water, sugar and rum before they were arranged on top of the gateau-like chocolate tart filling. My kids don’t like the smell nor taste of alcohol in their dessert. And I don’t like pears. Hence, substitution and modification were in order. Mangoes, instead of pears. And no alcohol.
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Salmon, cheese and cabbage quiche
In the 1985 James Bond film A View To A Kill, Bond offers to make dinner while staying in the mansion of Stacey Sutton. He takes a baked dish out of the oven, the clueless American heiress asks what it is and Bond replies that it is a quiche. The term is unfamiliar to her and Bond explains that it is an omelet. Personally, I’d describe a quiche as a cross between an omelet and a pie.
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Valentine’s Day cheesecake
Because my kids have fallen in love with streusel topping (see the blueberry streusel cupcakes and strawberry streusel cake entries), I wondered if I could create a cheesecake crust with a similar feel and taste. Of course, it would have to be more dense and compact, not light and crumbly. I also wondered if cream cheese and mascarpone are the only varieties of cheese that can be used for French-type cheesecakes. I did a little experiment and this cheesecake was the result.
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Blueberry streusel cupcakes
When I asked my husband to buy frozen blueberries, I was half expecting that he’d come home with a pack of “Baguio-grown” blueberries. Wishful thinking, I guess, because there were only packs of imported blueberries in the supermarket. We grow blueberries at Trinidad Valley in Benguet but we never seem to be able to find them in local markets.
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Strawberry streusel cake
According to Wikipedia, the term streusel (a German word meaning “something scattered or sprinkled”, from the verb streuen, akin to the English verb ’strew’) refers to a crumb topping of butter, flour, and sugar (traditional German) that is baked on top of muffins, breads, and cakes. The original recipe used fresh blueberries; I substituted strawberries.
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Self-frosting peanut butter cupcakes
The first time I made self-frosting cupcakes, I used melted chocolate. And I wasn’t able to document the recipe. I did remember, however, that it was inspired by a cupcake recipe with Nutella for frosting. I didn’t bother looking for the original recipe because I only use one recipe for butter cake these days. It was the one I used for…
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Food for the Gods and the accidental Christmas cake
As early as 2004, I have been talking about baking an all-Filipino fruit cake…I wasn’t able to bake one that year. Nor the next. Nor the year after that. Glazed fruits always go out of stock before Christmas and the dream stayed as a dream. Until yesterday. I overbaked my all-Filipino version of Food for the Gods (caught up in my reading) and I was wondering how to salvage it. The solution consisted of a bamboo skewer, a pastry brush, cinnamon-flavored pancake syrup, Bacardi rum, a lot of guts and even more patience.
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Choco butter cupcakes
For those of you who made the buttery cupcakes and found them a bit too heavy, here’s good news. I found another basic yellow cake recipe which I adapted and baked into cupcakes. The result was a lighter texture with the same crusty, slightly crisp exterior.
This is based on a recipe from The Joy of [...]
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