Despite Ondoy....

The weekend promised to be fun filled -- but it did not keep its promise. While the original plan was to go swimming, as it had been quite hot the past few days, the plan got postponed first due to some unavoidable circumstances. So me and hubby decided to just take B to the zoo for the very first time. The only animal she can recognize at the moment are cats and dogs (aptly referrd to as "meow!" and "aw aw!").

So anticipating a great weekend, I hurriedly finished off deadlines and prepared for Saturday.

Then came a rude, unpleasant and always expected visitor by the name of Ondoy. Tropical storm Ondoy, brought forth a year's amount of rain in just six hours. Most of Metro Manila flooded, thousands of people displaced and I'm pretty sure damages to the millions.

So what was a mother like me to do? Nothing. I couldn't do anything except pray that my loved ones are alright. It was a very long event actually. Come to think of it, I got so impatient at that time that I even asked my hubby if we can go out and stay at the mall for a few hours just to pass the time. But sorry no can do. The streets were all flooded and the rain just wouldn't let up.

Sigh.

I looked around the house to check if there is anything at all that I can bake and lo and behold, I bought a box of Betty Crocker's Angel Cake. It was a sale item in SM Supermarket. Two boxes for the price of one. I looked at the box and asked myself, do I really want to make an angel cake?. I guess on a normal sunny day I would have, except that it just felt to awfully boring. I decided to experiment. It wasn't until the bars came out of the oven that I knew what I was doing.

I call it Angel Bars with Lemon Buttercream Filling. It was fairly simple to make. I got 517 g of Angel Cake Mix. I halved that, so it came to around 260 g of cake mix.

Ingredients:

For the bars:

260 g of Angel Cake Mix (Betty Crocker)

1 whole egg

about 80 g of butter; softened

For the filling

about 40 g of butter; softened

about 3 heaping tablespoons of icing sugar

juice from 3 kalamansi

Instructions:

Cream the butter. Mix in the cake mix. When everything is well incorporated, whisk in the egg. Beat thoroughly.

Decant onto two small baking tins. I used baking tins from a small oven toaster and popped those in my electric oven. Preheated to 200 C and baked them for 20 minutes.

Let bars cool before transfering to a wire rack.

For the filling, cream the butter and sugar. When both are incorporated, add the pure kalamansi juice and mix well. Place in the fridge to cool for about 30 minutes. After this time, you are about ready to set your bars.

Turn out baking tins onto a wire rack. Spread the filling on top of one un-cut angel bar, then place the other un-cut angel bar on top. Cover with baking sheet (like when you're wrapping a gift) and replace back in the fridge for 2 hours to set.

Cut, serve and enjoy!

French Toast Bites and Homemade Mango Jam

Inspired by Crystal's Cozy Kitchen, I decided to make my own french toast bites over Sunday morning. The day was a bit sunny, though It was still a bit dreary for me and I wanted nothing more than to just laze around the house, play with my daughter B and just snuggle under the covers with my husband M. Truthfully I didnt want to get up the bed. If it wasnt for my daughter needing to be fed her breakfast and vitamins, I would have loved to just mosy on back to bed.

So anyways, this breakfast is pretty easy to make. Though Crystal's Cozy Kitchen said that she usually makes french toast bites out of bread ends, well as the picture shows in my case, I didnt mind using any part of the bread loaf hehe..

What you will need:

Bread slices

Butter

1 whole egg

1/2 c of milk

Sugar

Cinnamon

Mango jam (recipe below)

So first, whisk up the egg, add the 1/2 c of milk and set aside. Cut up the bread into little squares or bite sized pieces. Soak up the egg and milk mixture using the bread.

Heat the pan, and melt the butter, about a tablespoon. When butter is melted and heated, place in your bread slices.

Fry about a minute and a half. I like my french toast a bit more toasty. When it's about toasted as seen in the picture below, you can flip to the other side and fry about a minute and half again, 2 minutes more if you so wish.

When you are finished frying, transfer to a plate and sprinkle with sugar cinnamon. You can also add vanilla to the egg and milk mixture. I would have, except that I ran out of vanilla so I settled for the sugar cinnamon.

Serve with mango jam or any other jam of your choice. The mango jam I used below in the picture is homemade. Thanks to eCurry's Spiced Mango Jam, I got a simple recipe for homemade jams/preserves.

What you will need:

2 whole pcs of ripe mango

4 tbps of sugar

cinnamon powder

1/4 c of water

Slice up the mango (any which way you want is ok). Place in a saucepan with cover. Pour the water, add the sugar and about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Let boil for roughly 30 minutes. It will turn syrupy and a bit thick. You can do the jam doneness test after 30 minutes and if you are satisfied of the outcome you can remove the jam from heat and let it cool inside the pan before you transfer to a sterilized mason jar or any glass bottle available. Since this jam doesnt have any pectin in it, you would be wise to realize that the jam will not sit for a long time, unlike commercial jams. So better use it all up in a week!. Anyways, the jam I was able to produce was only enough to fill up a Gerber Juice Bottle (which was what I used). Roughly 4 ozs. So Im pretty sure it's gonna get used up soon enough. I'm just glad my husband M liked it heeeheeee!!!

And last but definitely not the least, I would like to make known (to anyone who's reading my humble blog)...I would love to have me my own photographer's camera!..Imagine the world of beautiful still life I could picture. Haaaa...what a remarkable camera....Why did I add that to my post?..Nothing..just want to shout out!...ciao! I hope you will enjoy doing this as much as I did.

Sundays with a Chocolate Cake

If you remember my previous post about Effortless Sundays, you will remember that I wrote it was moot point to say that my Sundays are effortless. And to prove my point, here is a rusty-c (read as rustic) chocolate cake that I made for my daugther for lack of a better alternative to going out. Sunday was a bit rainy and windy in this part of the globe so to make up for a dreary and grim afternoon, all cooped up in our tiny abode, I baked a chocolate cake for her (and for hubby).

Rustic by one of its definition means lacking in social graces or polish, which is definitely what my chocolate cake is. Now I said rusty-c because my skills in baking when it comes to anything chocolate is really rusty, and by one of its definition it means inept and slow through lack of practice. The first times I baked with anything chocolate -- most of it ended up in charity. I had to call our barangay captain to assist in distributing cupcakes and brownies to charity just for my efforts to not get wasted and of course for the food to not be thrown away or get spoiled.

Anyways, as I mentioned, rather than sulking up in the rain and boring musings of a Sunday afternoon, I decided to make use of the last of my flour, the last of my butter, the last of my eggs in the pantry and just DO this chocolate cake.

And it turned out ok! In the words of the Little Einsteins " I caannnooot buh-lieve it!!!". So in my best efforts to capture my elated sense of accomplishment, I am posting my rusty-c chocolate cake and how it is made:

Preset oven to 180 degrees C.

a cup of flour

a tsp of baking powder

half a tsp of baking soda

a dash of salt

half a tsp of chili powder

half a tsp of cinnamon

90 g of butter

1 cup of chocolate bits (chips)

nuts for garnish

1 whole egg

milk

sugar

Melt chocolate ang butter in a saucepan over uber low heat. When both are incorporated, remove from heat. Set aside. Using a separate bowl, blend together all your dry ingredients. Beat in the eggs. Add about 3 tbps of sugar. Beat well. Slowly add a few amounts of milk to soften and even the consistency of your batter. When your choco butter mixture has cooled considerably, whisk this in to your batter. Beat well.

Transfer to a baking tin or to your ramekins. Pop in the oven for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I love that my daughter loved the cake...or she probably thought she didnt have any choice in the matter. Anyways, it was really good...hope you like 'em too!!