@aaskelter 2 July 2021

Baking Filipino muffins aka Kababayan

Whenever I have an extra time, one of my ways to ease into our “new normal” is to bake. It is also one of my instant stress relievers. I lowkey enjoy punching into my dough. Kidding aside, the smell of freshly baked bread relaxes me and it makes me feel like I did well whenever I am coming up with a batch of a dozen or two. One of the easiest to make is probably **sugar cookies**. To be honest though, I only tried to learn to bake them to make use of the cute **BT21 cookie cutters** that I bought online but the end products amaze me everytime. My friends are even encouraging me to sell them! Who knows what would happen in the future, I might. But for now, I just bake some of these goodies as gifts to my friends in those few times that we did get to set a meet up and hangout in this pandemic situation.

Sugar cookies are perfect match to tea and coffee as it balances the sweetness out. There are some kinds that need frosting but the recipe that I found online can stand alone and the sugar cookies tasted real good, too. The other one is the typical chocolate chip cookies that my cousin used to bake. The cookies are soft and chewy and it feels like she has already mastered baking it. The one that takes a lot of time and effort is the actual bread bun with yeast but all of those efforts are worth it whenever they compliment on how soft the buns are. Cinnamon buns are my specialty and I really love baking them. You know that bread that you can buy in Starbucks? It tastes exactly like that minus the whipped cream cheese on top. I always opt to not put it because the bread itself is sweet and tasty already But what I am going to share here is how to make **“Kababayan” bread** which is like the local version of a muffin. It is a staple bread in every bakery that you will find in here. Also, it is easier because it doesn’t need yeast to make it rise so it would take lesser time to make them. The only rising component that you will be needing are baking powder and soda. For the ingredients, you will be needing: `Wet ingredients:` `1 tsp salt` `2 eggs` `3/4 cup milk` `1/2 cup oil (to make it soft and moist)` `2 tbsp vanilla syrup` `Dry Ingredients:` `1/2 cups flour` `3/4 cup brown sugar` `2 tsp baking powder` `1/2 tsp baking soda` So basically once you have prepared the exact amount of ingredients, all that you’ve got to do is mix the wet ingredients and the dry ones separately and then mix them altogether afterwards. Preheat your oven to 175 degree Celcius while you are buttering the muffin pan that you will be using. You can opt to have them straight to the pan or use these cupcake paper cups (like what I did) to minimize spill and so that you won’t be needing to wash/clean the pan every single batch. (Or maybe I am just lazy but efficient hehe) Also, the paper cups give the bread a simple but cute “aesthetic” so if you are after the Instagram-able final product, you can also opt to do that. Then you can start baking the bread for 12-15 minutes. And voila, here you go! The delicious Kababayan bread that my grandparents love!

That came out pretty nicely, right? Next time I’d like to try making some marble cakes. Can‘t wait to show you when I managed to do that. Until then! A