My Nanay aka my lola bake cakes since... as long as my memory could recall. My favorite among her cakes is the mango cake! So good. I drool as I type. Lol. I used to spend my summer times at Tacloban when I was a little kid and I enjoy watching her bake. She used to do it a lot more before because the commercial cakes weren't very accessible and available that time. On my latest visit last summer she baked me a mango cake! Wasn't able to document that one but I documented this one instead. Quite interesting eh? Besides the fact that it's violet... It's justifiably yummy!

So let me share to you the experience of baking ube cake with my one and only nanay! :D

First up, of course, is the preparation of ingredients. I don't think I'm allowed to spill anything. Haha. Nanay underwent lessons for baking when she was 40 or something, if my memory serves me right. She says its her passion. Way to go on following your dreams Nay! Age doesn't matter.

She did a lot of mixing which looked awfully tiresome. Horay for the invention of mixers that make things a whole lot easier. I can tell because when I tried to make a cheesecake without one my arms felt like arms of men who went through a load of work.

After the baking and all... She sliced it lengthwise and added a jam in between.

And of course the icing!

Nanay made two cakes. One for a customer and one for our own consumption. She made me do the icing for the latter. Haha. Just to be safe! I did fairly well. Thumbs up! After all the icing stuff we topped it with purple chocolate :D

Looks promising! It tasted great! Especially after refrigerating it. Looking forward to my next visit and I'll make sure to have another baking experience with her!

I really want to bake. What triggered me most was when we made red velvet cupcakes with my friends. It tasted so good and I could say I want people to experience the joy of eating tasty food. Although we followed a recipe from a famous person we did add some twists to it that I think sets it apart form others. So, I think I'm gonna add that to the menu of my future coffee shop slash bistro. Haha! Let's see if my dreams will come true.

We have been planning on baking for quite some time already... The waiting comes to a halt today. After registering at the Philippine Nurses Association we immediately went to JS Gaisano Mall to get some groceries for our ingredients!

Since Celine is already a baking type of person. She had ebooks about it and we followed this specific recipe by Martha Stewart :)

What we used:
 

This is buttermilk. I initially wanted to vlog about this baking experience but then I had a lot of epic fail moments while introducing the ingredients so I'd rather not and it has something to do with buttermilk. Well, I've learned that day that you can make buttermilk with evaporated milk and vinegar. Yes, I was that stupid. Is it just me? Am I alone on this one? Anyone? Haha





Our cupcakes are extra fluffy because we should have filled the lined cups only three quarters full but I... Yes, I take the blame... Filled it all the way up but no regrets just lessons learned. We also medled with the coloring. We added and added until we achieved our desired redness. We were bothered about tasting the dye if we put too much but our worries were proven null when we tasted the finished product ;)

For the frosting... We used these:


Celine taught us the techniques on how to do the thing... Pokie kept pestering me about being to slow. Haha!  I'm a beginner for heaven's sake. He's such a bully. He was having his OCness that day because he kept wiping off the dirt or anything that looks messy for him. So rest assured our cupcakes are clean... I guess. You have to make the cupcakes cool down a little bit before decorating it and stuff.


After frosting all the cupcakes I really wanted to put sprinkles on them but Celine only had this Christmas-y sprinkles which were a mixture of greens and reds but we only needed the reds so we ended up sorting the sprinkles. Budi did a great job with the sorting.
So what did we do with the greens? Well...

Pokie ate this. It's bread with the frosting topped with the green sprinkles. He's got one hell of a sweet tooth.

Let me share to you a closer look on our fabulous cupcakes. No bias, our cupcakes are simply delicious and  mouthwatering. Love your own! But really... it tastes awesome!

We have to give Martha Stewart the credits for the recipe and for making our lives easier :)
The set up courtesy by Celine Conanan. Thank you for welcoming us to your lovely home!
What do you think guys? Should we be open for business? Haha.
I'm pretty sure this won't be the last time we'll bake. We had so much fun. Watch out for more. Thank you for reading!