Perfecting Blueberry Muffins

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph ("Perfect Muffins") January 21, 2010]

Perfectly domed muffins require precise ingredient measurements and
the right oven temperature.

If there’s one baked treat that has proven to be the most elusive, I would say it would be muffins—blueberry ones, in particular. Sure, in the past I’ve made banana chocolate chip "muffins" from a basic banana bread recipe; or even airy chiffon vanilla cupcakes, but those are quite different from the honest-to-goodness breakfast domes—perfectly crusty outside, cakey and crumbly inside—that we all look forward to in coffee shops and bakeries.

It has taken me a year to finally come up with blueberry muffins I would be proud to share with the world. After dozens of flat, sunken disasters, I’ve deduced that there are two essential things a home baker must have when broaching the crusty/cakey-dome territory: a kitchen weighing scale and an oven thermometer.

For two reasons: One, a good weighing scale—ideally digital with a ‘zero’ button—ensures precise proportions of ingredients, in the same way as using measuring spoons for baking powder and baking soda help achieve perfect leavening balance in the recipe.

Two, just as one would tediously measure dry and wet ingredients, one should also factor in the right oven temperature. In the recipe I’d modified below, "Good Eats" host Alton Brown recommends preheating the oven to 380°F and raising the heat to 400°F upon placing muffins inside the oven. This temp-tango is achievable with the use of an oven thermometer. And even if one’s kitchen is equipped with an electric oven, a proper temperature reading helps a baker gauge oven calibration and watch out for maintenance or repair requirements.

Good news is, these two initially unnecessary kitchen gadgets aren’t ultra-pricey investments: My thermometer from Landmark cost less than P400, and the digital scale from the department store set me back around P980—worth the mini-splurge considering a can of Comstock blueberries from the grocery, or a bag of frozen ones from Healthy Options are way too precious to be tossed in the trash if the muffins fall flat or form undesirable concave dips in the middle.

That said, baking truly is a numbers game. But for every patient participant, the rewards can be very fulfilling—and delicious.

Blueberry Muffins

Yield 12 medium-sized muffins or 6 extra-large ones Prep Time 15 minutes Baking Time 15 to 20 minutes


1 cup plain yogurt (or two 125-gram packs of Nestle Creamy yogurt)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 small egg

6.25 ounce cake flour
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup blueberries (or 1 can of Comstock blueberries, drained); reserve 1/4 cup for the topping


1 Use a fine sieve or a regular strainer lined with cheese cloth to drain extra liquid from yogurt. You’ll end up with about half a cup of thick yogurt. Set aside.

2 Preheat oven to 380°F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan with oil or cooking spray, or use cupcake liners for easy removal and cleanup.

3 In a medium bowl, sift all dry ingredients together and discard tiny leftover lumps.

4 In a large bowl, blend yogurt, vegetable oil, sugar, and egg until pale yellow. You can either use a hand mixer or large whisk for this.

5 Add dry ingredients and stir for exactly 10 counts. Do not overmix or you’ll end up with holes—or ‘tunnels’—inside the muffins. Gently fold in 1/2 cup of blueberries into the batter for 3 counts and stop immediately. (Don’t worry about the flecks of flour, they’ll disappear during baking.)

6 Pour batter into muffin cups and top each one with a small mound of berries. Place in the oven and raise temperature to 400°F.

7 Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn pan around after seven minutes to distribute heat evenly. Muffins are ready when a toothpick inserted comes out clean or lightly crumbed.

8 Let muffins cool inverted on a parchment paper-lined wire rack. Store in a Ziploc bag in room temperature for the first two days, and transfer to the refrigerator if storing longer.

My latest 'baby'

So my dear friend Frances is expecting, and awaiting the arrival of her little bundle, Jelly Bean. Meanwhile, I am far from bearing offspring and my version of nesting is being in the kitchen and churning out sweet goodies and savory treats. My latest 'baby' is the cake above, the Chocolate Cake with Fleur de Sel Caramel Filling & Dark Chocolate Ganache by David Lawrence only my version has none of the posh french salt—just a few pinches of good old iodized salt—but everything else is to the letter. It took me three-plus hours to make: from the the caramel filling (which is already excellent by itself), chocolate cakes (two layers), frosting (a dark chocolate ganache), and I must say it was well worth it.

Sharing this happy mound of chocolate-caramel goodness to the world! And I'm so not the type to keep recipes secret, click HERE to view the video from GoodBite.com, a site a stumbled upon last year while looking for caramel and custard fillings online. It's about four minutes long, but the actual cake takes much, much longer to make. That's not to say you won't have fun with it :)

Polka Dot Brownies

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, January 2010]


These triple chocolate brownies culled and customized from a Nigella Lawson recipe found on YouTube are perfect for a classic Pinoy New Year’s celebration, following the age-old ‘requirement’ of donning polka dots and having round-shaped food at the table to help channel abundance in the coming year. As for me, I forgot to wear polka dots on New Year’s Eve, but fortunately, I was able to make these delightful cocoa squares dotted with creamy buttons of white chocolate way before the clock struck midnight. These brownies leave a particularly sweet type of fireworks in your mouth and are surprisingly, very, very easy to make. Here’s the recipe.

You'll need:

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate (or four squares of Baker’s Semisweet Chocolate)
1 1/2 sticks (or 12 tablespoons) unsalted butter
3 eggs
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup white chocolate chips, plus a handful for topping

Makes 16 brownie squares. Prep Time 5 minutes. Baking Time 20 to 25 minutes.

1 Preheat oven at 350°F. Melt bittersweet chocolate squares and butter over low heat, or in a tempered glass bowl set over simmering water.

Good butter and chocolate: building blocks of decadent brownies.

2 Remove from heat and let melted chocolate cool for a few minutes. Add eggs one at a time, stirring completely with every addition. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon. Do not overmix.

Add eggs for a silky-smooth, chocolatey batter.

3 Pour brownie batter onto a square pan (the disposable aluminum ones from the supermarket work well) lined with parchment paper for easy removal once done. Sprinkle top with white chocolate chips and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Tip: White chocolate chips aren’t always available in the supermarket, so stock up and keep them in the freezer.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Mariel Chua is already planning the next batch of brownies and other baked goodies to give away to family and friends.

Sweet Spots

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, December 30, 2009]

Buttery sylvannas at Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee

I understand that as long as it involves blueberries, fresh cherries and strawberries, or Valrhona chocolate discs, baked treats can be quite expensive, thus justifying the exorbitant prices some establishments charge for good-quality desserts.

That’s why I find neighborhood hubs and small bakeshops truly delightful, not only for their friendly price points, but also for their cozy atmosphere. Two current favorites are the Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee in Tomas Morato and Brewing Point in Tierra Pura Homes—both in Quezon City.

At KOCC, one can enjoy buttery sylvannas for P35, cheese rolls (with a lot of cheese filling) for P30, ensaymadas for P20, giant soup bread bowls to-go (and fill with your own pumpkin soup) for P20, rhumballs (think amped-up Dunkin Munchkins) for P15 each. Wash it all down with your choice of mild, standard, or strong coffee served with real cream and brown sugar.

KOCC's delightful cakes, at realistic prices

Brewing Point on the other hand dishes up an assortment of sweet, layered cakes—from the fruity and chocolatey—alongside homemade value meals and bento boxes (the servings are huge!). On top of the reliable and speedy Wi-fi connection, I enjoy the village-ambience and most importantly, the taste of their savory dishes.

I should probably include in this list Figaro, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but I find the sweet selections in these commercial establishments hit or miss, with a few staples (like Figaro’s bread pudding) that may be worth ordering something else other than the coffee these places are known for.

Mariel recently wrote about coffeeshop and Wi-fi etiquette over by her blog, NyMinuteNow.com. Check out her story entitled, “I’m with the Bandwidth.”

Fashion Forward

Courtesy of American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME)

http://www.magazine.org

I used to work for Harper's BAZAAR International and I can't believe I totally missed this! It came out early last year, right at the start of my year-long sabbatical. So that exactly explains why I never caught wind of it, until today, while reading news of Sarah Jessica teaming up with Halston to revive the brand. In terms of fashion, I've been kind of under the radar these last couple of months, opting for more comfortable commuter clothes. Every once in a while though, like when I catch glimpses of beautiful clothing or even portraiture of a magazine I used to love, my heart still skips a beat, and again, I look forward to the next dress-up day.

Calamansi-milk Breakfast Biscuits

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, December 7, 2009]

Start your day with a batch of soft, flaky, buttery biscuits.

Since October, I've made several batches of buttermilk biscuits, mostly on weekends. They're great for breakfast—with tart orange marmalade and fluffy scrambled eggs—or for random snacking—plain or with strawberry jam.

Buttermilk is relatively easy to find in big grocery stores in the U.S. In Manila on the other hand, a quick Google search yielded me the following (very ingenious and convenient) substitutes:

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough milk to make one cup; let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.

• 1 cup milk and 1 3/4 tablespoons cream of tartar

• yogurt or sour cream


As in the first case, instead of lemon, today I experimented with calamansi juice. And so far, the results have turned out great, nothing strange or extremely funky and sour—just flaky, buttery rounds of breakfast goodness.

Here's the Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuit recipe from Ina Garten, which I normally use:
[source: FoodNetwork.com ]

2 cups all-purpose flour; add more as needed for the board
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt (or 1 teaspoon iodized salt)
12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
½ cup cold buttermilk, shaken
1 cold extra large egg
1 cup grated extra sharp Cheddar
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water or milk
sea salt, optional

(Note: The original instructions call for a mixer. Below is the modified version easily done by hand.)

1 Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a metal sheet pan with parchment paper (or the locally available, Glad Cook ‘n Bake).

2 Place 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Using hands, work in the diced butter into the dry mix until the butter is the size of peas.

3 In a small cup, lightly combine the buttermilk and egg. Pour the wet mixture onto the flour-and-butter mixture only until moistened (you’ll most likely have a little extra liquid left).

4 In a small bowl, mix the Cheddar with a small handful of flour and add this to the dough until roughly combined.

5 Dump out onto a well-floured board and knead lightly about six times. Roll the dough out until about half an inch thick throughout. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter, or slice even-sized rectangles using a sharp, floured knife. Transfer onto sheet pan and brush the tops with the egg wash; sprinkle with salt if desired.

6 Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until biscuits are browned and cooked through (for a smaller batch, lessen baking time). Serve hot or warm and store in zip-top bags or in an airtight container.

For shiny tops, brush dough rounds with egg wash before baking.

Mariel Chua is Yummy.ph's official baking blogger. For breakfast, she scrambles eggs in hot olive oil sprinkled with red pepper flakes. To finish, she grates Cheddar cheese on top while the eggs are still steaming hot. On random occasions, she uses Gorgonzola.

(Orange marmalade photo courtesy of Smuckers.com)

Lemon Vanilla Caramel Cake

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, November 2009]

I must admit, I’ve made cakes in the past that have lingered quite a bit in the kitchen, uneaten. But this lemon vanilla caramel cake wasn’t one of them. It was gone within three days of baking, filling, and frosting it.

It’s also fun to make. The steps may come across as tedious (as with anything that involves folding fluffy egg whites into batter) but honestly, the least enjoyable part will probably be the first thing you have to do when making a cake, which is cut rounds of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pans with, and buttering all sides. I find this part of baking anti-climactic yet essential. Once you get that out of the way—don’t forget to preheat the oven—the baking process is quite soft and relaxing, just like the two spongey white cakes you come up with.

What sweet dreams are made of

This cake is a combination of two recipes, plus a lemony tweak I picked up from watching Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa. The base is a white cake recipe from Martha Stewart, and the caramel filling is from a Fleur de Sel (a special flaky salt from France) chocolate cake recipe from GoodBite.com. A quick Google search will yield video results for all of the above. Out of convenience, I've taken to culling recipes from all sorts of websites, versus getting them from cookbooks.

This lemon vanlla caramel cake can also easily transform to cupcakes. I would suggest using a melon baller to make a small hole on top to fill with caramel, before frosting the top with your marshmallow icing of choice. Personally I love watching egg whites transform into fluffy white frosting, so I don't mind making it from scratch. Here's the quick recipe I follow, also from Martha Stewart:

Seven Minute Frosting
[Source: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/perfect-seven-minute-frosting]

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
6 large egg whites
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 In the heatproof bowl of an electric mixer set over a saucepan of simmering water, combine sugar, corn syrup, water, and egg whites. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture registers 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 2 minutes.

2 Attach bowl to a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat mixture on high speed until glossy and voluminous, about 5 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Use immediately.

You'll have a lot of extra frosting left to eat from the bowl. Enjoy!

Tell me: What's your favorite cake? Please feel free to comment and share!

Dream Come True

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, November 2009]
I was around eight years old the first time I realized I could feed people with the things I whipped up in the kitchen. Carpenters were renovating our home (my parents bought our house barebones, with gray walls and hardly anything built in). I went into the kitchen to toss some flour and water to make my own Play-Doh and as an afterthought, decided to flatten and toast it in a hot pan and then finally coating it in sugar. One of the carpenters ate it, which I found really amusing—and gross, because to me, it was play-dough!

Before that, I spent weekends and summers at my aunt’s bakeshop. She let me tinker around and even let me use her candy thermometers, trays, and random ingredients—even the expensive ones. I made my own pink lollipops wherein I boiled sugar and water and waited until the thermometer pointed to ‘hard crack’; put in a few drops of red food coloring; poured the scorching mixture onto metal sheet pans; and then lay Zest-o straws over the hot sugar, slightly melting them in the process. I also watched my aunt create intricate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday cakes, and she let me make my own cheese candies and butter frosting to decorate a small cupcake (or two) to take to my best friend’s house on a playdate. Thanks to her, I became aware at an early age how delightful and delicious butter could be (as opposed to lard or shortening).

Over the years, I would be in and out of the kitchen. But it wasn’t until these last two years that I’ve seriously perused a career in food. The plans may still be blurry at this point, but so far, I’ve taken to blogging plenty of times about the things I’ve made in the kitchen. Food was always in the background, no matter what job I held. Well, at some point, I did work in a restaurant as a hostess and maître d’ during my early months in New York. And when I started working in an office again, I brought freshly-baked banana chocolate chip muffins and nutella to share with colleagues. When I found myself jobless, I baked more muffins and brownies as I nursed my wounded ego and jumpstarted my freelance career.

Fast-forward to more than a year after and much to my delight, I was recently called in to blog for the new and improved, Yummy.ph! So here I am, chronicling my foray into the baking world, with lots of sweet (and at times savory) musings along the way.

As if right on cue, my mother also gifted me with a brand new Kitchenaid stand mixer: the 90th Anniversary Edition in Candy Apple Red. Certainly I no longer have an excuse to not officially tinker about in the kitchen. So far, since it arrived, I’ve made chocolate cake, buttermilk biscuits, carrot cake, lemon vanilla cake, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies with it. And I can’t wait to talk about and share with you all these sweet treats. Meet you back here next week!

Been There, Done That

Going back and forth. A 'photoshoe' with my friend and mentor Marie
taken a couple of years ago.

For the first time in years, I walked into a room overwhelmed by what people were wearing. If you read this blog regularly, you would know how back in college, I had a different way of dress (very sporty, casual, versus the preppy branded/dark minimalist look of the 90s) that had been a source of insecurity for many years. It was only when I started working that I snapped out of this self-pity of sorts and found myself in a position wherein I could actually tell people what to wear, at least on their faces and hair. At the height of this job, I'd also enjoyed a closet chocful of clothes, a table of accessories, a room filled with shoes lined up to the walls. It was a pretty cool time, I must say.

Then came New York, and some slight changes in my wardrobe: At first, picking up where I'd left off, dutifully, like many city folk, toting the skyscrapers in my purse doing the whole subway-flat-office-heel switcheroo.

At the American preppy (with touches of stylish Italian) job, I'd adopted the more casual and straightforward fashion and incorporated even more color in my closet. For the first time in wintry Manhattan, I was in an office vibrant with hues of the primary color wheel that cut through the sea of black. I loved it. And even when I'd lost that job, I kept the colors (and skills).

Finally, I dropped the whole 9 to 5 shebang and settled into this comfortable style of mostly flats, jewel-toned tanks, soft knits, jeans, and shorts...almost like college again!

The other night was different though: If more than a decade ago I would look around and desire a particular type of fashion I had no access to, this time around—even though I felt that all-too familiar tinge of self-consciousness—it was mostly a feeling of discomfort, along the lines of, Uh-oh, do I have to start wearing heels again? (I do have a plan to retrain myself to wear them this year, especially after buying these shoes over the holidays.) Do I have to go back to that? (I do have it in me to be ridiculously overdressed on a whim, again, going back to insecurities of being underdressed in yesteryears past.) Do I have to start taking a bath again everyday? (That's what happens when you work from home, fellas!) I saw the dresses, hair and makeup, as if for the first time, and oddly felt fidgety.

Now that I intend to stick around here for a while, these are probably valid points to consider, perhaps for another transition in my life with certain elements that I have to establish, understand, and accept before embarking on this new journey. If you ask me point-blank, I love my life right now: the flexibility, the train rides, the kitchen sessions and frequent trips to the supermarket. If I'm going to give up all of that—and torture my feet in the process—it simply better be worthwhile.

Starting 2010 with a Bang!

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING beats New Year's Eve in the Philippines. An honest-to-goodness, true-blue Filipino celebration features plenty of food, local fireworks, sparklers and explosives of all shapes an sizes—some I'm pretty sure are illegal any place else. As midnight approaches, people flock the streets and welcome the new year with a reverberating barrage of all of the aforementioned, and then everybody reconvenes at the dinner table, continuing to eat (and drink) to their heart's content.

At my future laws' home on New Year's Eve, I saw the longest Judas Belt in my life EVER. I am not kidding: It stretched out from their house to the end of the street! For my foreign readers out there, a Judas Belt is just like the same piece of men's accessory, but in place of rivets and holes, lies a strip of triangle-shaped explosives meant to go off one after the other—a domino effect like no other.



The contraption pictured above, on the other hand, is a homemade line of kwitis—a particular exploding sparkler meant to be lit individually. My fiancé and the boys at his home dutifully set this up for 30 minutes, and watched it go off in less than a minute in a series of pfft-pfft-pfft sounds, like missiles being launched in movies.



And this loud bonanza is supplied and made more fun with tables filled with round shaped fruit and food, to represent good fortune and plenty of money in the coming year. Below is my future mother-in-law's homemade ube halaya [purple yam flan]. Yum!


Speaking of mouth-watering treats, I plan on re-posting the entries from my Yummy blog (including the latest Polka Dot Brownies) here in the next few days, to get the blog juices flowing and get the year off to a sweet start :) HAPPY 2010, EVERYONE!