Good for You Cookies

When you think whole wheat or something healthy, you’re mind wouldn’t automatically think oh cookies! However, many years ago I stumbled upon Heidi Swanson’s blog 101cookbooks and I was instantly smitten. Imagine my joy when she released a book called Super Natural Cooking; it’s a compilation of what’s in the blog and then some. Don’t let the label “healthy” or “veggies” or god forbid “whole grains” turn you off. Once you get over the labels, you would actually see that healthy doesn’t always mean tasteless or it has alien sounding ingredients. What I like about having this book even though I already read her blog is that there is this whole chapter where she explains each ingredient what is it for and how to use it. Being a very visual person I appreciated the fact that there are a lot of pictures, I mean I have to be honest I think without those gorgeous yummy pictures, you wouldn’t see me near that book without a 100 meter stick. This book has a lot of “healthy” meals compared to the ratio of “healthy” desserts however don’t be discourage because the lists of savory items to eat are indeed promising too. This book is full of those must try in the future thing.

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake

Next to chocolate, cheesecake is one of my favorite dessert. However, I must admit cheesecake and I never seen eye to eye, most of the time I get that soggy crust even though I wrapped the bottom of my springform pan with aluminium foil. I even double wrapped it but still leaky bottom. Fed up with the soggy bottomed cheesecake, I switched to using a standard cake tin instead of the springform pan and it works! No more soggy crust! I just have to make sure that the cheesecake is really really cold inside out, before trying to remove it from the cake tin. If not totally chilled, it might split in half when trying to unmold it and we wouldn't want that right? Though will still taste excellent I'm sure but for presentation purposes no cracks are ideal.

Boozy Banana Cake

A perk that I get living here in a very tropical country are the abundant tropical fruits, like mangoes and bananas. Bananas are available all year round so they are quite affordable and most often we got bananas at home. Some times way too much, like last week's batch of bananas got a bit too ripe before we were able to fully consume the whole bunch. Banana loaf is a nice way to use up all the over ripe bananas but then after weeks and weeks of using the same recipe, my family gets tired of it and don't actually eat it. Off to the drawing board I go aka the Internet! Ha! I surely cannot imagine what I would do without the Internet while food surfing I stumbled SugarPunk who made a Banana Rum Cake from Jill O'Conner's first book. I actually had this book and remembered bookmarking a lot of must try from this but alas my book was ruined, so when I saw a mouthwatering picture of a Banana Rum Cake from this book, I thought it's should be good. Another plus is that I have all the ingredients readily available in my cupboard. Though I don't actually drink liquor, I like cakes with liquor, it makes cakes soft and moist and liquored cakes makes me think of Christmas. Liquored cakes are very popular here during the holidays and my favorite is a Rum Cake. I hate bananas however boozy this banana rum cake gets I can still taste the bananas, it's really not my cup of tea. My brother and mom likes it though, so I still make banana cakes whenever. The shinny pecans on top of the cake looks so yummy makes this ordinary cake look so chic and sophisticated.

Oreo Truffles

It's summer here in Manila and we are experiencing El Niño, 35C (95F) is our hotest recorded temperature and the summer barely started! Any logical person would probably not try to make any candy or any chocolate confection that is suceptible to heat. Its very apparent I'm not part of those few logical people. El Niño or not, I wanted to try making Oreo Truffles ever since I saw some gorgeous truffles in Food Gawker

A Daring Oops...

For the month of February, the Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Aparna of Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose a heavenly Italian dessert called Tiramisu.

The challenge required us to make our own mascarpone cheese. For most of the DBer it was easy but for me now that I think of it, I think that's where I made the mistake. I didn't cook it long enough so it didn't set as much while it was cooling. This requires you to make a zabaglione and a pastry cream, no raw eggs here so everything is safe to eat. No need to be afraid of salmonella here. Since I love chocolates, I decided to make it into a chocolate zabaglione, to make it more sinful. Making all this preparation for the assembly to the Tiramisu is quite messy or was it just me? Haha...while the mascarpone, zabaglione and the pastry cream chilling in the fridge. I got tons of washing up to do! I hate washing dishes!

New Gadget!

Last night, I went to the mall to accompany my friends M and R. Before we head home, we stop by the kitchen area of the mall and as I was browsing I spotted on these Progressive Measuring Spoons/Cup Set, on Amazon for a while now, I almost bought it online if it weren't for the absurd amount of money I had to pay to have it shipped here. When I saw them last night I was like OMG! and quickly grabbed them. I was so giddy and happy that the sales person was amaze to see a person so happy on spotting on some measuring cups! Ha! I actually didn't care. I found these cups amazing with lots and lots of different measurements from itsy bitsy 1/32 tsp. to as big as 2 cups! Wow amazing absoultely amazing. I can't wait to use these on my next baking session. ^_^