#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.

#335_Fried Wonton

These are deep fried wontons

My Fried Wontons and my Fried Lumpia Shanghai share the same fillings. The difference between the two are the appearance or the style in wrapping them and the wrappers used...."wonton skins" for the Wontons and "lumpia wrappers" for the lumpia. They are both wrappers but the wonton skins are thicker than the the ones for lumpia.

Wonton skins are available in both regular stores and Asian stores, but there's hardly a regular store that carry Lumpia Wrappers so you have to make a trip to an Asian store if you want to use them.

For Fillings, click on the link below....
http://pinoyamericanrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/04/lumpia-shanghai-or-eggrolls.html
There are many different ways to wrap and fold wontons.

Here's a link which gives you different styles
of wrapping and folding wontons, click here.

For the style I used to fold my wontons, click on the link below.
http://www.chow.com/food-news/55419/how-to-fold-dumplings/

Steamed wontons

A famous restaurant here in Salt Lake serves these as an appetizer. Actually the owner came on a tv show one time and showed how they make them at his restaurant. They pan-fry these wontons in oil until browned then pour some water into the pan, cover it and let it steam for about 10 minutes. (Some cooks drop the wontons in a boiling water).

Here's the finished product of the pan-fried steamed wontons.

                             After steaming, they are drained on paper towels

Whether these are deep fried or pan fried, they are always a hit whenever I serve them at family gatherings.

For homemade Dipping Sauce or Saw-sawan recipe, click here.

Enjoy!!

Christmas Treats 2011

#334_Left-over Holiday Foods

Wondering what to do with your leftover ham and turkey from the Holiday dinners?
Here's a couple of ideas that I did with our left-over meat
a few days after the Thanksgiving dinner.

Turkey and Ham Sandwich with Provolone Cheese

For Thanksgiving I like to buy the biggest turkey I can find in the store so that we will have left over roast turkey to make sandwiches.

This year one store had a very good deal on the turkey, (I thought). I got the 22-lbs. tom turkey which I only paid 8 dollars for it. To get that deal I had to purchase $35.00 worth of groceries (excluding the 8 dollars for the turkey) and four 12-packs of coca-cola products for $10.00. The only downside was that I had to buy some stuffs I didn't really need for the dinner. So when you think about it, it's not that a good deal after all. Oh, well it's holidays....

Sorry I got side tracked....Okay, here's what you can do with the left-over turkey meat:

1) Slice or shred the meat. It doesn't really matter how you slice the turkey. When you pick the meat you'll end up with shredded meat anyway.
2) In a pan melt some butter and toss in meat. Sprinkle some spices: i.e. salt, Mrs. Dash or garlic powder or celery salt or Season-All or whatever spice you're in the mood in; cook until the meat is heated through.
3) For the bread, use sliced sandwich bread or French bread rolls. I love the French bread kind because they are crusty on the outside. Butter the sides and grill them whether in toaster oven or pan grill.
4) Spread some mayonnaise on one side of bread
5) Now it's time to pile up those meats....if you want to put a piece of lettuce leaf...go ahead. If you want to put a slice or two of ham, go ahead....then pile them turkey meat.
6) Put at least 2 slices of Provolone cheese or Havarti cheese.
7) This is optional....at this point I like to put this sandwich under the broiler and grill until the cheese is melted.
8) Now you can top the sandwich with the other half of bread and enjoy!
Simple, but soooo yummy!!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Ham and Cheese Omelet

In this omelet, I used 2 eggs and grated Havarti cheese.
You can also add some sliced green peppers, sliced chives and whatever you like in it.
Check out how Emeril Laggasse makes his omelet, click here.

Most Americans will pair this omelet with hash brown potatoes, but for Pinoys, me in particular, I eat this with garlic fried rice.....Mmmmm, Yum-O!!

You can also make a sandwich out of this omelet........

Enjoy!!