Author: Yelly

Taking each day one smile at a time!
Yelly Eats

Coffee and walnut brownies

Yelly

I am doing something yummy for money!

Our office is doing a week-long bake sale to raise money for Comic Relief.  Comic Relief is a charity based in the UK that was set up in 1985 that aims to raise money to tackle the root causes of poverty and social injustice.  The money that gets raised each year helps so many people and I enjoy doing my bit to contribute, albeit in a very small way.

I’m going to bring coffee and walnut brownies tomorrow.  It’s still chocolate but it’s got a distinct coffee taste that cuts through the chocolate quite nicely, or at least, I think so!  I love the recipe enough to share it.  I think this would be great with a cup of milky tea or, what else, coffee!  If you try the recipe, please tell me what you think!  I’d love the feedback.

Ingredients:Coffee and walnut brownies cooling
200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
175g butter
25g instant coffee granules
200g caster sugar
125g brown sugar
150g plain flour
100g walnuts, roughly chopped
3 eggs

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 170°C.
  2. Prepare a baking tray by greasing and lining with parchment paper and set aside.  I learned that when you grease the baking tin that you plan to use, it’s a good thing to also grease the parchment paper you line the baking tin with.  It prevents the parchment from sticking to the cakes and makes for easy removal.
  3. In a bowl, mix flour and choppped walnuts together, making sure that the walnuts are completely coated in flour.
  4. Place chocolate, butter and instant coffee granules in a heat-proof bowl over a sauce pan of simmering water.  Leave until melted completely but making sure you stir once or twice to make sure that everything is combined properly.  Remove from the heat once everything is melted completely and well-incorporated.
  5. In a free-standing mixer (this can also be done by hand or a hand-held mixer), mix sugars and egg and beat until the mixture is smooth and fluffy-looking.  I read somewhere that this usually takes about 5 minutes, but what I look out for is a change in colour, the batter becomes a paler shade of what you when you started to cream the sugars.  Pour chocolate mixture slowly into egg and sugar mixture and mix until everything is well-combined.  Add the flour and walnut mixture and mix until the batter is thick and smooth.
  6. Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  The top will look shiny and flaky.  Be careful not to over cook as the brownie can become hard and very chewy.
  7. This can make up to 24 squares, depending on how large your slices are.

Coffee and walnut brownies

Yelly Eats

Mango Love!

Yelly

Presenting (finally) the recipe for Mango Love!

I created this recipe to enter the Emerald Street Cupcake Challenge.  While I didn’t make the shortlist (I was disappointed, but I knew my recipe was more tropical than American), the whole process of creating and designing a cupcake was a very enjoyable and very delicious one!

This lovely golden cupcake is offers you a burst of tropical mango sunshine.  The twists of lime in the sponge, frosting and mango jelly are added to bring out the mango flavour.  The cupcake is moist and full of fruity mango sweetness.  The mango flavour theme continues in its golden yellow frosting.  It is topped with a heart-shaped mango jelly piece.  This luscious burst of tropical sunshine during the cold winter months that will have you reaching for another…and another!

Cupcake Sponge:P2100839
90g sugar
50g butter, unsalted
1 egg
180g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt
200g mango pulp
2 tbsp lime juice

Frosting:
300g icing sugar
80g butter
1 1/2 tbps lime juice
40g mango pulp

Mango jelly (for decoration, optional):
50ml hot water
80g mango pulp
1 tbsp lime juice
15g granulated sugar
1 packet gelatin

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 180°C
  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt until well combined with a balloon whisk and set aside.  In a small bowl, mix together the mango pulp and lime juice.  Set aside.
  3. In a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until this becomes fluffly and light yellow in colour.  About 5 minutes.  Add egg and mix until mixture is creamy.
  4. Add the flour mixture and mix until a heavy batter forms.  Add the mango pulp into the batter and mix for 5 minutes until the mango pulp is distributed well.  You may have to scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl to make sure everything is well combined.
  5. Spoon into a lined muffin tin.  Makes 8 – 10 cupcakes.  Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
  6. To make the frosting, cream butter and the icing sugar together.  Add mango pulp and lime juice until the mixture is creamy.  Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.
  7. To make mango jelly for decoration, mix hot water with 1 packet of gelatin until gelatin is dissolved, mix in the sugar, mango pulp and lime.  Allow to set (leave for about 4 hours for it to set properly) and cut into cubes or shapes and use to top frosted cupcake

This recipe makes 10-12 cup cakes.

Mango Love cupcakes

Yelly Eats

Love my Mango Love!

Yelly

Over a month ago, I saw an advert on The Stylist magazine about a cupcake competition.  The instructions were to create a cupcake made of a sponge cake base, frosting and decoration.  The prize was what attracted me the most: if you were in the top 5 finalists, you won a Kitchenaid artisan mixer, a copy of the new Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and the chance to attend a baking masterclass.  If you won, your cupcake would be sold in all the Hummingbird Bakery branches for 2 whole months.  To be honest, it was mostly the masterclass that I wanted to attend.  I wanted to attend classes so that I could improve my cupcake decorating skills.  They also said that you would learn baking skills at the masterclass and I was definitely up for that!  Any chance at increasing what I know about baking was a chance worth taking.  I already have a Kenwood chef so getting a Kitchenaid mixer would have been a wonderful bonus.

It was a cupcake challenge and I was definitely challenged!

I sat down and started reading up on flavours and looked at recipes.  I checked my baking notes and set about improving a cupcake recipe I already had.  I also knew that I had to create a flavour profile that was consistent with every bake.  So I tested and retested the recipe I had in my head and when I was happy with how the sponge tasted, I set about creating the frosting.  And slowly but surely, the cupcake that I imagined became not only an idea but a real, live cupcake!

I suppose I couldn’t have won the cupcake challenge because the brief was for the cupcake to embody Hummingbird Bakery’s American roots.  I think I was missing the Philippines and missing Philippine mangoes too much that it came out in the cupcake I created!  I called my cupcake Mango Love.  I said that the cupcake gave you a burst of tropical mango sunshine.  And it did!

I’m grateful for the experience, because it’s made me trust my baking instincts more.  I’m more confident about my baking and I know that my goal is now to constantly improve my baking.  This whole experience of putting together recipes and making sure the flavours were sound has encouraged me even more to bake and create.  I’m thankful to Hummingbird Bakery and to Emerald Street for issuing the challenge.  Even thought I didn’t win, when I look at the pictures I took of the cupcakes that I made, I still feel like, somehow, I won a prize.

The recipe will be up on the blog in the next few days! 🙂

Mango Love cupcakes

Yelly Eats

Easy-peasy cornbread V2!

Yelly

I did a slow-cooked joint of pork on the weekend.  I haven’t used my dry rub recipe in ages and I thought it was time I did.  I dusted off the dry rub recipe and had a critical look at ingredients.  I did a little tweaking and the pork turned out even better than I remembered.  The barbecue sauce that was made out of the leftover barbecue rub tasted even better as well.

But the dry rub recipe wasn’t the only recipe that experienced a few tweaks.  When one does a slow roast with barbecue sauce, the best accompaniment is cornbread.  I looked at my original cornbread recipe and I thought the flavours needed enhancing.  The new recipe has a better sweet-salty balance and I love my cornbread slightly crumbly and this new tweak added the right amount of crumble to my cornbread.

Here’s the tweaked recipe:

Ingredients:Cornbread

  • 200g polenta (fine ground)
  • 150g all-purpose flour
  • 120g sugar
  • 2 teaspoons  baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 280ml buttermilk
  • 80ml vegetable oil
  • 1 large egg

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 200C.
  2. Prepare 12 x 7.5 pan by lining with baking paper and greasing with butter and set aside.
  3. Mix polenta, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl with a balloon whisk until well-combined.  Set aside.
  4. Beat egg, milk and vegetable oil together until well-combined.  Add to polenta mixture in 3 parts.  Once liquid mixture and dry mixture has been mixed together completely, allow to sit for 30 minutes so that polenta can absorb the liquid.
  5. Place in oven and cook for 20-22 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
  6. This recipe makes 18-20 squares.
Yelly Eats

Cooking it slow and low!

Yelly

My favourite American food shows are Man vs Food and Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  Mainly because it gives me a lot of cooking ideas.  I think these 2 shows are entirely to blame for a phase I went through over  a year ago.  Mind you, I’m really glad that I went through this phase because I learned how to cook meats using a dry rub and I have my own recipe for a dry rub now.  I also learned the benefits of cooking meats low and slow – cooking them at a low temperature (about 130°C – 150°C) very slowly (at least 5 hours!).  This is excellent proof that good (and very tasty) things come to those who are patient!

Tonight, I dusted off my dry rub recipe (which is based on the Kentucky dry rub recipe) and cooked the pork shoulder that I bought yesterday (pork shoulder cuts were 50% off so I couldn’t resist buying it–I am a willing slave to food bargains!).  The recipe below will work for meats weighing between 1.75 – 2 kilograms and will work with pork and beef.

Ingredients:SlowroastPork1

  • 2 tablespoon cornflour
  • 1-2 teaspoons chili powder
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons paprika
  • 4 tablespoons sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon crushed chicken bouillon cube
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon cumin

Directions:

  1. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together.  I find that mixing it with a balloon whisk helps mix it properly and more efficiently.  Set a fifth of the powder aside to make barbecue sauce.
  2. Rub as much of the dry rub as you can onto the meat.  You can cook the meat as soon as you’ve finished rubbing the dry rub onto it, or for better flavour, leave it wrapped in cling film overnight in the fridge.
  3. Place the meat in a roasting tin and cover with foil.  Cook the meat in an oven preheated to 200°C for 15 minutes.
  4. After 15 minutes, turn down the heat to 150°C.  Cook at 150 for 4 ½ hours.  For the last 30 minutes, turn up the oven to 200°C and remove the foil and cook the meat uncovered.
  5. Allow the meat to rest covered with foil for 20-30 minutes before slicing.

SlowroastPork2

Yelly Eats

Pork shanks for dinner

Yelly

There is a Filipino dish called humba (hoom-ba) which I absolutely love.  My mum used to make it on Saturdays because my dad was teaching and would be away.  My dad is Jewish so we try to avoid eating pork when he is at home.  Because he teaches at graduate school on Saturdays and is away for most of the day, Saturday would be pork day.  My mum makes the most amazing pork chops and just thinking about them now is making my tummy rumble!

I am pleased to say that I can now cook humba and it’s a favourite because the cut of pork is one of the cheapest.  I love buying pork hocks and pork shanks because they’re so cheap and you get so much meat from them.  Humba has dried banana blossoms which can be purloined from oriental supermarkets.  When I cook humba I am transported to the Philippines and I am once again in my mum’s kitchen waiting for her to put the humba on the table (although I must say that my mum’s humba is still the best and my version of it pales in comparison!).

I went to the supermarket yesterday and found pork shanks.  I am someone who can’t resist a food bargain so I bought the pork shanks thinking I had banana blossoms at home.  I thought I was due another humba session.  But as I inspected my cupboard, I discovered that it didn’t have the banana blossoms that I thought were languishing behind cans of chopped tomatoes.  So after a little creative thinking, I thought if I cooked the pork shanks in tomatoes, it would work.  So I brought down a couple of cans of chopped tomatoes, I chopped onions, brought out the frozen chopped garlic, hunted my dried bay leaves down, and chopped up what was salvageable from the celery that I bought nearly 2 weeks ago!

I had my fingers crossed for how my little concoction would turn out and I was quite pleased at the flavour.  The base flavour was based on a Filipino dish called afritada which starts with sautéeing garlic, onions and tomatoes.  Because the pork was cooked slowly, the pork was meltingly soft.  Good things come to those who wait and slow cooking this was definitely worth the wait!  It was great served over couscous but would be great over rice or mashed potatoes too!  If you fancy trying the recipe, here it is:

Ingredients:pork shanks1

  • 1kg pork shanks (not deboned)
  • 2 400g cans of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 large onion chopped
  • 3 celery stalks chopped
  • 2 heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic
  • 2 dried bay leaves
  • ½ teaspoon paprika
  • ½ teaspoon cumin
  • 500-750 ml water
  • 1 pork broth cube
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions:

  1. In a large stock pot, heat the oil and sautee onions.  When the onions are slightly transluscent, add the chopped tomatoes, garlic, celery, broth cube, spices and the bay leaves.  Allow to simmer.
  2. Add the pork shanks and enough water to cover the pork shanks.  Cover and cook on low heat for 1 hour, turning pork shanks occasionally so that the skin doesn’t catch on the stock pot bottom.
  3. When the meat is soft enough, take the shanks out of the pot and debone them and return the meat pieces into the tomato sauce and cook for a further hour on low heat.  The deboning is optional but it will make it easier to eat later on and you can remove the skin if you want to make it less fatty.   Add salt and pepper to taste.
  4. When you are ready to serve, you can opt to slice the pork pieces into bite sized pieces.

pork shanks2

 

 

Yelly Writes

Hearts day post-mortem

Yelly

On February 14, I was woken up by 2 text messages: one from my mum and one from my big sister from another mother.  I crawled from under the toasty warm covers and read the text messages, smiled sleepily and then crawled back into bed.

Valentines Day was just another day, really, because I had loads to do work-wise.  I’m quite happy that work is keeping me busy because busy is always good.  I got home late because there was a staff meeting and I had to catch a later train.  The idea was to have take-away from my favourite Chinese take away.  But when I called the Chinese take away I was told they couldn’t do anything about delivering food to me until about 9PM.  I was exhausted so I wasn’t going to cook.  Settling for fried chicken wasn’t so bad.  At least I didn’t have to cook and the clean up after was a breeze!

Now, y’all must be thinking, awww what a sad Valentine’s day.  It wasn’t really.  I had a really productive day at work and learned new things, I managed to catch a train that got me home earlier than I thought I’d get home, and even though I didn’t get my Chinese take away (I was craving chow mein noodles!), I still shared chicken and chips with the person who knows me the best.  I’d say it was a good day.  After all, like Christmas, every day should be Valentine’s day.  We should all make an effort to make sure our lives are filled with love and romance and the appreciation of what our loved ones do for us.

However, I thought this photo was good to share: a picture taken at Covent Garden in London the Saturday before.  Things like these, they make me smile.  Romance is grand, aint it?

LOVECoventGarden

Yelly Writes

Customizing Bueno: Mi Piace Kate

Yelly

This gave me ideas about cleaning up the blog and making it look less cluttered. Changing my blog background was a great start. Reblogging this because I know it’ll help others who use the Bueno blog theme…and even if you don’t use the Bueno theme, the ideas are too good not to share!

Michelle Weber's avatarWordPress.com News

We all want our blogs and sites to feel like “us,” and there are tons of tweaks that can turn a plain ol’ theme into a bespoke web experience for the discriminating blog connoisseur. Last month, we looked at how one online mag transformed the Oxygen theme; today we’ll check out how one blogger took the third most popular theme on WordPress.com and built something entirely her own.

Say ciao to Mi Piace Kate:

Mi Piace Kate

“Mi Piace Kate” is Italian for “I Like Kate,” and we definitely do! Kate’s a graphic designer, cat aficionado, and handcrafting devotee who’s taken the free Bueno theme and run with it. Her blog is a stellar example of how some custom images and a $30 Custom Design upgrade can change a free theme into a million-dollar site that’s totally unique.

Take a look at the standard Bueno home page next to Kate’s:

Bueno Theme

If you…

View original post 661 more words

Yelly Eats

Ube!

Yelly

I’m working on an ube sponge cake recipe because I miss ube cake from the Philippines.  I particularly love the ube cake from Red Ribbon.  But because Red Ribbon hasn’t made it to this side of the Atlantic, I will just have to learn to make the cake myself.  I’ve always said that necessity is the mother of invention and it is absolutely necessary for me to have my ube cake fix!  I haven’t had a slice of ube cake since…I can’t remember.  It must have been over 5 years!

My first attempt seemed to go down pretty well.  The colour was great and the flavour was absolutely there.  The cake was spongy and light.

purple yam cake batter

I will have to make it again maybe next week (after the cake that’s currently residing in my cake box has been consumed).  I’ve got recipe improvements in my head already.  I’m sure the oriental store in Chelmsford will enjoy the fact that I’ll be buying another jar of ube jam next week!  Watch this space for the recipe soon!

Ube cake at last!

 

Yelly Writes

All done!

Yelly

I’ve been working on a secret project for a few weeks now.  It’s been quite frustrating because I couldn’t really blog, tweet or post anything about it on Facebook.  I’ve been wanting to be able to vent my frustrations but because of the nature of the project, everything had to be secret–and until now, there are elements of the project that still have to be kept secret.

I’ve found myself literally sitting on my hands to stop myself from talking about the project online.  There were days when I needed instant validation and wanted to take to social media to ask for people’s opinions.  I didn’t and that in itself was quite the achievement!  I’m not really good at keeping secrets…I will eventually let a secret slip somehow.  I’ve been quite pleased with myself really because I haven’t talked about it much.  I’ve only let my family know and of course, Alan, who has been helpful with ideas and suggestions.  It felt really good to be able to talk out my frustrations about this project.  We all need a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of.  Thank God for blessings like these!

Even without going into detail, I’m quite pleased that it’s finished (even though I can’t really talk about it!).  I’m quite pleased with the way everything’s turned out.  I am, to be honest, also very proud of myself.  I’ve actually started a project and finished it on time, and the result is exactly how I envisioned this when I was planning everything!  The discipline that I forced myself to stick to while working on this project is definitely going to be something that will help me in future.  I learned a lot about feedback and constructive criticism and taking the positive from every comment received.  The critiques reminded me of a Repertory Philippines workshop where we were taught that in everything, we had to learn to take the positive and not to let the negative affect us.

Working on this project has definitely bolstered my confidence!  My brother has indicated that what I had done was a winner and that’s always a good thing.  Family, while they will always fight your corner, can be your worst critics because they know what you are able to achieve.  I’m just hoping that other people share my brother’s enthusiasm!

I’m so sorry for all the vague references.  I will, eventually, be able to talk about all this and post pictures.  But I hope you’ll humour me and wait patiently with me (I will draw patience from y’all because I will probably fail this particular marshmallow test!) while I wait until I can talk about this!

Oh and keep your fingers crossed for me please! 🙂