My sister got this from a Southern States recipe book (I believe it was a Georgia recipe)… This is SO good — and so calorific! The calamansi will make the dish slightly sweeter. This is best made with lemons because of the grated lemon peel. I baked Lemon Squares for Christmas and it’s always one of the favorite treats in the family.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

CRUST:

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 tsps. grated lemon peel

1. Combine the ingredients in a mixer (with the paddle attachment). Beat at low speed for 30 to 90 seconds.

2. Press the crust mixture into the bottom of a 9″ square pan, using floured hands. Make sure that the crust is evenly distributed.

3. Bake at the center of the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until lightly brown.

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Posted: January 30th, 2008 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts.
Comments: 1

Baking a birthday cake can be a daunting task but that didn’t stop me from baking and show my labor of love to my 21 year old daughter. I begged off from icing a cake so I asked her “will blueberry cheesecake do?”

Fortunately she agreed. Topped with a lone pink birthday candle, my daughter made her birthday wish.

My blueberry cheesecake is not very sweet. Topped with ready-made blueberry filling easily makes it sweet. Actually you can choose any toppings for the cheesecake but the kids prefer blueberry.

Here is my recipe for Blueberry Cheesecake:
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Technorati Tags: birthday cake, blueberry cheesecake

Posted: January 24th, 2008 under Recipes, desserts.
Comments: 6

My Principles in Food Preparation teacher in UP Diliman was the late Matilde P. Guzman. My sister and I, as well as her notable graduates such as Sylvia Reynoso-Gala and Nora Daza, all benefited from the basic food principles that she taught us.

Studying her manual, “Principles of Cooking,” was my life-line. I found a blog entry about Mrs. Guzman during her early days — and looking at the photos reminded me of Mom’s life in UP Diliman.

Remember that Coconut milk or cream can be used undiluted or diluted thick or thin by adding hot water to fresh grated coconut meat. The quantity of the cream extracted by a coconut depends on its size, and on the ripeness of the coconut meat.

As a rule, 1/2 cup undiluted cream can be obtained from a large mature coconut . It will also yield about 300 grams meat.

300 grams meat yields 4 cups grated coconut.

4 cups coconut yields 1/2 cup undiluted cream.

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Posted: January 15th, 2008 under Baking Tips, Recipes, desserts, kakanin.
Comments: 3

Tapsilog as we know it was coined from the word Tapa (salt-cured beef ), sinangag (fried garlic rice) , Itlog (fried egg). Filipinos are so creative when labelling their dishes. My favorite tapsilog is the one served at Rodic’s Diner at the Shopping Center inside the UP Diliman campus. Tapsilog wasn’t the trend during my seventies UP days but Rodic’s Diner brought a respite to famished UP students who were bored eating the dorm’s unplalatable University Food Service (UFS).

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Posted: January 8th, 2008 under Filipino Restaurants, Restaurant and Eating Places.
Comments: 6

One of the most popular Filipino breakfast fare is the Champorado (chocolate rice porridge). The original recipe is made with soft-boiled rice and flavored with Tableas de Cacao which are bitter-sweet chocolate tablets made of freshly roasted chocolate mixed with milk and sugar. Champorado is usually served with a side dish of fried or smoked seasoned meats. I prefer to eat it with danggit (dried fish from Cebu). Childhood memories of eating champorado involved pouring evaporated milk in circles over the bowl of champorado. Just thinking of it makes me feel so warm. I found out about Antonio Pueo’s Double Chocolate champorado mix and it taste just as the original recipe. The “made with real Spanish chocolate” is very true. It’s quite handy to have this champorado mix around during the rainy days.

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Posted: January 6th, 2008 under Filipino Food, Recipes, Supplies & Equipment.
Comments: 4

Sally, my mother started her bakeshop in 1966. Her inspiration came after watching a movie. She noticed that a lot of moviegoers bought “kutsinta” or “puto”. She started with two product lines only. Then one day as a nine year old girl, I find myself being asked to help around the bakeshop. The bakeshop just expanded. Our kitchen was not big enough anymore. Mom built a bakeshop building beside our main house for the baking and packaging. Our home kitchen was used for simpler tasks like a test kitchen.

Regarding our logo, it was Rey Evangelista (ok, he was about 29 years old in 1966 — and he headed the Cebu Jaycees Children’s Art Contest at that time) who designed our logo and tag-line, “It’s Super-D-Licious!” I love the retro look. Our bakeshop was located in Lahug, Cebu City.

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Posted: January 5th, 2008 under Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Memory Lane.
Comments: 1

Now that the two noche buena feasts are set aside, there’s a lot of extra food especially ham. In our case, we had a lot of Majestic Ham leftovers. The best thing to do is to recycle the leftover Christmas Ham for an even tastier dish. In fact, I got this idea from web searches on noche buena recycling.

Since we had a boned-in ham, we recycled the bone and ham bits by cooking Beef Pochero aka Cocido

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Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under Home Cooking Tips.
Comments: none