#339_Ruffled Birthday Cake

I made this cake for a G'daughter who will be turning 12 in a couple of days.

The ruffles are made out of fondant.The white carnation flowers on top are also made out of fondant, but I've made them at my cake decorating class last year and so I thought I'd throw those in there since they also have frills.

Update: 2-19-12
For my friends on Facebook who asked me how to make the ruffles on the cake, I will try my best to explain how I did it with the help of accompanying pictures.

My sister sent me a picture of the ruffled cake a while back and I recently found the same picture on Pinterest. It took me awhile to figure out how it was done and then I finally came up with the idea on how to go about it using the technique on frilled carnation flowers which I learned in the fondant/gumpaste Cake Decorating class. Click here for a video on how to make carnation flowers.

First of all you need a fondant-covered cake ready and fondant for the ruffles.You can use the ready-to-use fondant, but I used the home made marshmallow fondant.

You also need all these tools pictured above: non-stick rolling pin, scallop cutter, brush, veining tool, sponge and dusting pouch pouch. (Gum Paste and Fondant class helps)

Roll out a piece of fondant very thinly and cut out strips using the scallop cutter. I cut the strips narrower than the size of cutter.

I cut the irregular-cut ends with pizza cutter or you can also use a pair of scissors to do that.

With the veining tool, make the frills on the scalloped edges just like you would with the carnation flowers by holding the small end of the veining tool like a pencil, press heel down at the scalloped edges and pull out to form frills. (Here's a video on how to make carnation flower, click here.)

Using a brush, wet the unruffled side with water, I attached the ruffles around the side of cake starting from the bottom then made my way to the top edge of cake.

The ruffled cakes I saw on Pinterest, the ruffles were either facing upward or drooping. I like mine to be straight out so I used these toothpicks to prop up the ruffles to stay straight out and then I removed the toothpicks when the fondant dried up and hardened. But I'm sure there's got to be an easier way to do this without using all these tooth picks tho and professional cake decorators for sure have an easier way to tackle this design.
If you find another way of doing this, please share it with me. Thanx!!

#338_Spanish Bread

Spanish Bread...
another popular kind of bread that Filipinos enjoy.

Why are these called Spanish Bread? I have no clue except maybe it is the same way how we call the "French Bread" here in the States as such even though there is nothing French about them.

As I was making some of the Lion House Dinner Rolls the other day (see post #336), I decided to use the other half of the dough to make some Spanish Bread to see how my G'kids would like them. To my surprise, all of them liked the bread! Our 15 year old g'daughter ate 5 of them, and she would have eaten more if she wasn't worried about gaining weight. Ohhh, so good!

As I mentioned on the Lion House Dinner Rolls post, the similarity between the two breads is the buttering and rolling up the dough. And the obvious difference is the shape. Spanish Bread are longer and skinnier while the Lion House Bread are short and puffy.

Aside from using the Lion House Rolls dough recipe to make the Spanish Bread, you can use any kind of soft dough recipe such as the Ensaymada, click here or Sweet Dough, click here, or even Pan de Sal dough, click here;

I remember back in the Philippines the bakeries over there used "mantekilya" or Star Margarine for the filling.

Shaping the Doughs:
The dough is formed into small balls, then rolled out into about 3"x5", slather the flattened dough with margarine and sprinkle some white sugar.


Starting from one corner, roll up tightly to the opposite corner and you'll end up with doughs looking like the picture above.

Arrange the rolled up doughs on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet with seams facing down. Let the dough rise until double in size. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degrees oven for 15-18 minutes.

Some bakers use bread crumbs on top, but I just brushed the bread with melted butter and sprinkled them with white sugar like you would ensaymada.

ENJOY!!!

#337_CTR Sugar Cookies

How to make CTR design Sugar Cookies

If you don't have a shield-shape cookie cutter just take one of your metal heart shape cookie cutters and re-shape it using a pair of pliers. You don't even have to do anything to the pointed bottom of cutter....its already perfectly shaped.

With a printed out CTR logo, cut out the letters and use that to make an imprint on the cookies. Using some sugar sprinkles, fill the cut outs with sugar sprinkles.

#336_Lion House Dinner Rolls

Lion House Dinner Rolls of different shapes
made in my humble kitchen.....

they are nice and fluffy...and yummy!

Lion House Pantry is located in downtown Salt Lake City and is famous for their pastries and bread. According to an article, click here, every year for Thanksgiving, they make 11,000 pies, 75,000 cookies and 65,000 dozens of dinner rolls. Yes, DOZENS! Amazing!! that's a lot of rolls!

These legendary rolls are sold for $6.00 per dozen at their bakery/outlets, but of course it costs less than $3.00 for 20-24 pieces if made at home and they made it possible for us to make them ourselves by sharing their recipe and procedure online.

Just a side note: These rolls remind me of our own Filipino bread called "Spanish Bread". The concept of brushing the rolled out dough with butter then cutting it into smaller pieces, and rolling up each piece is the same, however, the main difference is that we sprinkle white sugar on top of the butter before rolling them up and then brushing the top of the baked bread with more butter or margarine and finish it with sprinkling white sugar and/or bread crumbs on top.

As you can see, I need to practice more on rolling up the doughs,
but as imperfectly shaped these are,
the taste is Heavenly! and they are pillow soft.




Picture of the Lion House signature dinner rolls
as they appear on a cover of one of their books.

Their recipe and procedure is on the net, so I will direct you to their site.
For recipe and tutorial step-by-step procedure on shaping the rolls click on the links below:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=204&sid=1333738

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8wPowCbtbo

Note from MaMely:
As always, I used my bread machine to make the dough for these rolls where I let the machine do the mixing and kneading, then I do the fun part. The original recipe doesn't ask for vital wheat gluten and dough enhancer, but for some reason I can't part from my secret ingredients and so I did use them. I also used 1 Tb + 1 tsp of Saf instant yeast and used more flour than suggested on their recipe. As you know when making bread, we get different results from baking them from one area to another even from a kitchen to another kitchen. So, if you think you need to make some adjustments on the liquid or flour, don't be disappointed because that happens.

The Lion House, Salt Lake City

Update: 1-29-12

While I was making some of the Lion House Rolls the other day, I decided to make Spanish Bread with half of the dough to see if our G'kids would like them. To my surprise, they did! in fact our 15-year old G'daughter said she ate 5 pieces and would have eaten more if she wasn't concerned about gaining weight.

Spanish Bread are rolled like Croissant rolls.
When baked, they are brushed with melted margarine and sprinkled with white sugar.

#335_Fried Wonton

These are deep fried wontons

My Fried Wontons and my Fried Lumpia Shanghai share the same fillings. The difference between the two are the appearance or the style in wrapping them and the wrappers used...."wonton skins" for the Wontons and "lumpia wrappers" for the lumpia. They are both wrappers but the wonton skins are thicker than the the ones for lumpia.

Wonton skins are available in both regular stores and Asian stores, but there's hardly a regular store that carry Lumpia Wrappers so you have to make a trip to an Asian store if you want to use them.

For Fillings, click on the link below....
http://pinoyamericanrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/04/lumpia-shanghai-or-eggrolls.html

There are many different ways to wrap and fold wontons.

Here's a link which gives you different styles
of wrapping and folding wontons, click here.

For the style I used to fold my wontons, click on the link below.
http://www.chow.com/food-news/55419/how-to-fold-dumplings/

Steamed wontons

A famous restaurant here in Salt Lake serves these as an appetizer. Actually the owner came on a tv show one time and showed how they make them at his restaurant. They steam these wontons for about 10 minutes then pan fry them in oil. (Some cooks drop the wontons in a boiling water).

Here's the finished product of the pan-fried steamed wontons.

After steaming, they are drained on paper towels, then fry them in hot oil.... just heat a little oil in a frying pan, then fry the steamed wontons. That's the good thing about steaming them first, you don't need a lot of oil to fry them.

Whether these are deep fried or pan fried, they are always a hit whenever I serve them at family gatherings.

For homemade Dipping Sauce or Saw-sawan recipe, click here.

Enjoy!!

Christmas Treats 2011

#334_Left-over Holiday Foods

Wondering what to do with your leftover ham and turkey from the Holiday dinners?
Here's a couple of ideas that I did with our left-over meat
a few days after the Thanksgiving dinner.

Turkey and Ham Sandwich with Provolone Cheese

For Thanksgiving I like to buy the biggest turkey I can find in the store so that we will have left over roast turkey to make sandwiches.

This year one store had a very good deal on the turkey, (I thought). I got the 22-lbs. tom turkey which I only paid 8 dollars for it. To get that deal I had to purchase $35.00 worth of groceries (excluding the 8 dollars for the turkey) and four 12-packs of coca-cola products for $10.00. The only downside was that I had to buy some stuffs I didn't really need for the dinner. So when you think about it, it's not that a good deal after all. Oh, well it's holidays....

Sorry I got side tracked....Okay, here's what you can do with the left-over turkey meat:

1) Slice or shred the meat. It doesn't really matter how you slice the turkey. When you pick the meat you'll end up with shredded meat anyway.
2) In a pan melt some butter and toss in meat. Sprinkle some spices: i.e. salt, Mrs. Dash or garlic powder or celery salt or Season-All or whatever spice you're in the mood in; cook until the meat is heated through.
3) For the bread, use sliced sandwich bread or French bread rolls. I love the French bread kind because they are crusty on the outside. Butter the sides and grill them whether in toaster oven or pan grill.
4) Spread some mayonnaise on one side of bread
5) Now it's time to pile up those meats....if you want to put a piece of lettuce leaf...go ahead. If you want to put a slice or two of ham, go ahead....then pile them turkey meat.
6) Put at least 2 slices of Provolone cheese or Havarti cheese.
7) This is optional....at this point I like to put this sandwich under the broiler and grill until the cheese is melted.
8) Now you can top the sandwich with the other half of bread and enjoy!
Simple, but soooo yummy!!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Ham and Cheese Omelet

In this omelet, I used 2 eggs and grated Havarti cheese.
You can also add some sliced green peppers, sliced chives and whatever you like in it.
Check out how Emeril Laggasse makes his omelet, click here.

Most Americans will pair this omelet with hash brown potatoes, but for Pinoys, me in particular, I eat this with garlic fried rice.....Mmmmm, Yum-O!!

You can also make a sandwich out of this omelet........

Enjoy!!

#333_Italian Meatballs Sandwich

As you already know, we always associate tomato sauce with Italian cuisine.
It is therefore appropriate that I use the word "Italian" to describe this sandwich
because its filling is made with meatballs simmered in tomato sauce.

I will skip the making of meatballs part as I already have a post on
"How to Make Meatballs" (click here).
What I will share with you here is how to make the
Tomato Sauce with Meatballs and how to assemble the sandwich.

Meatballs in Tomato Sauce recipe:

3 Tbsp. olive oil or canola oil
1 small onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
4-cans (14-1/2 oz. each) whole peeled tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup water or broth fresh basil, crushed
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
Cooked meatballs (click here).

Cooking Directions:

In a large sauce pot over medium heat, heat oil then saute garlic until fragrant. Stir in onions; saute until translucent then add the tomatoes including its juice. Add salt, liquid, and basil, brown sugar and the meatballs. Put lid on and lower heat to low, then...let this sauce simmer for 1-2 hours, stirring once in a while. (Or you can use a crock pot and cook it all day). That's the secret of a good tomato sauce, for use in either pasta or for meatballs, it's the slow and long cooking time.

Before assembling the sandwich....
Slice some vegetables such as red and greed peppers and onion and saute in butter. And one important part of making this sandwich is to use a good crusty bread such as French bread. I also love to use Pan de Sal rolls to make bite-size sandwiches and they are absolutely the best.

To assemble the sandwich....

1) Pre-heat broiler.
2) Slice bread in half and spread some butter or better yet, Garlic Butter, then put them under the broiler, about 1-2 minutes.
3) Place sliced Provolone or mozzarella cheese on the one half of bread

4) Spoon some Meatballs with tomato sauce on the cheese, then top with the sauteed veggies.

Optional:

This is what I do with mine....put the sandwich back under the broiler and grill just until the cheese is melted.

Update: 11-29-11

Here's my Pan de Sal with Meatballs

Ohhh, Yum-O!!

Notes from MaMely:
How to make Garlic Butter: here's the link, click here.
For Pan de Sal recipe, click here.

#332_Chinese Broccoli ( Gai-lan)

Chinese Broccoli......

that's the tag that was on this particular vegetable at the Asian store. If you're like me who is not familiar with it, you would wonder if it was just mistagged because it doesn't resemble broccoli at all except for the stems; then the leaves look more like collard greens than broccoli.

A Chinese lady who was scrutinizing every single leaf of a bundle said that they call it "Gai-lan" in Chinese and raved about how good it is when cooked. She actually told me how she prepares and cooks it, but I just couldn't follow it. I only understood that it is so delicious and she steams the stems then combine it with the cut up leaves to cook....she got me so excited and bought a bundle to make some stir-fry.

I broke off the stems from the leaves then steamed them,
then I decided to make stirfry just like the
Beef-Broccoli with Cashews recipe #231, click here,
except I didn't think that I needed to steam the leaves part, so I didn't.

I thought the stir fry came out really good, with the leaves still vibrant green and all, but I was a little bit disappointed though because the leaves have a bitter taste. And so I thought that mixing in some left over "Broccoli Stirfry" that I still had from last week will improve the taste, but it didn't. Something went wrong....I probably didn't cook it properly in the first place.
Now, I'm not sure if I really like it that much after all....

#331_Beef-Broccoli with Cashews

I recently learned that consuming broccoli regularly prevents cancer or even fight cancer, click here. Since then I've decided to eat broccoli more often and I have been looking for different quick ways to cook it other than just steaming then tossing them in butter.

A friend of mine suggested that I put a piece of ginger root when making a broccoli stir fry. Another one suggested that I toss in some cashew nuts.

When I made this stir fry today, I combined the ginger and the cashew nuts. O-M-G!!! you oughta try it and be the judge!

Here's the recipe:
(Ingredients are just guesstimates)

Prepare the meat....
1-1/2 lbs. beef sirloin, thinly sliced, then marinate in:
1 ladleful of Yoshida sauce or Oyster Sauce
6 cloves garlic, peeled then crushed
freshly milled Peppercorns
2 Tb apple cider vinegar
Marinate sliced beef for at least 2 hours up to overnight.

Ingredients for the stir fry...
1 lb. broccoli
about 1 inch-2 inches ginger root, julienned
1 to 1-1/2 cups of broth
1 ladleful of Yoshida sauce or Oyster Sauce
1/2 cup Cashew nuts
3 Tb. Canola oil or Sesame oil
1/4 cup Cornstarch plus enough cold water to dissolve it

Cooking preparation:

1) Blanch or partially steam broccoli, then cut them into florets.

2) Drain beef in a colander, set aside.

3) Heat some canola oil in a wok and flash fry cashew nuts. Drain nuts in paper towels.

4) In the same wok, (put some more oil if necessary), on high heat, stir-fry the marinated beef with the ginger root, until the meat is no longer pink. Cover and lower heat and let it simmer until it is almost dry, and the meat has rendered its own fat, stirring once in awhile.

5) Turn heat down to medium low then add broth and Yoshida sauce to the meat, cover and let it simmer for about 3 minutes. Take out meat and transfer onto a bowl.

6) Turn heat up to medium high.To the sauce, add the steamed broccoli and stir-fry for about 2 minutes. Push the broccoli up to the side of the wok (or transfer it to a bowl) and stir in the cornstarch that has been dissolved in cold water to the sauce; continue to cook until sauce is thickened.
7) Combine the broccoli and the meat back into the wok with the thickened sauce and mix until well blended.
8) Sprinkle the cashews on the stir-fry before serving.

Best served over hot steamed rice.

This is not the usual Chinese way to stir fry the beef. In most Chinese stir fry recipes, the meat is only tossed in hot oil for about 2-3 minutes and they call it done, but if you want the meat to be well done and tender, this is the best way to do it.

How to steam broccoli: (I steam the whole head of broccoli then cut into florets)
Cut the stems off the broccoli. If you are not using a steamer basket, you can use a pot with an inch of water and about teaspoon of salt. Bring water to a boil, then put the whole head of broccoli and the stems in the boiling water, cover and steam until they are half done about 3-4 minutes. You want your broccoli to be crispy and vibrant green and not over cooked so the nutrients are not destroyed. Let them cool, then cut broccoli into florets. Peel skin off the stems and slice into diagonal.

How to blanch broccoli:
http://revolutionarychefs.com/index.php?Itemid=173&option=com_rapidrecipe&page=viewrecipe&recipe_id=152