Darling! Cupcakes

A chocolate cupcake with a dulce de leche frosting, most people would assume it’d be called as such. Yet, why did I name it as so?

Well, let’s take a bit of a walk in my memory lane.

Back in high school, I used to buy this certain homemade candy called “yum-yum”, our local version of yema.  This delectable candy was sold by a friendly lady who never fails to call any of her customer “Darling!” (yes, with an exclamation point; she had that much enthusiasm). And because of this, most students have come to known her as Darling. I was one of her avid customers (at P3 for 2 pieces, it was a steal!)

Now, you all know that I’ve perfected my chocolate cupcake recipe. The great thing about chocolate is that it mixes well with a variety of flavors so, I’ve begun to experiment in making it even, uhmmm… yum-yummier.

Back to my past, growing up, I’ve always adored my Ahma’s Chocolate Decadence cake. It’s a chocolate cake, frosted with chocolate fudge icing and topped with a caramel glaze.

Looking into my previous posts, I’ve always been a fan of bite-sized treats and my grandmother’s cake is no exception; I just had to make a smaller version of this.

With that in mind, I wanted to incorporate yum-yum into my cupcakes; yum-yum, as delicious as it is, is a hard candy. I can’t necessarily use it as frosting as it’d be difficult to bite into along with the cupcake (believe me, I’ve tried). After endless contemplation, I’ve realized that the yum-yum was actually inspired from a more well-known sweet treat, dulce de leche!

Dulce de leche and yum-yum are pretty much the same; they only vary in texture, with dulce de leche being the softer version. I’ve tried using real yum-yum for the cupcakes and it was disastrous! The frosting was tough and chewy, and would not pipe well. It was a mess! By using dulce de leche, you still get the wonderful flavor of yum-yum with just the right smoothness in a frosting.

Lo and behold, I give you one of the products from my small kitchen:

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Homemade Dulce de Leche

 

Dulce de leche (or, DDL for short) is a classic South American confection that is prepared by slowly cooking sweetened milk in order to create a caramel-like product. Literally translated, it means ‘candy of milk’ or ‘candy made of milk’. A traditional recipe of DDL calls for a can of condensed milk to be boiled for hours until the contents caramelize and form a brown, viscous liquid.

Yes, you read it right – HOURS.

Depending on the consistency, it can take up to four hours to create this Latin goodness.

Personally, this takes too much time; so, I looked for ways to speed up the process and searching online directed me to the process of using a pressure cooker.
A bit of caution though,  a pressure cooker can be dangerous to use if you are not familiar with it thus it is important to have someone who knows how to use it help you with the process.
With that being said,  I’m coming clean – I didn’t make them myself. I am terrified of pressure cookers!!! So, I let some generous (and brave) souls do the work for me! I just gave the instructions on how to make dulce de leche.

So here’s the recipe:

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Cashew and Yema Macarons

French macarons are probably one of most intimidating confections to make. Just like croissants (what’s up with French pastries?), I am afraid to make one.  The precise and delicate process scare me, and the unbelievable cost of ground almonds is  terrifying… no, terrorizing! P1 per gram? Come on!

Then one morning, I decided to make one. I woke up wanting to conquer my fear. After all, I have all the ingredients at home. Not to mention a brand new digital scale! I didn’t have ground almonds though, so I went to a baking supply store. As expected, they’re still freaking expensive. So…. Scrap almonds. I’ll challenge myself further and use cashew nuts! (Palusot lang kasi kuripot)

I don’t know if cashew macarons are common because they are usually unheard of,  so I’ll just leave everything to fate. All I was thinking was, both look similar when processed to a fine meal, so I guess cashews will do.

Thus my experiment with cashew macarons begins. This is my first time and like all first-timers,  I really don’t know what I’m doing. It also didn’t help that prior to this, I’ve only eaten macarons twice, both a long, long, long time ago. What helped me were YouTube tutorials, lots of online articles about making macarons, and a few trips to Fullybooked to scan macaron recipes.

Here are important notes that I would like to share:

• Use a kitchen scale (digital is better) instead of measuring cups for the measurements. It’s more accurate than the cups.
• Make sure that the ground cashew is very, very fine. If making your own cashew meal, add a few tablespoons of powdered sugar to whole cashews in the food processor and grind away! Then sift them thrice!
• Overmixing is an enemy! Be careful not to overmix the eggwhites, and the batter.
• You must rest the shells before baking them.
• And for better flavor, let the filled macarons rest in the fridge overnight.

Still intimated? Don’t be! Being mindful of the process, my first try was a success! I made really really good macarons. Not bad for a macaron virgin. Here’s my recipe:

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Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chips Cookies

The best chocolate chip cookies ever. Or so they say. I wouldn’t really know because this is the only chocolate chip cookie recipe  I have and it’s the only one I’ll ever need. What’s the point of trying other recipes? This is Jacques Torres’ recipe. Yes, the Jacques Torres.

Mr. Chocolate

Any chocolate lover  knows who Jacques Torres is. When I was new here in Manila, that was way back in 2003, I immediately fell in love with his show on the Lifestyle Network. I would rush on my way home to catch his 6pm show. He would make truffles, bonbons, chocolate and marzipan sculptures, cream puff towers and my favorite, his handmade cotton candy. There was even an episode when he made a painting completely out of chocolate. When I’m making my chocolate treats, I would always channel my inner Jacques Torres. Truly a pastry and chocolate genius, he is my real-life Willy Wonka.

Back to the cookies, this chocolate chip cookie recipe is based on Jacques Torres’ chocolate chip cookie recipe. At the time of baking, I didn’t have the required types of flour so I had to settle with all-purpose flour (APF) instead of bread flour and cake flour, if you want the original recipe, you can find it here.

So what’s the difference? Simply put, bread flour has a higher gluten content than APF. The extra gluten provides an extra chewiness/elasticity. Although an APF has that too, results may not be as outstanding. Here’s a tip, which is my kind of cheat, I put more extra work on the dough. This extra work helps ‘release’ extra gluten on the APF to make the dough a bit more tough.

His recipe also calls for a specific type of chocolate which you can purchase in his store. Obviously, we don’t have that here in Manila so I just used regular chocolate chips. But please use the best you can get 🙂

Also, this recipe requires the dough to be refrigerated for a minimum of 24 hours. Mine sat in the ref a little bit more than that which they say is even better. It can even last for upto 72 hours. Yes, patience is also a key ingredient on this recipe.

Enjoy your cookies with a glass of milk! 🙂

Oh, and another thing, this recipe  requires an obscene amount of butter, 1 pound! And a killer amount of chocolate, 2 pounds! Yeah, that much!!! So I just cut the recipe in half in order to accommodate what I have at home. Here’s the recipe:

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Mochi with Red Bean Filling

I’ve been semi-obssessed (if there’s such a thing) with mochi since highschool. I didn’t even know what it was back then. From what I remember, I once saw in the television this lady preparing a dessert with some kind of flour and cream, then cooking it in the microwave. The glutinous ball product looked enticing enough to eat and I’ve been wanting to make one since then. Of course, I was in the province, so there was no mochiko (the type of flour they used) and we also didn’t have a microwave oven back then, so I just forgot about it.

Fast forward to present time, I saw a box of chocolate mochi with peanut butter filling at the supermarket, and so the desire to make one which was held back years ago suddenly surged back. Months back, I was researching how to make mochi. I had my doubts with the microwave technique coz I was not so sure if it would ‘cook’ the flour so I searched for other options. I found one online which requires steaming the mochi paste instead of microwaving it. Sadly, it yielded an undesirable mochi, it was too oily and the mochi came out dry. There was also a baking technique but that resulted to a cassava cake-like consistency. So I gave up and totally forgot about it.

Then just last Friday, my officemates and I were talking about mochi ice cream and I remembered my unfinished conquest to mochi-land. And this time I thought of giving the microwave thingie a try. The result, well, I couldn’t be any happier. I should have trusted that lady! 🙂

For those who are unfamiliar with mochi, mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice. Traditionally prepared by pounding rice into a paste, it is now commonly prepared by using rice flour. Popular variations of mochi include daifuku which is a round mochi stuffed with sweet filling and mochi ice cream.

In the Philippines, the closest food that I could liken to mochi is tikoy. Both made from glutinous rice, tikoy and mochi almost have the same consistency. If we dig to a more local food, I’d say the espasol from Laguna and the Royal Bibingka from Ilocos are also quite similar.

Here’s my recipe:

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Polvoron

Polvoron!

Every Filipino grew up having this Filipino treat as a staple in their homes

Polvoron, which is of Spanish origin is a shortbread made of toasted flour, milk, sugar and butter. Its name is derived from the Spanish word polvo which means dust, as they are very crumbly and delicate.

There are a lot of regional (Spanish colonies) varieties of these treats. Some are complex which include baking and others are simple. The Filipino polvoron is probably one of the simplest recipes to make. It also requires a polvoron mold. It is usually made of tin with a spring mechanism that allows the polvoron to be released when pressed.

As a kid, I used to cook polvoron a lot of times. If I’m too lazy to form these into its mold, I would just store this in a jar and spoon out the polvoron to my heart’s content. I know, so unhealthy! 🙂 There are also times that I would omit the butter in the recipe and would just eat it in its powdery form, though not as tasty, it is equally satisfying.

Today, there are a lot of flavors that polvoron makers came up with. Delicious varieties include cookies and cream, chocolate, coffee, pinipig, and cashew among others. I’ve even tasted recently a not-so-yummy mangosteen polvoron. But I tell you, nothing beats a plain, buttery polvoron.

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