The recipe I used for this cake was actually not a good choice.  It’s called a Kentucky Butter Cake and I found it in the website www.allrecipes.com

I have to admit I was impressed with all the positive feedback the recipe generated.  It’s just too sweet for our taste and if I ever do this cake again, some adjustments have to be made.  First of all, I will not leave the cake in the pan as long as I did.  It got stuck in the pan after I left it in the refrigerator for a day and took me a long time and a lot of hot water to get the cakes out.

So, instead of getting into the recipe, I’ll give you some tips for the assembly.

I started with two different sized pans to get as close to the shape of a car as possible.  The first pan was a  rectangular Wilton cake pan that’s about 10.5 x 6.5 inches and 2 inches deep.  The second pan was a 1.5 quart glass loaf dish.  It was not a perfect match since I had to trim about a third of the finished loaf cake to make it fit nicely over the first layer.

Since the cake was too sweet, I decided to just lay it on top of the first layer and didn’t bother with a filling.  The cake was dense enough that it didn’t budge once I had it sitting on the cookie sheet I lay it on.  This was a heavy cake so I had to put it on a stainless steel cookie sheet if I was going to be moving it around safely.

Then I cut a few tubular pieces of the cake trimmings to use on both sides of the hood.  I then had my prepared buttercream frosting divided into two unequal portions.  About half a cup was tinted black for the hood and the rest was tinted as close to apple green as possible.  I used the old Philippine brand Peotraco gel tint for the black and it worked very well.  The green tint was a combination of blue and yellow McCormick food color.  Just a few drops of blue and lots more of the yellow.

When I was satisfied with the colors, I started with the body.  The only way it was going to work for me was to pipe the icing and cover as much of the cake before I smoothen it all out.  I used a small spatula to smoothen it out but as the icing melted, I used my clean fingers and that’s why the photo shows a dimply-looking surface.  I tried to  contour around the roof and hood sides but this melted eventually so go easy on the contouring around the edges or use a Royal Icing recipe. Then I piped the black frosting on the hood and smoothened that out strictly with my fingers.

Then I took four choco cookies and cut out foil rounds that fit in the center of each cookie.  The foil pieces stayed on the cookies with a little dab of frosting.  Then on to the sides of the cake they went for the perfect tires. Spouse said the edges even resembled treads so that was a nice bonus.

I then cut out some pieces of regular aluminum foil for the windows,  windshields, license plate, front grill and tail lights and stuck it on easily.  There was a little add-on not every car will have – a padlock.  I wish I had gold colored foil but I didn’t so I just made a teeny-tiny padlock shape thing with the regular foil and it worked for. For a finishing touch, I put some red candy decor pieces for the turn lights, both back and front.  Voila!  There’s your car cake!

Now that I’ve written this all down, I think I’m up for another cake decorating job!

Sami's Cake

This is a very basic carrot cake iced with a cream cheese frosting which I used for the “white cake” I wrote about in my last post.  I tweaked the recipe to my taste and think this will be my keeper recipe.  I just love this cake for the spice, the moistness, the crunch  of the nuts and the fact that it actually has some vegetable in it.  That fact kind of fools me into thinking this is a healthy cake.  You have to admit, it is healthier than a butter pound cake.

This is half the recipe of one I found online months ago.  It makes a single layer 9-inch cake that’s just about the right size.

3 cups finely grated carrots (you can freeze any leftovers for the next cake)

1/2 c. dark brown sugar

1/2 c. raisins/currants or dried cranberries

2 eggs (always large for baking)

3/4 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. vegetable oil

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. crushed pineapples, well-drained

1 1/2 c. all purpose flour

3/4 tsps. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/2 tsps. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. allspice

1/2 c. chopped walnuts (don’t chop too finely so you get some crunch)

Combine grated carrots and brown sugar in a bowl and set aside for 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Sift and combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl.

In a larger bowl, beat the eggs until light.  Gradually beat in the sugar, oil and vanilla.  Stir in the pineapple.  Add the flour mixture and stir until it’s all absorbed.  Be gentle at this point. Now add the carrots and brown sugar mix, then the walnuts and stir till well-combined.

Pour into your prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow the cake to cool for about 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

Cool the cake completely.  Give it a few hours to make sure, it’s worth it.  Or stick it covered in the refrigerator overnight.  Frost with cream cheese frosting.

TIP:  I prepare the frosting a day or two before I use it.  The texture comes out smoother.  My theory is,  the local confectioner’s sugar I get here isn’t all that fine even after beating the frosting longer than usual.  Leaving the frosting covered in the refrigerator for a couple of days before use does the trick.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 package softened cream cheese (I use Philadelphia, there’s more in a pack than the local brand)

1/3 c. butter, softened

1 tbsp. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

2 c. powdered sugar

Combine first 4 ingredients in a mixer and beat until creamy.  Add sugar and beat until smooth, about 5-6 minutes.  Be careful not to let the sugar dust get in your face!

I’ve written about some other family members too so I wondered if I was ever going to be found out. It had to be my uncle, the oldest member of our family – and I am so very proud of his internet savvy!

Even if I haven’t written in a few months, I’ve been cooking and trying out different recipes. My biggest thrill is to try out recipes with my family who never really got to try a lot of my cooking. This is one recipe that was a great success with everyone. I cooked this at Eldest Sister’s once and one by one, my nieces and Eldest Nephew came to see me while I was still frying away. They came out to the dirty kitchen, fish in hand, to tell me it was great. It was the sweetest thing. Eldest Sister’s kids are not that easy to please so that show was really appreciated.

I started with a recipe from Feyma Martin’s Full Circle blog and tweaked it a little. I lessened the beer to just one can to get a thicker batter. I also use a light beer so the taste isn’t too strong. Then I use very cold beer and frozen cream dory fillets from the supermarket that are partially thawed. I emphasize that because those are two ways you can ensure a real crisp coating with a flaky, and still juicy fish inside. The contrast is fantastic. The idea came to me when I learned that the Japanese use ice chips in their tempura batter to get it extra crisp. Those two tips work great and you’ll get perfect fish fries every time.

This was served with regular french fries and my usual coleslaw.

These fish steaks are what we call “tanigue” from the tuna family. This fish is a delicate, white-meat fish perfect for smoking or grilling, or as a ceviche. It’s very versatile and quite popular in seafood grill restaurants all over the country.

These steaks were supermarket bought but never frozen. I’m loving the fact that any seafood we now eat never has to see the inside of a freezer ever. When we lived in Colorado, I would always think of how far the seafood I was preparing had such a long way to travel to get to my pan. We were in he mountains after all….so far away from the nearest shoreline…way up in the mountains no less.

These steaks were simple to prepare. I made sure they were dry, seasoned them with salt and pepper and cooked them over a hot, stainless steel pan with a little olive oil. I like my seafood moist so the cooking process took only a couple minutes for each side. Just before I took it off the heat, I tossed in some butter and calamansi juice into the pan till it sizzled and then plated the fish.

This is simple, delicious and healthy. Fresh is a bonus, perhaps for toughing it out living in the tropics…just rewards, don’t you think?

This is a rice stick everyone in the Philippines knows. Filipinos like eating this with ripe mangoes, specifically, Philippine mangoes and none of the “manila” mangoes sold in the US. As every Filipino who has traveled outside the country will tell you – nothing beats Philippine mangoes for flavor and texture. And this Suman sa Ibos is perfect with our mangoes. This is salty and not sweet at all, a good contrast to a sweet mango.

The Thais also eat their mangoes with a sticky rice dish that is similar to Suman sa Ibos. But they don’t make it into rice sticks like we do.

When I was thinking of a recipe for the Lasang Pinoy 20th Edition which is about wrapped foods or Binalot, I thought of this suman immediately.

Our yaya or nanny (every family had one in those days in the Philippines) whom we called “Nana” taught me how to do the wrap when I was just a little girl of about 8 or 9 years old. I kept pestering her when they were making a huge batch of suman with my grandmother supervising everything. To keep me out of her way, she showed me how to wrap the suman and made me practise without the filling of rice and coconut cream. The first photograph here is the first one I’ve done in years. This is empty though, just a test suman.

The wrapper is young coconut leaves that haven’t completely opened and turned green even. I had my trusty laundrywoman source the leaves for me and she came with a whole bunch of leaves already cut from the long stem it comes out of. I looked at it sitting in the counter of the dirty kitchen and thought to myself, “What in the world am I going to do with all of that?!”

After my ordeal…excuse me…my interesting experience of making the real thing, I realized just how difficult it is. Like the muruecos I did earlier, I’d rather buy this from now on…confident that I gave it a try once and succeeded. Well, partially anyway. It was edible but it was too skinny! And it will probably take a thousand more sumans to make it perfectly plump the way I remember the ones Nana made. I’m not in the suman business so I’m happy.

Here are more photos of the actual rice sticks I made with REAL filling. It’s a simple mix of 1 c. sticky rice, 1 c. pure coconut cream and a tablespoon of rock salt.

There they are – all 5 of them.  Yes, just FIVE.  I didn’t have the heart to ruin it all by making skinny ones like these.  For a first attemp, they were okay, don’t you think?  You might be wondering what happened to all that rice.  Well, with some sugar added, I turned it into a lazy person’s rice cake called biko.  Hahahha!

Anyway, I boiled all five of them in the second extraction of coconut mixed with about 3 cups of water. It took me a full 2 hours before I was sure they were done. Then I noticed they didn’t plump up like I was hoping they would so I didn’t bother to take a photo and carted all of them to Youngest Sister who said they were perfectly done and the grains I used were first-rate, but she did note how skinny they were and how she wished there was more.

On that note, I shall end my pathetic suman story.

Muruecos is the name of a common rice stick or suman as Filipinos call it. It was supposedly my grandmother’s favorite suman. I like it too and featuring it for Lasang Pinoy 20th Edition, Binalot made the effort certainly worthwhile.

Again, this was my first time to try this recipe. By the way, I used white sugar instead of brown. I had this thought the dark latik will make a great contrast with the white sticky rice. You be the judge. I asked my mother how it was made but got no details like proportions and cooking time. We never made this at home even when my grandmother, who instructed rather than cooked, was around. So this was really a huge task for me to undertake. Actually, for all the work that goes into this, I’d rather buy this next time. It didn’t turn out bad …look at the evidence….errrr…I mean photo!

And honestly, I don’t know how suman artisans make any profit. The cooking time alone will eat up any gains. Then there’s the wrapping…how on earth they make a perfect suman each and every time certainly boggles the mind.

The wrapper is a young banana leaf. To prepare the leaf, wipe it down with a clean damp cloth to remove any debris. Pass the whole leaf over an open flame to make it easier to handle. A hot clothes iron will also do the job. Cut into rectangles about 4×12 inches.
So here’s the recipe:

2 c. sticky rice

2 c. pure coconut milk

1 c. white or brown sugar (brown sugar is used for the original Suman Muruecos)

1/4 tsp. salt

4 c. coconut milk from second extraction

latik

1 young banana leaf, prepared as described above
Start by washing the sticky rice over running water. Strain to remove excess water. Soak the rice in a bowl with the pure coconut milk. Season with the sugar and salt. Adjust to your taste. Cover and leave in refrigerator at least 4 hours.

Lay out a piece of your banana leaf wrap on a small flat tray, wrong side up. Put 1 1/2 tablespoon of the soaked rice on one end. Top with latik as shown in photo.

Then take the leaf on the end where the rice is, move the rice over an inch and fold over the leaf once to secure it. Make sure the rice grains don’t run off as you fold all the way to the end. You can do this by folding one side, then lifting and repeating for the other side. When you have folded the whole leave over your rice stick, fold the sides so the ends meet in the center of your rice stick.

Take two of the sticks and tie it loosely back to back with a strand of banana leaf. Place this in a stock pot and continue wrapping until all your rice and wrap is used up. Cover the wrapped rice rice sticks with the coconut cream. If this doesn’t cover the  rice sticks, add more water to your pot.

Cover and bring to a boil. Allow this to simmer for 2 hours.

Another entry for Lasang Pinoy’s 20th Edition titled “Binalot – All Wrapped Up!”. This dish is simply called “Binalot” by Bicolanos. It’s shrimp and coconut meat wrapped in gabi leaves then stewed and braised in coconut cream and herbs and spices.

This is one dish I’d never seen or tasted before but it intrigued me no end when Youngest Sister first told me about it. I asked two native Bicolanas I know about it. One was our laundrywoman who also plants and sells vegetables for a sideline. She also brought me the fresh taro leaves and herbs I needed. Actually, she brought me a whole lot of leaves yesterday…but more on that in the next post.

Apparently, I made one big mistake according to Youngest Sister. The wrap should have less stuffing and more of the leaves. I only used one large taro leaf per pouch. It would have been more interesting with more layers of leaves soaking up the coconut cream. She said I also should have let it dry further, till only the coconut oils are left in the pan. My big worry during cooking was drying it up too much that the pouches were going to burn! It turned out alright. My sister said it was delicious, and suprisingly, my husband loved it.

I had a little problem sourcing the coconut meat for the stuffing. You need to use the “bucayo-stage” coconut meat. There are several stages to a coconut: mala-uhog (literally, snot-like), mala-kanin (rice-like, for salads), bucayo (thick meat but not mature enough to yield coconut milk), niyog (mature, for milk extraction mainly). I asked our buko-man who peddles fresh young coconuts in our neighborhood to find me some and deliver it the next day. He didn’t show, so I assumed he didn’t find any. I went to the small market a few blocks away from our place and found the mature coconuts but not the bucayo ones. I saw a buko cart sitting nearby, but the buko-man was nowhere to be found. We waited, and waited…people stopped to buy his buko and kind-hearted strangers started selling them buko juice and leaving the money in a jar which the buko-man also left!

Finally he shows up and explains he went for his mid-morning snack. He picks me a green coconut with flecks of brown on it, but it isn’t bucayo…more like mala-kanin. But what do I know, so I take it. I spy another coconut in the corner of his cart. It had more flecks of brown on the surface so I asked him to try that one. Voila! It was perfect!

Lemongrass and herba buena is also used to flavor this dish. Herba buena is something my laundrywoman says is different from the local oregano, but she brought me fresh oregano anyway. The heart-shaped taro leaf is what I used for a backdrop to showcase these two herbs.

Now for the recipe. I’ll try to give you details as experienced by a first-timer. I’ll also point out where the mistakes were made so you can decide how to proceed when you try this recipe.

The Recipe:

shredded meat of about 2 bucayo-stage coconuts, about 3 cups (1 coconut will do)

1/4 kilo fresh shrimp, peeled and roughly chopped

about 4 c. milk of 3 mature coconuts, extracted with about 3/4 c. water added

12-15 taro leaves for wrapping, lightly wiped with a damp cloth to remove any debris. If you get rust stains on your cloth, it’s not mud, just the sap from the leaf. Be sure to cut the stem at the center of the leaf so it’s easier for wrapping. Just cut it with a knife till it’s flat.
about 6 leaves fresh Philippine oregano

about 2 stalks lemongrass, washed and cut in 1-inch pieces, pound with the back of a knife to release the flavors

5 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

1 large onion, peeled and minced

2-inch ginger root, peeled and sliced thin

2-3 siling haba or pepperoncini peppers

2-3 bird chilis or any hot chili you prefer

1 tsp. rock salt

2 tbsps. fish sauce

latik

coconut leaf rib or kitchen twine for tying the pouches

There’s a lot of prep work for the ingredients but once you have it all ready, the next step is just wrapping and cooking.

Lay out a taro leaf on a small tray and place about 2 tablespoons of the coconut meat, Top it with a tablespoon of shrimp. Wrap as you would a paper envelope and tuck in the last flap into a fold. Repeat the wrapping 3 times with more leaves. Tie it lightly just to keep it from unravelling during the cooking. Repeat till you’re out of stuffing and leaves, after making about 4 pouches.

My mistake here was putting more stuffing than was necessary, about 1/2 c. coconut meat and 1/4 c. shrimp and just using one leaf to wrap it. This made my pouches quite flimsy.

In a flat-bottomed casserole, place the rest of the ingredients minus the liquids.

Set your pouches over this and pour the coconut milk over it. Add the fish sauce and cook covered over medium heat about 1.5 hours or until the sauce is gone and you are left with nothing but the coconut oils covering the bottom of your pan.

Since the pouches will be sturdier wrapped in more leaves, you can then turn it over once in the middle of the cooking.

Serve individual pouches unwrapped at the top and sprinkled with latik.

This is the first of a series for the Lasang Pinoy Edition 20: Binalot, All Wrapped Up! I’m hosting this month’s event and while I thought it might be interesting, I had no clue what I was in for! This was actually the easiest dish I made so I’m posting it first.
The dishes I had in mind were all rather complicated and required dexterity, which I unfortunately lack….big-time. Then there was the scrounging around for ingredients and recipes. Then there’s the fact that these are recipes I’ve never tried to do on my own before. I even attempted a recipe I’d only heard of, but never tasted or saw before. Despite all the hassles, I enjoyed myself but am glad I’m done with the cooking.

Here’s a photo of the Ginataang Tilapia. It’s a whole tilapia unwrapped from its white bok choy encasement after stewing in coconut cream, onion, garlic and ginger:

This was one of my old favorites which my mother made quite often in the past. Our version doesn’t have the tomato stuffing that our neighbor from Bicol says the original version has. I’ve tried that and still prefer my mother’s version but this recipe here has both.

If you look at the photo closely, it looks like the sauce didn’t thicken. This is because the photo was taken right after I turned off the heat and transferred this fish to a plate. A few minutes later, the sauce thickened further and it looked gorgeous sitting on a large serving plate. I regret not taking a photo of all three fishes laid out that way…with the coconut cream all thick and yummy.

For those living in the US, this can be an easy recipe to make since all the ingredients are readily available in supermarkets with an Asian community. You can serve this to anyone who is not afraid to see a whole fish – as it should be served I personally believe.
There are a just a couple tricks to the wrapping. I have a photo here of how I wrapped the first one. The other two in the pot were wrapped differently though. Instead of having the leaves in a mirrored position with the white stems fanning out, I laid them on top of each other, with the white ends about an inch apart. This was easier to handle. You also have to smack the white stems of the bok choy with the back of your knife to flatten it out. Don’t use the whole stem, just leave about half an inch to an inch.

Here’s the complete recipe, with the tomato stuffing and the chilis:

3 whole tilapia, gutted and scales removed

6 large white bok choy leaves with an inch of the stems still on and hit with the back of a knife to take out the stiffness

3 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced (optional)
3 scallions, minced (optional)
1 minced garlic (optional)
1/4-inch ginger root, peeled and minced

about a cup of pure coconut cream (from 1-2 coconuts)

about 2 cups of the second extraction of 1-2 coconuts

half a head of garlic, peeled and minced

1 large white onion, diced

about 1/2-inch ginger root, peeled and sliced thin

3 siling haba chilis or any chili you prefer (optional)

2 tbsps. fish sauce

Make sure your fish is clean. I always gently rub fresh tilapia with rock salt just because it makes me feel good. Rinse well. Cut a slit in the belly. Dry and keep in your refrigerator if it’s a hot day (it always is where I am!).

Mix the tomatoes, scallions and ginger root in a small bowl. Add about 1/2 teaspoon salt. Take out the fish and stuff the bellies with this mix.

Lay out a couple of bok choy leaves on a small tray one on top of each other is best. Place one fish on one end and start wrapping it. Don’t worry about the ends sticking out. That’s perfectly fine. Repeat for the rest of the fish. Set aside.

In a kawali or wok, place the rest of the ingredients except for the coconut cream. Place the fishes over this and then pour out the coconut’s second extraction. Place your pot over medium heat and allow to simmer till most of the water is gone. This should take about 20 minutes with the lid half on.

At this stage, pour the pure coconut cream and allow to boil once before turning off the heat. Check for taste. Serve immediately.

Okay, this dish really doesn’t have a name…Bessie, my mom, just called it “Mrs. Johnson” and the name stuck.  Mrs. Johnson is actually the former American first lady, Lady Bird Johnson.  My mom found this recipe in some American magazine in the 60′s and turned it into her own.  It has very few ingredients, is simple to make and kids always love it.  And so, it’s become one of the family’s favorite recipes….

Lady Bird, like her husband Lyndon B., is from the great state of Texas which is known for their barbecues.  This recipe was shared in some American magazine my mother got a hold of back in the 60′s.  She tried it, made a few changes and it’s not really the same recipe she found in that magazine.  For one, I don’t think the Americans ever heard of banana catsup back then!

I’m sure the original recipe called for some tomato ketchup and some sweetener like brown sugar, molasses or something.  But my mom just went ahead and used banana ketchup…and the resulting dish is something you’d think was a complicated recipe.

The recipe is as simple as marinating some good beef brisket in plenty of Worcestershire sauce and banana ketchup.  There’s enough heat, sweet and salt in these two ingredients that you won’t need much else.   After sitting overnight in your refrigerator, just place it in your pot or pressure cooker and let it cook till tender.  Thicken the sauce a little by allowing it to simmer without the lid.

Serve over hot rice and some vegetables like peas, corn or carrots.

And before you get started on the first spoonful, just remember….the simplest things and recipes will sometimes prove to be the best!

Mine started off with a vegetarian squash, longbeans and coconut milk stew. Actually, I’ve featured this same Guinataang Sitaw and Kalabasa recipe in the past but the pot looked so invitingly good that day, I took another photo to show off here. There is a slight variation though – can you spot it?
The only difference with the first recipe and this one was the addition of squash tops. As I’d mentioned in another post, the monster squash vines have been growing in the yard. This was the same day the laundrywoman came to tend the garden and she took a snip of some squash tops which, unlike in the past when I had to run to my mother with a bunch of them for her to prepare, I did all the prep work this time. Of course, it was just a handful so it didn’t require Olympian efforts at all…