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Chocolate Sheet Cake

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Grr! I went to sleep this afternoon because I just could not keep my eyes open. Now, I’m awake and would like to live my online life, but my Internet connection’s being buggy. The intermittent connectivity issues has kept me from dropping ECs, so sorry for my droppers for not returning the drops. I did visit though, but the connection times out before I get to leave a comment, or your widgets are not even displaying. 🙁 Tomorrow, I’ll double up on my rounds. 🙂

I also wanted to join in with Music Monday, but I can’t even preview the YouTube video I wanted to show. It’s a video of Firewoman, written and performed by local band Hungry Young Poets. The band is no longer together and the lead singer is now doing a solo act. They launched when I was in highschool, and this particular song came out on my freshman year at university. A friend who also loves music gave me the lyrics to this song, and I sang it to audition for a music (based) organization. I love singing this song. If you’d like to check it out, do so here: Firewoman. (remember, I haven’t previewed the video but a friend shared it on his Facebook wall. I hope it plays well and does the song justice) Let me know what you think, ok?

For some reason though, Baking Life on Facebook is working just fine. Hirap mag load ng ibang sites, but the application goes on without any hitch. Haha! 🙂

But enough of my Internet woes.

Remember the chocolate sheet cake I made on Friday? Well, the recipe calls for Buttermilk. It’s something that’s not available in the smaller groceries around here. Good thing the Pioneer Woman also shared the substitute for buttermilk!

Click picture to go the Chocolate Sheet Cake Recipe!

The Pioneer Woman already has step by step photos along with the recipe so I won’t be posting similar ones. I do have to show these though, my favorite steps in the making of chocolate sheet cake:

See that buttery goodness? In making the cake, we had to melt butter twice. Once for the cake itself, cocoa powder is added to this. And second, for the icing. Mmmmm, I love the smell of melted butter. This was one of the boyfriend’s jobs for the day, butter melter, haha 🙂

Finally, wet and dry ingredients mix! I used to dread this part when baking brownies because the mixture tends to get quite heavy. If you do it by hand, it can get pretty tiring. For this cake though, it’s very light and easy. I didn’t have to use my mixer for this one.

It was so easy to bake this cake but it didn’t exactly turn out perfect. Our floor is uneven, hence, the oven’s uneven too. We ended up with a sheet cake that was thinner on one end, and thicker on the other. A friend of Alfred’s cousin who got to taste the cake at Theo’s birthday bash commented that it had a tad too much of vanilla. I personally couldn’t detect it, but I think it’s because I was using vanilla oil and we put a little too much considering there was vanilla on the cake and the icing as well. My version also doesn’t have pecans on it. Not because we’re allergic to nuts, but because we didn’t have any. I think the nuts would balance the sweetness so we’re definitely going to get some for next time.

But the biggest thing is this: I didn’t feel like it was the best chocolate sheet cake ever. 🙁 I used to make chocolate cake and cupcakes with a recipe I modified and I remember that tasting more richer, chocolatier. Probably because it has some coffee in it. But I refuse to give up on this recipe, so I’ll give it another shot some other time. Don’t get me wrong though, it tasted great! I packed a few slices for Theo (Alfred’s cousin), and also a few for my cousin Candy. They share the same birthday 🙂 I also gave slices to the kids downstairs, specially Hannah whose birthday was the next day, September 18th.

Mabilis naman naubos, so I’m sure it was yummy. Not perfect, but good. Maybe the next time I try it, it would be perfect. Haha 🙂

The next day, I baked the yummiest thing I’d baked in a long time. That was a perfect cake. Haha 🙂 But I’ll share that some other time. For now, let’s just pay tribute to my chocolate sheet cake:

Weekend Bake-a-thon

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I had a wonderful weekend. First, because it’s a long one (but not long enough ;)), three days due to the fact that I filed Sunday as vacation leave. Second, because I baked three cakes in three days! It was sooo much fun, the cakes were light to make, and the boyfriend was my assistant. And all three turned out too good not to share.

So no, I didn’t go on a real vacation, no pools or beaches or atv rides. I was indoors almost the whole time, but baking is such good therapy that it completely de-stressed me. 🙂

What’s with the bake-a-thon? Special people in our lives celebrated their birthdays and we chose to honor them by making cakes. Friday, 17th of September was my cousin Candy’s birthday, as it was Alfred’s mom and cousin Theo. We made Pioneer Woman’s Chocolate Sheet Cake. She calls it the best chocolate sheet cake ever so I really had my hopes up for this one.

The next day, we decided to make another cake to bring to the surprise party for Alfred’s Nanay. She’s not into sweets and not a big chocolate fan so we opted for something else. Tres Leches Cake. I also used PW’s recipe.

I fell in love with Tres Leches. And all who tasted it, loved it. We loved it so much we decided to make another one today so my parents and my brother could taste it too. Also because we only had one teeny slice of the cake last night at the party, hehe.

I have more pictures of the bake-a-thon, and a few more stories to share, but my weekend’s over in a few hours and I gotta go get some sleep.

How was your weekend? What’s your favorite cake? Did you have one this weekend? 🙂

Apps I use on my iPad

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Since the iPad already came with its own email client, I didn’t have to search for an alternative email app. Otherwise, I would have just used Safari to check my mails. I find that my Internet usage on the iPad is different from how I spend my time online on my PC. When online though (when within range of a Wifi network), you can bet that I’d be checking mail, or launching my most used App:

TweetDeck for iPad:

image from http://mashable.com/2010/09/12/twitter-ipad-apps/

It looks just the same way as it does on my PC. It also allows preview of images and pages linked to from the tweets. Only downside is that it crashes sometimes and I haven’t been able to ascertain the reason.

Flight Control HD

image from http://www.arktis.de/Flight-Control-HD_detail_27828.html

image from http://www.appsafari.com/games/11189/flight-control-hd/

I think I’m addicted to this game! My highest score is only about 143 aircrafts landed. I wonder if there are other maps available in the game?

Angry Birds

image from http://www.los-list.com/blog/geekology-angry-birds/

I have seen Angry Birds mentioned a lot on my Twitter feed from people who’ve had their iPads before me. It’s a pretty challenging game, haha. 🙂

Diner Dash: Grilling Green

image from http://appshopper.com/games/diner-dash-grilling-green

Playing Diner Dash on the iPad was a lot more fun than using a mouse on the PC. I can imagine how Cake Mania would be like 🙂 I finished the entire game already.

I also use Safari to get on Facebook and other sites but there’s this other app that can be used for tabbed browsing. Ma plays Plants Vs. Zombies on there too but I haven’t tried it. The Farmville app I have crashes, I haven’t had any luck launching it. I have FreeBooks and iBooks but haven’t read an ebook just yet. Marvel is a wonderful app to have too, it’s a different comics experience. Love it! 🙂

My iPad’s loaded with so many other apps, including two recipe boxes, that I don’t feel I’ve maximized it yet in the week that I’ve had it. No worries though, I’m just taking my time. This girl’s not about to get tired of her toy just yet. 🙂

Do you have an iPad? What’s your most used app yet? What’s your favorite?


Casa Reyes

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We were at the Greenhills on Saturday until around dinner time. There are several restaurants there that we already consider favorites, but we wanted to try something new. We had our sights on Casa Reyes. Both Alfred and I were already very hungry, I was sure that taking appetite suppression pills would have been the only way to keep us from gulping down food!

Casa Reyes, from what I gather (but I wasn’t able to confirm this) is operated by the family of Mama Sita. The matriarch of a family that has also released cook books featuring native Filipino dishes. They also have their own line of seasonings and instant mixes.

Upon entering the restaurant, we had to wait to be seated. There were other patrons enjoying their dinner already, and the crew were still clearing the table for us. After seeing the seasoning products on display, next thing I noticed was the cute and vintage-looking high chairs for little diners:

So Alfred and I are both BIG people right? Sabi ko, “palagay mo, pag nagka-anak tayo kasya kaya dito?” (I joked around and asked whether he thinks our future kids would fit in such small chairs!) haha 🙂

We got our table just a few minutes later. Ordering wasn’t easy! They have a lot of dishes to choose from, and being Pinoy food, most are definite favorites. In the end, we settled with these two orders:

Fresh Lumpiang Ubod

Kare-Kare

Though the Kare-Kare is shown here on a plate with a cup of rice, we actually got it in a pot, a palayok. I haven’t been eating rice, so I had the lumpia to myself, and Alfred shared the Kare-Kare with me. Both dishes were very tasty. I loved the lumpia, and it was priced reasonably too at less than a hundred pesos for the plate. Don’t ask me though if I prefer it over the famous Globe lumpia. I’d have to have them at the same time to make a comparison. 🙂 The Kare-Kare wasn’t special, or maybe it’s because we had just had home cooked Kare-Kare a few days before this meal. Dad cooked Kare-kare for the first time, and we all loved it.  🙂

We ordered dessert too, it was my guilty pleasure for the day:

Chocolate mousse

Leche Flan

All in all, we were satiated. The food was okay, the pricing was not bad. But the boyfriend wasn’t too happy with the service, he even commented that we weren’t going back there. I understand that it was a busy night, but there was a number of waiters staffed that day anyway. We didn’t order drinks with our meal but asked for glasses of cold water. Alfred normally needs more than a glass with his meal, so even before we finished eating, he’d already asked for a refill. He didn’t get it even after the second time he asked. Our glasses were finally refilled only after I had asked, and we’d asked for the bill already. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t see us (we’re very easy to spot), the request was acknowledged the first two times he asked, but it wasn’t granted. Sabi ko na lang kay Alfred, You should smile while asking. 🙂

So I think it will take a while before we set food inside a Casa Reyes resto again. Too bad because I really think they serve good food.

[Food photos in this post were taken using the LG Renoir camera phone, while the first photo was shot with My S Phone. I haven’t been toting Deena regularly like I used to :(]

Mission: I Heart the Philippines 2010

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Doc Ian of So Far, So Good is commemorating his blog’s fourth anniversary by encouraging us to celebrate what we ? about the Philippines!

I think this is such a wonderful way to celebrate, especially in light of all that’s been happening in the country. We definitely need the positive stories that I’m sure will be shared through this blogging event.

There are prizes up for grabs of course, and details on how to enter, and what to look forward to can be found at the Mission launch.

I’ve got a few ideas for posts already (yes, I will hopefully get to enter more than once) and I love that we have about two weeks to gather our thoughts, write, and enter. Goodluck everyone, and I look forward to checking out your entries (so share links with me too okay?). 🙂

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