Welcome back to me haha! I know, I know, it’s been a while since my last post. Not just a while… a loooong time! Not that I stop cooking oh no! I still do. My baking stops, that’s right, but the rest is still very much going on. In fact, my hard drive is overflowing with food pictures but finding the time to write the how-to’s was a bit difficult. Busy mom working from home. Blah blah blah. But the main reason was quite technical so I won’t go into too many details.

Anyhoo, maintenance and upgrades were done and here we are with a fresh-looking site. If you go around you’ll notice funny-looking symbols popping up here and there but I’m fixing them so bear with me.

To mark my ‘pagbabalik’ I decided I would share something in between maintenance and start with this easy truffles recipe. With all the truffles I saw in supermarkets during the holiday season, plus the fact that I was conceptualizing on retail design for hand-made chocolates, I was always gorging on them night after night after night until I decided to look online for recipes. I tried 2, one by Connie, and they’re great! (Can’t remember where I got the other one.) And very easy to follow. On both trial preps, I rolled the balls in cocoa powder as most of us like bittersweet (3 out of 4), and asked the boys for comments after each serving. In the end I came up with the following ingredients and measurements, which we all like. Addictively delicious melt-in-your mouth truffles.

I usually do 2 batches – one exactly as shown below, and another one using chocolate chips with 60% cocoa solids.

I made about 20 truffles each batch and managed to fill up 2 small trays for a party last Xmas.

And Xinnian kuai le! Happy Chinese New Year!

Iska

I am not a professional cook. My only claim to having a culinary background is a short stint as my dad’s teen ‘sous chef’ in his carinderia ages ago. Dad ran small eateries since I was a young kid - serving standard ‘turo-turo’ food ranging from the likes of menudo, adobo, pritong isda, dinuguan, binagoongan, bopis, munggo, pinakbet and giniling to merienda fares like goto, ginataan, pancit bihon, halu-halo and saging con yelo.

My father, a farmer in his hometown before working his way to becoming an accountant, definitely influenced my cooking in a lot of ways than I thought. My siblings and I were raised in a backyard full of fruit trees and vegetable garden. We spent weekends and the summer breaks running around with ducks, chickens, goats and pigs. I had wonderful memories of gathering eggs, butchering chickens, selling vegetables and the sweet aroma of preserved fruits. But my love for art led me to a degree in Architecture. Just few months after getting my license, I went abroad and lived independently at age 23. Definitely no maid, no cook, and a totally different food culture. Along the way I met lots of friends and spent what seemed a lifetime learning new tricks and recipes.

Now living in Auckland, I am a work-from-home mum who juggles time between work, fun and family - in pursuit of work-life balance. No matter how busy I am, I love the idea of cooking for my family. My blog chronicles home cooking greatly influenced by life outside my home country from Southeast Asia to Beijing and Auckland. And most of the time, being busy also means easy (sometimes quick), affordable meals.