Its the Chocolate Cupcake!

I love them with Homemade Chocolate Fudge.

• 125 grams dark chocolate, broken into pieces
•  1/4 c or half stick unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 175 icing sugar
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• Place the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot water and stir until melted ( Do not use double boiler, just hot water). Remove from the heat and beat in the egg with icing icing sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth and glossy. Allow to cool and thicken for spreading consistency. * Refrigerate for piping consistency *

I love them topped with white chocolate shavings.
I love them cold.

Will always love homemade chocolate cupcakes. 

Now Open.

Pages The Mason Jar of Recipes and La Bella Vita are now officially open. Will be updating as frequently as possible. Visit 'em earthlings! Enjoy and Thank you.!

- Ms. Claudine

Finally the Perfect Butterscotch!

No exaggeration but it took me 5 recipes just to finalize the ingredients, measurements, and cooking time for the quest of the perfect butterscotch. Im sorry but I wont be sharing to you my recipe... because I think Im selling this one... but for consolation and for the purpose of subtle kindness I  shared the base recipe which was derived from a Good Housekeeping Book... please visit my Mason Jar of Recipes page. 

I have received a lot of negative feedbacks about my butterscotch before, some said its too sweet, others commented that its not that chewy or its too chewy or it has too many nuts or something is really missing.... so I read, researched, experimented and tested all feasible recipes that I can find... after a lot of recipe tweaking finally a moist, sweetness balanced, and chewy butterscotch!

If a person/s says that your goods are not that nice, prove them wrong. Never give up. 

How to make the purrfect Kinilaw na Pasayan...or as Anthony Bourdain calls it "Shrimp Ceviche"!

• Lets start with the choosing of the right shrimp. Choose the white shrimp (in Iloilo we call it the 'PUTI-an) not the black ones or the prawn type but the white ones, try peeling off the shell if it comes out easily then its the right shrimp. Please make sure that the shrimps are firm, medium in size and fresh. The best ones are from the wet markets during market days.
• Then wash the shrimp well, still with the shell soak it in a bowl of vinegar  for 20 minutes.
• Drain off the vinegar then start peeling of the shell. Now to the tricky part, DEVEIN the shrimp. For me, I use a small sharp knife... I cut halfways from the back of the shrimp all the way to its tail then I remove the 'black vein'. When you do this you create a butterfly shaped cut...
• Marinate the DEVEINED shrimps in calamansi and vinegar for two hours. The shrimps will turn opaque and orange in color.
• After marinating... Squeeze the shrimp removing all the juices.
• Add finely chopped bell peppers and onions then shredded green mango. Mix em with the shrimp using your hands while tearing the shrimp meat apart into bits. 
• Lastly, add vinegar and calamansi juice. Then add sugar, salt and cayenne pepper to taste. (This is where you adjust the sweetness/saltiness/spice)

This is the No Fail Kinilaw na Pasayan/ Shrimp Ceviche Recipe. 

Its the Banana Cake!

I dont like to eat Banana Cake. Its one cake that I will pass if its being served. Most Banana Cake that I have tasted even the expensive onces have this thirst inducing texture and stucked-in-your-throat post eating feeling. So I made a recipe that I can eat! Here a Banana Cake that doesn't have a fluffy cupcake texture so dont expect it to be airy, its sweet but not thirst inducing sweet, MOIST..really moist and ofcourse really good smelling its a cross between banana and !

now you know what to do with those over riped bananas...

P.S.

Use Lakatan (cavendish) bananas. Never the tundal. Believe me it has a huge difference in the smell and taste of your cake.

The Classic Chocolate Cake

It's The Classic Chocolate Cake. Some like it frosted or filled with Chocolate Fudge or Caramel or Pastry Cream. So what I did is infused it all in my cake, I frosted it with Chocolate Fudge, filled it with Pastry Cream and caricatured it all over with Caramel. Go INDULGE!

The World's Baddest Dog: Happy 1st Birthday Big Moose

BURP! too full!

Because he is too fat and cant fit his body, he will just settle with his head.

Look at those fluffy ears!

Thinking what to do next.

Moose's look when he wants to go inside the house.

Moose is one big lovable pain in the ass dog. 


We bought Moose when he was just 2 months old from a Korean woman after seeing her ad in our vet's clinic. We visited her house to choose from the litter of puppies for sale, our criteria was to choose a puppy that looks gentle, healthy and cute. Moose caught our eye... he has huge shy eyes, really chubby and he looks GENTLE. We took him home. He was our first and only choice.


We named him MOOSE. Thinking he will grow up to become a gentle giant. 


I remember when we arrived home. He was a bit shy with our other dogs (3 mixed jack russ, a mix maltese and a black labrador) and he is so fascinated with water that he drunk so much as if he just came from Sudan and even went inside his bowl then he felt awkward walking in the bermuda grass. We decided to let him stay inside our house until he gets a little older, we thought he will get scared outside because its a new place for him.


His first week with us, he was still timid and the only thing we notice is he ate a lot and he doesnt like eating puppy dog food, he loves the for adult kind. Other thing he sleeps a lot and snores like a huge elephant. 


After a month with us there goes the real Moose! He grew up to be a really huge dog, his vet is worried because he is too overweight , but the only good thing is he is still very active, we even complained about his hyperactiveness, his vet assured us that it will be fine when he gets over his puppy stage....


Well after a year he is still a puppy trapped in a SHAQ-Like body!


He eats our plants from the potted ones to rare orchids, kidnapped a bat yes! a bat as in a bat and torture it with his giant paws, de-feathered chicks that unluckily strayed to our house, steal the meal of our other dogs, get stucked under my car because he was too fat, opened and finished half a bottle of Pet Tabs, sneaked out our gate and swim in our neighbor's muddy pond, sneaked out of our gate and hang out in a stranger's house,   ate countless of slippers, rags, brushes, mops, pails etc., tormented a frog to jump he doesnt like frogs that are staying put he wants them to leap around and chase them. When something happens outside its definitely MOOSE.


After all this grueling labrador months... we will never exchange Moose in any dog in this world, his Oscar winning sad eyes when he wants to go inside the house, his reassuring hugs and licks and his huggable tummy are irreplaceable and priceless.

Silky Lemon Meringue Pie

A spoonful of silky Lemon Meringue Pie is TRUE LOVE and WARMTH OF MORNING SUNSHINE in your mouth.

*Beat the egg white with cream of tartar till soft peaks then add icing sugar gradually, on high speed beat until silky and glossy that is around two-three minutes after stiff peaks.