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Dessert Highlight: Filipino Leche Flan

Cravings? What cravings?? I am still unsure as to whether or not I should classify this spontaneous desire to make and eat leche flan as a "craving," but nevertheless, it was worth it. This popular sweet, creamy and deeelicious Filipino recipe is something I don't think I'll ever get tired of. Need proof of how good it really is?? My husband just said it was "the best flan" he's ever had....and that's coming from a Puerto Rican! I guess Pinoys make the better flans, eh?? ;-D

Surpise!!!

Just a little randomly quick, yet SUPER exciting news to share...

I AM PREGNANT!!!!!!!!! :-D !!!!!!!!!!!

We feel very blessed to be given such a wonderful gift from God...and we are excited to be parents! :)

Christmas 2011 trip!

My husband and I knew we wanted to take a vacation somewhere some time in 2011, so we figured we would do it during Christmas, and we decided to visit his brother and his wife in Las Vegas, NV. I've only visited once before, but this time my stay would be much longer, and we would be staying in my in-laws' house located just outside of the Vegas strip. We also decided to take a road trip to Los Angeles, CA with my in-laws. The trip was very memorable, the sights were beautiful, the food was scrumptious, the shows were spectacular, and the shopping was awesome! Needless to say...we had a great time; thank you to Salvi and Cyndi for your generous hospitality! :-)

Trip highlights:
- Los Angeles: eating chicken & waffles at Roscoe's; late night hotdog dinner at the famous Pink's hotdog stand; shopping at The Grove; double-decker bus tour...
- Las Vegas: the sights!! - I never knew Vegas had that much scenery!...the beautiful mountains, canyons...so breath-taking; the shows!! - we watched the Cirque show "KA" and The Phantom of The Opera...double thumbs-up for both!; Jolibee, Red Ribbon and Goldilocks!! - famous Filipino eateries that I've missed since moving from the motherland over 10 years ago; Cupcakery!; visiting Red Rock Canyon; Christmas with the in-laws; Neon Museum....and much, much more.

Enjoy the photos, and if you know of any other super cool things to do in Vegas and/or the surrounding areas, let me know! :)

Wow...Has it been THAT long??!?!

Has it really been over 6 months since my last post??? Unbelievable.

Well, I am back and ready to post post POST! ;-D

Last night I made this deeelicious Stuffed Crust BBQ pizza for dinner with my hubby...it was crazy easy so you know what that means...recipe to follow soon! For now, go ahead and start drooling at the picture.. :-d~~

Later kiddos!

Dinner Highlight: Easy Peasy Beef Stew!

Wow. It's been a while....heh.

Well! What's new? I've got a job! Which is one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging as often...but here I am!

So this new recipe I tried was given to me by my lovely women's group leader at my church. It's from the Southern Plate recipes collection, and it's all made in the slow cooker! For all y'all that do not have one (and I believe I had mentioned this in one of my previous blogs), it's a great investment, and well worth it! Especially since I've started working full-time, having a slow cooker definitely solves the "I-don't-have-time-to-cook-and-make-dinner" problem/excuse (heh, sorry ladies, but let's face it...we make time for things we reaaally want to do..right?).

Anyways...this recipe is so simple it's ridiculous...yet it's soooo delicious! My hubby was definitely enjoying this meal. Sooo...here goes!

Easy Peasy Beef Stew!

Ingredients:
1.5-2 lbs. stew meat, cut into small pieces
1 pkg onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
baby carrots (however much you prefer; I added about half of a small bag)

Directions:
Dump all the ingredients in the slow cooker, give it a little stir, and cook it on low for 6-8 hours. (I cooked mine for the whole time I was gone at work, which was about 9-10 hours, and it was still great!). Serve over hot rice or egg noodles.

That's it! Hope your taste buds have a blast with this recipe! ;-)

More slow cooker recipes to come.... :-D

Dessert Highlight: Wellness Cupcakes and Vanilla Cupcakes

Let's bake!

Now that I'm back from my trip and am on summer break (minus the work part, but hey! at last there's no homework! ;-P), I have quite some time on my hands to bake and experiment on different flavors. If you do not know already, my dream is to have a bakery of my own one day, and believe it or not, that dream is slowly coming true! I'm not going to give much details just yet, but I will be featuring some cupcakes that will be included in our repertoire. All of the cupcakes are baked from scratch (good bye to boxed cake mix days! hehe), and since these may very well be the cupcakes we sell, I will unfortunately not be able to give the recipes on my blog any longer. However, if you are reeeeally interested, subscribe to my blog and email me and we'll see what I can do to help add some "yum!" to your recipes :-).

The cupcakes I am featuring today are my Wellness cupcakes (green tea cupcakes with a low fat cream cheese frosting and a hint of caramel) and the regular Vanilla Buttercream cupcakes. I am also in the middle of making Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes, so stay tuned!

Like I said, subscribe and email me or leave a comment if you have any questions!

Wellness Cupcakes and Vanilla Buttercream Cupcakes

Trip to South Korea

"Anyong-Haseyo!" ("Hello!", "How are you?", "Good morning/afternoon/evening!" in Korean ;-P)

I'm back! Well, technically, I've been back for a couple of weeks now, but I have not updated my blog in a while, sooo I'm back!

As the title says, I took a brief school trip to South Korea, and it was a great experience! The food, the culture, the people...everything was amazing. It wasn't as much of a culture shock for me since I grew up in the Philippines, but the huge discrepancy between the main city (Seoul) and it's surroundings was extremely surprising. Seoul is beautiful; it is highly developed and it well exudes the typical 'big' city life, such as that of Tokyo and New York City. We did visit a few businesses, like the KIA auto plant, Songdo City (High-tech, green-living city), and the Mapo Resource Recovery Plant. The latter was a plant that is basically a waste recovery (recycling) plant. One of the many things that amazed me was the discipline of the Koreans; imagine, they started separating their trash over 20 years ago! They are so forward-thinking - a trait that I truly admire and respect, and one that should be adopted by the Americans. The level of discipline within the South Koreans is quite typical due to their culture, and the U.S. can definitely learn a thing or two from them.

Aside from the business perspective, we also experienced the culture and the people of Korea through food, the city fashion and trends, and our day trip to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. I thoroughly enjoyed the food (if you go to S. Korea, check out Samwon Garden, the fish market, and eat some octopus! Live octopus! :-D), and I certainly did some shopping, but the highlight of my trip was our visit to North Korea. What a big difference the area was compared to the city; it was completely underdeveloped, and there was a level of tension in the air, one that was appropriate for 2 regions that are technically still at war. We got to see North Korea in person, and stepped into the meeting room where generals and officials of South and North Korea meet, so in actuality, I was in North Korea for about 1 minute ;-P.

All in all, the trip was one to remember. I'd visit again, but next time, with family. I hope you enjoy the pictures! :-)
Until next time...

 My hotel room

 Walking around the city

 Dim-sum on the first night

 Octopus dish!

 KIA auto plant

 Korean utensils

 At the subway!

 Mapo plant. Horse made with recycled material

 Japanese cherry blossoms in full bloom! :)

2002 World Cup Stadium

 Street food vendors

With South Korean military official on North Korean side of meeting room

Middle meeting table 

View of North Korean "Welcome Center"

Having Bulgogi (Korean sweet beef)

Trying to use the chopsticks :-D

King Sejong - He invented the Korean alphabet

Lanterns outside the temple

At Samwon Garden

By the waterfall at Samwon Garden

Continuation of Birthday Week for My Love! :-D

Sooo... We had a small, intimate birthday get-together for my huney with some church and work friends this past Saturday. Our menu included, guava-mozzarella crackers as our starter, salad, taco lasagna, rice n' beans, and Publix fried chicken for the main entrees, and finally, some guava-filled Puerto Rican cake per request of my sweetie. It was such a nice (and deeelicious!) evening. I'm glad it all worked out for my hubby. Happy 28th, sweetheart! :-)

Dessert Highlight: Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

Are you a Peanut Butter lover??? This one's for youuu!! :-D

As promised, here is the recipe of the cupcakes I made for my hubby to bring to work for this birthday. They were quite a hit, so enjoy!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 Box chocolate cake mix, prepared as directed on box -- optional: add 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels into batter to make cupcakes extra chocolatey! (makes 24 regular-sized cupcakes, 20-22 large cupcakes)
1-1.5 cups smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening (i.e. Crisco)
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp water
5 Tbsp milk, more if needed for smoother frosting consistency
20-24 miniature Reese's peanut butter cups (optional)

Directions:
Prepare cake mix as directed on box instructions. As mentioned, you can add about 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels into the batter to make it extra chocolatey. Bake cupcakes in cupcake pans lined with cupcake liners (about 1/4 cup of batter per cupcake). For the frosting, combine shortening, peanut butter, powdered sugar, salt, water, vanilla and milk in a bowl and mix using a mixer until the consistency is smooth and creamy. Frost cupcakes (I used a Ziplock bag and cut the tip) and top with a miniature Reese's peanut butter cup. Enjoy! :-d~~

Happy Birthday to My Love!

Yes, it was my hubby's birthday this week! :-D

It truly is a birthday week for him. On Sunday, we celebrated with the family at Buca di Beppo. Boy, their food is awesomely deeeelicious. We had a coupon which made the experience even better! I have no pictures of the food (yes, we were that hungry), but we ordered their Antipasto Salad, Bruschetta (one of the best I've had), Chicken Parmigiana, Spaghetti with Meatballs, and Baked Ziti. For our dessert, my sister-in-law bought some cupcakes from Sweet! and they were oh so yummy! Needless to say, we had a goooood dinner! :-D

On the day of his birthday, I had made 2 dozen cupcakes for him to bring to work. They were Peanut Butter Chocolate and Funfetti Vanilla. Apparently, they were a big hit and now I can possibly be hired as the personal company baker. ;-P

Here are the pictures....drool away! ;-D
(recipe to come shortly)

(Yup! I garnished the PB choco cupcake with a mini-Reese's cup! yum yum yummmm)

The celebrations are not over for him! We have one more party for him this weekend with some friends, and of course, with some guava-filled Puerto Rican Cake! Later, everyone! :)

Side Highlight: New England Baked Beans...Crockpot Style!

Ohh yes...this idea came shortly after our Boston trip!

I actually made this side for our 2010 Christmas Day family lunch. I decided to make it for 2 reasons:
1. My husband did not get to taste the infamous Boston baked beans while we were in Boston...and he really did want to have some, but we did not get the chance...and..
2. I was looking through a crock-pot recipe box gifted to me by a dear friend, and voila! I found this delicious recipe. :-)

For those of you who have crock-pots (aka slow-cookers), you already know that this will be quite easy and simple to make. If you do not have a crock-pot, I highly recommend getting one! It is one of those cooking investments you will not regret...promise. ;-)

I owe a special thanks to my father-in-law who, probably due to my subtle noises in the kitchen, also woke up early on Christmas day and helped me put together this wonderful side. I hope y'all enjoy this recipe as much as we have!

New England Baked Beans

Ingredients:
4 slices uncooked bacon, chopped
3 cans (about 15 oz. each) Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
3/4 cup water
1 small onion, chopped
1/3 cup canned diced tomatoes, well drained
3 Tbsp. packed light brown sugar
3 Tbsp. maple syrup (I used pancake maple syrup :-P)
3 Tbsp. molasses
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 small bay leaf
1 Tbsp. cornstarch (optional)

Directions:
Cook bacon in skillet until almost cooked, not crispy. Drain and set aside. Combine bacon and all remaining ingredients in the crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until mixture has thickened. If the mixture is not as thick as you'd like (which is what happened in my case), get some of the liquid from the baked beans (about 4-5 Tbsp) and add cornstarch to this liquid. Mix well and add liquid mixture back into the baked beans. Cook uncovered on low for another 15-20 minutes. Remove bay leaf before serving. Enjoy! :-)