WW #23: Red Velvet Cupcakes
Duncan Hines Red Velvet mix plus 1 1/1 cups water, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, and 3 eggs, equals…
I used this for the frosting…
Add these…
…and you get these…
It’s my first time to taste a red velvet cupcake. I don’t know how it’s supposed to taste. These, sad to say, tasted like cardboard. And I doubt if that’s how the cupcakes are supposed to taste. Thank goodness for the strawberry frosting! I’ll do this from scratch next time. :) It’s been a while since I used anything ready-mix for baking.
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Viva Chocolato
Last Friday, after browsing through book after book after book at Borders (at least, I did!), Hubby, Abby and I had dessert at what I’d describe as a “posh” dessert cafe cum wine bar cum chocolate shoppe. It’s called Viva Chocolato.
This pic was lifted from Viva Chocolato’s website. The rest are mine. :)
The photo above was obviously taken during the day and I have to say that the place comes alive at night, when the air is filled with the laughter of wine and chocolate lovers and live music is played by a guitarist/singer. Notice that brightly lit little room at the far end? It’s where private parties are held! A chocolat party! That’s my kind of party! ;) Viva Chocolato hosts parties for kids and adults alike.
We sat at a quiet corner on a high table with matching bar stools. I love the red and white thing going on with the lamps. 
Abby, as usual, had strawberry ice cream!
Hubby and I shared a slice of Ebony and Ivory cake ($6.95 a slice!!!). The “ivory” frosting tasted like cheesecake and the “ebony” was rich and moist. I loved it! At that price, I was determined to make myself love it! Hahaha!
I would love to come back to this place for a sampling of their truffles. I just found out that they have happy hour everyday from 4-7pm and one can pair a glass of wine with a truffle for 4.95. ;) How chic is that?!
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WS #17: Banana Choco Chip Muffins by Chef Abby
I have made banana choco chip muffins countless of times. But this latest batch tops ‘em all. Why? Because Abby, my almost 4-year old daughter actively participated in making them! This is our first kitchen project and definitely worth blogging about. Hee hee. 
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking sodia
1/2 teaspoon salt (We used sea salt.)
3 large bananas, mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup milk (We used light soy milk.)
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup (or more!) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat muffin pans with non-stick spray or line with paper cups.
Line the muffin pan with paper cups.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
Sift, sift, sift.
3. Combine bananas, sugar, egg, melted butter and chocolate chips in a large bowl.
Beat the eggs lightly.
Mix together the bananas, sugar, egg, butter and milk.
4. Fold in flour mixture, and mix until smooth.
The art of ingredient folding.
5. Scoop into muffin pans.
Optional: Lick the batter off the spatula and mixing bowl. 
Go ahead, lick the batter off the spatula! ;)
6. Bake in preheated oven. Bake mini muffins for 10-15 minutes, and large muffins for 25-30 minutes. Muffins will spring back when lightly tapped.
The finished product.
Quality control
Easily, the best banana choco chip muffins that came out of our oven! Promise!
We did this on Friday. From chef, Abby became a “little mermaid” on Saturday and Sunday, my other WS entry. Visit other WS participants here.
Have an awesome week ahead!
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La.Pi.S. #2: Dessert
This week’s theme for Lasang Pinoy Sundays is dessert…anything that goes well with tea or coffee. ;) Good thing I checked out the theme before last week was over. I made sure I took photos of my dessert from our buffet lunch yesterday. ;)
Dessert, to me, is the highlight of a meal, kinda like the grand finale to a food production number. That’s why it is served last, right? Hee hee! We had lunch at the China Buffet Palace yesterday. It does say China in the restaurant’s name but the place serves a variety of Asian and international food. I’ll tell you more about it in upcoming posts. For now, we’ll talk about dessert.
China Buffet Palace has a passable buffet selection: soft-serve ice cream in vanilla, chocolate, or a combination of both, cookies, fruits, cakes, fruit salad, jello and some fried dough. I normally shun fruits when on an all-out pig-out fest. :D So I headed straight for the small cakes.
Strawberry Cake
Mocha Cake
Lemon Cake
Chocolate Cake
None of the four rocked my dessert boat. 
They were all too dry. But of the four, the chocolate cake was passable followed by the lemon cake (although the frosting was too sweet). The mocha cake and strawberry were forgettable.
I would have wanted to come up with a dessert that I made from scratch. I was too busy last week to successfully pull a magic trick. Hee hee.
Enjoy your desserts! 
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The Almost But Not Quite Leche Flan
Ask someone from the Philippines what his/her favorite dessert is and most likely, leche flan would be in the top 3. I love leche flan. I’ve made it a couple of times in the last year. Consistency is still my biggest problem. I may come up with a perfectly nice batch one time and a rather disastrous batch the next.
My most unforgettable leche flan nightmare though was the one I attempted to make in October last year. The best leche flan is supposed to be one that is made purely from egg yolks…all the better if they are organic. And don’t forget the whole milk which should be organic as well. If you have access to a supply of carabao’s milk (waterbuffalo) then you have the ingredients to a leche flan that should blow you away.
In this part of the world, finding carabao’s milk is next to impossible. Organic products are very costly, too. But since I wanted to blow my mind away with the ultimate perfect leche flan, I bought the organic eggs and organic whole milk.
As I’ve said, I’ve made leche flan a number of time already. The liquid mixture firming up was never a problem. It may take some time to firm up, but it always does. Except for that perfect leche flan I was trying to make. I gave up on it after more than an hour, more like two really. I didn’t want my expensive ingredients to go to waste though, so I ended up scooping the mixture from the molds it was in and transferred it to several small glasses and refrigerated them. I was hoping they’ll finally gel. And they did…a little. The finished product looked like this…
Yeah, it tasted good. Still, it wasn’t supposed to look like this. This has got to be one of my more expensive kitchen nightmares. I could have whacked myslef in the head with a Cobra golf club. That was 8 months ago. I think I’m ready for a “rematch”. ;)
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Healthy Chocolate
I make no secret of my so-called “love affair” with chocolate. I am so head-over-heels in love with chocolate. *swoons* However, in an effort to finally get back into tip-top shape, I’ve decided to turn around and walk away from this affair. I would have been “sober” for four weeks now had it not been for Father’s Day. If you would scroll a few posts down, you’ll perfectly understand what I mean. Outback’s Chocolate-Chocolate Tower worked its charm on me and proved to be irresistable. Too darned irresistable, in fact. What can I say? I was caught in a weak moment. :P So much for my chocolate boycott.
During a trip to the grocery last Tuesday, however, I caught sight of the dark chocolates at the candy aisle. Dark chocolates of different brands seemed to be having a contest of which had the most cocoa/cacao content. I remembered the trip my Mom and I made to a natural doctor last February. Dr. Galloway told us that chocolate isn’t bad at all. What we should consume though, are the dark ones with high cocoa (cacao) content. She even showed us the bar of chocolate she carried with her in her bag, which, if I’m not mistaken, has 70% cacao. In addition to that, one also has to learn to be satisfied with just a little helping…just a teeny weeny block or square of chocolate. With these in mind, I grabbed this…
I preferred the package with individually wrapped chocolate squares than a single huge block of chocolate, as the latter might be a little too hard to resist. It is for this reason that I chose Hershey’s even if the other chocolate brands had upto more than 70% cacao content.
So what’s with the fuss over cacao content and dark chocolate? I won’t even attempt to explain this in my own words. Here’s the text on the the Hershey’s packaging:
Plant foods like berries, teas and even red wine contain many types of natural antioxidants. Cocoa beans, the seeds of the fruit of the cocoa tree, are one of the most concentrated known sources of flavanol antioxidants.
These are the other potential health benefits of dark chocolate:
- May reduce blood pressure in people who are hypertensive
- May improve insulin sensitivity in healthy adults
- May improve endothelial function, which affects blood flow in the heart.
- May decrease LDL cholesterol levels
- Contains potent antioxidants which protect against cell damage
- May increase blood flow to the skin and brain
- Chocolate milk may help you recover from exercise better than a sports drink
(Source: Health by Chocolate by Tara Gidus, MS, RD, CSSD, LD/N )
What do you think? Remember, the key is moderation. Believe it or not, one square is good enough for me. *pats self on the back* I’m just happy to be eating chocolate again.
Desserts/Sweets/Baked Goodies, Healthy Eating | Comment (0)
WW #16: The Chocolate Cake Murder Mystery
The bloody victim…
Who did it? *shrugs*
Let’s ask the eyewitness…
He’s pleading the 5th. Oh well!
Fret not, the perpetrators were caught in the act…
The mastermind (the mad woman in blue) was sentenced to 60 minutes of high-intensity aerobics. The accomplice? She’s just too darned cute. She, of course, got away with it.
Another “victim” HERE, my other Wordless Wednesday entry. More of Wordless Wednesday HERE.
Happy Wednesday to all!
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