5 Before Hopefully Not 35

I want to write about this wedding, do a blog redesign...and more!

As much as I'm thrilled by all the recent developments in my career, I tend to beat myself up over personal goals, deadlines, and projects that I am aching, aching to tick off my checklist. Inspired by the blog, 25 Before 25, published by also a writer and editor I'd recently befriended, here are my 5 before I'm hoping way before I turn 35 (I'm only 30, folks!).

1. Redesign NyMinuteNow.com, featuring a more streamlined template with plenty of white space to keep things sleek, pristine, and easy on the eyes. (If you have absolutely bug-free suggestions, let me know! Again, no bugs; I need something plug-and-play with HTML I can still modify. Sorry, no CSS for me AND DO NOT even mention Wordpress; the latter is NOT an option. Case closed. I've written about that issue here.)

2. Migrate this current version to its backup Blogspot address, for people who like this design, also for myself, when I get melancholic...or in case I change my mind about the new one.

3. Repost my Yummy.ph articles and recipes because the site did a redesign and the bloggers' pages are gone(!). Anyway I desperately need to take care of my AllMySugar blog too! (Oh, why do I do this to myself?)

4. Finish rewriting and editing my chick-lit novel. Sigh...

5. Do a Wedding Series here, because I have at least five wedding-related posts brewing that I haven't gotten around uploading. Plus, I'd recently started contributing to Summit Media's relatively new venture BridalBook.ph. I've accepted that I've happily jumped into the big-day bandwagon. Now that I'm married, it's a different kind of excitement and delight when I hear of other people's engagements, or, in the case of a recent wedding I'd attended, being a guest.

I'm sure there's more than the above, but for now I'm keeping it to five so as not to get ahead of myself!

About All My Sugar

One of the reasons I put off blogging for so long, aside from a sense of overwhelm and amazement surrounding my recent wedding, was that I also couldn't decide between moving to a new blog address, AllMySugar.com, or staying here at NyMinuteNow.com, business as usual. On one hand, I felt that I was outgrowing this space, and it didn't help that I've been barely in NYC this past year. And on the other hand, this blog has made so many ties online and offline that moving web addresses almost feels like actually moving offices, or even houses. From the customized sidebars, blogging series, to of course, the posts themselves...there is so much history here.

Read about these lovely hand-cut noodles at AllMySugar.com :)

So by the looks of it, I'll be writing my food-related entries there, in the same way I started posting my beauty articles at BeautyintheBigApple.com.

Think of it as spring-cleaning my online life, or opening up a new home for these thoughts that I like to share with the world, or for a handful of friends who check in every now and then. Also, as my Yummy.ph blog features all baking-related posts, I can use the new space to talk about the other things I make that don't require an oven. I'll also channel all my Mystic Pizza dreams and talk about places where they serve good (or bad) food, have great (or not so great) service, and so forth. We'll see how it goes!

Perfecting Blueberry Muffins

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph ("Perfect Muffins") January 21, 2010]

Perfectly domed muffins require precise ingredient measurements and
the right oven temperature.

If there’s one baked treat that has proven to be the most elusive, I would say it would be muffins—blueberry ones, in particular. Sure, in the past I’ve made banana chocolate chip "muffins" from a basic banana bread recipe; or even airy chiffon vanilla cupcakes, but those are quite different from the honest-to-goodness breakfast domes—perfectly crusty outside, cakey and crumbly inside—that we all look forward to in coffee shops and bakeries.

It has taken me a year to finally come up with blueberry muffins I would be proud to share with the world. After dozens of flat, sunken disasters, I’ve deduced that there are two essential things a home baker must have when broaching the crusty/cakey-dome territory: a kitchen weighing scale and an oven thermometer.

For two reasons: One, a good weighing scale—ideally digital with a ‘zero’ button—ensures precise proportions of ingredients, in the same way as using measuring spoons for baking powder and baking soda help achieve perfect leavening balance in the recipe.

Two, just as one would tediously measure dry and wet ingredients, one should also factor in the right oven temperature. In the recipe I’d modified below, "Good Eats" host Alton Brown recommends preheating the oven to 380°F and raising the heat to 400°F upon placing muffins inside the oven. This temp-tango is achievable with the use of an oven thermometer. And even if one’s kitchen is equipped with an electric oven, a proper temperature reading helps a baker gauge oven calibration and watch out for maintenance or repair requirements.

Good news is, these two initially unnecessary kitchen gadgets aren’t ultra-pricey investments: My thermometer from Landmark cost less than P400, and the digital scale from the department store set me back around P980—worth the mini-splurge considering a can of Comstock blueberries from the grocery, or a bag of frozen ones from Healthy Options are way too precious to be tossed in the trash if the muffins fall flat or form undesirable concave dips in the middle.

That said, baking truly is a numbers game. But for every patient participant, the rewards can be very fulfilling—and delicious.

Blueberry Muffins

Yield 12 medium-sized muffins or 6 extra-large ones Prep Time 15 minutes Baking Time 15 to 20 minutes


1 cup plain yogurt (or two 125-gram packs of Nestle Creamy yogurt)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 small egg

6.25 ounce cake flour
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup blueberries (or 1 can of Comstock blueberries, drained); reserve 1/4 cup for the topping


1 Use a fine sieve or a regular strainer lined with cheese cloth to drain extra liquid from yogurt. You’ll end up with about half a cup of thick yogurt. Set aside.

2 Preheat oven to 380°F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan with oil or cooking spray, or use cupcake liners for easy removal and cleanup.

3 In a medium bowl, sift all dry ingredients together and discard tiny leftover lumps.

4 In a large bowl, blend yogurt, vegetable oil, sugar, and egg until pale yellow. You can either use a hand mixer or large whisk for this.

5 Add dry ingredients and stir for exactly 10 counts. Do not overmix or you’ll end up with holes—or ‘tunnels’—inside the muffins. Gently fold in 1/2 cup of blueberries into the batter for 3 counts and stop immediately. (Don’t worry about the flecks of flour, they’ll disappear during baking.)

6 Pour batter into muffin cups and top each one with a small mound of berries. Place in the oven and raise temperature to 400°F.

7 Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn pan around after seven minutes to distribute heat evenly. Muffins are ready when a toothpick inserted comes out clean or lightly crumbed.

8 Let muffins cool inverted on a parchment paper-lined wire rack. Store in a Ziploc bag in room temperature for the first two days, and transfer to the refrigerator if storing longer.

Polka Dot Brownies

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, January 2010]


These triple chocolate brownies culled and customized from a Nigella Lawson recipe found on YouTube are perfect for a classic Pinoy New Year’s celebration, following the age-old ‘requirement’ of donning polka dots and having round-shaped food at the table to help channel abundance in the coming year. As for me, I forgot to wear polka dots on New Year’s Eve, but fortunately, I was able to make these delightful cocoa squares dotted with creamy buttons of white chocolate way before the clock struck midnight. These brownies leave a particularly sweet type of fireworks in your mouth and are surprisingly, very, very easy to make. Here’s the recipe.

You'll need:

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate (or four squares of Baker’s Semisweet Chocolate)
1 1/2 sticks (or 12 tablespoons) unsalted butter
3 eggs
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup white chocolate chips, plus a handful for topping

Makes 16 brownie squares. Prep Time 5 minutes. Baking Time 20 to 25 minutes.

1 Preheat oven at 350°F. Melt bittersweet chocolate squares and butter over low heat, or in a tempered glass bowl set over simmering water.

Good butter and chocolate: building blocks of decadent brownies.

2 Remove from heat and let melted chocolate cool for a few minutes. Add eggs one at a time, stirring completely with every addition. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon. Do not overmix.

Add eggs for a silky-smooth, chocolatey batter.

3 Pour brownie batter onto a square pan (the disposable aluminum ones from the supermarket work well) lined with parchment paper for easy removal once done. Sprinkle top with white chocolate chips and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Tip: White chocolate chips aren’t always available in the supermarket, so stock up and keep them in the freezer.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Mariel Chua is already planning the next batch of brownies and other baked goodies to give away to family and friends.

Sweet Spots

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, December 30, 2009]

Buttery sylvannas at Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee

I understand that as long as it involves blueberries, fresh cherries and strawberries, or Valrhona chocolate discs, baked treats can be quite expensive, thus justifying the exorbitant prices some establishments charge for good-quality desserts.

That’s why I find neighborhood hubs and small bakeshops truly delightful, not only for their friendly price points, but also for their cozy atmosphere. Two current favorites are the Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee in Tomas Morato and Brewing Point in Tierra Pura Homes—both in Quezon City.

At KOCC, one can enjoy buttery sylvannas for P35, cheese rolls (with a lot of cheese filling) for P30, ensaymadas for P20, giant soup bread bowls to-go (and fill with your own pumpkin soup) for P20, rhumballs (think amped-up Dunkin Munchkins) for P15 each. Wash it all down with your choice of mild, standard, or strong coffee served with real cream and brown sugar.

KOCC's delightful cakes, at realistic prices

Brewing Point on the other hand dishes up an assortment of sweet, layered cakes—from the fruity and chocolatey—alongside homemade value meals and bento boxes (the servings are huge!). On top of the reliable and speedy Wi-fi connection, I enjoy the village-ambience and most importantly, the taste of their savory dishes.

I should probably include in this list Figaro, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but I find the sweet selections in these commercial establishments hit or miss, with a few staples (like Figaro’s bread pudding) that may be worth ordering something else other than the coffee these places are known for.

Mariel recently wrote about coffeeshop and Wi-fi etiquette over by her blog, NyMinuteNow.com. Check out her story entitled, “I’m with the Bandwidth.”

Calamansi-milk Breakfast Biscuits

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, December 7, 2009]

Start your day with a batch of soft, flaky, buttery biscuits.

Since October, I've made several batches of buttermilk biscuits, mostly on weekends. They're great for breakfast—with tart orange marmalade and fluffy scrambled eggs—or for random snacking—plain or with strawberry jam.

Buttermilk is relatively easy to find in big grocery stores in the U.S. In Manila on the other hand, a quick Google search yielded me the following (very ingenious and convenient) substitutes:

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough milk to make one cup; let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.

• 1 cup milk and 1 3/4 tablespoons cream of tartar

• yogurt or sour cream


As in the first case, instead of lemon, today I experimented with calamansi juice. And so far, the results have turned out great, nothing strange or extremely funky and sour—just flaky, buttery rounds of breakfast goodness.

Here's the Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuit recipe from Ina Garten, which I normally use:
[source: FoodNetwork.com ]

2 cups all-purpose flour; add more as needed for the board
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt (or 1 teaspoon iodized salt)
12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
½ cup cold buttermilk, shaken
1 cold extra large egg
1 cup grated extra sharp Cheddar
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water or milk
sea salt, optional

(Note: The original instructions call for a mixer. Below is the modified version easily done by hand.)

1 Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a metal sheet pan with parchment paper (or the locally available, Glad Cook ‘n Bake).

2 Place 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Using hands, work in the diced butter into the dry mix until the butter is the size of peas.

3 In a small cup, lightly combine the buttermilk and egg. Pour the wet mixture onto the flour-and-butter mixture only until moistened (you’ll most likely have a little extra liquid left).

4 In a small bowl, mix the Cheddar with a small handful of flour and add this to the dough until roughly combined.

5 Dump out onto a well-floured board and knead lightly about six times. Roll the dough out until about half an inch thick throughout. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter, or slice even-sized rectangles using a sharp, floured knife. Transfer onto sheet pan and brush the tops with the egg wash; sprinkle with salt if desired.

6 Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until biscuits are browned and cooked through (for a smaller batch, lessen baking time). Serve hot or warm and store in zip-top bags or in an airtight container.

For shiny tops, brush dough rounds with egg wash before baking.

Mariel Chua is Yummy.ph's official baking blogger. For breakfast, she scrambles eggs in hot olive oil sprinkled with red pepper flakes. To finish, she grates Cheddar cheese on top while the eggs are still steaming hot. On random occasions, she uses Gorgonzola.

(Orange marmalade photo courtesy of Smuckers.com)

Lemon Vanilla Caramel Cake

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, November 2009]

I must admit, I’ve made cakes in the past that have lingered quite a bit in the kitchen, uneaten. But this lemon vanilla caramel cake wasn’t one of them. It was gone within three days of baking, filling, and frosting it.

It’s also fun to make. The steps may come across as tedious (as with anything that involves folding fluffy egg whites into batter) but honestly, the least enjoyable part will probably be the first thing you have to do when making a cake, which is cut rounds of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pans with, and buttering all sides. I find this part of baking anti-climactic yet essential. Once you get that out of the way—don’t forget to preheat the oven—the baking process is quite soft and relaxing, just like the two spongey white cakes you come up with.

What sweet dreams are made of

This cake is a combination of two recipes, plus a lemony tweak I picked up from watching Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa. The base is a white cake recipe from Martha Stewart, and the caramel filling is from a Fleur de Sel (a special flaky salt from France) chocolate cake recipe from GoodBite.com. A quick Google search will yield video results for all of the above. Out of convenience, I've taken to culling recipes from all sorts of websites, versus getting them from cookbooks.

This lemon vanlla caramel cake can also easily transform to cupcakes. I would suggest using a melon baller to make a small hole on top to fill with caramel, before frosting the top with your marshmallow icing of choice. Personally I love watching egg whites transform into fluffy white frosting, so I don't mind making it from scratch. Here's the quick recipe I follow, also from Martha Stewart:

Seven Minute Frosting
[Source: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/perfect-seven-minute-frosting]

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
6 large egg whites
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 In the heatproof bowl of an electric mixer set over a saucepan of simmering water, combine sugar, corn syrup, water, and egg whites. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture registers 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 2 minutes.

2 Attach bowl to a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat mixture on high speed until glossy and voluminous, about 5 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Use immediately.

You'll have a lot of extra frosting left to eat from the bowl. Enjoy!

Tell me: What's your favorite cake? Please feel free to comment and share!

Dream Come True

[Reposting from "Baked!" at Yummy.ph, November 2009]
I was around eight years old the first time I realized I could feed people with the things I whipped up in the kitchen. Carpenters were renovating our home (my parents bought our house barebones, with gray walls and hardly anything built in). I went into the kitchen to toss some flour and water to make my own Play-Doh and as an afterthought, decided to flatten and toast it in a hot pan and then finally coating it in sugar. One of the carpenters ate it, which I found really amusing—and gross, because to me, it was play-dough!

Before that, I spent weekends and summers at my aunt’s bakeshop. She let me tinker around and even let me use her candy thermometers, trays, and random ingredients—even the expensive ones. I made my own pink lollipops wherein I boiled sugar and water and waited until the thermometer pointed to ‘hard crack’; put in a few drops of red food coloring; poured the scorching mixture onto metal sheet pans; and then lay Zest-o straws over the hot sugar, slightly melting them in the process. I also watched my aunt create intricate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday cakes, and she let me make my own cheese candies and butter frosting to decorate a small cupcake (or two) to take to my best friend’s house on a playdate. Thanks to her, I became aware at an early age how delightful and delicious butter could be (as opposed to lard or shortening).

Over the years, I would be in and out of the kitchen. But it wasn’t until these last two years that I’ve seriously perused a career in food. The plans may still be blurry at this point, but so far, I’ve taken to blogging plenty of times about the things I’ve made in the kitchen. Food was always in the background, no matter what job I held. Well, at some point, I did work in a restaurant as a hostess and maître d’ during my early months in New York. And when I started working in an office again, I brought freshly-baked banana chocolate chip muffins and nutella to share with colleagues. When I found myself jobless, I baked more muffins and brownies as I nursed my wounded ego and jumpstarted my freelance career.

Fast-forward to more than a year after and much to my delight, I was recently called in to blog for the new and improved, Yummy.ph! So here I am, chronicling my foray into the baking world, with lots of sweet (and at times savory) musings along the way.

As if right on cue, my mother also gifted me with a brand new Kitchenaid stand mixer: the 90th Anniversary Edition in Candy Apple Red. Certainly I no longer have an excuse to not officially tinker about in the kitchen. So far, since it arrived, I’ve made chocolate cake, buttermilk biscuits, carrot cake, lemon vanilla cake, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies with it. And I can’t wait to talk about and share with you all these sweet treats. Meet you back here next week!

Yummy in my Tummy

Officially starting my blogging life at Yummy.ph, one sweet treat at a time.

In between deadlines—procrastinating, if you will—I'm mostly in the kitchen, tinkering about and trying out something I've seen on TV or browsed online.

Other than that time I applied as an editorial assistant at Quick & Simple (a New York-based title that folded last year and replaced by Food Network Magazine), it never occured to me to make a career out of the food I love to eat and make. Blogging about food was just that: sharing epicurean adventures along with tidbits—from the bittersweet to the palate-inspiring—about my life.

In hindsight though, food was always in the background no matter what job I had. As an intern at Seventeen, one of my earlier assignments was the Eat section wherein I wrote about making yummy alternatives to dorm food, and how to spice up regular college fare (e.g. drop a few pieces of Tobi Mexican Nuts in your regular Nissin's Yakisoba for extra crunch and protein). One of the first things I had to ask a photographer to shoot was a jar of Nutella.

At work, food to me was always a priority. Ask any supplier I'd regularly worked with and I'm sure they'd tell you that the minute I got to the studio, as the models were being prepped and made up, I was ordering our lunch from Yellow Cab and North Park. Out of probably a hundred shoots, I can only recall one time when the makeup artist and hair stylist actually had to remind me about ordering food, only because I had a fever and was struggling to keep shooting.

So, I am HAPPY and absolutely THRILLED to announce that I'm going to be writing for Yummy.ph! The newly revamped website of Yummy Magazine! With special thanks to Frances Amper Sales for putting me up for the spot. When I got the email, I couldn't believe it; the only other time I've been a voice of 'authority' when it came to food was when I was co-president of the Young Homemakers Club, a.k.a. YHMC, in high school.

Click here if you'd like to read my first post for my blog Baked! over there, and as always, meet you back here for more sweet and savory musings along with all the other flavors that make life—and eating—even more exciting.