Nutty chocolate cake

Hi everyone! Last Monday was the first "monthsary" of me and my blog. :) So I decided to celebrate it with nothing less, and the most famous recipe of all time (I think), a chocolate cake!

(It was a tag team effort, my mom wanted to try decorating my baked goodies so she did the cake decoration here! Ain't it awesome? :)

I used the recipe of Ina Garten's Double Chocolate Layer Cake, only I did not make it into two layers. This is my FIRST TIME baking a cake, so please look away from all the "ugly" and "wrong" things I did. Haha! :p

The batter ---mixing the dry with the wet. Manual mixing IS TOUGH.

My favorite part -- the recipe called out for melting the chocolate! YUMMY!

See it riseee!!!! (A still very wet batter)

I left the cake and the frosting chilled overnight (unintentionally because I accidentally slept). But it was a good think because it made the frosting more thick! :)

Now to the fun part....

Spreading the frosting (which looks like Nutella)

 Grinding and spreading over the cashew nuts and garnishing with the bread sticks..

 Voila! A CHOCOLATE SINFUL CREATION!

Let's move on to THE most favorite part of all time!

 Slicing the cake

 And dunking it to the mouth!

It tasted heavenly! The cake was so moist. It's definitely worth seconds and thirds of recipe reuse. Thanks to technology, this yummy recipe was made to be shared for everyone!

The only thing I adjusted in this recipe was the amount of butter in the frosting. It can be noted that it said 2 sticks, but I only used 1 stick, for I prefer a lesser butter-y taste. I turned out just as I hoped. :)

Yay for the chocolate cake! <3

Corn muffin overload

Hi everyone!  It's a busy day in the house today. My sister is getting married tomorrow, and preparations are on the way! I'll post photos soon of the wedding and the personal details I helped them out with to make their day special. (My sister just sometimes takes it a little bit overboard.)

In the meantime, here's my new kitchen adventure! Corn muffins! And just a little bit of everything, actually WITH corn.

Last Friday at work, I had the chance to "live" in our kitchen systems. Oh, the joys of a wonderful, well-equiped, well-stocked kitchen. My officemates and I concocted a simple lunch for our group. We decided on a Kenny Roger's style of meal (complete with the chicken, mashed potatoes, corn and carrots, and of course, corn muffins!)

We followed the recipe from Gisslen's Professional baking book, which my officemate handily had, but there are also a lot of corn muffin over the net, which may be equally delectable! We were not able to buy cornmeal, so instead, we used caned corn. We added the canned corn to the mixture, but junked up a portion in the blender before mixing it in the batter to achieve a smoother corn taste.

Hand mixed corn muffin batter

Note: The corn muffin mixture needs to be baked immediately after combining all the ingredients, so the pans must be greased and ready before even starting to put anything to the mixing bowl.

Our excitement led to not noticing the YIELD part of the recipe. I know, total bummer. What we failed to see was that the recipe yielded around 30 muffins! For the lack of more muffin pans, we even used those small pans for what I guess, macaroons, and even the big 8" diameter pan for cakes! 

Little corn macaroons (or cupcakes) which we toasted a little to see if which level of "done-ness" is yummier! (I preferred the not burnt one though, but a couple of my officemates liked this toasted one)

Here's what we ended up with: corn macaroon, corn muffin and corn cake. 

In all fairness, they were good. :) My officemate sprinkled some confectioner's sugar on top of the muffins to give a little more sweet kick.

A simple, tasty treat!
 My next kitchen adventure: Chocolate cake! Can you give me some handy tips with my next one? :)

My baby blobs

Hi! Happy April!!!
 Let me share to you my current obsession: these little fur blobs.

They love to kiss each other and bite each other's tails.

Last February 28, my shih-tzu dog Hersheys (whom I fondly call "Taba" or fat)  gave birth to five cute blob. It's funny how I always relate the giving birth of a dog to that of a human giving birth. In both occasions, I daresay, the males are always the lucky one --- they are totally free from the process. Partner dogs are sometimes even oblivious to the fact that their partner is in labor already. Weirdly. Bittersweet facts of life.

Here's the photo of their parents (pardon their messy look, they are yet to be trimmed *puppy cut* for summer!) :

Mom, Hersheys

Dad, Mallows

That dad dog was sleeping during the whole labor process. Supportive partner, eh? (But hey, I guess, different standards are practiced by dogs. Heh. :P

Anyway, I call them "blobs" because they actually looked like such when they were born until they had the courage to actually stand up. A little over a month now, they are already nomads wandering around the house with the danger of someone stepping on them accidentally anytime.

What I find weird about them is that they are all of the same color. Well, their tones and shades vary, but you get what I mean, they are all in one hue! BROWN. Well, it's still tri-color, brown, black and white. Brown body, black face and ears and a white chest (or necktie) to be exact.
 
Why do I find it weird? Because it is the first time I've seen my any of my shih-tzu dog breed five puppies with the same color. The matriarch of the family (or rather our original female dog) had given birth to two batches of puppies each having a different color. There's usually a majority white dog, brown, blonde, and black dog in one batch! But in this case, it was different. In a chocolate-y kind of way. ;)

Here's my favorite of the pack: Muffin.

SEE HOW CUTE SHE IS? She looks a lot like a mouse (Haha!), because of her really tiny size. They have this princess breed, which makes them supposedly smaller than other shih tzus. But still, Muffin is extra small, she is half the size of her siblings. (Case in point: her and the iPad). Tragic.

But she is the smartest of them all. The most responsive. She even knows her name already! Small but terrible. Can she stay as small as this? She is so cute as it is, I don't want her to grow bigger! Haha. Silly me.

These blobs are a definite fun. The house haunted by the constant squeals and tiny wagging tails, always for the look out for their mom's breastmilk. Can they stay puppies forever? :)