Category: Yelly Eats

Everything and anything about food, cooking, baking, and recipe-testing

Yelly Eats

Food for the gods, a Filipino tradition

Yelly

I grew up enjoying food for the gods during Christmas and I always thought that it would be such a complicated recipe because, well, at the time, you couldn’t exactly buy the ingredients from your local supermarket.  It was such a treat when people gave us a box of these lovely sweet treats and I remember when we were handed one each after dinner so that we could make it last.  This was before my Lolo Ani opened a bakery and started baking these in huge quantities and we had food for the gods on tap every Christmas!

Food for the gods are really date and walnut bars.  I don’t really know why they’re called food for the gods, maybe because they are scrummy and so wonderfully to eat!  I’ve tried several recipes and after a few tweaking exercises, I may have cracked it.

I brought this to work today so that I could share it with my officemates.  I am merely continuing the Filipino tradition of giving away food for the gods at Christmas!

Here’s my recipe:Food for the gods aka date bars

Ingredients:

150g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
225g brown sugar
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g walnuts, coarsely chopped
150g dates, coarsley chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 175°C.
  2. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder together with a balloon whisk until well combined.  Add walnuts and dates and mix with a spatula until the dates and nuts are well-covered with the flour mixture and well-distributed within the flour mixture.  Doing this will ensure that the dates and the nuts do not sink to the bottom of the mixture.
  3. In a mixing bowl (am using a free standing mixer but you can also do this by hand with a balloon whisk), combine melted butter and sugars and beat until the mixture is smooth and almost creamy.  Add the eggs one at a time, making sure that the egg is well-combined before adding the next one.  Add the flour-date-nut mixture in quarters.  Mix until everything is well-distributed and you cannot see any flour.
  4. Spread mixture in a greased 17.5cm x 26.5cm (or thereabouts) pan lined with baking parchment (I learned that lining the baking pan with parchment is good because it makes it easy to release the cake from the pan) and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  This recipe makes up to 24 squares.
Yelly Eats

Chocolate bark

Yelly

I saw Ina Garten make this in one of her shows and I thought, “Wow that looks really easy!”

And believe me, it was really easy!  All you have to do is melt chocolate of your choice (I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate to balance the bitterness of the chocolate) in a heatproof bowl over boiling water, making sure that the boiling water didn’t touch the bowl.  The process might be slow but the chocolate comes out really beautiful and shiny.

Then you spread the chocolate over wax or parchment paper and sprinkle your choice of nuts and dried fruit and let it cool and become solid.  It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t put the cooling chocolate into the fridge.  Doing this will cause the chocolate to lose its sheen.  Also, if you intend to use dark chocolate (60% or higher), it might be a good idea to temper the chocolate with a heaping teaspoon of icing sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla paste so that the bitter taste is calmed down.

Chocolate bark cooling

Once the chocolate has cooled and hardened, you can either use a sharp knife to slice the chocolate into shapes or break them apart with your hands.  I prefer the knife option though, because if you break the chocolate up with your hands, the natural heat of your hands will make you leave finger prints all over the chocolate.

You can vary the sprinkles, depending on who this is for.  I placed salted cashews, dried apricots, dried berries and dried cranberries.  This makes for a tasty goodie bag item, which I learned, is also called a “hostess giveaway”

Chocolate bark

Yelly Eats

Scones!

Yelly

I’ve been wanting to bake scones since I saw this Gary Rhodes show on TV.  He made making scones look so easy.  Mind you, I’ve always believed these experienced chefs always make everything look so easy to make!

So I started looking up scone recipes.  I started with opening Paul Hollywood’s book.  The recipe was quite interesting because it used bread flour instead of regular flour.  I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t taste like the scones that I’d loved so much from The Delaunay counter.   So I decided to look through Mary Berry’s  Baking Bible.  I looked at Mary’s recipe and thought this was going to taste more traditionally scone-y.

Mary’s Baking Bible is lovely because the instructions are straightforward and not formidable at all.  It tells you what to do and if you do it, then it’ll come out wonderful.  The recipe said it would make 20 small scones and it made 21.  I probably made a couple of scones too thin, which made it possible to make an extra scone.

When the scones came out the came out soooooo lovely and golden brown!

I couldn’t not have scones, clotted cream and jam.  I’d been having quite the sickly week as there is a bug making its rounds at work, so I thought I deserved a tiny bit of a treat.  Because I was feeling a bit blecchy, I was worried about how the scones would turn out.  It was definitely a comforting treat.  The next time I do Mary’s scones, I’ll put a bit of fruit in it!  Should make for lovely fruity scones!

 

Yelly Eats

Fajita night!

Yelly

I am a wannabe domestic goddess (you wouldn’t think so if you saw what my front room looked like!  Martha Stewart I definitely am not!) and I have illusions of joining the Great British Bake Off.  I say illusions because I am in no way, shape or form ready to bake at that level just yet!  I say “just yet” because it is the great dream…and I am slowly self-training my way into readiness.

I love to cook and I adore my tiny kitchen.  But there are days when I really don’t want to spend to much time in it.  Tuesdays, more often than not, are days when I don’t really want to cook.  It’s my I’m-so-tired-I-could-cry day for some reason.  So on a Tuesday night, I will usually find myself sitting on the train hoping there are leftovers in the fridge, or me buying a ready meal from the supermarket to pop in the oven when I get home or there is the phoning-takeaway-of-choice  route.

Tonight however, is different.  Tonight is fajita night!  While I cheated yet again tonight (I bought a fajita spice packet from the supermarket!), here’s a fajita spice mix recipe that I know works really well:

Ingredients:

Spice Mix
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1-2 teaspoons chili powder (or go without, this really depends on how hot you want it to be!)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika (sweet variety, or if you can find the smoked variety, that will work too)
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon crushed chicken bouillon cube
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon cumin

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
650g chicken thighs, diced (I use chicken thighs because they don’t dry out as much as chicken breasts)
1 medium sized white onion, sliced thinly
1 red, 1 green and 1 yellow bell pepper, julienned (pepper colours can be changed, of course, depending on what’s available)

Directions

  1. Mix together all the spice mix ingredients.  In a metal or glass bowl (only because the spice mix will stain plastic bowls), mix chicken, vegetable oil and the spice mix together until the chicken is well coated.
  2. Making sure the pan (I used a non-stick pan) is very hot, brown the chicken and cook for about 10 minutes.  Add the onions and the bell pepper and cook for a further 5 minutes.
  3. Serve in warm soft tortillas with sour cream, salsa and guacamole.

And there you go!  A meal that’s quick, easy and surprisingly healthy (especially if you go easy on the condiments!).

Yelly Eats

Pan de sal at last!

Yelly

I’ve been looking for a pan de sal recipe that I can work with and I have think I may have found it.

Pan de sal is a Filipino bread roll that is sold at very nearly every corner bakery shop in the Philippines.  I’ve missed it so much that I’ve told myself it’s necessary for me to learn how to make it.  This is the third adaptation of a recipe that I’ve seen online.  As usual, I read and reread the recipe to make sure I could follow the steps without reading through the recipe over and over (even if I had the iPad open on the recipe anyway!).  I always worry when I’m making bread because I’m never sure it’s going to turn out right.  But there was something right about how the dough looked while it was being kneaded in the Kenwood.  I kneaded the dough by hand and the dough felt right then too.  When I oiled the dough to prepare it for proofing, it looked right.  Ha!  Listen to me waxing philosophical about bread dough!

After following the baking instructions and making the bread rolls, I must admit, I was a bit worried again.  It might’ve have looked right as proofing dough but I always worry that I’m too heavy handed with anything I bake!  With a lot of whispered prayers I popped the trays into to oven and waited (impatiently) for 15 minutes until the timer pinged to tell me the rolls were ready.  They looked gorgeous and they tasted even better.  They finally tasted like the pan de sal I remember from the Philippines!

And, yes, I am very, very please!

Yelly Eats

Chocolate Guinness Cake

Yelly

I made this cake yesterday to bring to work today.  We were having a buffet for someone’s leaving do.  I thought as I wanted something chocolatey and the person was Irish (or at least I think he is), I thought an Irish-themed cake would be a great idea.  So I went and baked a chocolate guinness cake!

The recipe was from Hummingbird Bakery’s Cake Days cookbook.  I’ve made this several times now and one thing that I completely love about the Hummingbird Bakery books is that if you follow the recipe to the letter, the cakes turn out beautifully!

Yelly Eats

Baking is the best medicine?

Yelly

I called in sick today because I got up and my head was absolutely pounding and I felt absolutely horrible.  Nevertheless, I soldiered on.  I jumped into the shower and went through the motions and got ready for work.  30 minutes into my morning rituals, I just sank into bed and said to myself that I was well and truly too ill to even finish getting ready.  I got back into my bed clothes and dived back into bed.  I got up after a couple of hours and only to call in sick.  I didn’t feel human until nearly lunch time.

I forced myself out of bed and tried to just sit up.  I knew that the longer I stayed in bed, the more I would feel horrible.  I knew my body well enough.  If I gave it a chance to wallow in illness it would wallow until it was well and truly pruney!  So I got up.  I thought I’d do a spot of baking because baking always made me feel better.  Although, as an afterthought, I was breaking an unofficial rule that I followed: never to cook or bake when I’m not feeling well (whether it was illness or just a general tiredness)!  I thought doing a spot of recipe development would help me feel better.

I’ve been trying to develop this base recipe.  So far, it’s worked for banana bread, blueberry cake, and apple sauce cake.  I recently baked a lemon and poppy seed cake and had a few leftover lemons and loads of poppyseeds so I thought I’d bake another lemon and poppy seed cake.  I had this great idea that I’d try making mini lemon and poppy seed bundt cakes using my lovely mini-bundt cake tin.  I’ve only used it once, making my Lola Lucing’s torta cebuana (which reminds me, I need to try  making them again!).

So off I went and baked.  I think they turned out quite well, except the seemed to be a tiny bit drier that I wanted them to be.  I think the tweak needs to be that the temperature needs to be a bit lower and there needs to be more syrup for the cakes to soak in.  But otherwise, they looked adorable!  I didn’t necessarily feel better after baking because I felt even more shattered if that was at all possible.  I’m not exactly going to complain though because I made 12 beautiful mini bundt cakes and 4 cupcakes as a result!

Yelly Eats

Rum baba, yum baba!

Yelly

One of my favourite sweet treats is a rum baba!  I had one in Manila AGES ago and never forgot how good it was.

Alan had this waiting for me when I got home from work on Friday.  My tummy thanks you very, very much for the lovely surprise! ♥

I saw Paul Hollywood make this on the Great British Bake Off masterclass this week.  And, of course, because I love it, I’m going to HAVE TO learn how to make them myself!  I HAVE TO!