Baking sugar cookies are not my cup of tea. It’s labor intensive. I’d rather bake bar cookies because they are so much easier. You dump all the dry, wet, mix and voila, one gets a yummy cookie. Not with sugar cookies. Whenever I bake sugar cookies, my kids know it’s a labor of love. It’s the love that makes me continue on with this tradition even if they are now adult children. Let me share with you the Christmas Sugar cookies that have been a continuing Christmas tradition for the past twenty years in my family. You can even prepare sugar cookies weeks ahead before you give them to your friends and relatives. Just store them in a cool, dry container.

If you are located in Manila, Philippines, you don’t have to go far to Divisoria to buy your ingredients. You can purchase at Chocolate Lover.

NOTE: The Christmas Sugar Cookie recipe can be used only for your personal use and cannot be posted in your website, blog or any other site, form or means without my WRITTEN permission

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Posted: December 10th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Christmas.
Comments: 4

Every Christmas season, I bake “Gingerbread Men Cookies” for my children. Even if they are much older now, the memories and the aroma of molasses, cinnamon and other spices give them a warm cozy feeling. It’s one reason that I’ve continued this tradition year after year. I will share this recipe with you if you want to bake it too.

This recipe is modified for a tropical climate. The original recipe requires immediate rolling after the dough has been made but our tropical heat just makes it gooey to handle.

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Posted: December 9th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Celebrations.
Comments: 9

What do we do with leftovers from Christmas dinner? Most especially scrap ham. My favorite is Majestic Ham. The solution….Pochero or cocido. I prefer to call it Pochero as it is a very common dish in my hometown Cebu.

Pochero (Spanish spelling , Puchero) with its bounty of meats, sausages and vegetables is known as the “real national dish of Spain. Brought to the shores through the Spanish conquistadores, it is a favorite dish at Filipino festive occasions. With extra ham from the noche buena, the pochero is one way of recycling left-over meats. This recipe is richly flavored by the ham bones and scrap ham simmered with the beef.

Ingredients

1 kilo cubed beef (with some portions of fat)
1/2 kilo leftover ham bones
1/4 kilo scrap ham
8 to 10 cups water or enough to cover meat
4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut in half
4 Saba bananas, peeled, sliced in half
3 pieces chorizo de bilbao sliced diagonally into 2 inch pieces
1 cup chick peas
1 head of cabbage quartered
1 Baguio pechay leaves separated

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Posted: November 20th, 2009 under Noche Buena, chicken.
Comments: 5

It’s the time of the year when one needs to plan for the holidays. As early as September, I already know what to bake for Christmas. A childhood memory that never fails to remind me of the Christmas season is Fruitcake. I used to bake a lot of fruitcake in the past but the girls never really got around to acquiring a taste for it. They preferred the Gingerbread Man Cookies because of the story behind it after I bake the first batch. That’s my then 16 year old daughter, Lauren when she helped me with my fruitcakes a few years ago. Fruitcake flavor is best when it has been aged for a few months in a cool place (preferably the refrigerator in the Philippines).

For those of you who want to bake Fruitcakes for the Holidays, here is a recipe which I call Golden Fruitcake. I’ve modified this based from my mom’s original fruitcake recipe. My Golden Fruitcake does not have a strong taste of brandy nor is it too sweet. Anyway, there’s a lot of preparation so make sure you run down the list carefully.

Here is my Golden Fruitcake recipe

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Posted: September 9th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Christmas.
Comments: 10

One of mom’s specialties in her Sally’s Bake Shop was Special Mamon or what Americans commonly call as Yellow Sponge Cake. Customers raved about the creamy and soft texture of mom’s Special Mamon. My sister shared this Mamon recipe which is reminescent of Goldilock’s special mamon recipe. According to my sister, this is Minna Picache Cruz’s Special Mamon recipe and a friend of Sylvia Reynoso-Gala. I hope you like it.

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Posted: March 23rd, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes.
Comments: 19

I also bake apple pie every Christmas. The cinnamon smell reminds me so much of my childhood days when mom used to bake apple pie. There was one Christmas in the early seventies when Apple imports ceased. Mom innovated her apple pie by using sayote. No one knew it was a fake apple pie until she announced it after we all gobbled it up. But these days, apples are sold in most fruit stands. I use the tart apples (green/red apples) from China as they have a sweet apple aroma unlike the plain Washington apples. The Chinese apples have a crunchy texture that makes it a pleasure to eat.

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Posted: December 26th, 2007 under Baking Recipes.
Comments: 3