Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I now this cake doesn't look Asian much less Chinese but please don't kill me! I have a valid reason I didn't have enough time to make a special cake for this occasion was busy in my Wilton class that I just use the cake I decorated in class.

It's pretty right? YES

taste good? Na too sweet for my family so we just scrap off the pretty roses

Wilton Course 1 (Day 2)

In our last day in class we get to do Roses, Calyx, shell borders, dots, ribbons(damn loops!), everybody's favorite clowns, bear and etc. It was better today still more washing tips and pastry bag, but had so much fun. I got the chance to make buttercream roses which what I have always wanted to do for such a long time now I know how. Haven't perfected it but in my eyes they are so pretty! I'm so exited to try this again!

Since Living Well where the Wilton class was held also sells wilton products we get to have a 10% discount on wilton items. We were like kids stuck inside a candy store! so much to buy and so many wants...so little cash ;) I got myself a LOT!

1. Meringue Powder, I got the biggest one because they don't have stock of the small one and anyway chef said it's very useful for us specially our weather here is very humid and less dangerous specially with royal icing since you wouldn't want to consume raw egg whites.
   
2. Clear Vanilla Extract so that my white buttercream will stay white
3. Tip Saver to save all those expensive tips when they get crooked
   
4. 6 in. Lollipop Sticks plan to make that lollipop cheesecake that I missed in the DB challenge last year
5. Ultimate 3-in-1 Caddy finally went ahead and splurge and got this! I've been eyeing on it for such a long time. I was waiting for it to go on sale which didn't happen before.
   

To top it off I've made a new friend Ann who was gracious enough to keep my purchases since I'll be commuting home and can't carry all those stuff. I'll just ask our messenger to get my purchases from her house in China Town. Oh how I love being Chinise here almost every Chinise person I know aside from me lives there.

Thanks! Ann

Will I be taking Wilton Cake Decorating Course 2??? You'll just have to wait and see. My credit card is sooo max out now I charged everything! the class and all toots!

Awww...my vacation is over and back to reality and work tomorrow

Wilton Course 1 (Day 1)

I've been waiting for this day for almost 3 months now, finally it's here and it's worth all the wait. As regular readers of this blog might see that I'm a die hard wanna be cake decorator and what better way to learn than from the best! Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 at 8,500 pesos (approx. $180.00) doesn't come cheap though so I really thought hard whether or not I'm gonna take this and finally made up my mind and gave it a go.

I'm actually not new to cake decorating about 2 years ago I took Heny Sison's Cake Decorating Course 1 too, the difference I think is the technique and some parts taught in the Wilton class I didn't learn before. The techniques are much more presice and the instructor explains it very well the reason behind the particular angle and stuff, which is nice.

Our class was taught by Chef Jackie Po and she made the class lively and fun. She gave alot of tips what NOT to do, which is quite nice. Those are stuff you don't get out of a book. What I liked about is class is also the fact that the number of students are quite small so the instructor can easily go around and see one by one how you are progressing and I also like the fact that I have tons of space to put all my stuff. In this class most of the materials are provided in the Course 1 Student Kit which also includes an instruction manual on all those angles and stuff which is quite nice since it's helpful when we want to apply what we have learned in the class. The only thing i didn't like about the class is that they are hesitant to let as borrow pastry bags and tips because they are afraid we might take them home or they just don't like to wash them, I'm not sure. This is a big deal for me because we waste precious time washing those greasy bags instead of concentrating and practicing our piping. We had so little time...look I didn't even get to finish my rainbow cake.


I hope tomorrow I would do better...Wish me luck!

Peppermint Brownies

One of the reason why I love Christmas season is because I get to eat and drink my favorite Starbucks' seasonal treats which are the peppermint mocha frappe and the peppermint brownies. However, last year for some reason all the peppermint treats are gone???

What the??? What the h*** happened??? WHERE ARE MY PEPPERMINT BROWNIES!?! NOOOOOO.......

Clearly you can see I LOVE my peppermint brownies.

I'm lucky not to be one of those people who have an aversion with the peppermint chocolate combo. I'm also lucky that I happed to dropped by King Arthurs Flour's blog and guess what they made? GUESS!!!

Yeah! you guessed it correctly! PEPPERMINT BROWNIES!

I was so excited that the first thing I did after my dinner last night was make these! The brownie base was quite simple to make just a mixture of butter, flour, eggs, cocoa powder, baking powder and of course the peppermint oil. Luckily, I tend to hord baking ingredients so I've got peppermint oil in my pantry.

The batter seems a bit thick but in a 9x13 inch pan it thought the batter wouldn't be able to cover the entire pan, but I have managed to squeeze it in. The mint frosting is a bit on the sweet side even though I only used 2 cups instead of 3 cups. Where's the glaze you might ask? Well.... just call me Ms. Lazy and besides I was too exited to try this I didn't have the patience to make glaze. Don't worry because even without glaze they still taste great! I would prefer a thicker brownie base aside from that it's perfect!

Recipe can be found at King Arthur Flour.

Powdered Doughnuts

In Manila, there are tons of new food related magazines that are coming out catering to all sorts of people.

Appetite Magazine - like what's in and what's not in the food scene.

Food Magazine - was my favorite before it was fun, modern and easy to follow however they turned it into those who specialized in delicacies of every little island we have in the Philippines! Which is great however I'm not into making those because they are hard to recreate, I'll just buy them :D

Foodie Magazine - is what Food magazine was before .... why not get that? Well, I got turned off with the ABS-CBN because when the changed their magazine format they didn't bother to inform us subscribers that they'd be changing the format . As soon as my subscription was over, I went out and look for a new love which happens to be Yummy Magazine.

Yummy Magazine - for me this magazine is what I have been looking for great photos, great recipes and such a glorious layout and still very informative. It's hip and modern too!

Like most foodies we tend to collect and collect and we have that must do recipes, but as time passed by we tend to forget. I like Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice 's idea of hosting the Magazine Mondays, wherein every Monday, she cooks or bakes something from a magazine.

I must admit ever since I saw that post about a year ago I HAVEN'T been doing that, until this recent January/February issue of Yummy magazine all things change. When I saw the DIY Yummy Idea section where they have a recipe for yeast raised doughnuts I'm hooked! I just have to make that. I don't know what it is I mean I've seen a lot of yeast raised daoughnut recipe and those recipes didn't compel me unlike this one did.

The first thing I notice with this recipe is that it uses cake flour and all purpose flour, which I'm thinking to make it soft which I can clearly feel when kneading the dough. Shaping it was a lot of fun too! What I didn't like was the frying! I don't know how to fry!!! I couldn't tell is they are done inside and out. While I was frying my doughnuts I'm panicking, they seem to be browning too quicky and is it normal to be smoking too much?

After 5 DOA, 3 injuries and several survivors, our kitchen was full of smoke luckily the alarm didn't go off and I smelled like smoke too! After all that commotion, I felt too tired and drain to make the chocolate glaze, I took the lazy and easy way out :D I just dredge them in powdered sugar! Hmmm...so inadvertently I made a Powdered Doughnuts.

They are sweet, soft and yummy...what more can you ask for?