Baking Nostalgia

My temporary little blog space at home--the attic, whilst my cat 

is busy watching the cars passing by the highway.

July is almost over, like it just flew by when you're busy with a lot of things. What kept me busy lately? Cooking and baking.

The advent of YouTube has made everyone's life so much easier. I learned the proper way of face contouring through YouTube, how to blend in those eye shadows, the art of applying under eye concealer, how to make no bake cakes and lately mug cakes. Yes, cakes directly mixed in one of those little coffee cups then baked using a microwave oven.

Cookies n Cream mug cake

Chicken Pesto Pasta served with chilledRed wine
(wine from Bugnay Berries). I cook and bake
alternately.

Baking is such a tedious process and this is what I learned when I was in Junior high, I had baking class and you can't just pop in all the ingredients without properly measuring them. With cooking, you can still alter the taste during the process since you can always grab a spoon to balance the mixture of each and every ingredients. Unlike baking, once the product is done, if you poured in too much salt whilst making the batter you're done, it won't be edible trust me and you have to start over.

Some dessert I made--
sliced apple and dragon fruit
with condensed milk.

My sister and I at one point enjoyed baking during our teens. Our parents even bought us this huge oven to further our passion for baking but we just gave it up as time went on because of the cost of ingredients and the time spent waiting for a finish product. Our oven turned rusty and old until we can no longer use it.

Chocolate mug cakes topped with
Oreo cookies and rainbow sprinkles

As I got older I still had my penchance for cooking but I never thought that I would reconcile my love for baking until recently. I started out with my home made pancakes since the ingredients were simple: eggs, all purpose flour, milk, butter, sugar and you're good to go even without baking powder then top it up with some strawberry jam! My sisters said it was phenomenal so I was encouraged to make other products out of flour such as Japanese cakes, waffle etc.

My steam baked chocolate cake with
rainbow sprinkles.

steam baked cookies n
cream chiffon cake

I got bored and scoured YouTube to try something else until I stumbled upon these mug cakes you can make just by using a microwave oven. I bought some more ingredients such as vanilla extract, baking powder, low fat cocoa and some rainbow sprinkles to begin with then I tried a couple of mug cake flavors: Chocolate and cookies n' cream. I wasn't happy with them although my sissy said it was fine. I found the cake's texture kind of rubbery because I did not follow the instruction which is to cook the cakes in just two minutes since our microwave oven doesn't heat up fast anymore so I extended the cooking time to almost four minutes. I quit making mug cakes and turned to cooking the batter by steaming them. The baking process took kind of long (about 20 minutes or so although you can check it from time to time) but the outcome was better. The chocolate cake I made was moist and no longer rubbery, very fudge cake. I topped it up with rainbow sprinkles afterwards and I was happy.

I found recently that shopping for baking products is my new happiness. It may sound funny but I frenzied over baking supplies and ingredients whilst at the supermarket. I don't know, I guess I'm just nostalgic sometimes.