Just a few of my (food) experiments

I like to try out different recipes especially when I have the needed ingredients at hand. And I call them "Experiments", which gives me some justification if the food didn't end up right especially the taste. However, 80% of my so-called experiments ended up better than I expected, which often surprises me. But the weird thing is I cannot replicate these experiments; I have to do several trials. But I have no complaints. Example, a couple of my experiments are my banana-kiwi-hazelnut spread crepe and chocolate cupcake.

Banana-kiwi-hazelnut spread crepe

My hubby loved this one. I made it for breakfast one weekend. Good thing we were given a few yellow kiwi fruit brought by hubby's aunt from a visit to New Zealand. I really wanted to use Nutella but my budget does not permit so I used the regular hazelnut chocolate spread. It turned out fine.

Chocolate cupcake

Relatively moist inside

This one my daughter loved. Ever since my sister gave me an electric mixer, I try to use it whenever I can. Since I don't have an actual oven (someday..will definitely buy one when I have the budget), I use my turbo broiler for baking. My baking trials always end up too dry or burnt on top. Lessons learned has finally paid up. For this mini chocolate cake, I lessened the baking time, lowered the temperature and covered the top with aluminum foil to keep it from overbaking the top portion. And viola! I made my first moist cake made from scratch and baked from my turbo broiler. As I have said, it is relatively moist on the inside compared to my previous cakes (from the box). Next project: to make a better moist cake. But for now, I quite satisfied with myself ;).

PS. Pardon my choice of words like trials and experiments. I have worked in research for several years so naturally, I can't shake off using some relatively scientific words.

A few perks of being a crafty mom

As I have mentioned before, I am into crafts. I really like working with beads, papers, cross-stitching etc..the more tedious the craft the better. That was before i had kids. I still have some unfinished patterns with me ever since i got married. Whew, anyone would understand a day in the life of a mother. Anyways, there are a few perks being into crafts and having kids, especially toddlers and pre-schoolers. First, baby clothes and cloth diapers can be personalized with embroidery and embelishments. I embroidered MJ's name in all of her cloth diapers, and now have added Ysa's name. Second, baptisms and birthdays are a real treat; from invitations to souvenirs creative minds and hands are put to a challenge. I so love planning and preparing baptisms and birthdays. I was able to make nice invites, diaper cake (for baptism) and cute swimming pool birthday cake (inspired by the cake we found from Kraft magazine), decorated shoebox (for school) for MJ. We had a blast decorating the pool cake, actually it was my hubby and I who were arguing where to put what. As for Ysa, I've made nice baptismal candles and souvenirs using scrapbooking materials. And now I'm planning what to do for her first birthday. Uhmm exciting! Lastly, no matter what the craft looks like (of course best efforts are applied), anything made are greatly appreciated with a big embrace and lots of kisses. Since pre-schoolers still doesn't have a clear understanding what looks good or not, anything I made were greeted with a response "Nice" (with a wide grin) or "Thanks mom" followed by a kiss. Who wouldn't be inspired to make more crafts for the kids? I only do hope they'll appreciate these things when they get older ;).