i made meringue shells today with the intention of making mango bravo.

we still have 2 large boxes of ripe mangoes, down from 3 yesterday since I made some ice pops.

gavin came to ask for rice which we ran out of so i asked her instead if i should make mango bravo or sans rival with the meringues. i expected her to choose mango bravo since i already made sans rival before but she still chose it 😂

luckily there was one extra meringue shell so i made a single serving of sans rival just for her.

all the stuff I made the past few weeks i was in survival mode.

sourdough batard and ciabatta

radish cake

ube biko

coconut custard cake

cinnamon rolls

sourdouth bagels

sourdough pizza dough turned focaccia

hakaw that didn’t hakaw

chicken gyoza

so i finally made it— baklava from scratch.

took me half a day from making the phyllo dough to pouring the syrup right after baking.

i’ve been in the metro long enough i’ve started to actually hate it here

i can’t wait to go home, but at the same time i don’t want to. i wanna be somewhere else entirely.

went to the embassy early in the morning for my brother’s visa renewal. i haven’t been there for more than ten years now i don’t remember if the ‘manned’ lockers were there before. i was going to go back to the car and wait but decided against it and just waited for him outside. there’s no waiting area for companions but there are people renting out monoblock chairs. I didn’t rent one, I just made do with the large plant box by the roadside. i actually contemplated renting since i wasn’t sure how long the waiting time would be, but thankfully my brother was done within an hour. I was pretty nervous about this interview since he didn’t really bring a lot of supporting docs with him- thankfully he wasn’t asked for any. in his words, the interview was ‘basic.’

01/24/26

got last-minute orders today.

i know my blog is all about food these days— and just about the same stuff. but i just can’t help it.

i tried to make macarons yesterday using peanut flour instead of almonds. i just knew it had potential. but needless to day, they didn’t make it here. i’ll prolly try again next time, but with almond flour.

i’ve had a cold for three days now

it’s so bad i even developed a slight aversion to coffee

and i love coffee

i was craving for salmon sinigang sa miso again

so i cooked some this afternoon as my first proper meal of the day

i made it with calamansi instead of sinigang mix so it’s not very sour

but that’s okay cos i wanted it as anti-inflammatory as possible

i ate it quinoa

would’ve been better with rice though

today’s bakes

banana muffins, cookies- speculoos (i forgot to put the biscuits on top 🤦🏽‍♀️), triple chocolate, brown butter milk choco chip, red velvet with cheesecake, silvanas

not very aesthetic cos the white choco chips always turn brown. i prolly should add them after baking instead.

some of my bakes the last three days.

papa initially asked me to bake five dozen cookies as gifts for some relatives and customers. of course I agreed— it’s money for me, after all.

i baked some last friday for relatives in NE.

then yesterday he changed his mind and asked me to make banana muffins and cinnamon rolls instead.

banana muffins are a pretty easy bake, so that’s okay.

my cinnamon rolls, though, are made with sourdough and i recently had an issue with my starter being too acidic which made my dough turn sour pretty quickly. i did have to do some troubleshooting, thankfully it was resolved before yesterday and my starter seemed to be in balance again.

i slept in yesterday so when papa told me abt the cinnamon rolls, i quickly fed my starter, let it rise for three hours, then made a stiff starter with it. the whole process of baking the rolls took me until 1am this morning. then i woke up at 8am to make the cream cheese frosting and bake the second batch of the banana muffins. i delivered everything to the store by mid-lunch. i was exhausted, but fulfilled.