The Foodie's Food Trip

Insalata Caprese (Tomato Mozzarella Salad)

I've been seeing the tomato mozzarella salad on TV and online and I had been curious on how it tastes. So I tried making some.

Tomato mozzarella salad, or Insalata Caprese, is a very simple Italian salad. All you need are slices of tomatoes, slices of mozzarella cheese and some basil leaves.

In the salad I made, I decided to use cherry tomatoes and bocconcini (mini mozzarella cheese). I bought these lovely Piccolo cherry tomatoes (still with stems) and a tub of bocconcini.

I usually am not a fan of tomatoes in salads, I always pass them to hubby. But these tomatoes are so sweet and delicious and juicy, I love them!

I sliced them in half instead of putting them whole

My tub of mini mozzarella

cute!

The salad should also have basil leaves, but I forgot to buy some. :D

After slicing the tomatoes in half and adding the bocconcini, I seasoned it with freshly ground sea salt and some pepper, plus a drizzle of olive oil. Presto! Insalata Caprese!

Try making them with large tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and slice them. This would also be perfect on toast! :)

Chocolate Crinkles 2 Way

It's that time of the year again when I usually bake chocolate crinkles.

I have been doing this recipe from Allrecipes for years and it has never failed me yet. But, last year a friend sent me another chocolate crinkles recipe using a chocolate cake mix... interesting, right? Oh, and that recipe is by Paula Deen. :D

The Allrecipes cookies are so easy to make that I don't have to use a mixer. Paula Deen's recipe is called Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies. It is also very easy (it uses a cake mix!) but I needed to use a mixer for this because I needed to cream the butter and cream cheese (yes, it has cream cheese!) together. The only thing that takes time for both recipes is the rolling of the cookies and covering them with the powdered sugar.

I made the cookies from Allrecipes first. I mixed the ingredients the night before, and baked two batches the next morning. It's also the perfect time to use my new cookie scoop. :D Here's what my cookies looked like:

Don't they look perfect?

After baking the cookies, I prepared the ingredients for Paula Deen's recipe. I still need to put the cream cheese and butter to room temperature. When everything's ready, I made the dough and placed them in the freezer so the dough will harden quicker.

When the last batch of the Allrecipes cookies were done, I baked one batch of Paula Deen's cookies (using the same cookie scoop of course!). Here's what Paula Deen's cookies looked like:

Aesthetics-wise, the original recipe were perfectly-domed and the powdered sugar coated the cookies perfectly too. :D Paula Deen's recipe were a bit flatter than I expected, and the powdered sugar stuck to the cookies (even before I baked them... and I even coated some twice).

Here they are side by side (L: Paula Deen's recipe; R: AllRecipe's recipe):

Texture-wise, they're both soft. Allrecipes' cookies were a bit cakey (bot not too much cake-like cakey). Paula Deen's cookies really are soft and gooey! I guess the Allrecipes' cookies were like that because of the baking powder. If I remember it right, I usually replace the baking powder with baking soda... or maybe ADD baking soda because I have a note in my recipe 1 tsp baking soda... and I have no idea why I forgot that! I usually made them soft and gooey and comes out a bit thinner than that. So this time I liked Paula Deen's texture.

UPDATE 19-Dec 2011 12:55PM: After posting this blog entry, I baked the remaining dough from the Paula Deen batch. Output: cakey too! And they're the same batch! Did I set the oven's temperature too high? Did I bake it too long? Or maybe because I left it in the fridge overnight, just like the Allrecipes batch! I don't know... but the main thing here is... they have the same texture now.

Allrecipes' cookies

Paula Deen's cookies

Taste-wise, I like them both. :D Although I think Paula Deen's cookies were a bit saltier. I also asked my #1 critic and my guinea pig... my husband. He liked the Allrecipes' cookies better. The chocolatey-ness will definitely depend on the cocoa powder (for the Allrecipes) and the chocolate cake mix (for Paula Deen) you use. I used Green and Blacks Cocoa - Organic Fair Trade 100% cocoa powder and Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix).

FYI, I used the same cookie scoop so they're all uniform in size (I think it's 1 tablespoon), used the same baking tray, baked at the same temperature (175ºC/350ºF) at the same period of time (10-12 minutes).

I only used half of the recipe in Allrecipes and I made a total of 20 cookies.

For Paula Deen's recipe, I made a total of 32 cookies.

I think you'll just have to make them to try them out yourselves. :D

Here are the links for the recipes:
Chocolate Crinkles from Allrecipes
Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies by Paula Deen

Happy baking and happy holidays!

My New Breakfast (And Sometimes Dessert, Too!)

I've seen them in the supermarket before, but only tried them recently. And I've been buying them since then.

What am I talking about? Yogurt. But not just any yogurt, it's Müller's corner yogurts.

It's called Corner yogurt because the yogurt is just plain (or sometimes flavored) yogurt, then the toppings and/or other flavorings are in another corner.

I just had this for my afternoon snack... Toffee Hoops.

They have other healthier flavors... but I like mine sweet! :D

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nutella was on sale the other day, so I bought two jars. So now... what to do with all that Nutella? Bake, of course!

See those two cutie Nutella jars? Bought them in Italy during our holiday two months ago and I looove them! Each jar just contains 30g (the normal Nutella jar has 400g) and they're sooo adorably cute!

Anyway, I made some Nutella cookies before, but hubby and I felt something's missing... the chocolate chips. I can simply add chocolate chips to the last recipe I used, but decided to look and try out a different recipe completely.

I found one from justJENN which looks simply divine and chewy and perfect.

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies
from justJENN

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup Nutella
1-1/2 cups chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and prep baking sheets with silpats (or baking paper).
In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter, the sugar and the brown sugar. Add the eggs and the vanilla until combined.
Gradually add the flour until the mixture is combined.
Then mix in the chocolate chips and the Nutella.
Drop by Tablespoons onto the prepped baking sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes.
Let cool on wire racks. When the cookies come out they will go from rounded balls to lovely flat cookie discs.

The Nutella was supposed to be swirled and not completely mixed... I think I over-mixed the Nutella to my cookies. It doesn't matter... they're still great!

My Craving For Silvanas

Being away from the Philippines made me crave a lot of food, that although I do not eat them often I still crave for them. One of the food/dessert that I've been craving for years, even when we were still living in Singapore, is silvanas.

Silvanas are frozen cookies/dessert wherein meringue-like cookies, usually made of cashew nuts, are sandwiched and covered with buttercream then coated with cake or cookie crumbs and sometimes ground cashew nuts. It is very similar to sans rival, cake version of silvanas.

I've been looking for a recipe for a looong time but can't find one. Then a few months ago, I asked my sister if she has a recipe of silvanas (or sans rival)... she's got both! And so I made some! :D

Now for the ingredients... Most of the ingredients I needed were easy to buy - eggs, sugar, butter. But the cashew nuts... I searched for weeks (or maybe even months)!

In the Philippines, I realized that cashew nuts are not that expensive and you can buy them in almost any supermarket. Here in London, it's more expensive than I thought it would be! But still the craving wins. I've checked three supermarkets and all of them sell salted (and even peppered) cashew nuts... and I need plain unsalted ones. I finally found one from a store that sells vitamins & supplements, they sell organic and healthy food. They even have banana chips... product of the Philippines. :D

And the baking begins... Here are some steps/notes while making silvanas:

The first thing I made was the buttercream. My sister gave me a recipe for Swiss buttercream frosting. But everything was in metric measurement, even the eggs! Although I can approximate the weight of an egg white, I still wanted a recipe wherein it says the number of eggs I need (not in grams/millilitres). So I searched for other Swiss buttercream recipes online and found one from Smitten Kitchen.
Next is the meringue cookies. I have two options for making them round and small,
1. Pipe the meringue into perfect little circles
2. Pour them in a tray and just cut them in circles after baking.
I opted for the second one, since I do not trust my piping skills. The only downside of the second option is the excess cookies left. In my case, I still used them as coating for the finished silvanas. :D

My meringue cookies getting ready for the oven

I decided to use my square pans for this instead of my rectangular ones because my rectangular pans kept on warping/popping/bending once inside the oven, and my square pans are all stable and steady.
After baking, I let them cool a bit then pried them out of those baking paper... they're stubborn and sticky! So next time I'll make sure to butter and flour them more generously.
After that I cut them into perfect circles. I used a cookie/biscuit cutter to form these circles then let them cool some more.
For the cookie rejects and the sides, I baked them some more to make them a bit crunchier, then ground them up. I them mixed those ground meringue cookies with some ground cashew nuts. That's what I used to coat the silvanas.
Once perfectly cool enough, I spread some buttercream on one cookie, sandwich it with another, then put them in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. I put mine in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
Remove the sandwich cookies from the refrigerator. Cover the sandwich with more buttercream, then coat with the ground meringue cookies mixed with cashew nuts. Put them back in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.

The finish product... yummy!

My lovely Silvana

Unfortunately I can't share the recipe for the meringue cookies. But for the Swiss buttercream frosting recipe, you can get them from Smitten Kitchen.