Inca Kola cupcakes

My best friend Bruce and his family own a wonderful Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco. Every now and then, we'd go over there to visit. You should visit too, people at Yelp love them, and so do we. It's called Rincon Peruano (yes, I'm plugging, but it really is a must visit place). They have this golden cola called Inca Kola and it's just utterly delicious. It doesn't taste like any other soda I've had. It looks like mountain dew, but you'd hate on mountain dew after you've had this. So last time we were at the restaurant, well, we bought 2 dozen of them to take home coz that stuff is addicting.

While talking to Bruce last night, I came up with the idea to make Inca Kola cupcakes. I've made San Miguel (Filipino beer) cupcakes, Guiness cupcakes--- so it was time to step it up a bit. I might have messed up a bit today by not putting the ingredients in room temp, I still need to tweak the recipe a bit, but it is delicious. I also used this crazy frosting I found online for the frosting. Why is it crazy? It has flour in it. It sounds weird, but it's heaven.

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 350F

Ingredients:

1/2 cup room temp. butter

1/2 cup sour cream, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup inca kola

cream the butter, sour cream and sugar. When the butter mixture becomes fluffy, add eggs one at a time. When thoroughly mixed, add the vanilla.

In another bowl, sift (or whisk) the flour, baking powder and salt together.

Add the flour mixture and Inca cola to the butter mixture, alternating each other starting and ending with the flour.

scoop the batter in lined muffin pans, bake for 15-18 minutes in 350F preheated oven.

For frosting, any buttercream works =). Enjoy.

Hormonal Challenges and homesickness

It's been 3 weeks since I've been back from my trip to the Philippines. I miss it a lot, I want to go back. Anyway, while we were there we had Chicken Sinigang. Now I've seen it made here and there but I just was never raised on it, my mother was a strict beef, shrimp or bangus (milk fish) Sinigang maker. NEVER CHICKEN! I don't know why, I'd have to ask her why.

I basically cook based on how my boys devour food, it's usually pretty easy--- anything works. I'm actually the picky one, is it really a surprise? So yesterday, I asked my husband if he would want some chicken sinigang and he ok'd it. Nostalgia then enters from the left stage door. I made it today and it just sent me back 9,000 miles away again. It's my new favorite, and it didn't even take as long of a wait as beef sinigang takes.

Please take note on my failed attempt at beautifying that radish. End result is mouthwateringly tangy though. Pretty sure that "mouthwateringly" isn't a word by the way.

On to the dessert-- Every time that time of the month strikes me, I usually always need chocolate--- chocolate cake to be specific. I bought a ready made cake due to laziness the other day but I was just not satisfied with it. They used yellow cake to begin with, totally buzz kill to the delish ganache that was on it. So today, I took matters into my own hands and dealt with the problem within my kitchen. Well, plus I was also testing out recipes for my son's upcoming 2nd birthday. this was our end result:Now let me just put a disclaimer I haven't tasted the whole thing all together, but the separate parts I did take a bit of bites from have satisfied my needs. Oh, and quick tip, if you ever have creme fraiche in the fridge but your cake calls for sour cream, go on ahead and use it. It's actually better, it's much thicker and just has the proper amount of tang.