#344_Dressing Up Ms. Barbie with Fondant

Barbie Doll cake

I dressed up this doll cake with homemade marshmallow fondant.

#343_Sweet Potato PanCakes Surprise

No More ‘Mallows Picketer

In the Philippines, Sweet Potato, known as Kamote is one of the staples that we always eat almost every day of the week, whether as a snack or as a breakfast item.
When we were growing up my mother always told us not to peel the Sweet Potatoes when we eat them because nutrients were hiding in those peels. She was right. Aside from a good source of fiber, Sweet potatoes have plenty of nutrients in them.

My Sweet Potato PanCakes Surprise

I call it Sweet Potato PanCakes Surprise because you can surprise your family or friends with different fillings in the cakes each time you make them. They are like chocolates in a sense that people will never know what they're gonna get until they bite into it.

Here's my "surprise" for today.

My recipe is super easy to prepare and is very forgiving. Nobody can go wrong with it, in fact when I make this, I just eyeball everything.

My simple filling is composed of (mostly leftovers) sliced ham, sliced cooked chicken, grated jalapeno jack cheese. If I have leftover roast beef I'd throw it in there too with peas & carrots.

Here's my recipe for the Sweet Potato Cake Surprise

2 lbs. Sweet Potatoes
1/2 stick butter
Microwave the Sweet Potatoes for 5 minutes until soft (microwave one at a time).
Mash with fork until smooth. Stir in the butter or mash sweet potatoes and butter together.

For the filling:
1 cup cooked chicken, sliced into cubes (I used left over rotisserie chicken)
1 cup sliced ham
pinch salt
dash of freshly cracked pepper
1 cup jalapeno jack cheese, grated
Mix everything in a bowl

1 cup panko bread crumbs for coating the cakes
Canola oil for frying

Procedure:
1) Put the Panko bread crumbs in a bowl. Drop about 1/2 cup of mashed sweet potatoes right into the bread crumbs, spreading them out to form a circle.
2) Put about 1/4 cup of fillings on the mashed sweet potatoes.
3) Make a patty by taking another 1/2 cup of mashed sweet potatoes and place it on top of the filling, covering the entire bottom sweet potatoes. Sprinkle patty with more crumbs.
4) Repeat procedure until everything is used up. You might have some leftover fillings you can use for something else.
5) Heat about 2 TB canola oil in a frying pan and fry the patties, 3-4 patties at a time depending on the size.

Spread out mashed Sweet Potatoes on the bread crumbs forming a circle.
It doesn't have to be a perfect circle.


Put some fillings on the mashed sweet potatoes and make a patty.


Coat patties with Panko bread crumbs

Just a little bit of oil is needed to fry these cakes.


Serve them with maple syrup if you desire.

ENJOY!!!

#342_Mad Hatter Cake

Here's my take on a Mad Hatter Cake

Sorry, folks, I don't have time to blog this minute, so I'm just posting pictures of my latest project.
Mad Hatter is a character in the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland and I was commissioned to make a cake, and this is what I came up with.

#341_Three-Cheese Chicken and Ham Pan de Sal

I was going to make some Cheese Pimiento Pandesal, but somehow I made a detour along the way, (when I opened the fridge) and ended up with a filling that is somewhat "pizza-ish" and somewhat "cordon bleu-ish" instead of just a simple cheese plus pimiento filling. No regrets though because I just love the outcome. It's incredibly flavorful and has a little bit of kick from the Jalapeno Cheese.

For the filling, I threw in some Jalapeno Cheese, Sharp Cheddar and Swiss Cheese mixed with slices of ham and cooked chicken (left over Costco rotisserie chicken). Mixed altogether.
For the dough, I used the Pan de Sal recipe found on this blog, click here.

I divided the dough into 24 pieces, (these are huge pieces), flattened them out and placed some filling on the dough pieces. Shaped each into Siopao fashion.

Follow the rest of procedure in making Pandesal, i.e.....
Roll each filled dough in bread crumbs and arrange them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Let dough rise sufficiently. Bake in a 350 degrees pre-heated oven.

These baked for 23 minutes.

ENJOY!!

#340_Homemade Hamburger Buns

Sandwich or Hamburger Buns in 60 minutes

I've owned a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for over 20 years now, but have never used it to make dough until today. I only use the stand mixer for whipping cream, making icing or frosting. I love using it to whip the meringue for Chiffon Cake, but never made dough using it because I'm hooked with my bread machine.
Today that has changed because the dough recipe for this bun was made using the stand mixer, and I wanted to follow exactly the recipe and procedure.
So I followed everything in the recipe except for the rising time because my house is kind of cold. We keep the temperature in our house at 64 degreesF, a comfortable temperature for me and hubby, but not for the buns.(no pun intended). This means that doughs rise a little longer in my kitchen.

The recipe is from a blog, Wives with Knives, click here for the link.

I don't have to say it because as you can see from the picture the buns came out perfect....the height, the size, the texture. They have a lot of substance. Perfect for any kind of sandwich. Although they might not be as perfectly shaped as the ones made by the blogger on Wives with Knife, hubby says they taste really good, a lot better than Sara Lee.
You see I made these for deli sandwiches for Sunday dinner, which is tomorrow, but he can't wait to taste them so he made himself a couple of PJ sandwiches. I'm glad he volunteered to taste test them for me because he is good at it. I trust his taste because he never fails. When he says something is really good, he means it. I only wish though that I can also get him to taste test the Filipino food that I make.
Anyways, if you want to try this recipe you can just go to the link and get the recipe there.

Enjoy the buns!

Update picture:

Here's the deli sandwich

#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;

Just a side note: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.