Journal # 7: Buffalo wings satisfies my cravings!

I am an ultimate fan of Shakey's Buffalo wings. It's a bit tangy, spicy and salty. I just love the awesome flavors it has! So, on my venture of recreating that dish, I found a recipe that comes close to the Shakey's wings! 

A week ago, I went to google and searched for "buffalo wings" and this awesome hooter's recipe by Todd Wilbur caught my eye. It had great reviews, although few. It was rated 5 stars. So then I tried the recipe last night and I loved it! It came really close to my favorite at the restaurant! :))

Oh and it's not just awesome, it's extremely easy to make too!

Here are a few (extra) steps that I did to make them more awesome!

Okay, so the first thing I did was thaw the 10 pcs. chicken wings I had in the freezer. When it was completely thawed out (about 4 hours), I washed them with water, removed the dirt and rubbed the wings with salt. This helps remove the icky, slimy stuff on 'em and helps infuse salt on the chicken. Then after rubbing them with wings, wash them with water again. I don't know what this process is called but I call it the salt bath. LOL

So, after the chicken wings are clean. I separated using kitchen scissors (of course, you could also use a knife! LOL) the drummette from the actual wing. From what I've read, A drummette is the section of the wing that is connected to the body of the chicken.
So then, I have 20pcs of chicken to coat and fry.

I dry these wings with a disposable paper towel, make sure to discard these after use, reusing them may cause illness. When they're dry, and make sure to make them stay dry, it's time now to prepare our coating. You could also prepare the coating while thawing, if you're not doing anything else, just to save time. The recipe only calls for 1/2c flour, 1/4tsp. cayenne pepper, 1/4tsp. spanish paprika and 1/4 tsp. salt. Mix them all together and coat the wings with them. This recipe is only for 10 wings, so I doubled the amounts so that it would be enough to coat the wings and drummettes.

It's time now to start cooking! I preheated my oil to about 110C and I deep fried the wings for 6mins and the drummette for 8mins. They turned out to be really crispy. Make sure you don't overcook the chicken, they will dry out!

My only comment on the batter would be to add more salt, 1/4tsp. is too little for my taste. So the next time I would be adding more maybe upto a teaspoon.

Moving on...
The sauce is made up of butter, hot sauce, pepper and garlic powder. I melted the butter and I found out that I didn't have any garlic powder or hot sauce on hand so I substituted these for real garlic about 2 tsps. finely chopped and Chinese Chili sauce. It worked well too! The recipe calls for equal portions of butter to chili sauce but, for me, it ended up too spicy, so I added more butter to find the right balance for my palette. 

I also added dried basil leaves about 1 tsp. for aroma. I put the sauce on a container with a lid and put the cooked chicken on it and shook it like crazy! LOL Then I served it on the table! It was a winner! Everybody loved it! My mom loved it too but was too worried about the fats she might gain coz of it! haha

I love buffalo wings and to save money, I'd just make them on my own since I have this awesome recipe with me! It is definitely a keeper! 

I'm sorry I don't have pictures, I was just too excited to eat them! You'll know what I mean, when you've tried em! HAHA

Try the recipe too, let me know what happens...

That's the Buffalo fried Chicken without the sauce. :) 

Journal #6 : Meringues

Here I am again, trying to help other new/self-taught bakers like me. This post is about this frustration of mine: Meringues. I'm frustrated because they're so easy to make but so difficult to bake! You really need patience in order to perfect this! Read on if you want to understand the importance of the ingredients and the steps in making this delicious dessert!

If you get bored while reading this whole blog, just take note of those highlighted in red! :) Those are important!

These goodies whether chewy or melt-in-your-mouth are great desserts! It is also made with only very few ingredients: egg whites, cream of tartar, salt and sugar. The egg white is the most important ingredient. It must be at room temperature before whisking or else the meringues will fail. The cream of tartar helps stabilize the egg whites (as i've read in other recipe books) like helping them incorporate more air and maintain the stiffness of the peaks. The sugar and salt's importance are, of course, obvious.

Whisking these by hand would take forever and would definitely hurt your arm. You'd be dead tired before you could make soft peaks. Ha ha! For comfort and ease, use a stand or hand held mixer with a whisk attachment. 

One thing you should keep in mind is too not add the sugar all at one time. I did this once and the meringue flopped while baking. It wasn't able to stiffen enough during the whisking so it collapsed while baking. The purpose of adding the sugar little by little is to stiffen the air pockets in the egg white so that it would hold its shape even when exposed to hotter temperatures (i.e. in the oven).

As to the issue of what kind of sugar to use, I prefer Caster Sugar which is more expensive than regular white sugar. It is easier dissolved which means lesser time to whisk and more time for other things. :) You can still use regular white sugar but whisking time will be longer.

After whisking you may or may not add vanilla extract but if you do add it last. I like adding vanilla extract, I think it results to better tasting meringues.

Meringues in the oven!

Off to the baking part, some recipes say bake it at 100 C for about 1 hour, but I think the best way to do it is preheat the oven at 120C and once the meringues are in, bring down the temperature to 100C. It will give the meringues a nice crisp on the edges. This is important if you live in a place with a room temperature lower than 28-30C: After baking, do not take it out of the oven, turn it off, leave it there to dry for about 3 hours. If you skip this step, your meringues will be sticky on the outside and chewy. It won't be a crunchy meringue!

Believe me, I've had this problem over and over again until I did this step. THis is what got me frustrated. I never gave up though. I had to try again until I perfected it!

You can try any meringue recipe on the internet these tips and tricks will help you to bake the awesome meringues!

Remember: If at first you don't succeed try and try again! :)


Feel free to comment and share!

Journal # 5: Violet Cupcakes

I am obsessed with mastering the art of decorating cupcakes. It took me a while to figure out how to use the different tips that were available to me.

With the vanilla cupcakes I had on hand, this is what I ended up making, the Violet swirls and designs! Flowers and swirls are generally the easiest designs anyone could do! I think I did fairly well. Did I?

Pretty pansy!

Isn't the pansy beautiful? This was the result of my third try. It was really difficult for me. LOL But I never gave up! I still have to work on it though. 

I first piped a plain swirl then I added the pansy. I made 5 petals and then I added 1 silver ball instead of piping another color. I didn't have enough bags to have another color of frosting to be piped up.

After doing this, I thought of swirling/tinting my plain white frosting with the violet one and so I did. I first did the swirls, they turned out beautifully too! FYI, violet is my favorite color. So anything that has the color violet is beautiful for me. haha

I will not give up! I will learn new tricks to improve our business and share with everyone the good this brings! :)

Christmas is in the air and I'm really excited about baking the orders that have been lined up already! Thanks for the support! 

BTW, the foodnetwork.com's Vanilla Cupcakes are awesome! :) You guys should try them out. Get their app on your iPhone, iPad or iTouch too! It would be a great help to you! 

It's like a flower garden!

 

Violets

Journal #4: The Burger Queen

Read the title again with a Darth Vader voice. I think it's creepy sounding. HAHA

Anyway, about 2 days before our cousin, Gaile, left for CdO, I decided to make burger patties! I used the recipe in BBC. I forgot the title and link (maybe find it and attach later) but it was easy and delicious! A very easy recipe for a burger that you could easily alter to suit you and your family's tastes!

Mixy, mixy, mixy!

It only requires ground beef, eggs, flour, seasonings, bbq sauce, garlic, onions, and a little tomato sauce. I think that's about it! :) You just mix them all together by hand or by a wooden spoon. I did mine by hand. It was a bit icky. It'll turn out like this.

I don't remember the exact measurements but you only need about 1/2 kg. of ground pork or beef. For my burger patties, I used pork since we didn't have any beef around. Make sure you taste a little portion (cooked) of it. To ensure that it tastes awesome!

The lonely patty!

After mixing tutti ingredienti, I shaped my patties into flat circles. Again, You can do this by hand or by use of a spatula. I only made 3 circles then because there were only 3 of us in the house that time. I want my patties freshly cooked in every meal. 

I didn't think burger patties were so easy to make. I had fun making them. I'm getting hungry just thinking about making them last time. HAHA.

So, by this time, the grill that you will be using should already be preheated and sprayed/brushed with a little oil. The directions in the recipe claimed that I should fry it. But to make it less fatty and healthier I decided to grill them, less oil is better! :)

I used some flat silicone spatulas (the ones at the back of the uncooked patty)to transfer the patties and used them for cooking too! They made all of it easy! 

1, 2, 3, 4, don't put them in the fire that long!

Based on this picture, you can see how lovely and delicious looking they turned out to be!

The only problem with mine was, it was a tad salty. So be careful with how much spice you put in. I also added some secret ingredients to further suit our taste. :)

Cooking time wasn't specified at the recipe, so I suggest for Pork Patties: 3-4 minutes on each side, medium fire. Beef Patties: 4-5 minutes, medium fire. You should always check the patties after 1 minute, you don't want them burnt.

That is so delish!

I like my burger simple, so my sisters and cousin sliced some onions and tomatoes, prepared some fresh lettuce and sliced cheese. My favorite dressings are Mayonnaise and Mustard plus some pickle relish. My cousin, Gaile, cooked some fries for the side too. It was awesome!

I'd cook it again some time! I had some left over patties and I freezed them. Oh and I added lots of garlic and onions to the patty mixture, I love those flavors on my burger! 

Eat away! 


Signed, 

The Burger Queen
Ice :)

Journal #3: Basic Dinner Rolls

I was highly interested in making dinner rolls or bread but I had a problem: all the supermarkets around my area don't have ACTIVE DRY YEAST. So, all that I could buy was INSTANT DRY YEAST. 

The Back story:
My sister has been trying for quite some time now in making soft bread. Every single time she tried, she ends up non-rising bread. We still bake them and they end up as a good pizza crust. I realized then that something else may be wrong.

I, then, searched for recipes online for dinner rolls. I tried to find the easiest ones and so I did. I then began making the bread and followed the instructions very carefully. The part where I had to let my batter sit out to rise or double in size did not happen! I was really frustrated. I did not know what went wrong. So then I read the recipe again. Checked my ingredients if they were still good. Then, I read the label for my yeast. It says "Instant Dry Yeast", I looked at the recipe and it said "Active Dry Yeast."

*FacePalm*

I finally figured out what went wrong. My tip to you new bakers would be to make sure the ingredients that are asked would be the ones you would use, just to avoid disasters. LOL And that you'd READ the entire recipe first before doing it. Make sure you understand what you have to do.

So yeah, I changed the recipe that I was using and searched for recipes that called for the use of Instant Dry yeast. And I found the one called "Perfect Basic Dinner Rolls" by StressBake7 from Yummly.com.

The recipe was very easy and I tried it. My Rolls turned out really great! Although I did some minor alterations by adding herbs to my dough, more flavor for the bread itself etc. 

Oops, where'd the other pesto roll go? *burp*

 The first alteration I did was adding freshly made pesto to the rolled out bread. I baked it at 360 Farenheit for about 15 minutes. It had a good color and aroma. 

You may also use ready made pesto that's available on any store. :)

It tasted really fresh and good. Oh, and before I forget, I reduced the amount of salt in the recipe coz' I found it a bit too salty. 

Eat me! Pestolicioius!

 Based on the picture on the left, You can see that my rolls weren't sealed. I forgot to add water to the side to seal it. LOL. So, to avoid that next time, I plan to re-check every step that I do.

That's really good bread!

The second alteration I did was add some sesame seeds on the bread. At first, without thinking, I placed the sesame seeds on top right after I floured the dough, this is wrong. The sesame seeds fell coz' it had nothing to stick to. So, on the next try, add the sesame seeds on top before flouring the dough and shaping it. Or maybe butter could help. If you forget to add the sesame before you flour, you could finish all the steps first then just butter the top then put the sesame seeds on 'em.

The baking time for these regular rolls are 17minutes. A little more and the bottoms would turn black.

Hmm. Chocolate Bread.

The final alteration I did was add chocolate chips in the dough. Who doesn't love chocolate on their bread, right? I loved it! I added about 6-7 large chip in the middle then sealed the bread. When I tasted it, It seemed that the chocolate was too little. I guess next time I'd add more for more flavor. 

I baked these for 17 minutes too. Their sizes were the same as the the regular rolls. 

 So yeah, here are the products of my perseverance and creativity-ish. I'm not really good at conceptualizing things and creating one-of-a-kind dishes. I'm here to deal with what I have in the kitchen and produce what I think would be best for everybody. :)

I just love baking food, don't you feel the same way?