filipino food – MAGPIE STREET

To produce golden snitches in food form when I threw a Harry Potter theme birthday party for hubby (why not?), I didn’t want to do what others have done, which was to create round cakes (cake pops) and cover the snitches with artificially coloured icing to make them look like snitches. Besides, I had too much on my plate then to bother intricately decorating each cake pop. I just wanted something that was relatively easy to make.

Then I recalled a homemade sweet called Yema. I knew a few people whose mums used to make these sweets and get them to sell these to other kids at school. The brightness or dullness of this dish’s natural yellow colour depends on the ingredients you use and their proportions. Some can be quite pale, while others darker and almost brownish. In addition, you can also coat the yema balls with raw sugar or glaze them with caramelized sugar (which is a bit more tricky).

For the duration of hubby’s Harry Potter party, I called them not yema, but Golden Snitches. Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

10 egg yolks
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, or zest
Raw sugar for coating

Procedure:

In a non-stick pan, combine egg yolks, condensed milk and lemon until well blended. Place pan on stove, over low heat, and stir constantly until thick enough to be formed into small balls. It is important to keep on stirring and scraping the sides and bottom of the pan while cooking to avoid burning parts of it.

Remove from heat and let the mixture cool. When cool enough to handle, shape them into small balls, about an inch in diameter, which seems to be just a good size for a snitch. Roll each ball in raw sugar.

Arrange in a serving tray with enough spaces in between the snitches so they don’t look too crowded when you add the wings.

I made the wings days in advance so they’re ready to add to the golden snitches on the day of the party. I used toothpicks, aluminum foil and double-sided tape to make them, while seated on the couch, also watching an action movie with the hubby. 🙂

Spring has come to Australia, and the chooks have felt it. To celebrate the warmer-than-winter season, they decided to lay lots of eggs!

Well, in fact, a bit too much so I decided it was high time to make this:

Whoops! Nope, not just that.

What I really meant was this…

One of the Philippines’ most favorite desserts, this baby is a good way of disposing those chooks’ eggs properly. Since it was the last Sunday was the last of the month, we had the traditional ward luncheon at church after the services and for that, I decided to make Leche Flan to share with the folks.

It’s really not that hard to do. The last time I made this dessert was way back in 2009 or 2010, yet when I made one last weekend, it was still as easy as ABC.

INGREDIENTS

5 whole eggs
1 can condensed milk
water
3 Tbsp powdered milk
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 Tbsp raw sugar

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius. Fill half of a larger tray/pan with water and put that inside the oven for the water bath.

Beat eggs in a bowl. Add condensed milk, water and powdered milk. In other recipes, they use a can of evaporated milk. But because when I made this last Saturday evening, there was no evaporated milk at home, so I dissolved powdered milk in a can full of water (I used the emptied can of the condensed milk to measure) and used that as substitute. Add a teeny-weeny pinch of salt and a few drops of vanilla. Mix well by gently stirring, to avoid forming bubbles…although I think no matter how well I tried to mix it manually, you’d still come up with something like this:

Use a clean cheese cloth to strain the mixture. You can also use a fine wire strainer, like I did.

Straining will make your mixture, and thus, the flan, smoother.

Place sugar in a pan. You may add a bit of water to dissolve the sugar. Place the plan over low heat to caramelize the sugar, until it’s golden brown but not burnt.

Let the caramelized sugar rest for a while. Then pour into the pan the egg-milk mixture. Cover the pan with foil.

Now, use your oven mittens and very carefully place the pan of egg-milk mixture on the water bath inside the oven. Watch out that you don’t spill the water or the mixture or wet your mittens with the boiling water. Cook for 50 to 55 minutes, keeping the oven temperature at 180 degree Celsius.

Let the flan cool before turning it upside down on a plate to serve.

Tag: filipino food

Golden Snitches Dessert Recipe

Leche Flan Recipe