Baking 101: Easy Bread Pudding

You have a week old left over bread, hard but without molds...what are you going to do with them? Throw them? Nope!

Why don't you make a pudding?

That's what I did with the week old loaf in the house. I just cut the bread into small pieces, put them inside in the individual sized ramekins, poured custard mixture, sprinkled some cinnamon and sugar on top, and baked them. How easy was that? You only need an hour to make this pudding.

Make some of these and you'll be happy to know that good things really come in small packages. Heaven...

Ingredients:
2 eggs
3 small cans of evaporated milk
2/3 cups of sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon mix with 1 tbsp of sugar
6 slices of "tasty" bread, sliced into small pieces

Procedure
1. Put the sliced breads into 5 individual sized ramekins. Set aside.
2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, and pour milk and sugar. Mix well.
3. Pour the milk mixture in the ramekins with bread. The bread will absorb the milk, once absorbed, pour more milk.
4. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and sugar mixture on top.
4. Bake them at 350 degrees Farenheit for 30 minutes.

This can be served warm or cold.

Baking 101: Custard Cake

Custard cake is a chiffon cake covered with custard (an egg and milk mixture). It can be bought from the local pinoy bakeries. I was a frequesnt buyer of this when I was still a kid and it is still one of my favorite panaderya pastries. The silkiness of the custard goes well with the chiffon cake.

I have been wanting to bake chiffon cake but too afraid to do it because I might not beat the egg whites properly and the cake would turn flat and not fluffy...

But thanks to the video of Panlasang Pinoy, I was able to do it.

But being a first timer, here are some of the things that went wrong. hope you can all forgive me...hehe!
1. I burnt the caramel. I left the pan over the stove and washed the dishes. When I saw the pan, the caramel was burning hahah! I know it's weird, but after chilling the cake, the burnt caramel -- slightly bitter in taste, tasted good!
2. The cooking time from the site where I got the recipe is 60 minutes. I followed the temperature, pre-heated the oven and put the cake batter inside. After 20 minutes, I noticed that the cake cracked and the top is already brown but not burnt. I still baked it for another 15 minutes, feared to underbake it...but NOOO, I overbaked the cake...I wonder what went wrong...was the cooking time wrong? maybe...
3. See those ridges in the custard? That's because I did not use the baine-marie method. I have a small oven and a bigger pan wont fit inside. Next time I'll bake them in ramekins.

Overall, never mind the (slightly) bitter taste of the burnt caramel, the cake is delicious and divine! I will definitely bake this again...don't laugh at the picture...the cake deserves a second chance ahahahah!

Here's the recipe for the classic Pinoy custard cake. For this recipe I was able to fill an 8x8 and 11x7 pans.

Ingredients:

Caramel

1/2 cup sugar for each pan

Custard

6 pcs eggs

1 big can condensed milk

1 cup fresh milk

1/4 cup granulated sugar

Cake

for the batter

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar, you can make it 3/4 cups if you want it sweeter.

11/2 cups cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup milk (I used evaporated milk) mixed with 1/4 cup water

1 tsp lemon rind (optional, but recommended)

for the meringue

6 egg whites

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup sugar

Procedure: 

CARAMEL

1. Place the baking pan on top of stove over medium heat.

2. Pour the sugar until melted. Set aside.

CUSTARD

1. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour over the caramel. Set aside.

CAKE

Cake Batter

1. Sift cake flour and baking powder together in a bowl. 

2. In another bowl, with a wire whisk, beat the yolks and gradually add sugar while beating.

3. Alternately add the cake flour mixture and the milk and water mixture to the egg and sugar mixture (too many mixtures, hope my instruction is clear). It should begin and end with the cake flour mixture. Mix until well combined.

4. Mix the lemon rind. Set aside. 

Meringue

You can now preheat the oven to 350 degress Farenheit.

1. In a bowl, pour the egg white and add the cream of tartar. 

2. Using an electric mixer set on high speed, beat the egg white until soft peaks form.

3. While continue beating, gradually add the sugar until the meringue is shiny and firm

4. Add a cup of the cake batter to the meringue and gently fold it in the meringue until combine. Continue adding the batter, then fold again until all the batter has been used up.

5. Pour the mixture over the caramel and custard and spread evenly. 

6. Put the pan in a larger pan. Halfway fill the larger pan with water. 

7. Bake for 30 minutes or until the toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

Cool and chill before serving. 

Enjoy!

Baked Herbed Chicken Strips

Last Friday morning, on my way to the FX terminal, a neighbor (an old woman) greeted me good morning and casually said "tabachingching" (cutesie patootsie way of say fat). I smiled at her and jokingly said, "wala po kasi makain sa bahay heheh!" (I don't have anything to eat in the house e). And I continued to walk.

After 15 steps, another neighbor greeted me again and said "Kumars tumataba ka yata?" (You're getting fat?) Poor me, all i can do was to smile.

Before reaching the pharmacy, another person called me by saying "taba" (Fat)!

KABLAG! BOOM! OK enough! I quickly decided to go on diet again! For 3 people to say that to me on the same day, in 15 minutes, I confirmed that yes, I gained too much weight na!

Since I don't feel like going into Southbeach Diet now (I have cupcake projects coming up! and I have to taste them!), I will cut down my carb intake but I will make sure that the taste of the food that I'll eat will not suffer.

I browsed my books and the internet for the easy to make but still tasty recipes that at the same time will help me push my weight down.

For the first entry, I'll have the Baked Herbed Chicken Strips. Very tasty and easy to make. I just mixed all the coating in a plastic put the egg dipped chicken strips and broil them. They are done in 20 minutes! I found this wonderful recipe from this website. She used chicken tenders, a portion from chicken breast. What I used is just the whole chicken breast and then cut them into strips.

Here's the recipe for the chicken...


Ingredients:
2 chicken breast, cut into strips
Salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup panko or Japanese bread crumbs.
2 tbsps Italian herbs, I used McCormick
Salt to season the breading
2 tbsps olive oil

Procedure:
1. Wash and drain chicken breast. Cut into strips and then season with salt and pepper.
2. Combine the Italian herbs, bread crumbs and salt in a plastic bag. Shake well.
3. Dip the chicken breasts in the egg and transfer them into the breading mixture and shake them to coat the meat well.
4. Transfer the meat in the baking pan and drizzle with olive oil.
5. Broil for 15 minutes or until the coat turns brown.

Serve with gravy or with vegetable salad. You can also make a chicken sandwich with this recipe. Just put veggies, a lowfat mayonnaise, pickles and this chicken in wheat bread and you'll have you hearty and guilt free sandwich..

Enjoy!

Brocolli in Garlic and Olive Oil

This one is a great side dish and very very easy to make. Aside from the brocolli, this involves 4 ingredients only...garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. The ingredients will bring out the natural flavor of the vegetable.

I served this last night together with the tempura.

Here's the recipe;

Ingredients

1 medium head brocolli, cut and sliced in florettes
5 cloves garlic
5 tbsps olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Instruction
1. Wash the brocolli thoroughly. I've got a tip from my mom that to make sure that the vegetables will be bug-free, you can soak the vegetable in water with a tablespoon of vinegar for 10 minutes. After that, wash again with running water.
2. Cut the brocolli in small florettes.

fresh brocolli florettes

3. Heat the pan, add the olive oil and garlic.
4. Add the brocolli, stir fry until you reach the desired doneness of the vegetable. I like mine to be half cooked.

5. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot!!!

Easy Tempura

We bought shrimps (...again! we really love shrimps) and instead of cooking the buttered shrimps and the ginataan hipon, I tried the tempura.

Tempura is deepfried dish of vegetables or seafoods. To make them crispy, each will be dipped in batter - a mixture of water, egg, flour and salt,  before deep frying. What makes the tempura delicious is the dipping sauce. The original dipping sauce includes dashi and mirin, but since Japanese stores are nowhere to be found in my area, my Nora Daza cookbook saved my day!

If you want to maintain the crispiness of the tempura, try rolling them in japanese breadcrumbs, called panko. That's what I did and it really did make the tempura more crispy.

So here's the recipe, try it!

Ingredients
For the tempura
15 pcs shrimps (suahe type)
salt and pepper

Batter
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup water
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

1 cup of panko for coating the shrimps

Procedure
Shrimp
1. Shell, devein and wash the shrimps. I butterfly cut the shrimps by making a slit at the back. Do not take off the tails. Season with salt and pepper, then prepare the batter.

deveined and butterfly-ed shrimps 

2. For the batter, combine all the ingredients and mix well.

Batter


3. Heat oil in the frying pan or deep fryer. The shrimps must be submerged in hot oil to achieve an even golden brown crust. Aside from that, we want soft and juicy shrimps and if you have insufficient oil, tendency is to have a longer cooking time resulting to dry and tough shrimps.

Anyway, once the cooking oil is hot, cooked the tempura until golden brown.

4. To remove the excess oil, place them in a kitchen paper towel.

Dipping Sauce
Ingredients
1 cup hot water
1 chicken boullion cube
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger
2 tbsps grated radish

Just mix everything and that's it!!

Hope you'll like it!