Dear Malin

Thank you so much for the lovely cupcake liners! They're absolutely adorable. I love them! :)

Let me know the next time you are in town, I'll bake you a cake :)


See you soon!
Aikko

Cottony Soft Three Vanilla Japanese Cheesecake

My friend Abbie sent me a link awhile back (make that way way waaay back). She came across a cheesecake recipe that seems to be too good to be true.

And indeed it is. I can't believe I tried making it just now. It was tangy yet sweet, cottony soft and definitely a "where have you been all my life?" kind of cheesecake.

I tweaked the recipe a bit to make it a three vanilla cheesecake. Why three?

My cheesecake has vanilla sugar, vanilla beans and pure vanilla extract. It couldn't get any vanilla-ish than that.

The recipe calls for butter, cream cheese and milk. Simple enough.

Which I'd need to melt over a double boiler. Then set aside to cool. This is where I added the vanilla beans. Beans of one pod is enough. Yummy!!!

The recipe calls for corn flour. I got stuck there for awhile when I first read the recipe. I can't find corn flour in the grocery aisles. Just cornstarch. Lucky me, I found out they are one and the same.

Once the cream cheese mixture has cooled, I folded in the cake flour, corn flour, egg yolks and lemon juice. A very dense mixture will come out.

In another bowl, I whisked the egg whites till foamy, then I added the vanilla sugar gradually.

I waited until soft peaks form then I folded it into the cream cheese mixture. 

I then made sure to fold it gently then added the vanilla extract. Pour mixture into an 8-inch spring form pan.

I covered my pan with aluminum foil since I'll be using the Bain Marie (a.k.a water bath) technique.

I baked it at 325 F for an hour.

Oops! I almost burned a part of it. Hehehehe! I blame the oven for this, not me who got distracted because I was reading "The Lost Hero"... again.

Cottony Soft Three Vanilla Japanese Cheesecake

recipe adapted from Diana's Desserts

Ingredients: 

140g fine granulated vanilla sugar 

6 egg whites 

6 egg yolks 

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar 

50g butter 

250g cream cheese 

100 ml fresh milk 

1 tsp. lemon juice 

60g cake flour /superfine flour 

20g cornflour (cornstarch) 

1/4 tsp. salt.

1tsp vanilla exract

1 vanilla pod

Instructions:

1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Add vanilla beans. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well. 

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the vanilla sugar and whisk until soft peaks form. 

3. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Mix in the vanilla extract. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper). 

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C (325 degrees F). 

Makes 1 (8-inch) cheesecake, 12 servings

Happy Cupcaking, 

Aikko

ps: To the people of Japan, my heart goes out to you.

I ran out of...

Vanilla extract last weekend. So I headed to the nearest Gourdo's (Greenbelt 3) to buy a bottle or two.
That was the plan. 

But plans don't always work out. When I saw Wilton's Bake Easy, I thought, I just have to have it. 

And then I saw this. Isn't it beautiful? I can see a butter cake being baked in this pan. Pops can imagine gelatin being formed in it. Wilton calls it a Cascade Pan. I don't know why but I'd like to call it a Bundt pan doubly prettified,

Want to see how it looks like on the inside? Can this pan get any prettier? And I just have to have it. There goes my plan of only buying vanilla extract! :)

Happy Cupcaking,Aikko

Black Background, I Don't Get You

I'm supposed to be writing about something work related. Instead, I have this post open typing the night away. 

I don't like a black background, no matter how black the background is, I can't get it to look the way black should look in my photos.

See, first I tried taking a picture of one cupcake, then three and then five cupcakes. It's still not black enough. I'm not doing something right, am I? Camera settings perhaps?

This is the blackest black I got for the background. Unfortunately, the composition sucks, hehehe! :)

The roses are made from gumpaste. As you see, I still need lots of practice. They look like weird roses. I like it though when I gathered them all and made them into a bouquet. They actually look better together than on top of the cupcakes I made! 

Why red stems you ask? This post is inspired by a YA - Beastly by Alex Flinn. A modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I love fairy tales and also love fairy tale retellings. I'm supposed to tell you more, but I got distracted the not-so-black background. Anyway, there's always the next time. 

Happy Cupcaking, 

Aikko

ps: Beastly, the film version, opened last Friday. Can't wait to see it.

Pinoy Cupcake: Champorado at Tuyo

When I was a kid, I don't like food (I don't have that problem now, a perfect evidence is my waistline). Every year come the school annual physical examination, I give my mom a report from the school nurse saying I was underweight. You know what one of Ma's tricks was? Using condensed milk as her paintbrush, she'd put a smiley face on a champorado. Then she'd coax me to eat it, "Look now! We're eating the eyes", "Oh look, we're eating the lips!" Ma totally worked her magic on me. 

Champorado (and I am quoting from Wikipedia) "is a sweet chocolate rice porridge in Filipino cuisine. It is traditionally made by boiling sticky rice with cocoa powder, giving it a distinctly brown color and usually with milk and sugar to make it taste sweeter. However, dry Champorado mixes are prepared by just adding boiling water. It can be served hot or cold and with milk and sugar to taste. It is served usually at breakfast and sometimes together with salty dried fish locally known as tuyo."

As part of my Pinoy Cupcake Project, I made these Champorado and Tuyo cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes made of rice flour and tablea de cacao, iced with chocolate ganache, topped with a sliver of fried tuyo and drizzled with condensed milk.

This post is also for Joshua and his wife Roma, my sister's school friends. They now live in London so I am guessing they terribly miss Filipino food, hence the request to make champorado cupcakes. Joshua and Roma, these are for you.

Happy Cupcaking!
Aikko

Heart Filled Cake Bites for Valentines

I have some Kisses, a few candy melts and a handful of cashew nuts. Sweet, a bit nutty and definitely chocolate-y.

And then I baked a red velvet cake and crushed it into crumbs. Sort of like how Angie Dudley does it, Bakerella-style.

And when there are cake crumbs, the logical thing to do with them is to make them into cake balls or cake bites, right?

By default, cake bites should be covered by chocolate candy melts. And I gathered rolling them into chopped nuts would make them more interesting.  

But you know what could make these cake bites even more interesting? By inserting kisses inside the cake bites so they'll look this this:

Heart filled cake bites for Valentines.

Happy Valentine's everyone!

Happy Cupcaking, 

Aikko

Start a New Fashion, Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve

Why do I love Enchanted? Let me count the ways:

I love how the ladies who lent their voices to the most beloved Disney Princesses have played parts in the film.

Amy Adams was a darling and Patrick Dempsey, we'll what I can say, he was dreamy.

Idina Menzel was there. Too bad, she wasn't able to sing even just one song.

Need I mention Stephen Schwartz?

Last song is one of my happy songs.

Which inspired this post.

Starting your fashion, wear your heart on your sleeves. Sometimes, it just pops up in my mind out of nowhere. Weird.

Yeah weird, but in a good way.


So even if it's still a week a way, happy valentines everyone!


Happy Cupcaking,
Aikko