Recipe: Newbie Baker's Double Chocolate Loaf Cake

I love dessert! In fact, I am proud to call myself a dessert monster.

But me and baking, no we don't get along well. It all started, this fear to bake, during my sophomore year in high school. We had a group baking project then at our home economics teacher's house and I can't remember exactly what I was designated to do then but I just ended up with burnt cookies. I thought then that me and the oven are never going to be good friends.

Baking is one of the skills I am dying to learn but am so scared to try. But just as the cliche goes: Face Your Fears. So that is exactly what I did.

Guess what? I faced my fears and defeated it!!!

Here are the ingredients (recipe adapted from allrecipes.com):

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsps baking powder
1 1/4 cup fine muscovado sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted at room temperature
2 eggs, whisked lightly
1/4 cup unsweetened chocolate chips or shavings
1 cup full cream milk

How I did it:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.
2. Sift together all dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder). Mix with sugar.
3. In a separate bowl mix melted butter, eggs and milk. Mix till thoroughly combined.
4. Gently combine the wet and dry ingredients until mixed thoroughly.
5. Drop chocolate chips/shavings into the mixture.
5. Spoon the mixture slowly into small (I used 8x4), greased loaf pan and bake for 40-50 minutes until toothpick test comes out clean.

ENJOY!!!! (I'm now so excited to try other cake/pastry recipes. I'm hoping to try using flax seeds and oatmeal next time. Care to share your recipes?)

Yields: 1 8 lb loaf cake (about 10 half inch slices)

Recipe: How To Make Buco Salad Ice Candy

What you need:

1 cup of cooked sago (I used small pearls)
1 cup of evaporated filled milk
1/2 cup of condensed milk
1 1/2 cup of shredded fresh (and young) buco (coconut) meat
1 cup water
1/2 cup buco water
20-25 pcs of 1.5 x 10 plastic ice candy wrappers

How to do it:

1. Mix the evap and condensed milk together. I do this first to make sure the sweetness of the condensed milk is evenly distributed.
2. Add the milk mixture unto the buco water and the plain water.
3. Stir till milk is thoroughly incorporated with the water (I used a whisk to do this)
4. Add the the sago and the shredded coconut.

5. Funnel unto the plastic wrappers, knot and freeze.

Yields about 20-25 pcs of 5 inch ice candy sticks. Ours is still freezing so I have yet to tell you how it taste but my little girl drank about 1 cup of the mixture this morning and she loved it already so I think once frozen it should taste way better. I wanted to use pure buco water for this recipe but I needed the buco water that I had for a different project so I had to substitute with plain distilled water. You might want to try that on your version though (just a suggestion).

This summer has not been as hot as I'd expected it to be but still ice candies are always the perfect accompaniment to afternoon meryendas - so hot or not - enjoy! :))