Wikipedia

I am on Wikipedia, well not me but a link to my blog is :)
While looking at my statcounter I noticed people where coming in from Wikipedia!!!!
Someone put a link on my blog for my recipe of Habichuelas con Dulce, it is under references, link 4 called recipe, check it out!
I feel special, lol, I KNOW, I am silly like that!!

Muffin King!!

My name is Banana, Carrot and Almonds Muffin and I am the King!!!

So far best one, imo, that I've made so far!!! it was so soft and not to sweet, perfect for a little snack!! they were gone FAST!!

I {HEART} Cooking - or is it Baking?

Yes I am on baking roll :) and I LOVE IT, I never in a thousand years would have though I was going to like baking as much as cooking, I used to be a box cake kind of girl but NOT ANYMORE (not that there is anything wrong with that, I love my cakes from a box and frosting from a can too ;)

Bayo doesnt like sweets to much, but yesterday he told me he wanted something sweet, I asked him what and he said just something super chocolaty!!! PERFECT, because I wanted to try a recipe for some time. It is called HERSHEY'S "PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" Chocolate Cake, and you can find the original at Hershey's Kitchens. They also have one for the frosting at the bottom of the page, but I wanted to try a different one I had.

I also wanted to do some Cheesy Muffins I found at The Pionner Woman, and added that to my baking list.

So I will describe each one in separate ;p

First lets start with the Cheesy Muffins and after we'll move to dessert

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups shredded colby-jack cheese (I used Cheddar instead, because I am that cheap :p)

1 cup milk

1 egg

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter (I used salted)

Whisk together dry ingredients, then stir in cheese.
In a separate bowl, whisk egg, milk, and butter together. Pour milk mixture into dry ingredients and stir with a spoon to combine.
Bake in greased muffin tins at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

This little babies are to die for, great warm just out of the oven, and EVERYONE loved them and kept asking for more!!!Now just look at that Cheesy piece of heaven :)

They are also great out of the fridge, just put them on the microwave for 15 sec and enjoy them for breakfast :)

And for dessert we have:

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups AP flour
3/4 cup Hershey's cocoa (I used another brand and they came out perfect, again cheap!)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin cups with bake cups.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter onto prepared pans.
Bake 22-25 minutes for cupcakes until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from cups and cool completely.

YUMMY!!!!!! Even my picky mother ate four!!!

For the frosting I took the recipe from Cupcake Blog, and this thing was also to die for :)

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
1 stick butter

1/2 cup cocoa

4 cups confectioner’s sugar

1/4 cup milk

Beat butter for about 30 seconds until soft. Add cocoa and 1 cup of sugar and beat until incorporated. Add half of the milk and the remainder of sugar and beat until incorporated. Continue to add milk until you get to the consistency you want.

And put to work your piping skills (mine where zero) so I think they came out real pretty!!!

Enjoy!!!

I {HEART} Cooking - Perfect Chili

Today is FFF, but I had a hard time finding a picture for today’s theme :p Sorry!!
Instead I have a great recipe :) it’s not cold here but I know this is a great winter dish, and I have been searching for the perfect chili recipe and after a few failed attempts I finally did one I love and this is my forever keeper :D

Perfect Chili

Ingredients:
- 1 can of red or pink beans, with the liquid
- 1 can of black beans, with the liquid
- Olive oil
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 small tomatoes, diced
- 2 aji gustosos (Capsicum Chinense), if you cant find it just use half a green bell pepper, diced
- Fresh parsley
- 1 pound of ground beef
- 1 small can of condimented tomato sauce, you can also use regular tomato sauce
- 1 Taco seasoning mix (I used Old El Paso)
- Salt, a pinch
- 1 teaspoon of pepper
- 1 tablespoon of Chinese hot pepper paste, use Tabasco if you don’t have it
- 1 tablespoon of crushed garlic

Add about a tablespoon of olive oil to your saucepan, add onion, tomatoes and aji gustoso (or green pepper), stir frequently for about 2 minutes and add your ground beef; brown meat until is fully cooked and add the Taco seasoning mix, lower your heat to medium.
Take half the can of both beans and put them in your blender to liquefy them, pass them through a colander and add them to the meat, also add the rest of the beans that where not blended.
Add some fresh parley (as much as you like, I love this, so I added about 5 tablespoons), tomato sauce, hot pepper paste or Tabasco, garlic, 2 cups of water and salt and pepper.
Let it simmer in low heat for 30 minutes and…
Enjoy!!

Note: this is really hot, so if you don’t like it that spicy just skip the hot pepper paste or Tabasco.

Finally brought my camera for a picture of the final product, some fresh parsley is a nice touch to decorate your bowl!!

Around the Blog World... I {HEART} Cooking

I follow a couple of blogs, and one that I do posted a recipe that brought a BIG smile to my face :) Dominican Rice and Beans (the girl is not Dominican wich gave me an even bigger smile), this is a dish we eat EVERYDAY, not me, but Dominicans in general -I used to back at home when I was little- and I love doing it once in a while for Bayo, for us is nothing special, but when you havent eaten it in month you miss it like CRAZY :p
If you want to try it out go here, and she also has some other great recipes for $5 or under!!!

I {HEART} Cooking

Holiday Salads are a thing in my family, we do like 4 different ones on Christmas Eve or New Year Eve and whenever we have a party at home a Holiday Salad is a most!! I already posted one of them a while ago, but today since it is New Year Eve I am posting my most favorite one, the family tradition, the unchangeable one and the one I did for tonight party at my in laws. Sorry for the lack of picture but I had to do several thing today and couldn’t take any one :(

Ingredients
-1 pineapple, cubed
-3 green apples, cubed and without the skin or peel
-3 red apples, cubed and without the skin or peel
-1 ½ cups of ham cubed
-1 cup of almonds, skinless
-1 cup of raisins
-1 cup of mayonnaise

Cut everything into cubes (the pineapple, apples and ham), mix with the rest of the ingredients and serve cold. You can decorate it with maraschino cherries, I did an 09’ out of cherries on top of mine ;)

This is one of my favorite things to eat as a leftover the day after the party :D
ENJOY!!! And Happy New Year Again!

Here is some proof of the Holiday Salads Thing:

2006Bayohan is pointing at the 4 cheese lasagna to send the picture to my sister and see what she is missing from living so far away!!! (Notice the 3 big bowls, they have 3 different Holiday Salads)

Yes, we take pictures with our food :) This was Christmas eve 2006!

2007

New Year Eve 2007 at my in laws, I was not kidding about taking pictures with food :pSee the big aluminium pan with a huge fork, that is todays salad!!! and the first bowl is also a different Holiday Salad :)

2008

And this year at my mom's Christmas Eve dinner today recipe is the tall bowl with cherries for deco and next to it a different Holiday Salad!!!

See!!! I told you Salads were a big part of our holiday dinners tradition!!!

I {HEART} Cooking

This post is a little all over the place, sorry in advance :P
I hope you are all enjoying your thanksgiving, like I said we do not celebrate it here, but I did something a little special for our meal :D I also helped my mom make some salads because she is hosting a thanksgiving dinner at her house.

That means I have 2 great recipes for today :D YAY!!!!!

First lets start with YUMMY Chicken, Rice, Mushroom Casserole

-2 cans of cream of mushroom soup
-2 ½ cups of water
-1 ½ cups of uncooked rice
- ½ spoon of dry parsley
-1 spoon of black pepper
-1 cup of bacon, diced
- ½ cup of cooking whine
-1 can of mushroom, sliced
-1 onion, diced
-4 chicken breast

Mix all the ingredients (except the chicken) and put it in Pyrex, season your chicken like you usually do (I use lemon, pepper, garlic) and put it on top of the uncooked mix that is in your Pyrex.
This goes to your oven for 45 mins at 375˚F

Here is mine, TRUST me the pic does not do any justice to the wonderful flavor this casserole has, our house smelled like glory today –I also baked brownies for a dessert tonight so the good smells lasted long :p

And know a Holiday Salad: Cheese and Apple Salad

Ingredients
-1 can of red bell peppers
-1 pound of Gouda Cheese, cubed
-2 red apples
-1 can of sweet peas, drained
-1 can of corn, drained
- ¾ Mayonnaise

Cut everything into cubes, the peppers, cheese, and apples with their skin or peel, mix with the rest of the ingredients and serve cold.

I tried taking a good picture of it -the colors in this salad are beautiful- but they kept coming out like this:

So here is a picture of the one on my recipe book

I also did MckMama’s Corn & Bean Salad but in my style.

I am also Thankful for these cuties :P

I {HEART} Cooking

I’ve been wanting to post photographs of the making process of some of my recipes, and I finally remembered to take my camera down to the kitchen, first there are 3 things you NEED to know:



1) I’m not a pro photographer, I have a point and shoot camera and stink at taking good, nice pictures –I have my sister for that ;)- plus remember I’m a doctor so I have a right not to be artsy :p

2) I don’t have a nice kitchen with nice kitchen stuff; I have a plain old kitchen with old not at all sassy thing :(

3) I don’t make fancy recipes, most of them I invented or copied somewhere from a magazine or the internet, BUT they are YUMMY and you can impress some guest with them!!!


With that being said here are two great dips for you to enjoy:


Tuna Dip

First get these ingredients

1 can of tuna in oil
½ onion
½ green pepper
2 lemons
½ red pepper (the canned one)
½ spoon of dry parsley
¼ package of leek or green onion
¼ cup of mayonnaise
1 spoon of ketchup
½ spoon of mustard
½ of Chinese sauce

Drain the tuna, and cut the onion, green pepper, red pepper and green onion into small pieces.

Take it to the food processor –mine is broken so I used the blender.

You may need to move it so it won’t get stuck and you get the nice dip consistency you need.
Put a little fresh parsley garnish and it should look like this.

Serve it chilled.

Cheese Dip

Get these ingredients:

½ pound of cream cheese
½ package of leek or green onions
¼ spoon of garlic
¼ of evaporated milk (save some more to use later)
½ red pepper (the canned one)
salt and pepper

If you use fresh cream cheese get it into crumbles –if you use the Philadelphia type you don’t have to- and cut the red pepper and green onion into pieces.

Put it all in the food processor, I used the blender –remember mine is broken.

Again you may need to move it with a spoon so it won’t get stuck and you get the dip consistency you need.
Add some green onion as garnish.

Serve it chilled with some tortilla chips and cracker (I used Pesto crackers) on some nice fishy plates :p

You could also use this to make little sandwiches or get creative!!!!

I'm NUTS about...

NUTS!!!

Today I realized how much I love them; anykind pistachos, almonds, peanuts... you name them I LOVE THEM.

And I love nutty things too, like salads with almonds, pistacho icecream, cashews in my chinese food and so on...

This is a weird post, but I just wanted to let you know how much I love them... and they are healthy too so its a win-win situation :p

and now a recipe:

I {HEART} Cooking

This is a really good easy snack :D Potatos Wedges My Way!!!

• 10 small potatos



• taco seasoning



• olive oil

Make sure the potatos are really small or cut them in wedges that are thin so they'll be more crispier once they are done :)

After you cut them in weges -leave the skin, they are better like that- add two big spoonfull of the seasoning, you can use any seasoning you like and splash them with olive oil, take them to the oven until they are golden brown, let them cool down and you've got yourself a Yummy snack.

I {HEART} Cooking!

I decided to change the Friday Recipe to: I {HEART} Cooking!, because I wasn’t really doing it on Fridays anyways and sometimes I just want to share a recipe in the middle of the week –like now- and most important I really HEART cooking!!!

Here is a little background story about today’s recipe:
When I was little my mother used to make Broccoli Soufflé and I loved that thing so much, well I asked her for the recipe and she doesn’t remember it O.o not good >.>
So I started looking in the internet for some recipes and they all required either ingredients I don’t have or they where to hard for me to do it (I love cooking but I stink at “beating the egg whites to stiff peaks”, and I don’t have the cool machine to do it either), here is when I decide to do it my own way :D

First take a can of cheese soup with can of evaporated milk a pinch of salt and pepper and boil it a little until is creamy (like the regular soup) and set aside.
I boiled to large broccoli flower with seasoning until they where really really tender, I drained it and pureed the broccoli with two eggs until it look like green mash potatoes :P (not really because it still has little chunks).
Then I put it in a prebuttered Pyrex, on top you put the cheese soup and grated extra cheese, take it to the oven until the cheese on the top is golden, wait before you serve it because if you do it right there it will fall apart.

It tasted just like my mothers one, it didn’t look the same way but it turned out to look good too (I have to start remembering to take my camera to the kitchen while cooking).

ENJOY!

Beans & Corn Salad

OK so it is not Friday Recipe, but I wanted to share something I did today; when Bayo likes something a lot he says this exact same phrase: "Yo pudiera comer esto otra vez" -I could eat this again- but it's the way he says it so happy like giving me a hint to cook it again, ohhh I love this guy so much. So I did this today thinking he was going to hate (just like I know my sis will -she is a bean hater- YOU ARE!!!) and HE LOVED IT, he repeated it 3 times and kept saying the phrase over and over ;)

I cannot get full credit for this because it is MckMama's Corn & Bean salad, but I made own version because either I wanted to change it bit or they didnt have the same ingredients in my supermarket, the changes for my version I will put in red so you can choose what version to do, they are both YUMMY!!!

4th of July Corn & Bean salad, MckMama style or Vanessa style

First, gather the following ingredients:

1 can of garbanzo beans, drained
1 can of pinto beans, drained (I used red beans)
1 can of black beans, drained
1 can of corn, drained
2 cans Ro Tel with cilantro and lime (they dont sell that here so I used Mexican Salsa -the chunky one)
one leek, sliced (1 red onion chopped)
2 Tablespoons Italian Dressing
dashes of chili powder, cumin and garlic powder (I dont have chili powder so I used chinese hot pepper paste, is like a chinesse Tabasco they sell at the chinesse market, didnt used cumin at all, and instead of garlic powder I used pureed garlic)
1/2 of a fresh lime (since I didnt used the Ro Tel that has lime in it I used 4 small limes instead of 1/2)
fresh cilantro (lots of it, I LOVE THAT THING)
salt

Mix everything and serve cold, ENJOY!!!

This is the Ro Tel you use...

This is what I used instead :D

and that is the pepper paste that I used (not the same brand but you get the idea) this thing is HOT, so 1/2 spoon will do it!!!

Friday Recipe?

*The Friday Recipe was done a little sooner because I dont have time to post tomorrow*
As promised here is the red bell pepper jam…





The texture is not all that nice, but the flavor is just something else, I tried this like 10 years ago at a friends house and for Gabby’s babyshower looked for recipes in the internet and came up with my own personal one (I will give you both in case you want to try them out)
Get 4 big red bell peppers, ½ glass of sugar, ½ glass of water and ½ glass of apple vinegar (I used ¾ water and ¼ vinegar because I wanted it to be sweet, not sweet and sour, so it is your choice).
Chop the peppers and take away the seeds and the white thing in the inside, boil with the rest of the ingredients until those peppers are tender and smoshie, kind of like this:

Drain the pepper but save some of the liquid, put the pepper in the blender and liquefy them, add some of the liquid little by little until you get a jam like consistency.
Take it to the refrigerator over night and the next day put it on top of cream cheese and serve with cracker.
You can also use the jam alone with crackers or bread or ANYTHING because this thing is delish even alone :D

Friday Recipe - Happy Halloween

Here is another amazing cake creation by my lovely sister (OHHH MY KIDS ARE GOING TO BE LUCKY WITH AN AUNT LIKE THAT) ;)

Here it is in her own description:

The cakes were super easy to do, they were butter cakes, they were really airy and 'light' because I figured that since the colors were already so 'loud' (for lack of a better word) I had to make it fluffy and tasty but not overpowering (I over think these things!), also butter cakes because of the color of the batter that takes the color from the food colorants very well and the end result is very bright colors.

"Snot, body parts and tapeworm/maggot" cake

I wanted the insides to look as chaotic as the outside did, so I took divided the batter into 3 small bowls and colored it green, red and black. There was no rhyme or reason to the way I emptied the batter into the pan, I just wanted swirls of the three different colors, nothing as 'structured' and 'organized' as the rainbow cake. I baked in the oven until it was ready (you know, same ole same ole, poke with a toothpick if it comes out clean then that means it's ready)
I made a very basic and simple powder sugar icing and colored it green, for 'snots', the fun part of the cake was the fondant pieces on top. All it took was some marshmallow fondant and food coloring, the 'eyes' are little circles, the 'fingers' are just sausage shaped pieces of fondant and the 'maggots' were achieved by simply rolling a pinch of the fondant between my hands (like we did when we were kids), the trick, I reckon, is the details. To make the 'flesh' color, I mixed a bit of red and yellow with the white fondant (just a couple of drops of each color, you have to be very light handed because you don't want it to turn orange) the key was then to make the little indentations on the fingers, I did that with a knife, the nail was then 'painted' with writing icing (regular icing in a little tube that makes it easier to write on cakes with) I used the same red to make the little veins on the eyes and the center of the eyes was made with blue icing and I then took a small brush (make sure it's a cooking brush) and put a bit of dark blue colorant on the center to make it seem a bit more real. For the 'maggots' I just put a drop of each of the colors I had 'til it became mucky and yuck. After putting all the pieces in, I added a bit of blood splatters with red icing and that was it.

"Graveyard" cake

The graveyard cake was red inside, I wanted it to look like 'blood', although after the making it I went 'wait, cemeteries don't have blood inside the graves, I should have made a chocolate cake with cookie crumbles!' but I think it still came out nicely despite the faux-pas. I covered in green icing, for 'grass' and then covered the 'grass' in chocolate cookie crumbs for the 'dirt', the graves are buttercream cookies (do you sense a theme here? I love butter, mmm butter!) covered in dyed fondant. With a small brush dipped in black food colorant, I wrote the little headstones. The ghost (isn't he adorable with his cheeky grin?) was made out of fondant and black food colorant (for mouth and eyes). I added green sprinkles for 'grass' (I felt it was too 'naked' without it) and little blobs of red icing for the 'flowers'.

I encourage anyone to try and play with fondant, it's really fun and since it's so pliable making shapes is rather easy.
I already have planned out the Christmas cake, it's going to blow these two out of the water! Who would have thought that I'd be able to cook? Remember I couldn't even fry an egg? I was inspired by my adorable sister (That's me ;)) to give cooking a try (SHE MAKES THE BEST PASTA EVER) and now I love it. (*sniff*)

I dont know about you but I think they are GREAT!!! and I cant wait to have those X-mas's cakes in the Friday Recipe Post :D