TAISAN CAKE

TAISAN CHIFFON ST-JOHN CAKE

Good halo morning everyone, today we celebrate 2 important events: St-John ( free day in Canada wohooo!) and R's Birthday! Since she is a VIP for certain people - me included, I was challenged by L ( yaaai, you're in the blog again, fame + 2! ) to bake a birthday dessert worthy of Marilyn's president song. That's right! So you think,
                         "We're gonna burn a PIE or bake a cake,
                           But nothing is as cool as what I'm gonna make! "
and that's how I introduce P, another very important group contributor ( P, you are famous since 10 seconds ago under the "pie" pseudo also, yaaai).Yes she's cool, but, as I quote my lyrics above, she's competing with our ready to make Taisan. Taisan  was made famous in the 80's by the Goldilocks cake factory which every filipino loves and apparently not very well known by the new generation.

 Alright, so grab your torch and pitchforks cause today we face a double challenge:
1)I never bake a cake before and, of course, I absolutely lack the advanced technology to do it. But don't worry, brute force can always replace a mixer.
2)Because of state holiday here, no grocery store is open therefore I got all ingredients form a drugstore ( yes you can do that!. You get fidelity points also. wohoooo! )

Alright, now that we got everything ( and more) let's get down and do the the dirty work.
1) mix your cup of flour with your cup of sour ( actually 1/2 teaspoon salt). Try to add 1/4 cup of sugar. Of course you cannot because apparently it changed state of matter and it became a stone block trapped in a jar. After using several minutes and deploying some of my manly force in chopping it, I tried to approach it a different way by throwing it in the trash and using honey as replacement. It's always good to have honey around( and I'm not talking about your partner), and also bees are very important. If you want to know more about bees check out my blog entry on how to make adobong-adobo.

We add a spoon of olive oil ( because it's good for you! ) and a spoon of salty low fat margarine  because we couldn't find unsalted butter, and because we are extreme like that! Also low fat is good for you and you'll see why later during the cooking. Oh almost forgot, throw 4 free range chicken egg yolks also and mix.

2) Separately, and this is where we go creative, you are supposed to mix some egg whites with tartar cream ( whatever that is) and with a kitchen mixer. Since we only have egg whites available we will improvise by preparing some lime jelly-o mix , mmmMMMMmmmm! and add some to the pot! More. More. MOOORE! Alright, the final ingredient you should add is the kitchen mixer but since I have none I'll be content with my current situation and don't get greedy. Kids it's always good to be humble and thankful even if for sure we could have come up with an idea for a mixer...just saying, that drill machine you use to assemble stuff looks interesting..
Alright, this is the part where you show that all those years of not working out were useful and start stirring the whole thing clock wise in order to make some sort of pasty thing. Oh, almost forgot, add the baking soda! Baking soda makes everything double in size ( add some to your bank account ) and also whitens your teeth.

 3) Now that the mix is relatively stable and is not on the verge of exploding anymore,you need a tray to properly bake it. But at the same time that shows weakness, especially if you don't own one. So, again, make use of your ingenuity and use that IKEA universal pot to bake the mixture in the oven ( Ikea is great even if Sweden lost to Germany in the last 30 seconds of overtime) . Also, as a detail, first remove the handles.  Ha, you thought you got me there, didn't you?! Nope, no fire alarm today.

4) Watch your tele novellas while waiting for the baking soda to do its thing.
30 minutes later.... oh no Javier no! she is the sister of the mother of the nice of your adopted brother! Don't tell her where the treasure is!..
5)Done, a brown , smoky taisan shows its face to the world for the first time, Hello Beautiful World!! Smak! smash it with a bamboo paddle and place it on a plate! At this point you should serve it with melted butter and mozzarella but since ours is not really good looking we switch recipe and turn it into a different cake ( sorry all, the constraints were removed today)

 We slash it in half with ninja like agility and moisturize it the cool way: we shall prepare that calamansi juice that you have in the fridge with Emperador rum! Yes, we're giving it that edge over the competition and we transform it in CAKE LIBRE ! Drink some yourself to get courage for the next steps! VIVA EL CAKE!

6)Peanut-butter one half while adding chocolate mousse or nutella to the other. Spray some whipped cream in the middle and stuck them back together. Satisfaction guaranteed!

7) Let's decorate! Let your inner Martha Stewart take control and turn this into a  real birthday cake! We pave the exterior with some more chocolate first. Too thick? No problem , we mix it with milk. Oh right I forgot, you need milk at step 1 ! You missed that?, too bad, hahahaha! Ok, so we mix some milk and chocolate, but since now is too liquid we put it back into the milk bottle and create a perfect chocolate milk for tomorrow morning.
8)Add a whipped cream border in order to trap the chocolate mixture from falling on the sides. Yuuuck. Add more. More. Turn that into a border wall since apparently it's going into style again all over the world.
9) Don't forget to add a written message from the heart to your loved one and, of course, a topping of his/her favorite mini nestle chocolate turtles!
Serve chilled and drunk in company of worthy people!

Edit: also serve it fast before it turns into something not really documented. I'll call it a Shape-Shifter cake! As we always say, it's the intention that counts!