Little Bars Of Happiness And Sunshine

I admit, in the ignorance of my youth, I turned up my nose on lemon bars and other lemon-based desserts. I mean, it's a baked treat, for goodness' sake, why muck it up with tartness? [Silly me, what's sugar for?!] I remember buying a tiny bar in the office cafeteria, you know, try-try lang. Boy, was it SOOOO GOOD!!! So good that I bought four or five more. Okay, fine, aaminin ko na, seven bars! Seven more bars of  happiness and sunshine! But it was pretty expensive for something that was smaller than a matchbox. Fifteen pesos, if I remember it right. I saw a recipe in a local daily and tried it. It was by Crukitchen, and it was so easy to bake, and delicious, of course.

Crukitchen Lemon Bars

2 c all-purpose flour
1 c powdered sugar
1 c butter, melted
4 medium eggs
2 c white granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
¼ c all-purpose flour
½ c lemon juice
Additional powdered sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan and line with waxed paper. Grease waxed paper. (Or use nonstick baking paper.)
2. Combine flour, powdered sugar and butter in a bowl. Mix until very smooth and evenly yellow in color. Pat into prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until slightly golden.
3. In another bowl, whisk together eggs, white sugar, baking powder, flour and lemon juice until fluffy. Pour over the hot crust.
4. Return crust to oven and bake for 20-25 minutes more or until light golden brown. Let cool on a wire rack. Dust the top with powdered sugar then cut into bars.
  

Easy and Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake

Oo, nasunog ko ang gilid. What can I do, I'm torch-happy.

I practically cheated when I made this cheesecake, I should rename it the almost-immoral cheesecake. You know why? Because I basically dumped all the ingredients, save one, in the rice cooker pot, mixed the batter, switched it on, and let the rice cooker do the job. Then I took the credit!

This is very easy to make. At the risk of sounding like an insufferable know-it-all, let me just clarify that this isn't like the New York cheesecake, which is dense and creamy. This one is fluffy and more cake-like, hence lighter and not quite as tummy-filling as the New York variety but just as delicious. 

 Ingredients:
1 usual box of cream cheese
40 g cake flour
40 g white sugar
200 ml milk (or cream, if you prefer it creamier)
3 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice

Instructions:
1. Mix everything except for the egg whites, which I beat until stiff and then folded into the cheesecake batter. (Actually, it is the batter that should be folded into the beaten egg whites. But whatever.) You don't have to separate the yolk from the white and just mix everything at once. But I did -- I'm a fancy baker that way. LOL!
2. Turn on the rice cooker. Trust the rice cooker with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. Hehehe. When the light switches to "warm," do the toothpick test. If still uncooked, just turn the rice cooker back on.
3. Once cooked, remove the pot from the rice cooker and let it cool.
4. Place a plate on top of the cheesecake and flip it over.
5. To serve, you can eat it plain or with jam. I prefer to sprinkle some sugar, which I caramelize till it is golden.
 
Try not to cry when you see how beautiful, and taste how delicious, your cake turns out to be.

Love, 
TPS
Proponent of easy cooking and baking
"You lost me at the seventh ingredient."

Sharkteeth's Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies

A couple of years ago, I lost my cookie mojo. Ewan ko ba. Basta na lang tinamad ako, di ko nagustuhan ang output, etc. Come summer, Sharkteeth begged me to teach her how to bake. So here we are.

I just bought the ingredients, told her to follow the recipe at the back of the Tollhouse choco chip pack, and let her do her thing. Kaso may nakalimutan akong sabihin, which is to smell each and every egg before adding it to the ingredients. I was watching her mix the dry ingredients, to which she added an egg. Bago pa man bumagsak sa flour mixture yung egg, I was all [in slow-mo], "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Bulok yung egg!!! Hay nakowww, mananalo ako ng MotherBaker of the Year. Cardinal rule of baking, nay cooking, and I forgot to tell her. Buti na lang di pa mixed in yung butter and chips. Stop muna ang baking for the night -- we had to buy a fresh set of ingredients the next day.

Anyhoooo, baking proceeded smoothly the next day. I told S to add a teaspoon of instant coffee to the cookie dough, cut a quarter of the butter, and add another teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Cookie dough

I think the butter is still way too much, even if you're making soft cookies. But the addition of coffee and a teaspoon of vanilla made so much difference. If you are making a soft batch, transfer the cookies to a cooling mat. Leaving them on the baking pan will harden the cookies, as the pan is hot. I would have preferred to add macadamia nuts, but they are so difficult to find in this baking god-forsaken place.

Delicious output: soft batch

Well done, Sharkteeth! Cheesecake next weekend!

The baker

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm so lazy to post the recipe, so I'm just linking you to Allrecipes. I just modified the recipe a bit: a splash of milk here, more vanilla there, used only brown sugar, no semisweet chocolates? No problem, chopped up some Lindt dark chocolate bar no one wanted to eat because it's too bitter. Believe me, it's better than semisweet. It kinda reined in the sweetness. Baked it for 10 minutes, then left it in the oven to cool. Don't wait for it to harden---turn off the oven while the cookies are still soft. Yummy.

Carrot Cake

I am busy, busy, busy at work, and baking is one of my stress-busters, well, aside from mincing meat into tiny, miniscule bits when I'm pissed. So baking it was. What to bake? What to bake? After much trepidation, I summoned all my courage to bake a carrot cake. Whoa, a carrot cake?! Kaya ko ba 'yon?

I got the original recipe from Allrecipes, and it delivered! The cake was easy enough. However, as the cake was intended for guests, I felt that I need to ice it. I didn't think icing it would be difficult. Boy, was I W-R-O-N-G! In the first place, I couldn't find my icing tools. In the second place, cream cheese icing is way more difficult to spread than, say, buttercream icing. But I survived. Or should I say the cake survived. I wasn't planning on putting those fondant carrots (those are not orange fondant chillies, silly), but somehow, carrot cakes SHOULD have fondant carrots on top. They add nothing to the taste but certainly adds cheer, don't you think? I thought of buying those tiny baby carrots and putting them of top; it's just that the guests might not be prepared on biting a real, hard carrot when eating a cake and think of my cake unkindly. I digress. For the fondant carrots, I needed glycerine, which I don't have, so I just improvised with Caro syrup. I added a bit to confectioner's sugar, mixed it well till it became a firm ball, then added a few drops of food coloring (Ferna's egg yellow). As for the cake, here's the original recipe from Allrecipes.

Cake
4 eggs [I added another.]
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil [I used 3/4 cup of canola oil and 1/4 cup of butter.]
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans

Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans [I didn't add pecans.]

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. [I cooked it for and hour and left it inside till the oven cooled.]

Frosting

1. In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.

It's a bit sweet for my taste, but as what Sharkteeth exclaimed, it's very "carrot-ty." Very moist yet firm, as carrot cakes should be. The cake as it is makes a good companion for coffee; with the icing, it's perfect to cap a meal. Of course, there are a few things I'd tweak* next time, but it's great and I declare myself victorious.

*Decrease the shortening to just 3/4 cup and use a ratio of 1:1 canola oil to butter.
*Decrease the sugar to 1 1/2 cups and use brown.
*Use more butter and cream cheese for frosting.
*Find those damned icing tools!

I Finally Did It!

Guess what I did this weekend? I have been longing to do it since, like, forever, and yay for me, I finally did it!
If you're thinking boob job, so sorry. I couldn't afford it. Yet. These are mounds of dough under a wet towel. KG and I were chatting sometime ago about bread, of all things, and I think I mentioned that I want to bake a loaf of bread. Simple, right? Well, yes and no. The ingredients are fairly easy to find, and I have everything in the pantry. It's the waiting (for the dough to rise) that really taxed my patience. I say if you want to learn patience, go bake a bread. And the kneading, oh, the kneading---my arms are still sore. *cough, Babe, pink or lilac Kitchen Aid, cough* I find the outcome a bit jaundiced because of the eggwash (which I shouldn't have done in the first place), but the bread is soft and the crust is, hmmm, crusty. Plus, I think the oats I added on the crust provided a bit of character to the loaf. The outcome is pretty good, all things considered. The ironic thing is, I don't care much for breads.
My trusted assistant.Roast beef sandwich para sa miron.Lest I forget, I got the recipe from CDKitchen. I say, follow the instructions to the letter and it's gonna be okay.

Busy With Life

A gazillion manuscripts, a wake, two weddings, a mini-Gossip Girl, 17 gifts for 17 people I don't even know, not even one name, 300 cookies---these are just a few of the things preoccupying my week. I love Christmas, I really do. It's my favorite time of the year...more than my birthday even, but the month is packed not just with Christmas-related events but with, well, LIFE and all its accoutrements (and death, come to think of it), and I'm missing my bedtime by a few hours, and those few precious hours spell a huge difference in my sanity! Hmmmm, this is actually just a long-winded excuse for not posting, and I'm not likely to post again till Sunday. So I'm off to my short-term blogging sabbatical and going back to baking those 300 freaking cookies. Toodles!