Almond Tarts

Just made some awesome almond tarts. Took awhile but it was all worth it. The burns on my upper mouth is the proof of how good it was.

For this recipe, I took some almonds and toasted them on a pan on low heat. They came out softer so it was easier for me chop them up. I had already made the crust the night before because I used some to make quiche under my little brother's orders. The crust recipe comes from my little brother's My First Cook Book.

Simple Pastry dough

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 stick of butter
2 tbsp sugar (for sweet tarts/optional)
3 tbsp cold water
a pinch of salt

Take your room temperature butter and just roughly cut it into cubes. Throw in the flour and salt. Using your fingers, rub the flour and butter together with your fingertips until they look like breadcrumbs. Add sugar. Add the water a little at a time until you have a soft ball of dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. This shouldn't take that long to make. In fact, keep in mind that you want balls of butter wrapped in flour because you want a flaky crust. Put this dough in the fridge for a good hour or so but you can also just use it at that moment. If not, wrap in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge until needed. .

Almond tart filling

5 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 tsp fine salt
2 cups chopped toasted almonds
2 tbsp bourbon/whiskey
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 eggs, lightly beaten


Melt the butter and add the sugar, corn syrup and salt on medium heat. Constantly stir for about 2 minutes or until the sugar is melted. Let it cool for about 3 minutes and add the nuts. Once cool, add the whiskey, vanilla and eggs and mix until fully incorporated.

Preheat your oven at 350* F.

Once you have your dough and the mixture ready, take the dough and on a well floured surface flatten it out and form some circles. I used the mouth of a glass. Anyways, the size of the cut outs of your dough will depend on how big your tart tins are. As for my tarts, I'm using mini cupcake tins. Place the dough in the pan and fill it with your filling.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the filling has set. Enjoy...

Spongecake

First time I made this cake it came out so good. The second time, it was even better. Spongecake seems to mean exactly what it's called. The batter itself was very springy and sponge like and so is the finished product. Anyways, I have to add, the first time I made this recipe, I really wanted to make a twinkie replica and I came pretty close if I hadn't underestimated my oven (the cakes were a little crunchy on the corners, almost burnt). As for the filling, it came close if I had just kept mixing in the little sugar that I did put into the marshmallow fluff. Because I didn't you could taste the fine granules of the sugar I put in. Plus, I probably should have used confectioners sugar and not home-made fine sugar.

Spongecake

6 small eggs separated
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup cake flour
1 tsp baking powder

Mix the egg yolks and sugar until fluffy. Add water and vanilla and mix for a couple of seconds. Take the cake flour and baking powder and sift thouroughly. Afterwards, add flour mixture to egg yolk mixture and mix well. With a clean whip, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the flour-yolk mixture. Make sure you don't over mix it and instead fold it because it can cause the batter to deflate which won't make a very springy cake.

Pot Roast

We went to Costco and tried some really good pot roast. The biggest problem was that it was so expensive. $4.99 a pound. Even with a $2.50 discount from a $10.00 package wasn't enough to make me buy it. But with that price, I was determined to make some from scratch.

Pot Roast

3 lbs of Boneless Beef Chuck Roast
5 medium sized red potatoes cut in quarters
2 medium sized carrots
1/4 of an onion thinly sliced
8 cloves of garlic
2 cups of low sodium chicken stock
1 twig of fresh rosemary
Olive oil
Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste

Take your Chuck roast and wash it, sprinkle in a little bit of salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. In a pan lightly coat it with olive oil and pan fry your hunk of meat until a dark golden crust is apparent. Cook both side.

While cooking, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Take a pan and line it with foil, place 3 whole bay leaves and put the meat on top. Take three cloves of garlic, lightly crush it and put it in between the crevices of the meat, you can also cut into the meat to stuff in the garlic.

Put more olive oil on the pan where the meat was cooked and place the onions and garlic. Cook until brown and pour in the chicken stock. Once the sauce boils, quickly pour in the rosemary and let it simmer for 2 minutes. Strain the vegetables out and pour the stock mixture in the pan with meat. Place the potatoes and carrots in the pan with the meat. Sprinkle some Italian seasoning on the meat and vegetables as well as additional salt and pepper to taste and let it cook in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Decrease the temperature to 300 degrees and cook for an additional 2 hours or until tender. Make sure you adjust the flavor by adding salt to the meat and to the sauce that the meat is sitting in. Based on the 3 lbs of chuck roast I used around 1 1/2 tbsp of sea salt and it took me about 2 hours and 30 minutes to cook it to the texture I liked.

Chicken Enchiladas

Okay, if you're wondering why the picture of these enchiladas don't seem to be that golden brown, it's because it's not cooked. We ate them so fast that I wasn't able to take decent picture of the enchiladas. I didn't want to display the savageness we probably committed on this dish. But anyways, the first time I tried chicken enchiladas there were the most amazing thing I had ever eaten. Back then I didn't bother to cook it myself so I had to wait for my mom's patient's mother to make them before I could eat them. My mom's coworker had the recipe and had the courtesy to give it to us. The first time I made it, I made a good 3 batches and froze them so I could cook them anytime I felt like eating some. Oh, also, I use the La Victoria green enchilada sauce but you can use the red ones if you want. However, if you follow this recipe down to the brand of the sauce, considering it's a big contributing factor to taste, you might be hooked more than you probaly are if you've eaten enchiladas before.

Chicken Enchiladas

4 boneless chicken breast
12-14 corn tortillas
1 (28 ounce) can of enchilada sauce
1 pound of grated colby jack cheese (an entire sealed pack from food 4 less)
salt and pepper to taste.
10 stalks of cilantro for flavoring and color

Preaheat your oven at 350 degrees F.

Boil the chicken breasts in water with a little bit of salt and ground pepper. While the chicken is boiling, grate the cheese if it is not grated already, open the can of enchilada sauce and take out the tortillas from the fridge. It might be good to do this as a team effort considering it's a very quick meal. Usually my brothers grate the cheese and the other brother opens the can. Wash your cilantro as well and roughly chop it. Set cilantro aside.

When you see that the chicken is cooked, let cool and shred. Add a little bit of the enchilada sauce, some salt and pepper as well as a handful of cilantro (but not all, because the rest is meant to garnish the top of the enchilada). Just to make sure this recipe doesn't get too confusing, a small amount the sauce goes to the chicken mixture (about 1/4 of a cup), about half of the container is meant for the tortillas to be dipped in and the rest is to top the entire pan.

Using a shallow pan, heat the tortillas and dip them into the sauce. One of my biggest tip is to pack in about 2 heaping spoons of the chicken filling and a handful of cheese. Tightly seal it without breaking and place in the pan. Once the pan is filled, top with cheese, a little bit of the sauce and some of the chopped cilantro.


It's the same cheese if you're wondering, it's the light that's making this thing look so different.


Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown. If you decide to freeze it, make sure it thaws before you cook but if you don't have time for that, cover the enchiladas with foil and cook in the oven. If you stick a fork in there and its still cold, keep it in the oven a little longer. Enjoy.

Brownies

OMG, I just made the awesomest brownies. It was sooo good I burned my tongue eating it and I did not care. Too good to spit out.

Brownies

1 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
6 small eggs or 4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line the container you will use with parchment or grease it.
Combine the melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. I have chickens that produce my eggs so I always have them at hand.


They're pretty small in comparison to eggs from the store so I end up using 6 for this recipe but if you have regular eggs, use 4. Anyways, beat in the eggs, one at a time and mix well until well blended. Take the flour and sift it along with the cocoa power and salt. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture until blended.


Now what makes these brownies so amazing is that the central layer of the brownies consist of gooey chocolate chips. In order to do this, take your batter, spread a small amount on the pan. This will consist of your thin layer of chocolate. Sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the first layer of batter. Add another layer on top and cover the morsels. It was a little bit trickly because I used parchment paper but I did not want the brownies to stick to the pan. Not to mention I was too lazy to whip out some butter to grease the pan with(hehehe).


If you are using a large deep pan, the brownies will take a longer time cook in comparison to if you cooked it with a small shallow pan. The dish I used was a shallow dish therefore it cooked in about 15 minutes. A good way to know is to stick a toothpick in there and when it comes out clean, it's cooked. Another thing I learned though, it seems that when you smell the brownies, if it smells intensely good, that's about the right time it's done. It reminded me of pineapples. When you sniff the fruit and it smells very strongly of pineapple, that's when it's ripe.

By the way, let the brownies cool once it's done and cut into desirable pieces.

Mochi

When I went to Little Tokyo I went to a small store that sold all kinds of mochi. If you don't know what mochi is, it's a sticky rice dessert that is sometimes filled with something and sometimes not. Back then I never thought that you could make your own mochi. Well here it is, I made some mochi filled with peanut butter and I must admit it's one of the best. I also made some with Nutella and that was good. I tried using purple yam but it was too soft to keep it in the sticky rice. By the way, make sure you use the Mochiko brand. It's one that's in the box. Well, you can use another type of brand but it seems you have to mix it with another type of flour. For the sake of this recipe I only used the glutinous rice flour.

Mochi

1 1/2 cup Mochiko flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup water
1 tsp vinegar

3 tbsp cornstarch or potato starch
3 tbsp of confectioners sugar or in my case fine sugar

Mix the 3 tbsp of cornstarch and 3 tbsp of confectioners sugar and set aside. Take the Mochiko flour, sugar, water and vinegar, mix them together in a microwave safe bowl. Cover with a wet paper towel and place in the microwave between 8 to 10 minutes depending on your microwave. After 5 minutes, check the mixture and mix with a spoon to ensure that it cooks evenly. Personally, it took my mixture around 7 minutes and 30 seconds.


Anyways, ofcourse its going to be sticky to handly and that's why you will need a clean surface sprinkled with the cornstarch mixture to work with the mochi. place a small amount that you can handle on your kneading surface and sprinkle more cornstarch mixture. Flatten with a rolling pin or a circular cup and cut out small at least two circular shapes (or whatever shape you want).


Place a small amount of filling on one piece and cover with another. Pinch the edges to close and enjoy.

Gourmet Egg Sandwiches

I have chickens, its not news to a lot of the people who know me considering I tell just about everyone around me. They produce an average of 3 eggs per day. For a family of four who used to have a member that could eat 6 eggs per day, you would think that the average my chickens produce wouldn't be enough. But, instead of propelling my brother to eat eggs everyday and consume all the eggs my chickens produced, it changed his perspective on eggs by valueing them. Plus, I showed him a video of where store bought eggs come from and that really steered him from eating eggs.

This whole delimma doesn't mean we don't eat eggs at all. Instead, my brother eats eggs when there's nothing else to cook or if we want to make something quick and small. Did I mention my chickens produced eggs about half the size of eggs that you would normally find in the store. Now, you might ask what makes this thing so "gourmet" well its the mayonnaise. The mayonnaise is mixed with a very small amount of fresh chives. Yup, I said fresh chives. I don't know how it would taste with dried chives but the fresh ones seem to do the trick.

Egg Sandwich

2 small eggs per person or 1 store bought eggs.
1 pan de sal sliced in half or 2 slices of regular sliced loaf bread
1 slice of cheese per sandwich
1/2 tbsp. mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp. sour cream
1/8 tsp fresh chives
1/8 tsp lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Take the mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon and fresh chives, some salt and pepper and mix together. Beat the eggs with salt and pepper. Cook the egg mixture in a greased pan over the stove. By the way, do not over salt the egg mixture or the mayonnaise mixture, you need salt to taste but becareful when adding as to not kill the recipe. To the cooking egg mixture, you can sprinkle in some grated cheese on it or when cook set aside. Toast the bread in the toaster or on the pan and slather some of the mayonnaise mixture. Put the cheese and top with the cooked egg. Voila, gourmet egg sandwich.

Hot Taro Boba

There's this girl from work and everytime I see her she's always talking about taro boba. I pass her by and she'll tell me how much she loves taro boba. Then it hit me, I can make my own so here I am now. I made this warm because it's really cold here in California right now.

Taro Boba

1 pakackage of taro powder or 1 tbsp taro powder
4 tbsp cooked boba
Sugar to taste



Boil five cups of water and pour in the boba pearls. Cook the pearl until soft. Turn off the stove and let the pearls soak in the water. Remove them from the water and add some sugar or honey.




Instead of throwing out the water when you drain the pearls, just use that to dissolve the taro powder. Add sugar if necessary and then add some boba. Make sure you get some oversized straws or else you'll be eating pearls from the other side of your tiny straw.

Pinisi - Twisted Donuts

This is a Filipino dessert and it is one of the best. My mom used to make this when I was a kid and here I am making it myself. It's the awesomest cycle ever. Another thing to mention, making this beats buying them from the store. One, they have better ingredients because you won't skimp out on anything and you can customize it if you feel that its lacking sugar or salt.

However, for the sake of this dessert, the sugar and salt proportions are good. This bread is sprinkled with some form of sugar therefore it does not need any other modifications. It's fried too so adding more butter is not necessary. Oh, if you haven't noticed, the bread recipe is very similar to other bread recipes I posted. That is because, this recipe is super easy and super versatile so look forward to other bread recipes that have this as the main ingredients or even the same recipe just with a twist.

Pinisi

1 package of active yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
7 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup milk
4 tbsp butter (the way I did it was, I used my two fingers and measure it that way)
1/8 tsp salt
3 cups flour and some for kneading (about 1/2 cup)

Take the warm water and add into it the active dry yeast and sugar. Set aside to activate. This'll take about ten to 15 minutes. For me, the doubling in mass is the indication is good. The important thing is that it starts forming foam because
that's how you know that the yeast is viable.

Add the milk, salt and melted butter to the yeast mixture and lightly mix. Add your liquid mixture to a large bowl with exactly 3 cups of flour and mix for five minutes with a wooden spoon. Now, keep in mind that the dough is going to be very sticky but that's ok. In fact, it's good because the bread won't be so tough. Instead, it will be soft and great. Another thing to note is that you have to work with this dough very fast. Sprinkle some flour on your work surface and place a portion of the dough (about a palmful) to which will have to roll between your hands and long stretched dough. Once long enough, hold the center and grab one of the end piece and spin around the other. Place this on a greased pan, cover with a wet towel or wet paper towel and let it rise in a warm area.



This should take about an hour. If you're wondering who those two are, they're my brothers. The one wearing green is Mark while the smaller one is Matthew.


Once doubled in size, deep fry until golden brown and sprinkle some white sugar, a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon or parmesan cheese.

Chocolate Truffles

During Christmas, a close friend of my mother gave us chocolate truffles as a present. It wasn't the first time I ate truffles. In fact it was probably the second or third time. But it wasn't until now I was able to make them. With that said I treaded on a journey to find the exact recipe. This isn't exactly what I had eaten but it is worth remembering. Plus, these were my first attempt to making my own chocolate.

Chocolate Truffles

1 8 ounce package of cream cheese
3 cups semisweet chocolate
3 cups confectioners sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Take the cream cheese and cream it until smooth with a mixer. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and incorporate this into the cream cheese. Slowly pour in the confectioners sugar and the vanilla extract. Cover chocolate and refrigerate for one hour to make sure it's manageble. But let me tell you, it wasn't a hassle even if I was working with it for a good thirty minutes. Once, that's good, with your hands, form little balls and coat them with crushed nuts or cocoa powder. Personally this was really sweet so I made super small, literally one/two bite pieces and coated them in three batches of different ingredients. I used crushed cashews, crushed almond cinnamon and cocoa powder. I liked the cocoa powder the most because it competed witht he sweetness of the chocolate.

By the way, this is a fun activity to do with children. I did it with my younger brothers and they loved it.

Enjoy!

Linagang Tadyáng - Filipino Beef Rib Stew

If there's anything I love about cooking, it's easy cooking. Now, what's easy cooking? For me, it's taking a bunch of really good ingredients and throwing them in the pot. Less than an hour later, voila, food that will last you the whole day.

My mom made this today. I normally cook, but it seems that she and I take turns especially after what I made yesterday. My brother had wanted to make some rotisserie ribs but I highly discouraged it with the sole reason that we needed to eat vegetables. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the potatoes in the garlic and cheese mashed potatoes are vegetables but, I really prefer colorful vegetables.

This stew has cabbages, onion leaves, beans, mushrooms, potatoes, carrotes, onions, a little garlic and a fourth of a bell pepper. Now that sounds like it has some colorful vegetables to me. You don't necessarily have to put all of these vegetables in the stew but you do have to stick to the basics. Now the basics are, onion and garlic for sauteing the meat, cabbages, potatoes and onion leaves, everything else took time to be incorporated into the dish. It began with the green bell pepper, and then the beans and later the mushrooms. How it happened, is pretty clear. A friend of mine loved using bell peppers when cooking so we began to take that up. The beans, my mom's co-worker, Juana, always made very interesting vegetable concoctions. Based on my mother's recount, she loved to half cook all kinds of vegetables. And from the looks of things, she sounded vegetarian. Anyways, enough about that, the mushrooms got in the pot because we didn't know what we were going to do with the mushrooms that were just sitting in the refrigerator.

Linagang Tadyang (Filipino Beef Rib Stew)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves of garlic diced
1/2 a large onion diced
1/4 of green bell pepper diced
10 cups of water
1 lb of beef ribs sliced
1/2 a whole cabbage
3 stalks of onion leaves
1 cup uncooked beans (black, pinto, your choice)
1 cup of roughly sliced mushrooms
4 red medium potatoes cut in half
2 carrots cut into 1/2 inch pieces
Salt and pepper to taste

With the beans, you can either cook them in a separate container or just throw them in the pot when the water is added. But, if you are using a darker bean, like black beans, it is better to cook them in a different pot with a little bit of salt and pepper to taste, just because color incorporates into the soup making it dark. However, if you don't mind, then just go on right ahead and throw them in there.

Sautee the garlic, onions and bell pepper with the olive oil. Once this is done, it should only take about five minutes or less depending on the heat ( I can tell when it starts smelling really good), add the ribs to brown. About eight minutes later, add the ten cups of water and let it simmer for fifteen minutes or until the meat is almost tender. Add some salt and pepper to taste. Keep adding water if it seems too low, try to keep eight to ten cups of water in the pot. Add in the potatoes and carrots and cooked beans.

Once the meat is tender, just adjust the flavor of the soup based on your taste and add the onion, leaves, cabbage and mushrooms. The pot should be covered for 5 minutes or less and let the little steam half cook the leaf vegetables. Quickly uncover and set aside where there isn't any direct heat. Just a reminder, the pot should mostly be covered while cooking.

Have fun!

Buttery Bread

This is the first time I made really really good bread. The first time I made bread my mom said, "this bread is so hard that if I throw it against the wall, the wall would have a dent." Now my mom didn't say this in English but she said something to that effect. But that bread was really hard. The several times I made bread afterwards wasn't that great either. It doesn't help when you get this feeling that making bread is so complicated.

Ok, I made bread today and it was really good. The only thing I want to fix is that the bread has a very strong yeast odor. I know you need yeast to make bread but I can do without the smell. The issue with this bread has nothing against the issues that I had with the breads I made previously. It seemed like lacking the understanding of making bread was the issue. At first, I realized that activated yeast is very important for a fluffy bread. Next, I realized that letting the dough rise was very important as well. Letting the dough rise a second time finally hit me today. It wasn't until today that I finished perfecting bread. It only took a couple of years. But anyways, without further ado, I present bread... buttery bread to be exact.

What makes this bread so buttery? A lot of butter or olive oil brushed on the dough while it's rising the second time and more brushed while it's cooking.

Buttery Bread

1 cup warm water
1 packet of active dry yeast
1/4 cup milk
6 tsp sugar
5 tsp butter
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Mix the water, sugar and the yeast. Set the mixture aside and let the yeast activate.



Once the yeast starts frothing up, it should take ten minutes, place it in a bowl. Add the salt, butter and milk. Add the flour one cup at a time. On the third cup, sprinkle more flour and use some of that flour to dust a working area where you can knead the dough. The dough will be very sticky and soft so use the leftover flour knead the dough. Use either the same bowl you used or use another but grease the bowl and place the dough. Cover with either a wet towel or wet paper towel. Set aside until it doubles.



Once the dough doubles in size, beat the dough for ten minutes or so. When I did this part, the dough was very airy but when I beat all the air out of the dough, it was pretty tough. Not as tough as the bread I've done before but the elasticity was pretty strong. I have a feeling it has something to do with all the glutin but I have a feeling this is the reason why you have to beat the dough for ten minutes.

You can do two things with the dough, you can roughly roll the dough flat, roll it and tuck the edges. Place the dough in a loaf bread pan and let it rise again. Or, you can divide the bread into smaller pieces and let rise for another hour.



Brush the dough with olive oil or butter. Regardless, preheat the oven 350 degrees F 10 minutes or however many minutes to preheat the oven before you make the bread. As you can see, the bread did grow but now you can see why most people would put this dough in a loaf pan. The dough does grow but it spread out when it has nothing to cling on. But, seeing how it works now, I think next time, I'll just use the individual large cupcake tins that I have to make these rolls. Or, not butter the bread the second time it's doubling so that it doesn't spread on the pan.



Bake the bread in the oven until the outer side of the bread is brown or the inside is cooked. Don't forget to brush the bread with butter at least twice during the cooking process. Wait until the surface of the bread can withstand the brush. I brushed the dough while it was still soft and it was a little difficult. I was a little scared of deflating the dough but it was good. It was good though.

Have fun!

Fried Chicken

I bought these humongous chicken legs at .99 cents a pound from the grocery store. From the look of things, these chicken legs are almost the size of turkey legs. I had to make some cuts on the meat because the last time I cooked these chicken legs, they were cooked on the outside but the inside was still bloody.

Did I mention I perfected this recipe. My mom makes this type of fried chicken with the simplest ingredients. It was so depressing to find out that the chicken was crunchy and delicious without any complicated stuff in them. Plain old flour, and spices are needed and I couldn't make it right. The chicken always came out funky but not anymore.

Fried Chicken

7-8 large chicken legs
1 1/2 cups of flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1/8 tsp garlic salt
1/8 tsp lemon pepper
seasoned salt
msg

Combine the flour, cornstarch and cayenne pepper. Put all these ingredients in a resealable bags

Prepare a pan with enough oil to deep fry the chicken. The rule of thumb is the chicken has to be submerged in the oil as stated by deep frying. If you have a deep fryer, great, but I don't. So, if you don't have a fryer, then I suggest using a narrow pan.

Take the chicken and place them in a bowl. If the chicken legs are large, then create some deep cuts to insure that the inside is fully cooked. Sprinkle in the salt, black pepper, garlic salt, lemon pepper, very little seasoned salt and an even smaller amount of msg. Yes you read it correctly. I use msg. Personally, I think it's fine in small amounts. We've used it for a very long time and it hasn't led to any fatalities, so I'm guessing it's not as bad as most people think.



Today, I almost over salted this batch of chicken, so be careful. Another thing to add, you can change the spices used to flavor the chicken. I am using spices that we have at home. Plus, I value the amazing flavor that can come from simple ingredients. The important factor here is to coat the chicken in the flour mixture and later deep frying it.



Put the chicken in the flour mixture, seal the bag and mix until the meat is well coated. Make sure the oil is hot enough and put the chicken in carefully. Cover and cook until the chicken is golden brown.

Here's what it looks like...

Tortilla Chips

I think this is more of an idea than a recipe, but it's a really good idea. No more wasting old tortillas. We used to throw away tortillas that were to old or too hard to eat. Then, today, I realized that tortilla chips must be just tortillas fried in some oil. Cooking hard old tortillas was amazing. Turning them into edible chips that were topped with cheese opened up a whole new world for me. Imagine all the nachos I could make, or just the simple fact that instead of throwing away tortillas I can turn them into amazing tortilla chips. It seems with this recipe, the older the tortilla, the better.

Tortilla chips
10 old tortillas
oil for frying



Cut the tortillas in half and than a fourth and even 1/8. It seems the 1/8 size is manageable. Fry them until golden brown. Top with some cheese, salsa and ground meat cooked with taco seasonings for nachos. Or you can add some guacamole or some sour cream and enjoy.

Italian sausage

Ok, I really doubt that this is considered Italian sausage, but the flavor works for me and I can make it at home. Plus, I love sausage pizza. This hits the spot.

My brother requested pizza and I thought, I should totally put some sausage on top. But, one, I don't have money to buy some sausage and two, I tried looking for sausage at our local grocery store and I couldn't find any. I then decided that I was going to make them on my own using some ground beef and the spices provided by my spice rack.

The sausages tasted very similar to Italian sausage. The spices were right but, I failed to put enough salt. With that said, I should have listened to my gut feeling of cooking a small piece of the mixture to check if it had the right proportion of flavor to meat. I now have kept that in mind.

Italian-like Sausage

1/3lb of ground beef
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp rosemary
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp marjoram
1/8 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp vinegar
1 egg




Starting from the top and clock-wise after, you can see that there's black pepper, fennel seeds, cayenne, marjoram, paprika, thyme and finally garlic salt in the middle. Add more salt if necessary. Mix all the ingredients together and form little balls. Cook on the pan until brown and sprinkle on top of pizza.

My brother suggested forming these into long sausages and cook them for breakfast. Sounds good to me.

Pizza Supreme

I've been making pizza since 2009. There's one thing for sure, I need to keep making this pie to perfect it. There's always problems, like sometimes, the dough is too thick. The crust is cooked and brown while the middle is still doughy, not good. Or, the dough needs more salt. In the end, the dough is the issue. The toppings, like bell pepper, onions and cheese aren't really a big deal. But today, the crust wasn't only the issue. I made some homemade sausages for the first time and it was good except it lacked salt.

I was super excited over the homemade sausages that I disregarded my gut feeling of cooking a small piece and checking if the mixture was right. Well, now I know. It just needed some salt. The spices were right on the spot that the whole house smelled like Italian sausage. Super awesome! Next time I'll probably use another type of dough. Like maybe the bread dough I used to make some buttery bread.

Well here's how I made it...

Pizza Dough

2 packets of 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
3 1/2 cups of flour

Take the warm water and put in the sugar and yeast. Set that aside and let the yeast activate about ten minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

When that's done activating, if the yeast mixture isn't in a bowl already, put it there and add the oil and salt. By the way, I got a tip of putting the bowl, if metallic, in the microwave and either melt the butter or some water. Slowly add the flour, 1 cup at a time. On the third cup, knead the dough and sprinkle some of left over flour. In a separate greased bowl, place the dough in and cover with a wet towel. Set in a warm place and let it double. This will probably take an hour or so.

For me, I made the mistake of flattening the dough on an unfloured surface and compiled my pizza. It was awful putting the pizza on another pan to cook. The pizza -broke and separated. So that was a big no-no.

Well anyways, with that in mind, place half of the dough on a greased pizza pan. Oh yeah, use a thin pan. I tried cooking the pizza on a thick pan and it made the crust as well as the underside of the pizza taste like a crunchy cracker. Too crunchy for me, but if that's what you like then here's you're solution.

So, spread out the dough with either a rolling pin or your hand, spread some store bought pizza sauce on the dough, sprinkle your favorite shredded cheese, and other toppings you might like. Good toppings that I've used are onions, green bell pepper, mushrooms and homemade sausage. I'll post the homemade sausage recipe by itself, this post is already pretty long.



When you have the sauce, cheese and your preferred toppings, throw it in the oven until the crust turns brown.

Enjoy!!!

Snickerdoodles

It's going to be Valentine's Day and my little brother has to bring something to his school tomorrow. There are cupcakes and sweets at the store on sale. But, I am so broke I was only able to afford the red sprinkles Matthew (my little brother) requested. I had planned to make cupcakes but I had a hunch that some kids might not even touch the tray that holds the cupcakes considering it's not pretty looking or anything. I was going to decorate it and all but I figured I might as well just make some cookies.

I make the best snickerdoodles when I don't forget the recipe. Unfortunately, I forgot it, so the first batch was aweful. Note to self and those who read this, There's a reason why butter is used for cookies and cakes, it works better than olive oil. So, don't use olive oil. The first batch was a disaster but I redeemed myself on the second one. I just stayed up really late to make them.

I have to say, I know cakes and cookies often time have ingredients like baking powder or soda but with this cookie, I don't bother to put that in. I just put all the ingredients that are listed below and cook for exactly 8 minutes. The cookies come out soft and delicious without having to worry if I incorporated the baking powder well enough.

Snickerdoodles


1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt

Cinnamon sugar mixture

3 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar

Combine and set aside. Add more as you go along if necessary. You can add but you can't really remove.

Preheat oven at 400 degrees F.

For the snickerdoodles, cream sugar and butter until smooth. Add vanilla extract and eggs. I add the salt to the flour and mix. Then I add the flour mixture to wet mixture until the flour is incorporated.

Use a spoon and drop circular-like sized batter into the cinnamon sugar mixture and roll until well coated. They don't have to be perfect, personally, the more they look like they were homemade, the better. Place straight to a pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for EXACTLY 8 mins. No more, no less.



Note: I used 2 types of pan, a thin pizza pan and a thick cake pan. The cookies seem to spread out more when using the thin pizza pan. The cookies also look fluffier and softer.

Big Mac

Yes you read the title correctly. I have perfected the recipe for this awesome burger with the help of my brother. He made them today and followed the recipe for the sauce down to the drop (which I rarely do). So thank you Mark.

When I first saw this recipe, I was so excited. I had finally made it and it took about an entire batch to remember that the lettuce is shredded and mixed with some of the sauce. It took this batch of burgers to remember that there's cheese in there as well. I know there are pickles, but there's some relish in the sauce already so that should suffice. You know what though, in the end it's all up to you. You can make it an exact replica of what you would find in McDonald's or you can adjust it to your liking.

There are probably two recipes in this one. The sauce and the burger patties. The burger patties are really just some flattened ground beef with salt and pepper. However, I'm not serving this for anyone but me, my mom and brothers so I figured, why not spice up the patties. So I did!

Big Mac

Burger Patties:

1 pound of ground beef
4 pcs of finely chopped mushrooms
1/4 finely chopped onions
1 tsp garlic salt
1/8 tsp of cayenne pepper (add more if you want it spicier)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all these ingredients together. A good way to see if the mixture is to your liking is take a small piece, flatten it with your fingers and cook on a hot pan. Don't forget though, that if you lack the ingredients listed above, you can omit the mushrooms, garlic salt and cayenne pepper. You're left with the beef, onions, salt and pepper. Just mix all those ingredients up and flatten them with the use of a large piece of parchment paper as seen here.




Sauce

1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp french dressing
4 tsp relish
1 tbsp minced onions
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1/8 tsp salt

Combine all the ingredients and set aside.



Shred the lettuce into strips and mix in some sauce. Set that aside.



Take your burger buns and cut the top bun into two like shown here.



The Burger

Cook the meat and add the bread in to toast if you like. I like to cook the meat until it's brown before I add the bread to make sure no cross contamination occurs. Plus, the oil from the meat helps toast the bread, so I like to add the bread when the oil starts to show. Here's something else to keep in mind though, the meat releases a lot of fat into the pan and you don't really want the bread to absorb it all so if this is something that's an issue, just pop it in the toaster. Luckily my pan is lop-sided so all the oil pools to one side. ;p



Take the lower piece of bread and put a little bit of the sauce, probably 1 tsp. Place the burger on top (with an optional slice of cheese) and add some of the lettuce and sauce mixture. Add the middle section of the bread a little bit more sauce, the second patty (optional cheese) and more of the lettuce mixture. Put the uppermost bread and viola, a Big Mac replica.




Enjoy!

Irish Cream Cake

Do you know how much I love to cook? Too much. I have a French exam tomorrow, a couple of readings and a video to watch for my English class. But, instead of studying, here I am blogging. I just have to blog about this cake I made out on a whim.

I call it "awesome cake". Hahaha, maybe not. I'll probably just call it Irish Cream cake because of the Irish Cream Bailey's in it. Well anyways, here it goes.

Irish Cream Cake

1 box of SuperMoist Butter Yellow or Yellow Cake mix.
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup of Irish Cream Baileys.
3 small eggs

Preheat the oven to 350*.

Take the water and mix the Irish Cream Baileys. Mix that mixture into the cake mix and add the olive oil. Put the eggs in one by one and beat until smooth.

The mixture was a little thick so I added a quick splash of Irish Cream Baileys. Using a 1/4 measuring cup, roughly put in some batter into the cupcake pan.

Place in the oven and cook until when a toothpick is inserted, it comes out clean.

Note: If you take a look at the picture at the bottom, this cake is deflated in the middle. I trully believe that the reason for this is because I used 2 (two) small eggs instead of 3. So, don't forget to use 3 small eggs or 2 big eggs.