Drunken Cake

As hubby's birthday was getting near, I've been already thinking about the cake that I'd want to prepare - what design this time, what flavor, etc.  I'd like it to be different from the cake I did for my sis-in-law's birthday and I didn't feel like using fondant as I have even lesser spare time these days.  Fondant just require considerable amount of time although they are really very pleasing in the eye.   And the cake becomes really, really personal because the design will be unique.

But, this time, it just won't be fondant.  I was not in the mood for it.  So I searched around but couldn't find something that tickles my fancy.  But the irony of life is hard rock solid.  You'd normally won't find what you're looking for when you are actually looking for it and would accidentally stumble upon it when you're not looking for it.

That's what happened with this cake and I.  But it wasn't love at first sight.  Coz really, stout in a cake?  And then it was love at second look.  I found the recipe from this caprichosdecocinablog and was just convinced at how the blogger raved about the recipe.  Hubby loves dark beer.  Guinness in particular.  And this recipe calls for a Guinness as the star ingredient in it. So I thought, cake with guinness? Spells hubby's name in it.  

The verdict? We got a winner!  I've never blushed so much with compliments and raves with the other cakes I did compared to this one.  Even the coldest person I know expressed his ravings about THE cake.  So there's no way I'm not gonna share this to the world wide web.  TRY. THIS.  You can thank me later.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

250g cake flour (regular flour should be ok too)

75g of unsweetened chocolate powder

400g sugar (I used 350g)

2tsp sodium bicarbonate

250ml of stout beer (guinness for e.g.)

250g butter

150g heavy cream

2 eggs

For the topping:

300g cream cheese

150g sugar confectioner

350g heavy cream

How to for the cake:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180ºC. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl: flour, powdered chocolate, sugar and sodium bicarbonate.

2. In a pot, heat the dark beer.  Don't let it boil.  Once the beer is hot enough, put the butter in chunks and stir slowly until beer and butter is thoroughly mixed.  The original recipe where I copied it from, has a different way for this step but I've seen other recipes and this one is easier and more convenient for me.  And it worked quite well :)

3.  Remove the butter and beer mix and put it in a mixing bowl.  Add the beaten egg and the heavy cream and mix.

4. Then slowly add the mixed dry ingredients.  The recipe didn't mention about using electric mixer so at the beginning, I just tried to mix it with my spatula but figured it might take me forever before getting a homogenous mixture so I ended up using the electric hand mixer.

5. Take the mixing bowl with your two hand, stand near the oven and ask your hubby or anyone from the house hold who knows how to operate a camera to take a picture of you and your raw masterpiece.

Ok, this step is optional.

6.  Put the batter in a molder. I used a 23cm round pan.

See the rich color?  Black beauty.

7.  Bake for 50 minutes.

8. After 50 mins, take it out from the oven and let it cool down before removing from the molder.  And then be happy and be very excited and admire your work!

The silly smile can be omitted.

How to for the topping:

1.  Using a wire whisk, mix the cream cheese and sugar confectioner until they are totally mixed and smooth.  Tip:  Use cream cheese in room temperature.

2. Whip the heavy cream and carefully mix this with the cream cheese and sugar confectioner.  Tip:  If you want a voluptuous topping,  do not completely mix whipped cream and the cream cheese mixture.  

left: whipped cream.  right: cream cheese mixed with sugar confectioner 

The blog where I copied this recipe from, has this cake with a majestic beautiful topping in it... all cloud-like and spongey.  At first, I thought I was able to achieve it but then later on,  the topping kind of settled down a bit.  I blame it on the room temperature so I immediately put the whole cake inside the refrigerator.  It kind of stopped it from flatting out.  Then again, I looked at other recipes and pictures of this cake and almost all of them has the toppings kind of flat and some look like a melted cheese on top of the cake.   So I was already happy with how mine turned out.

This was how it was at the beginning.

After a few minutes it turned out to this.  Still not bad.

Reminds me of a foamy dark beer in a glass.

photo source

 Seriously I didn't expect the cake to be THIS good.  Its darkness is magnificent.  It's thick and moist and has a certain tang that can make one just ask for more.  The topping completes the cake.  They're soulmates.  So perfect for each other.   Although the cake itself can stand out on its own.  If one is watching the calories, the cake is just the same majestically yummy on its own.  It got me hooked.  I know this black beauty will frequent our household from now on.

And it got me those you should-put-up-a-business comments.  Plus hubby was really happy about it.  It's love.  Wait till you see the other details I add to complete his birthday cake.  Tacky.  Corny.  But I tell you it's love :)

We celebrated hubby's birthday last Saturday although his birthday is still on Tuesday, August 30.  Weekend is the best day to celebrate birthdays, agree?  We were in the countryside near the mountains and it was perfect for barbecue as well.  We had a blast.  

see? isn't it obvious that the candles and the happy birthday card are DIY? 

They're like child's work ha. ha. 

A birthday cake wouldn't be complete without a candle and a happy birthday card, yes?


p.s.
The cake's original recipe is called chocolate guinness cake

Baking cheesecake intimidates me - not anymore!

Need I say, I love cheesecake?  I've been browsing, reading and studying recipes for cheesecake.  But every single of them make me produce bead-like sweats on my forehead.  Not to mention most of them would have this highly sophisticated kitchen aid or something else of the same level.  Mahirap lang po ako eh. We can't afford kitchen aid so all I have in my kitchen is a cheap-o hand mixer.  Another problem is that most of the recipes use graham biscuit for the base... and we.don't.have.graham.biscuits.here.in.Spain.  Insane, right? 

But One day, I found a recipe that gives an option to not use kitchen aid AND no graham biscuit either.  I got excited. Only that, it takes a lot of time and there's this process of waiting for certain hours, blah blah.  I thought I was ready. I bought the necessary cheese - 4 boxes of 'em but then when the moment of truth came, I chickened out.   Revisiting the recipe, I thought it was just too much for me.   So I just forget about it and ate the toast with philadelphia cheese for 2 straight months.  Or maybe it was 3.

Then came a cool mommy blogger who posted a recipe for cheesecake.... the easiest and yummiest ::just let the bad grammar go, ok? I like to ryhyme:: cheesecake next to the original New York cheesecake and cheesecakes from The Cheesecake Factory.  Ok, maybe not.  But this IS really, really good.

The cool mommy blogger I was talking about is Ava of Mamás Todoterreno.  And if you want to see her recipe direct from her blog and have that spanish polished, go give it a try :)

Or you can continue reading for my own version of step by step to the heaven... I mean to making a no-sweat cheesecake.

Ingredients:

150g of biscuit - remember the Microwave Chocolate Cake recipe I posted? Same biscuit can be used.  Or if you are lucky and there's an available graham - go ahead and use that :)  Only that perhaps, there's no need for adding sugar anymore.

50g of granulated sugar for the base - you may opt to use brown sugar

150g of granulated sugar for the cheese

75g of melted butter

450g of philadelphia cheese

2 eggs

Very easy ingredients right? I know.

So moving on to the step by step

Just like before, the biscuit was crashed using the classic mortar and pestle.  If you have a food processor, it'll make things easier and faster.  But the good ol' way is not bad at all :).  Put the crashed biscuit on an aluminum molder just like in the picture.  A normal cake molder can also be used I believe.

put the 50g of sugar and then mix well then pour the melted butter and mix, mix and mix some more

Flatten the base with a spoon.  Hand is good to use too. Then set aside.

Put the cheesecake in a bowl and add the sugar.  Mix, mix.  Notice I'm just using a spoon? I love this.  Simple life. Oh, before I forget.  It is important that the cheesecake is at room temperature so it'll be mixed well.  Smoot and without lumps.

In separate bowl, beat the two eggs.  I took a shot in action! How cool is that? Not. lol.

Pour in the beaten egg in the cheese and sugar mixture

Then mix again until everything is uniform.

Pour in the mixture on the base that we prepared before and voila, ready for the oven.  Baking recipes normally ask to preheat the oven but I'm a big rebel mom, I didn't.  I sometimes think it's a waste of electricity heh.  So I didn't.  I just turned the oven to 170ºC and popped in the cheesecake.

According to Ava, 35minutes is enough but mine was still a lot wobbly after 35minutes so I ended up waiting till 45minutes.  

Here she is fresh from the oven.  I let it sit for about 30minutes to cool it off then popped it in the refrigerator.  It's really good when it's cold :) You can also top it with your favorite toppings like cranberry or strawberry marmalade, etc.  The possibilities are endless!

I didn't cut it nicely but one bite, you close your eyes and you go uhhhmmm uhhhhmmmm.

So tell me. Is this easy or is this easy?  It's E.A.S.Y.  Try this, I beg you. You'll never regret it.  The proof is this - hubby is not a fan of cheesecakes but then he tried this and he flipped out.  Cheesecake from the restaurant as he describes it. My smile was from ear to ear.  He even brought cheesecake for dessert in the office for 2 straight days now.  

We love this in our house that I have done 2 cheesecakes in a span of 3 days.  Crazy. 

Chicken Pastel

I've seen this recipe from Panlasang Pinoy and I thought I just have to try it.  The only challenge is the dough that needs to be put on top of the whole chicken mix.  This mama has started to learn baking but not making dough or bread... so it was a challenge for me.  But then, I had an idea.  I saw a ready-made dough for making empanadas(similar to a pie) here in Spain.  So I thought perhaps I can use that.  Then here comes hubby poking his nose on my cooking (I actually asked his opinion ;-) ) and told me that hojaldre dough is better and tastier.  Hojaldre is a type of pastry that is flaky. It is also called danish pastry. 

Hojaldre in my hand, I prepared to do the chicken pastel.  

Ingredients:

2 lbs boneless chicken breast, cubed
2 pieces Chorizo (or Chinese sausage) I used whatever chorizo I had in the fridge.  It was a chorizo criollo but perhaps even chorizo de bilbao in the Philippines would be a good substitute.  I am not actually familiar with chinese sausage heh.
2 pieces Beef franks (or Vienna sausage, hotdogs) I used bratwurst coz that's what I have :) This is what I love about cooking... it's easy to substitue ingredients and you can still get the same or even better result.
1 regular sized carrots, cubed
1 regular sized potato, cubed
2 tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock I just boiled a cup of water and then dissolve a chicken broth cube in it.
6 to 10 pieces green olives  I used those conserved olives in a bottle and they tasted really nice in the chicken pastel.

 

3 tbsp soy sauce
1 pc lemon (or 5 pieces calamansi) In this part of the world, calamansi is unheart of so I definitely used lemon.
1 cup white mushroom sliced (or button mushrooms) I used the fresh ones but I'm pretty sure canned ones would be ok too.

1 cup butter I just used half cup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
3 cups water

Can't bake? Make a cake using microwave - soooooooo easy, trust me!

I was first reluctant to try this recipe because baking a cake using microwave? Kinda weird, no? At least for a new baking-mom like me. But it turned out to be really moist and sponge-like not to mention a nice treat to the palate. 

So without further ado, here's the recipe and the how-to:

Ingredients:

4 eggs
20 Biscuits (like Marie) -
 
1 cup of Nesquik (I used colacao - local brand here in Spain)
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
¾ cup of sunflower oil (perhaps any vegetable oil is ok too)
1 pack of powdered yeast (about 15g)

In a big bowl, put the eggs and the sugar and using an electric hand mixer, beat until the volume doubles.

Add the milk and then continue beating. Add the oil and beat some more.

Mix the yeast with chocolate powder (Nesquick) then slowly add until everything is well blended.

Once everything is well mixed, add the biscuits. I previously pounded the bisuits with mortar and pestle. The original recipe I found says to just break the biscuits in small bits but after putting the batter in the microwave, there were still some big chunks of biscuits left. So the next time I did this, I pounded the biscuits. Turned out better.

Once the batter becomes homogenous, place it in a rounded cake molder (previously buttered if not using a silicon one). Pop it in the microwave and use the max power. Our microwave only has 750W and it took 10.5 minutes for the cake to bake perfectly!  For a 900W, 8 minutes should be enough.

After 10.5 minutes, I did the toothpick test and it came out clean so I took it out from the microwave. I used a 23cm molder so the cake turned out a bit thin but it still looked good.  It turned out really nice.  It took me 30minute for everything - preparation and baking.  

Let the cake cool down for at least 15minutes before serving or removing from the molder.  And of course why not put a simple design to make it even more appetizing.  I have these cookie cutters in different shapes.  I placed them on top of the cake and then sprinkled sugar confectioner on top.

So, ladies (and gents) go ahead and try it out. Trust me, this is really easy to do. Kids (and adults) will really love this :-)

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