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!

then it was a green cake.

I have this theory about kids, give them what they want  now (if they’re not your kids) because you can’t afford what they want in just a few years.  For now, Youngest Nephew is happy with a Chinese-made, battery operated helicopter with lights, moving rotors, and sounds.  Cheap.  His older brother is happy with a real flashlight, “like a security guard’s” and a step trashcan – I got him both for his birthday last September.  He was happy.

Back to the cakes.  The first cake is a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  It’s a very basic recipe, very simply iced so I put these sugar decors I got from Goldilocks bakeshop previously.  It’s not perfect but when you light the candles on that cake, any 3-year old will be so happy, the imperfections won’t matter.

The second cake is a Mr. Bean car cake.  It’s supposed to be a Austin mini, complete with the padlock (badlock as my nephews call it, “to keep the bad men out”).  Youngest Nephew and his older brother aren’t the only ones in our family crazy about Mr. Bean, so is Spouse and Eldest Brother-in-Law.  This car cake was a big hit I have to say.

When the nephew told me about the green cake wish, I immediately thought of making this.  That was a couple of weeks before the birthday so I made plans, none of which I did.  I settled for a butter cake recipe, never tested but easy enough.  Then a couple of days before the birthday, I had the cakes sitting in my refrigerator and I didn’t start on it. I was stressing over it.  All I thought then was thank goodness I didn’t let on with the nephew about my plans because he was going to be soooo disappointed.   Spouse eventually told me it didn’t matter if the cake was not perfect.  He said so long as it vaguely resembled a car, any 3 and 4-year old will be happy…unlike their 40-something OC aunt I might add.  That made it easier for me to do the task.  It took time but it got done.  I started decorating the cake the morning of the  birthday, at 1:00 am.  I crawled out of bed wide awake with images of ways and tricks for decorating the cake.  So I worked like those little elves working for the shoemaker and was done in a couple of hours.

It’s not perfect.  But for a very non-artistic person’s efforts, it’s not half-bad.  My talents are not artistic at all, they lay somewhere else.  I’ll tell you where when I find out.

So I got a huge surprise when we opened our car door to show the kids what was in there, and they both screamed, “Mr. Bean car!!” – I have to say, it was all worth it.  Even when they were disappointed that the cookie wheels came off because they were trying to make it move, I was delighted.  They didn’t even think the car was a cake!

When it finally sank in that it was a cake, they very gingerly put their little fingers to that buttercream frosting and made a happy mess of it.

Recipes to follow…

Let’s find out…..

MAMMA MIA!!!!!

]]> http://unofficialcook.com/general/unofficial-cook-in-the-making/feed/ 0 http://unofficialcook.com/recipes/seafood/fish-and-chips/ http://unofficialcook.com/recipes/seafood/fish-and-chips/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 19:18:34 +0000 Mita http://unofficialcook.com/?p=780 [Continue Reading]]]> I’m back and it’s all because my 93-year old uncle found my blog when he entered his name on google and found a post I wrote a couple of years back about our family and soybeans. Go check it out to understand the strange connection. Now, I’m in touch through email with my cousin like I’ve never been before.

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.

LJC was the first true bon vivant I met. The year I worked for him was before the LJC Restaurant Group was even formally named although they already had a string of restaurants open in the Philippines and in Washington DC. That was the year Karihan Karitela and Cafe Adriatico-Hong Kong were opened. It was an exciting time and I was so young – everything was just so new to me. Your first job is always your baptism of fire and it was for me…I still shudder when I recall how dumb I was back in those days.

LJC: Hello Mita, what did you do today?

Me: Sir, you won’t believe this…I typed ONE letter the whole day today.

LJC: Ummm….I’m not paying you to type one letter a day….

Is it any wonder I didn’t stay on long as his secretary, with my boss mostly in the US on vacation! I was promptly moved to the Marketing department. But I learned so much working for LJC. He was involved in every phase of conceptualizing, menu-planning, recipe-testing, building and construction and marketing of each and every single restaurant he opened. Everyone knows he was also a former journalist and government press officer and avid antique collector before he became a restaurateur so there was nothing that escaped his watchful eyes. I learned just by watching and listening and boy did I lap it all up.
If there’s any one person I cannot separate from LJC when I think back, it was his father. Ambassador Emilio Aguilar Cruz, Lolo Amba as his family and all his employees called him, was LJC’s best friend and probably the biggest influence in his life. It was always a pleasure seeing those two men interact – more than father and son they were mentor and student, best friends. LJC had a reverence and respect for his father like nothing I’ve ever encountered. That truly was a special relationship.

I remember LJC, like his father, had that curiosity for new technologies. You might guess my age if I tell you one story to back me up…but here goes…

When cellphones were just introduced in the market, LJC promptly got one and was on and on about how wonderful it was he could conduct business while sitting in his car weaving through the infamous Manila to Makati traffic of those days.

Lolo Amba on the other hand was so fascinated by a photocopy of my hand I had tacked by my desk and asked if it was a fax copy. He went on about how wonderful fax was and how easy communicating had become. Sadly, I lost contact with them before the internet and email. I always wondered how Amb. Cruz would have felt about it all. He would have been a great blogger if he ever got into it.

LJC’s mother, Fely de Jesus-Cruz or Lola Ising as we called her, was another fixture in those days at Bistro Burgos. She’d come by usually in the afternoons and sit by the restaurant patio. I loved talking to her and listening to her stories of when she was a young wife and mother. She was a published writer too so her stories were all very interesting and brought me to an era I never experienced.

Those days, it seemed LJC was always in a hurry…he had this purposeful shuffle, with both hands in his pockets, walking from his car to his office in an old converted garage right next to the old Bistro Burgos. I’d spy him from the second floor window of my office and before I even had time to prepare he’d be barging in with an energy that always surprised me.

He’d be on the phone with his daughter first…then he’d have his stereo playing classical, jazz or broadway music depending on his mood, and conduct his business in just a couple of hours with people coming and going through my office it made my head spin …and then he’d be off again…to one of the restaurants most probably.

LJC’s passing has left a big, gaping hole in Philippine society. He was a forceful influence not just in the restaurant industry or publishing or urban renewal. In a way, you could say his influence spanned a couple of generations of restaurant patrons in the country and raised the bar for what to expect when you enter a restaurant….spoiled us all if you will.
As each and every person walks into any restaurant bearing his name in the future, they will be welcomed into Larry Cruz’s world…a wonderful, soothing world of the best food and and music, set against an ambiance only Larry Cruz could dream up.

Eldest Sister passed on an order of 192 cupcakes she got from her husband’s niece last week. The dummy that I am, I took it on without batting an eyelash. You really have no idea how many 192 cupcakes are until you have them all laid out…and run out of counter space.

This really was a first for me. When I got food orders in the past, I would pass it on to Eldest Sister and just help her. When I started adding up the ingredients I needed for this order – it only then dawned on me, this was not going to be such a piece of cake, pardon the pun.

There’s the logistics of what is the most efficient way to do things so you don’t screw everything up…like making sure your cake batter is fresh and the glutens in the flour won’t develop and make the cake tough. I had visions of cake batter boiling up in the heat of the kitchen and crawling out of the cupcake liners….and there was the thought of ending up with scary-looking Halloween cupcakes instead of the pretty Christmas cakes I had in my head…

Mercifully, the order came more than a week before the delivery date so I had more than enough time to prepare. The shopping was done a couple of days after we got the order and boxes and ribbons ready the next day. The buttercream icing was done a couple of days before delivery and there was nothing to do the day before but bake, decorate and pack.

Before all that, I did a trial batch of Red Velvet cakes and it was a total disaster. I used the convection oven for some reason and the cakes came out burnt on the outside and runny on the inside. That really floored me….but I tasted it and it was really delicious. I knew I had a good cake recipe to begin with so I just have to smarten up and correct my mistake. I also decided to work with only two tried and tested cake recipes, Vanilla and Red Velvet.  I then  stuck to buttecream icing and an almond-flavored poured fondant for frosting.

If worse came to worse I thought, I’ll call and say there won’t be any cupcakes. But I was not giving up all because everyone else was too busy to help me out and I was IT. It won’t kill me is all I kept thinking throughout the whole experience….

And so the night before I did the actual baking, I prayed for calm and peace…. and it worked!

I enjoyed myself baking and decorating the next day. Oh sure I got up before the sun came out and went to bed at past 2 in the morning the next day….but I did manage to sneak a 30-minute power nap during the day…and sure I had aches and pains everywhere but it only took a couple of Advils to get me going again…and Spouse…oh my Spouse was there all the way! He even did most of the packing and came up with an ingenious idea so the cupcakes won’t rattle and fall in their boxes. I am so blessed.

The best part, my client seemed happy enough to order more cakes the very same day we delivered and said her 6-year old daughter loved the cupcakes. Last night I got a message from her saying her daughter allocated 2 boxes for herself. She also opened a box of the cakes before it was loaded into their car and started happily chomping on a vanilla cupcake. Her mom said she’ll only eat the icing on one famous and expensive cupcake bakeshop but won’t ever go for the cake for some reason. So it was really a pleasure to see her going for the cake too!

The cute thing had one little hand curled up while she was eating and Youngest Sister noticed she saved and was clutching the cupcake decors! When she opened her hands to show me three tiny sugar stars, that made it all worth it.

Oh….btw, when we delivered the cakes, we did it in a parking lot somewhere in Fort Bonifacio. When we met up, we both opened our car trunks and did the exchange. On the way back, Spouse, Youngest Sister and I laughed afterwards at how ridiculous it must have seemed…almost like a crack cocaine transaction…or maybe sugar crystals ….

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?

Eldest Sister was contacted by a lady acquaintance about providing pastries and snacks for her office some weeks back. First thing she does is yell for some help from Youngest Sister and myself so we obliged and came up with some items we thought were appropriate for an all-day office snack tray…nothing fancy. We came up with gigantic oatmeal raisin cookies, red velvet cupcakes, individual chicken pot pies and food for the gods bars.

We took one day to do everything and boy, we were a mess! We were just a happy mess with nieces and little nephews running around checking on us or demanding attention, Spouse sleeping on one of Eldest Sister’s sofas trying to stay out of the way, a frantic Eldest Sister who managed to make a batch of bread at 4 a.m., a focused Younger Sister…don’t even ask about me…I was just there for the ride.

We never heard from the lady…until last Friday when she calls Eldest Sister, just an hour after we left after another whole-day visit that we usually spend eating and gossiping and playing with the babies. Eldest Brother-in-Law is going to celebrate his birthday tomorrow and Eldest Sister was planning a party too! But hey, an order is an order and we were glad to oblige. This was our first order for a business we’ve always tried to get into the last 20 years…..yikes, THAT long ago?

And so we took another day off yesterday to make some cupcakes for a birthday. Thank goodness we weren’t the mess we were last time. Cupcakes are so much more manageable compared to other things you have to individually wrap or cut or shape. Decorating can be fun if there’s a group of chatty women around. Thank goodness there was my 22-year old Eldest Niece keeping us focused. How could this young lady be one of us? She’s so damn calm!

I took my old digital camera with me but only remembered to take photos after we decorated and wrapped the cupcakes. The lighting was terrible! Flourescent bulbs on a dark, rainy late afternoon DOES not make for good lighting. But I shared the photos anyway.

We made our favorite RedVelvet and a new Black Forest recipe with Cream Cheese Frosting and Banana with Buttercream Frosting.

Latik.  What is it?  The best way to describe it is fried coconut milk curd.  Pictured here is the latik as I took it off the  fire.  Leaving it in the hot oil will turn it darker…the perfect topping for a variety of Philippine rice cakes.

It’s quite simple to make.  You take coconut milk and put it in a  wok over medium high heat.  When it boils, turn the heat down and simmer until the oil starts coming out.  The curds will start forming and you can start stirring  to prevent uneven browning.  I like to stir gently so I get bigger curds which I prefer to the alternative.