February 26, 2011

We no longer eat beef as  much, at least not at home.  I very seldom cook beef now, limiting it to maybe one or two meals a week.  Recently, I landed an assignment for my food blog and I’m required to post 4 healthy beef recipes.  The first recipe I posted was that of Beef Nilaga.  Nilaga is a Filipino word that means boiled.  I chose chuck shoulder pot roast, a lean cut of beef, for the recipe.   The photo above is of the less healthy cut of beef with bone marrow and tendons! Yum!  It is perfect with steamed brown rice with a dipping sauce mixture of fish sauce, lemon juice and chili peppers. I say it’s ok to “sin” every now and then, for as long as one has a clean bill of health anyway.   This is definitely not the best post workout supplement. Far from it!

The 7th Annual That Takes the Cake Sugar Art Show and Cake Competition begins today, February 26 and will run until tomorrow, February 27.  That’s two days of cake heaven on earth!  There’s going to be hundreds of cakes to tickle your sweet tooth that I can’t promise you won’t be thinking thermogenic fat burners almost the entire time!  Here’s the official press release from the Capital Confectioners, organizer of this “IT” annual cake event:

Competitors, celebrities, and connoisseurs of the cake and sugar arts universe will gather in Austin today, February 26 and tomorrow, February 27 to behold fantastic feats of confectionery curiosities as part of the “Caked Crusaders: Super Heroes and Super Villains” theme of the 2011 “That Takes the Cake!” Sugar Art Show and Cake Competition.

“The Show Cake competition challenges decorators from around the world to create an enormous piece to match our exciting theme,” said Kyla Myers, president of Capital Confectioners, the organization that hosts the show every year. Show cakes have a minimum height of 24 inches and are held to extremely high judging standards.

In the divisional competition, kids and beginners through to professionals and masters can enter categories such as wedding cakes, novelty cakes, or confections. Although the theme is only required of the show cake section, divisional entrants can also choose to incorporate the theme into their entries. The show itself also features the theme in decorations, t-shirts, and more.

“Cake can be a serious business, but it’s also a lot of fun. Our show is about the complete enjoyment of everyone’s favorite treat,” Myers said.

Jennifer Bartos, Show Director and owner of All in One Bake Shop, agreed. “We always hear that while our show elevates the elegance and beauty of this art form, it’s our Austin-style spin on the traditional that brings people back again and again.”

The Austin cake show has established a solid national and international reputation for excellence and hospitality, according to Bartos. “In just seven years we’ve gone from being a small event in the corridor of the Le Cordon Bleu culinary school to now needing more than fifty thousand square feet to hold the event. As one of the top three cake shows in the country we attract many of the best in the industry: television personalities like Mike McCarey, Lauren Kitchens, Nicholas Lodge, Marina Sousa, James Rosselle, and Michelle Bommarito are only some of this year’s wonderful guests teaching classes and serving as judges for the competition.”

Myers added that the prestige of having the star of the film “Kings of Pastry” appear for a Q&A after a screening of the film for the Saturday night dinner event highlights the wide reach of the show. “It will be exciting to have Jacquy Pfeiffer discuss the documentary that features his quest for the prestigious MOF award. Chef Pfeiffer has been with us before as a judge and instructor.”

Members of the public are welcome to share in this super-heroic event as spectators, competitors, or students. “Classes are filling up fast,” Bartos said, “and the deadline for online registration for the competition is February 22, but we will accept divisional entries at the door up until 10:00 am on Saturday.” Bartos recommends that anyone interested in competing register right away at thattakesthecake.org.

General admission includes viewing competition entries, access to the vendor area, informal demonstrations, and the awards ceremony. This year the show also features a special all-day event on Saturday, February 26 where most of the competitors from TLC’s “The Next Great Baker” will team up once again to make super-hero themed cakes. This special event is also included in the general admission price, meaning there’s more to see and do than ever.

For more information, visit the event website: http://thattakesthecake.org

February 24, 2011

I love our newest kitchen gadget.  It’s a cotton candy machine!  I have my daughter to thank for this.  It’s hers actually!  She had the wisdom to ask Santa to give her a cotton candy machine for Christmas (plus a pair of light-up shoes). Anyway, about two weeks ago, we got around to taking it out of the box and finally giving it a test run.  The machine makes use of hard candies.  We had a couple of fruity candies we got to try: grape, strawberry, green apple and one other flavor.  We also got to try making pepper mint cotton candy!  It was good and refreshing! Hee hee.  We have to re-stock our jar of candies.

While this cotton candy machine looks every bit like a toy, it isn’t.  It is an actual working electric kitchen gadget.  It doesn’t run on aaa rechargeable batteries.

Hubby used his Hipstamatic for Iphone app to take this photo of a cake my daughter decorated last week.  I baked the cake, of course.   The cake is a combination of mocha and chocolate chiffon with  custard filling.  Because I wasn’t feeling well the day the cake was to be decorated by my little girl, hubby had to buy whipped topping instead.  Hubby and my little girl took on this project by themselves.  I did help a little with the frosting of the cake as my daughter got just a tad frustrated with the task.  Decorating the cake with the heart-shaped marshmallows and Valentine M&M’s was all the handy work of my daughter.

We finished the cake in about 3 days. And we don’t feel guilty enough to start taking diet pills. Hee hee.

I made these lovely (if I may say so myself!) cupcakes for a 7th birthday cake/cupcake ensemble.  The theme, you may have already guessed, was butterflies. Oh I had so much fun making these butterflies!  They are all made with gumpaste, thus, they are edible.  I made 50 cupcakes for the party.  That’s 50 butterflies for the cupcakes alone.  And there’s an 8-inch round cake, too, which was decorated with flowers and leaves and more butterflies!

I was told the guests loved the cupcakes, specially the frosting. Believe you me, you don’t want to be taking an appetite suppressent when there are treats this pretty!  They taste as good as they look.

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