I went a little crazy with the cooking yesterday

Tuesday I had a slight fever. I felt paralyzed and helpless and we ate leftovers. Nothing wrong with leftovers, but if you are anything like me, you start twitching when you don't cook. I guess it's more like I went on a cooking/baking tirade this week. I just NEEDED to do it. So here's some of my creations from my delusional week.

First I corrected the issue I had with the Inca Kola cupcakes. I also had a bit of free time on my hands so I sculpted some fondant flowers.

The day after that is when I got him with symptoms of grogginess and lack of energy. A day passed and I decided to make up for my lack of activity so I made these. They didn't really take too much effort, but a hump day dinner, I guess it was a bit of a nutso job. I did run my dishwasher twice (or was it three times?).

I first made these biscottis. I can't take up for the credit, this one was Giada de Laurentiis' recipe. I did put French grey sea salt instead of just sea salt. I don't think that will still make it my recipe.

Then I looked in my fridge, and hey, there are carrots. Loads and loads of carrots. Why did I buy these much carrots? Only one way to fix it!

I actually wanted to put baking soda in this, I ran out coz I was unclogging our sink. It turned out to be a good thing coz adding that extra 1/2 tsp of baking powder made it oh so fluffy wuffy. (Baby talk, gross, forgive me, I've been getting all crazy giddy over potty training my toddler--- that's another story).

I guess we can't have dinner with appetizer and dessert, well in theory, it technically can happen, but I know my boys would go crazy if I didn't offer some type of main course. I have a serious addiction to goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes together. I just LOOOOVE it. Any sausage with fennel seeds in it, count me in. Best way to combine them all? The usual way I do it, except this time, I decided not to include cream. You know, I had to cut down on some carbs with this meal.

I think my fridge is stocked up for food until Friday dinner. We'll see. Today, I might just tackle on ice cream again. My new ice cream make is my favorite new friend. I'm totally biased to it right now. LOOOVE it, I just love it!

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.

nutty for coconuts

A client wanted a super summery cupcakes for her function for tomorrow. She fell in love with my strawberry cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting. She wanted the same one, only problem is that she can't pick them up the day of, she needed to pick them up the day before and so I suggested something different because of how the strawberries are 2 days after. I suggested coconut cupcakes and raspberry frosting. We both agreed that both are very summer flavors. I wanted to put a bit of twist of Filipino flavors in it, and commonly, our desserts, when made with coconut, may include pandan. Pandan is an aromatic leaf, usually we boil it to get the scent out of it. Here in America, the leaves are a little hard to get a hold of, so the extract will do. I just put a hint of it, most of the flavor comes from the high quality vanilla and coconut milk. I toasted some coconuts too to add some contrast.

Citrus Roast Chicken

Yesterday was roast chicken for dinner. I just basically threw everything in the pot. I accidentally also bought salted butter the other day and finally found use for this sacrilegious culinary ingredient. I dunno what's been going on with my new sea salt, but it just doesn't seem to be salty enough. I doused this bird with melted salted butter. It was a really good idea coz the skin was crispy and just had enough saltiness and hint of lemon and orange. I took everything out later and made a thyme gravy. This is also because I accidentally opened that beef stock for the corn-pepper risotto the other day. Oh, with rice, just HEAVEN! Roast chicken really is one of those things that take love and patience. Very comforting right now too since the summer nights have been a bit cooler.

Strawberry cupcakes

I think I have just tasted the sweetest strawberries I've had in my whole life. This weekend, we went to the farmers' market at Clayton city. We were a bit late, about 10 minutes before they were gonna close late. The only thing I really wanted were strawberries because they were a request from Brian. I asked him what kind of cupcakes did he want for my new cupcake liners I just got in the mail and he said strawberry would be nice. I finally was able to make them today. I used my own recipe, I just don't know how much I like it. They turned out a bit more muffin like than cupcake, mostly because I was too lazy to wait for the butter to reach room temperature so I used vegetable oil instead. It tastes good, just not great. I think I should have followed my instinct of making a chocolate cupcake base rather than a vanilla cupcake base. The frosting is pretty good though, a bit rich, but it goes well with the strawberries. I did a cream cheese frosting for this one. I think this one goes to the trial bin, it's not my final recipe for this. I'll definitely try again. Maybe I will use buttermilk next time.

Chicken and Risotto

Tonight's dinner was Honey Balsamic Chicken w/ corn-pepper Risotto. I don't know what was up with the new tube of sea salt I got but it didn't seem like it was adding saltiness to my food, even with the parmigiano regiano, but i asked Brian if they were salty and he said both of them tasted they were just right on the salt side. I'm pretty sure I probably put A LOT! It just didn't seem like anything really got salted right away. It was a cook what's in the pantry type of deal today. I also stupidly grabbed a box of beef broth instead of chicken broth, so tomorrow, I have to figure out a way to use the beef broth I opened. I went to my mom's house yesterday and i remember that she just got corn and they've been very sweet lately. I've always eaten rice with corn, my mom used to make this soup with malunggay (horseradish leaves) and corn with a lot of garlic, and I used to eat that with rice and carabao milk. I kinda made a twist with that today in risotto form. I had a leftover red bell pepper so I threw that in as well. For the chicken, I got tarragon a few days ago but have been wondering what to do with it. It's a very mild herb, I don't use it too often but i wanted to veer off my common herbs I use, mostly coz i'm waiting for my herb pot to get lusher. Balsamic and tarragon seem to work really work together with the sweetness of the honey. I've officially used up my whole bottle so now I have to pick up another bottle at the market this weekend. Due to my salt issue today though, the chicken didn't seem to have enough salt. Inspired by my last trip to PPQ, I wanted a sweet and sour dip sauce for my chicken. So I pulled out the bottled sweet and sour sauce I had and mixed it with some honey, lemon and salt and it ended up making enough heat and tartness + sweetness for the chicken. The boys really liked it, and I got full from it real quick. This is comfort food so I think I'm going to keep this one in the arsenal.