Flan

This delicious cold dessert is to die for!! Specially since it is sweetened with condensed milk, and this is the first time I add to it heavy cream..A Brazilian friend told me to add it and yummy, it turned out soo delicious!

Since this required a little more effort to prepare it, I thought of adding pictures to make it easier.

Prior to doing the flan, we have to do the caramel. So for this we need:

2 cups of sugar (regular, granulated)
1/2 cup of hot water

Lets start by putting the 2 cups of sugar in the flan form which is usually the one with the hole in the middle and heat it to let it melt. What worked for me is to increase the heat and decrease it every once in a while, I would increase it and the sugar would start melting and the low heat would allow them to settle and melt the rest. Do what works for you!



After all sugar has melted, step away a little from the pan and pour the hot water. Be careful because it will boil and maybe splash around. Few second and it will calm down. Keep whisking.


Once it reached below picture, spread around the caramel. You can do this by moving the pan in circular motion or maybe using a brush or a spoon.
Now we get to do the Flan.

Ingredients
2 cans of condensed milk
2 cans of milk (measure with the condensed milk can)
200-250ml of heavy cream
3 eggs
1 tbsp of corn flour

Method
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Blend all ingredients. Pour them on the caramelized form. Set banhe-marie method and cover with aluminum foil and bake for 45min. Remove foil and bake another 15min until toothpick comes out clean.


Once cooked, put in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours. I love leaving it overnight, and it is ok to leave it for a day or 2 before serving. Just slowing flip it on a big plate and here is the beauty!


ENJOY!!!

Wilton Cake Decoration Course 1

My mother and I were taking course number 1 of Wilton Cake decoration. I must say that we did really enjoy it though it was so hard since I had to go after work directly and the course would take 3 hours, twice a week, for 2 weeks. I would be at home around 8:30pm! Anyway, the course is done! and we did learn so many things!!

We learned how to do icing, and their consistencies, and where to use each. We did stick to only 1 recipe for butter cream, which is the one in the book they gave us, but I will be trying later other recipes that I have seen around.

Below pictures are the final projects my mom and I did! And I must say they turned out so beautiful! :)

This was the cake I made! I had to do the flowers a day before and leave them to dry out. It turned out beautiful!


This is the gorgeous cake my mom made! The flowers are so beautiful!


And these are all the cakes of the class! We did enjoy it and I am taking into consideration taking the other courses 2 and 3 later on! If you have Wilton classes available where you live, you should go ahead and take them, you will learn a lot!

My niece's welcome party!

Want to post few pictures of my niece's welcome party! She's my first niece ever, and she's gorgeous! She's 3 weeks old now <3

I will post later recipes of few of them following this post..!

This cake was done my by mom! me and her are taking this Wilton decorating class and this is what she did last time! I will post about my cakes later on as well!

Mini Cheesecakes..
How cute are these???

These are brigadeiros but in a mini cup!

Passion fruit mousse, delicious!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffin

These muffins are so easy and delicious to make. I decided to make these for my son to take it to his nursery. They freeze so well too! Just wrap each one with transparent paper (this is what I do). This recipe is one of the good ones to use when we find ripe bananas around the kitchen and we don't know what to do with them! :)

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 Tbsp espresso or strong coffee (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cup of flour
• Chocolate chips (I used around half cup)
  
• Walnut to decorate (optional)
  

Method

No need for a mixer with this recipe.

Preheat the oven to 180 C. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl.

Mix in the sugar, egg, espresso and vanilla.

Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in.

Add the flour, mix until it is just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chips and put a walnut on top of the muffin.

Pour mixture into a prepared muffin tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean, it's done. Cool on a rack.

Makes 12 muffins.

ENJOY!!