sweet tooth fix in 3-2-1

here is a quick solution for your sugar cravings in the afternoon:  a single serve microwave cake.  i saw this post form nappykaye.blogspot.com and i have been itching to try it for days.  finally, i was able to conduct my experiment.

all you need is 2 packs of instant cake mixes – one should be always angel food cake, and the other one is your choice.  a microwavable mug, tablespoon, water and a microwave.

i chose chocolate cake mix for this batch.  i mixed the two packs at home, and brought to the office a small container of the pre-mixed mix. 🙂  here are my things:

microwavable mug + chopsticks/stirrer

cake mix – i used the container scoop to measure

now for the three special steps (just like agent oso 😀 )

measure three (3) tablespoons of cake mix into your mug.

add two (2) tablespoons of water.  mix them thoroughly.  make sure that you also get the sides of the mug.

put it in the microwave and cook on high for one (1) minute.

let it cool for a while, and then enjoy! 🙂

my chocolate cake!

you could also opt to add toppings like whipped cream, fruits or whatever.  i enjoyed my cake.  i might be making more of these in the coming days. 😉

2013 holiday cooking

i love cooking.  whenever there is an opportunity, i like to try out cooking new dishes especially during the holidays.  hubby asked me to do something different this year other than our usual carbonara and roast chicken dishes.  his request: lengua (ox tongue).  so i scoured the internet for a recipe that would be easy to do. 😉

lengua in mushroom sauce

we pre-ordered the lengua from the meat vendors in our local market.  it is a little bit pricey at around php 200.00 per kilo.  we had to reserve it early since there is only a limited number of tongue that they sell.  think about it, for one cow, there is only one tongue.  there is only so much that you can get for a day. 🙂

to tenderize the tongue, we had to boil it for a good 4-hours.  you can also use a pressure cooker if you have one.  after which we cleaned it to remove the “skin” and white film-like coating of the tongue.  it was then thinly sliced.  we also added salt to the boiling water during the latter part to flavor the meat.

i then pan-fried it in butter.  it was set aside for some time while i was making the sauce.  i just simply sauteed garlic, onions and button mushrooms in the oil that was used to fry the tongue.  then i added a can of cream of mushroom and evaporated milk and continuously stirred it until it had the right consistency.  it was seasoned with my tj’s everyday seasoning.  then i combined this with the fried lengua.  once the sauce was over the lengua, you would even guess that you are eating roast beef. 😀

chili

our next dish was the chili.  i have been cooking this for some time now since hubby loves the chili soup served by the soup kitchen.  it was just a simple combination of ground beef, tomatoes, red beans and bell peppers.  spices like chili powder and turmeric are also added.  we like to top it with a lot of cheese.  this dish can be eaten as an appetizer, side dish, viand, dipping in chips or added to taco and hotdogs. 😉

i bake cupcakes and/or cookies during christmas day and new year’s eve (cause those are the only days i have time… hihi).  for this year i made calamansi muffins and cookie butter chocolate chip cookies.

calamansi muffin

cookie butter chocolate chip cookies

i like the calamansi muffins which you get at the real coffee cafe at boracay.  so when i found a recipe like one from kitchen cow (which she got from pepper.ph), i decided to try it out.  you can see the recipe here: kitchen cow.

it was a good recipe for the calamansi muffin, although the original one had a little bit more zing from the calamansi flavor.  maybe the next time i do it, i will add a little bit more.  but that is for my own preference.  the other ones who tried the muffins said that they were good and flavored just fine.

i used the biscoff creamy cookie butter for my cookies (i prefer this over the tj speculoos).  the recipe was just a simple one that you do for chocolate chip cookies, cookie butter was just added to the batter.  the result were chewy cookies. 🙂  i used the regular cookie pan, and i also used muffin pans to bake them so we had cookies pretending to be muffins batches. 😉

i don’t know if these will become staple dishes in my menu, but i would like to learn more recipes in the coming months.  i will post whatever experiments in the kitchen i do come up with.

fusion lunch at home: chicken inasal + hainanese chicken rice

i love to do grocery shopping.  i love to cook.  so whenever there is something new that i spot at the grocery store, i make it a point to buy that so i could use it at home.  these are my latest finds:

mccormick rice cookers – hainanese chicken rice (grabbed from mccormick’s fb site)

trader joe’s everyday seasoning

mama sita’s inasal marinade (grabbed from http://www.philamfood.com)

we bought chicken leg-thigh parts and marinated it using the inasal.  as per instructions, it should be marinated for at least 3 hours, but for best results, overnight marinating is advised.  together with the marinade, i also added tj’s everyday seasoning into the mix.  we cooked the chicken using our trusty turbo broiler.

**i love tj’s everyday seasoning.  it is a combination of different flavors and spices which comes with it’s own grinder.  i use it with almost all of the dishes that i cook.  i bought this online at Lorena and Loreta.

the rice mix is easy to use.  it is said that it is good for 2 cups of rice.  the cooking instructions are pretty easy to follow especially if you will be using the rice cooker.  you just have to add the mix to your washed rice and let it cook at the cooker normally.  just remember to fluff the rice after it has been cooked. 😉

here are the results:

broiled chicken inasal

hainanese chicken rice

we liked the flavor of the chicken very much especially when it is still hot.  given that we marinated it for only 3 hours, it must be really better if we did marinate it overnight so that the flavors are thoroughly infused to the chicken.  the flavor of the rice complimented very well with our broiled chicken.

stay tuned for more of my holiday experiments. 😉

sinigang na corned beef

last week, i was feeling a little under the weather, so i decided to cook some sinigang na corned beef for our dinner.

i just used purefoods chunkee corned beef, string beans and sinigang sa sampalok mix.

any other tips on cooking this viand? =)