What I baked for Valentines Day

Last week I told myself that I would be faithful to writing on this blog about my baking adventures but alas my laziness always wins and I missed last week. To remedy this laziness, I will try to write about something every Tuesdays (Like I will put an actual alarm to remind myself). That aside, today I'll write about something I made for Valentines, Cake Pops!

They are actually pretty easy, I just watched a few youtube videos and voila... There are 5 steps to making the cakepops, 1) Bake the cake 2) Destroy the cake 4) Shape and freeze 5)Dip in candy melt and decorate!

For the first step, I use my trusty chocolate cake recipe.. I will reveal my chocolate cake recipe *drum roll please* But the recipe is not really a secret, because it is printed in every Hershey's Unsweetened cocoa box! I snapped a picture for those people who don't have it.

Second step, is to destroy the cake.. this is my absolute favorite step because it's messy and it doesn't feel right to destroy a cake. So what I did was I split the cake into 4 parts and rubbed 2 parts each until the cake is destroyed into crumbs. Then mix your favorite icing with the crumbs until it's able to hold (I used choco buttercream for this).

Fourth step, shape the crumbs and put in the the freezer for however long. 

Last and most fun, is dip in candymelt! But before you dip them you have to skewer the candy with your cakepop sticks. Then you decorate! <3 I guess this is the hardest part for me becuase I had trouble melting the vanilla candy and chocolate for the coating because I do not have a microwave.  I didn't use a makeshift double broiler at first so I ruined like half of the candymelts (so TIP: use a doublebroiler to melt if you don't have a microwave like me).

So this is how mine looks like, it's not super pretty but cut  me some slack this is my first time making this..

I gave these out to people who went to my house around Valentines day, just to make them feel good and happy. <3 

I hope you had fun reading this! Please don't forget to like my facebook page and for any questions or violent reactions drop me a message. 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charliesbygrace

Email: graceria.naval@gmail.com

Bagoong fried rice

I always have left over cold rice. It always ends up wasted and thrown in the trash or fed to my kitties outside.. what a waste! And today I found cold rice sitting on my refrigerator again, usually this gets turned into your normal fried rice but today I wanted to do something different. After scanning a few recipes on the internet I decided to try out bagoong friend rice with unripe mangoes. *I thought I had unripe mangoes but it turns out they've already ripened, but it's okay*. In my recipe I used skinless longanisa, you can use pork belly or liempo. Here's a quick recipe for cold left over rice:

Ingredients:
Left over rice, around 2 cups
Bagoong (Shrimp Paste) 3 tbsp
chopped garlic
2 eggs
Cooked skinless longanisa (sliced into bite size pieces)
Ripe or unripe mango
Chopped scallions *optional*
Salt and pepper

1. Beat eggs and add salt. Scramble eggs and slice into bite size pieces. Set aside.
2. Saute garlic. Mix in rice. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Add the bagoong, mix until it is evenly blended with the rice. Stir fry for a few minutes, like around 3 minutes, then add longanisa and eggs.
4. Once cooked, place in a plate and add the mangoes and scallions.