Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love chocolates with mint. That is my ultimate dessert heaven. That is why when I saw a photo-recipe online of the mint chocolate chip cookies, I immediately reposted and shared it to my friends. One of my friends, Arvin, took it to heart, and recreated the dessert heaven.



In his blog, Vin Chocolatier, he wrote, "This chocolate chip mint cookie recipe is inspired by the raw cold and chill breeze of December, balanced with a hearty dose of dark and rich chocolate." He adds that the chocolate chip mint cookies, "can be quite intimidating because the mint really jolts you with a sudden freshness with each bite, but it eventually calms down with the soothing sweetness of chocolate."

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe from Arvin Peralta 

1/2 cup / 100 g butter, softened
3/4 cup / 150 g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup / 150 g all-purpose flour
1/4 cup / 35 g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
200 g chocolate chips (dark works best, but you can use milk chocolate too) 

Mint Glaze 

1/2 cup + 1 tbsp / 75 g confectioner's sugar
1 tbsp / 8 g cocoa powder
2 tbsp / 40 mL hot water
1/4 tsp mint extract

• Preheat your oven to 180°C.

• Cream the butter and sugar until smooth. You can do this manually (sure, labor of love), but better use a hand mixer or a freestanding mixer for ease. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix well until soft and fluffy.

• On another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Add gradually to your cream mixture until well incorporated. Mix in your chocolate chips.

• Using an ice cream scoop or a 15mL tablespoon, drop measures of cookie dough on a lined baking sheet. The cookies do not expand when they bake, so you can leave little spaces in between to pack in as many as you can.

• Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a rack.

• Mix all the glaze ingredients in a small saucepan and and heat until combined. Drizzle the glaze over the cookies as they cool on the rack. The glaze will solidify gradually as it cools.

Pizza for Brunch

There is a certain group of people who firmly believe that certain things aren't meant to be eaten until past a certain time of day, like no alcohol before noon, no ice cream for breakfast, or no cereal during dinner. Fortunately (in my opinion) for me, I grew up in a household that did not fall prey to these stereotypes, and I grew up comfortable eating fried egg and tinapa for dinner, cereal very late at night, and pizza and ice cream for breakfast.

I love pizza, and for me nothing comes close to Gourmet Garden or the Garden Special from Yellowcab. But lately there have been fewer and fewer toppings, and in accordance to my new year's resolution to eat better, I have shied away from most pizzas because they are far too oily.

Which brings me to today, and I would like to share what I do to get my healthy pizza fix. It is so much easier to buy pizza crust from the store, but if anyone is interested in making their own pizza dough, Chef Todd English has a great recipe for pizza dough here. The rest of the ingredients are:

1. Zuchinni - cut into thin rounds or roughly half a centimeter (because they taste best when they are cooked all the way through)
2. Eggplant - cut into slightly thicker one centimeter
3. Blanched Tomatoes - You drop tomatoes (not fast! you don't want to get splattered!) into hot boiling water for no more than maybe a minute, followed by a quick dunk in ice water. After this you peel off the skin, it is much easier to peel off the skin if you score the tops of the tomatoes (you cut an X on top so you have something to pull when you peel off the skin). I know this is technically not blanching as blanching usually takes only 15 seconds, but you want the tomato to get to a slightly mushy but still intact phase, because this is going to take the place of your tomato sauce. It will get messy. Do it in a bowl.
   
4. Green Bell Pepper - cut these into crunchy rounds, and don't be afraid to include the seeds!
5. Feta - one of the staples in our household, we use Lemnos feta most of the time because they have some great goat feta. You're gonna have to crush this with a fork so that it is easier to spread.
6. Mozarella (Fresh Bocconcini) - Almost all commercial pizzas use long life mozarella blocks, which may be a better melting cheese but is not very good for you. Fresh mozarella, like Bocconcini has a shelf life of only a few weeks, and are balls of cheese in water. We get this from S&R in small clear plastic tubs (Mamma Lucia). You're gonna have to cut this up in pieces, doesn't matter what size.
7. Olive oil - for general drizzling
8. Basil - the perfect garnish
   

So first off, you want to waterproof the crust, as you can be sure that all the vegetables and the bocconcini is going to release a lot of water upon baking. So you drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil on the crusts and bake them until they begin to form a hard crust on the top. You take them out and begin to spread a thin layer of crushed feta first. Then you alternate the eggplant and zuchinni, and top it off with tomatoes and green bell pepper. Last will be the pieces of mozarella. Drizzle again with olive oil. Place in the oven at 350C until the cheese melts and the zuchinni and eggplant are cooked.

That sounds like pretty great breakfast to me.

Recipe | Bong's Flaming Phoenix

Bong's Flaming Phoenix
Servings per batch: Good for 4 to 5 people
Preparation time: Around 10 minutes | Marinade: 30 mins to 1 hr
Total preparation time: Around 1 hr and 30 mins
Difficulty: Easy! :)

Coming from the holiday season, I am sure that you have eaten a lot of food from your Noche Buena, a Spanish term for the usual family dinner on Christmas eve, your Christmas dinner, New Year, like your usual lechon, fried chicken, adobo, hamon, fruit cake, and your other Filipino dishes.

I'm sure that by now, you're tired of the usual "way of cooking" and the usual taste of your dishes. I am. So one morning, I just decided to experiment and create my own chicken dish. One thing is for sure, I want it pepper-y and hot. This explains why the name given to it by Stephanie Tan.

Flaming Phoenix (recipe good for 1/2 - 1 kilo boneless chicken)

Dry ingredients:

• 1/2 - 1 kilo boneless chicken cut into strips
• 4 cloves garlic diced into super small pieces (but I like to put more garlic)
• 1 - 1 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper
  
• 1 tablespoon paprika
  
• 2 pinches of salt
  
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper

Liquid ingredients:

• 1 juiced lemon (small)
  
• 1/2 cup olive oil
  
• 2 tablespoon Kikoman soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 3 tablespoon melted butter
  
• 1 cap-full of white wine vinegar with herbs of provence (or without)
  
• 3 cap-full of Ginebra San Miguel GSM Blue gin (or any gin substitute)

Combine the dry ingredients and the liquid ingredients to the strips of boneless chicken. Mix and coat the chicken evenly with the ingredients. Let it sit so that the flavors marry well together and you'll end up with a yummy treat!

After 30 mins. to an hour, you're all ready to fry or grill them. This dish (photo above) was pan-fried with very little oil.

Preheat the pan, then add the oil. Saute some garlic, until they're golden brown, then remove them, and set aside. You can now add in your chicken strips. When you see that the sides have turned a little bit white to brown (or different from the normal color of raw chicken), you can now turn the strips over. Fry it for a minute or two, and you're good to go!

A new dish you should try this new year. Happy cooking! ^^

Recipe | Dulce de Leche

Dulce de Leche
Servings per batch: 1-2 bottle-fulls
Total preparation time: Approximately 3 hours
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate


Most of you probably know Dulce de Leche as an ice cream flavor or something that's in a cake or whatnot, but the actual Dulce de Leche itself can be described most accurately as a jam. It's basically like a jam that tastes like caramel, only less sweet.

Make no mistake about it, it might taste similar, but Dulce de Leche is not caramel. The big difference is basically the presence of milk in Dulce de Leche and a little something called the Maillard reaction. Now go and look up the Maillard reaction on Wikipedia since explaining here would be much too boring and off topic.

Dulce de Leche is a simple thing to make, the only thing about it is that it demands patience - lots of it. The total cooking time for this will take at least 2 1/2 to 3 hours, sometimes even longer.

To make Dulce de Leche you will need:

• 1 quart (.95 liter - which is basically one liter all the same) whole milk
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 vanilla bean (with the usual treatment: split, scrape seeds)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Just combine the milk, sugar, and vanilla in a pan and bring it to a simmer until the sugar has fully dissolved. After the sugar's fully dissolved, add the baking soda and continue to cook at a bare simmer. Just leave it be and stir occasionally.

Now, I suppose you can substitute 1 tsp. of vanilla extract if you can't get your hands on vanilla beans or if you're too lazy to have to go and buy some (Santis Delicatessen sells vanilla beans and they have stores in Makati and in Quezon City).

For those using vanilla beans, make sure to remove it after an hour because it will start releasing some funky flavors if you cook it any longer than that.

As I said, this will take at least 2 1/2 to 3 hours because you have to reduce the whole quart/liter of milk down to about a cup of stuff; and that's a whole lot of reducing. A laptop with series of Simpsons episodes worked pretty well for me to stave off boredom.

You want it to reach the consistency of say... melted chocolates. So just wait it out and remember to keep it at a bare simmer. If it still has liquid consistency, don't worry too much because it does get much thicker once you put it in the refrigerator. Even if you do screw it up, don't worry about it because you can just try again. We learn best from our mistakes after all. Believe me, the hours you spend slaving over this only makes it all the more satisfying.


After you're done cooking, pour it through a strainer to remove clumps that might have formed. Store them in appropriate containers. It'll keep for a good while; it's got a lot of sugar anyway, so that should keep microorganisms at bay.


Now you can do pretty much anything with your Dulce de Leche. You can put it on toast, eat with bananas, ice cream, pancakes, cupcakes, whatever you can think of, really. Enjoy!

Recipe | Joey's Banana Cookies

Joey's Banana Cookies
Servings per batch: Makes around 40 cookies
Total preparation time: About an hour and a half
Difficulty: Another experiment -- I've yet to actually follow a recipe. So I suppose you can say this is relatively easy, if I managed to cough it up haha :)

These are like banana cake in cookie form, but not as sweet and definitely much, much healthier than your typical banana cake. My cookie experiment #1 came out soft and quite fluffy :9

These have absolutely no butter in them (just 2 tablespoons of canola oil that I put in as a "safety measure") ♥ I think these cookies are very healthy, as far as cookies go.

This is my first baking experiment. I'd have to say it went better than I thought it would :9 Considering that my baking experience is a total of one cookie, I wasn't very confident about how the cookies will turn out, since I still only have a vague idea of the "proper" proportions and what sort of ingredients you have to put in to make the cookies come out tasting and resembling cookies.

I'm glad these came out okay tho. Not quite what I wanted, but my brother says he likes these more than my apple cookies (but, personally, I liked those better). And, to be honest, I wasn't planning to post this recipe since I still want to tweak it a bit, but talking to a few of my friends who got to try it (and apparently loved it), I decided to share the recipe anyway and, should I ever find time to try it again, just update this post with the improved recipe.

In any case, I hope you guys enjoy this! :) It's really quite simple to make, and it's healthier than most baked goodies ;) (Most of my cooking tends to be on the healthy [and tasty!] side -- Hannah says it's my niche.)
Happy baking~! ♥

• 1 cup mashed bananas (~5 bananas)
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
  
• 2 eggs (or egg substitute, the equivalent of two eggs)
  
• 2 and ¾ cups flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
  
• 1 and ½ cups brown sugar
  
• 3 tablespoons cinnamon

Mix the mashed bananas, eggs, canola oil, and brown sugar together in a large bowl. Combine the rest of the ingredients together in smaller bowl, then add the dry mixture into your wet mixture. Mix well.

Preheat your oven to around 250°C (480 °F).

Line your baking sheet with parchment/wax paper. Spoon dough to the sheets, leaving at least a ½" gap between each cookie. Bake for about 20-30 minutes. The cookies should come out soft and a bit airy/fluffy.

See more photos on my flickr.

50 Things You Can Make in Your Microwave: Banoffee Pie

Hannah's Dorm Room Banoffee Pie
Preparation time: 30-45 minutes, plus time for chilling



A medley of bananas and caramel, cradled by a graham cracker crust and finished with fresh whipped cream, nothing is more satisfying than coming home to your own individual serving of Banoffee Pie. Created in the seventies at The Hungry Monk restaurant, it has become increasingly popular here in Manila in the past year or two.

I personally love Banoffee Pie, regardless of the warning that comes on most Banoffee Pie recipes that read "milk cans may explode", as the toffee is traditionally made by cooking cans of condensed milk in pots of simmering water. This has pushed me to come up with any and all ways of getting the sweet and sticky caramel without fear of having to wipe down my toffee covered kitchen.

While I found less dangerous methods on the internet, one using an oven to cook the toffee and the other suggesting boiling the condensed milk in a saucepan, these methods were not as inspired as using a microwave to cook the toffee! I'm thinking people in apartments, in dorm rooms, or people who share common kitchens, who only have a fridge and a microwave, could actually make this dessert! In the hopes that I will soon be making this in the dorm room of a certain great medical school campus, I give you:

Hannah's Dorm Room Banoffee Pie

Ingredients:

• 250g graham crackers
• 125g butter
• 4 bananas
• 1 400ml canned condensed milk
• clotted cream or your favorite whipped topping

1. Crush the graham crackers. I find that the easiest way to do this is to use a large wooden mortar and pestle, but a blunt heavy object and the graham crackers in a ziplock bag does pretty well.
   
2. Place the butter in a microwaveable bowl (i would recommend the biggest bowl you have, you will thank me later) and heat it up in the microwave until it is melted, this should take from 10-15 seconds. Do not worry if there are still some lumps of unmelted butter, just give it a stir and it will eventually melt.
3. Combine the crushed graham crackers and melted butter to form a sandy biscuit base, and press it in to the container you would like to use. Put it in the refrigerator to firm up.
   
4. Using the same microwaveable bowl you used to melt the butter (no need to wash the bowl!) pour the condensed milk into the bowl and place it in the microwave. Be careful not to overfill the bowl, it should be at most only half filled.
   
5. Now this is the slightly tricky part, and you can't leave your microwave alone at this point because cooking time varies with the type of microwave you have. Have your setting on either low or medium and start the microwave. When you notice that the milk has begun to expand much like lava would turn off the microwave, take out the bowl and mix the milk until it has flattened out again. Do not allow the expanded milk to collapse by itself, because you will burn the milk. Keep repeating this until you get your preferred shade of caramel. Also be careful not to overcook the milk, you will notice that it is overcooked when the caramel refuses to smoothen out anymore (then you have caramel candy! but that's not really what we want isn't it?)
   
6. When the caramel is cooked, pour it into the refrigerated graham cracker crusts and refrigerate again. (You can go off and do whatever now)
7. When you are ready to eat, cut up the bananas how you like them, place them on top of the graham cracker-toffee base, and finish with either whipped product (the canister you shake and spray) or whipped cream. I like to use clotted cream because its already thick right out of the container.
8. Enjoy!
   

Note: I like to keep the crushed graham cracker, melted butter, and toffee in separate containers in the fridge so I can just assemble it throughout the week for when I have an especially bad day.

Recipe | Joey's Apple Sauce & Apple Cookies

Joey's Apple Sauce & Apple Cookies
Servings per batch: Makes around 60 cookies
Total preparation time: About an hour and a half
Difficulty: It was my first time baking haha! :) Quite easy.

One of my goals for this summer was to try my hand at baking. It took me forever to decide what exactly my first baking project would be, but I finally settled on making apple cookies.

Until I saw this photo (the same photo I got the original recipe from), I've honestly never heard of apple cookies before. And, apparently, upon mentioning it to the few friends I told about my plans of baking, not many people I know have either. Since I already decided not to bake anything generic (like chocolate chip cookies or crinkles) and since I adore apples, apple cookies seemed like a pretty good place to start my baking journey.

The recipe in the photo's description called for unsweetened apple sauce. I decided to make mine from scratch so that I'd be sure that there would be no preservatives, etc. in my cookies -- Everything from scratch! I even used a masher to obliterate my diced apples into apple sauce (you can use a food processor or a blender like a normal person though, haha). I'm not quite sure how to defend myself for doing it the primitive way, since I have a perfectly good blender at my disposal -- maybe so I can say that everything, even the making and mashing of my apple sauce, was a labour of love? :P

I'm very blessed and happy to be the first foodista to post a recipe on our still-new blog ♥ I hope you enjoy making and eating these as much as I had.

NB: There will be excess apple sauce. You can store this in your fridge and just eat it as it is or enjoy it with some ham for brekkie :) It is delicious on its own though, trust me ;)

Apple Sauce
Servings per batch: Makes 3 and ½ cups
Total preparation time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

• 6 Fuji apples (medium), peeled, cored & diced
  
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Place your apples and water in a soup/sauce pot, cover and bring to a boil on high heat. Once it comes to a boil, switch to low heat and stir occasionally for about 20 minutes (or until your apples are just soft enough to mash without difficulty). Add in your sugar and stir till it completely dissolves. Finally, add the ground cinnamon and nutmeg and let sit for 1-2 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Your kitchen ought to smell quite heavenly right about now. :9)

Turn off the heat and choose your weapon for mashing up your apples. You might want to keep your apple sauce still a bit chunky (ie, not very blended/smooth yet) for your cookies.

Apple Cookies

• 2 eggs
• ½ cup canola oil
• 2 and ½ cups apple sauce
  
• 2 Fuji apples (medium), peeled and grated
• 2 and ½ cups brown sugar
• 2 and ¾ cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup raisins

Mix the brown sugar, canola oil, egg, apple sauce, raisins and grated apple together in a large bowl. Combine the rest of the ingredients together in smaller bowl, then add the dry mixture into your wet mixture. Mix well.

Preheat your oven to around 204°C (400 °F).

Line your baking sheet with parchment/wax paper. Spoon dough to the sheets, leaving at least a ½" gap between each cookie (they don't spread much, don't worry). Bake for about 20-25 minutes (poke one of the cookies with a toothpick or a fork once you reach the 20 minute mark to see if it's ready).


And that's it :) Quite easy to make. The cookies, if you do them right (I can't imagine how you can go wrong though), are very moist and very soft (and yummy! They're not too sweet and they're not very heavy :9). This was a huge hit in my house, and I'm sure it will be in yours too. Enjoy baking and the cookies (and snacking on the leftover apple sauce)~! ♥


PS. Read what Cy and Harrell had to say about the cookies :)

See more photos on my flickr.