And I’m back for more #GreatHallowTweet. BOO!!! Do check out my fellow ghoulish frighteners in crime on the left sidebar (look for the pumpkin!). Get some inspiration from them this Halloween season — trust me, they have lots of wonderful stuff for you!

As for today here at Gourmeted, I bring you: Mummified Sweet Potatoes! Yes, it’s all about the mummies. I love the cute side of mummies. I love wrapping things, especially gifts. I like wrapping food in crunch. I like wrapping, period. Wrapping means surprises, and I sure do love those.

Goodness, do I sound drunk from sweet potatoes? Perhaps.

This Halloween snack was borne out of necessity almost. Deep fried sweet potatoes with sugar were my favorite after-school snack, an indulgence I get 8 times out of ten when I beg our helpers to make them for me us. When you’re a kid, you get a lot of things for free, with a smile, too. These days, my taste buds (and hips) aren’t too fond of deep fried, but the fact remains that I have never successfully baked sweet potato fries or wedges that are crispy on the outside as the deep fried goodness. They become limp faster than burn my mouth from fresh-out-of-the-oven sweet potatoes. [Never do that, promise me, please.]

These were incredibly good and addicting.

Enter Phyllo Dough, which in my book, will always pack a crunch when you need it! You see, there’s a bit of a phyllo-mena here in the household. I’ve been on a filo kick lately because they are so darn handy with food, be it sweet or savory, snack or main meal. It’s a perfectly sane idea to keep a box or two in the freezer, just as you would do for butter. What, you don’t do that? :)

This sweet and healthy snack is easy to do, all you need are:

• 1 medium sweet potato
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter
• 2 t0 3 tablespoons of brown or demerara sugar (depending on how sugary you want it to be)
• 2 sheets of phyllo dough. for every medium size sweet potato

You can double this recipe, just use the 2 butter, 2 (or 3) sugar 2 phyllo ratio and you’ll be fine.

Oven is preheated to 400°F and potato pieces are baked 10 minutes, turned, then baked for another 15 minutes. Easy enough, right? The construction is the tricky part, but I was able to do everything under an hour, including the baking time and even while shooting photos. Once you get into the groove, there’s no stopping the mummy production line.

Here’s how I did each piece:

Cut the sweet potato into wedges or a-little-fatter-than-fries size (half an inch x a quarter inch is perfect) and place in a bowl.

Lightly brush half a sheet of phyllo dough with butter, fold, then butter the exteriors, and cut into 16 strips. Sprinkle or rub each strip with sugar.

Use the remaining butter to toss the wedges in.

Fold each phyllo strip in half, lengthwise, and wrap around each piece of sweet potato.

Just tuck the beginning of the strip by overlapping after the first turn.

Tuck the end underneath the strip looping before it.

Just a little push would do. The tine of a fork could help, too. And there you have it, one mummy!

Place on a baking/cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

And bake for 10 minutes in an oven preheated to 400°F.

Turn each piece, exposing the caramel-y side and bake for another 15 minutes.

VOILA!

For bulkier pieces, wrap them twice with phyllo for that extra crunch and finger-food stability if you’re serving it for a party.

The good news is, the crunch of the phyllo stays for hours. Mmm!!!

Up until we moved from Manila, the Halloween holidays was spent going to cemeteries to visit our loved ones who passed away from All Saints Day through All Souls Day. It wasn’t ever about parties or making ghoulish treats. Nowadays it’s a long way from “home” to do our annual visits. I haven’t forgotten our roots, but I’m slowly adapting Western Halloween festivities. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?

Fact: I’m not a fan of scary. I avoid horror movies and can’t watch them alone. I can’t handle haunted houses, unless you can stand me screaming your brain off. I’m afraid of the dark. Halloween food and costume parties are as far as I’d go for Halloween. Thanks to Renee‘s #GreatHallowTweet BlogHop, I’m getting into the spirit!!! Although I’m fumbling my way through. On the other hand, I’m sure my Hallow cohorts have better things up their sleeve. Look for the pumpkin on the sidebar and click on their links to see what they’re up to. Whooo!!!

My first Halloween “treat” for you this year isn’t a sweet treat and requires some imagination…so forgive me. I love vegetables. For some people, knowing that this has spinach inside it is spooky in itself. Haha. [You can also check out last year's Macawrongs.]

Mummified spanakopita!

If you poke a couple of holes with the tip of knife, boring through the filo to a glimpse of the spinach before baking, the "eyes" would well up like this.

I’ve included some photos of the process of mummifying them. These are basically snack size and would also make excellent appetizers! I already have half of mine in the freezer for later.

Spread the spinach mixture (use your go-to spanakopita filling recipe) on two filo sheets greased with olive oil or butter.

Fold over, and slice the whole length of filled filo into 2-inch width strips. You will end up with about 12 filo mummies. If you do, you will need 4 more filo sheets to for mummification.

To create the mummification strips, brush half of a single filo dough and fold crosswise. Cut in half.

For one of that halves: Cut into quarters. For the other, cut into 8 strips crosswise, which will be the mummy strips.

Get one of the quarter sheet and fold over one of the spanakopita pieces.

Use a dab of olive oil to stick them together if needed.

Lightly and sparsely brush the thin strips of filo pastry with olive oil and wrap around to create the mummy effect.

Tadah!

Hmm…so much for Fuss-Free Fridays! How about Too Lazy Tuesdays? Hahaha.

I used to be a picky eater as a young child. It’s not that I won’t eat vegetables or that I will only eat burgers (McDonald’s burgers were actually a rare treat because it wasn’t a place we .). The thing is, when I likes something in particular, could you just please cook it for me everyday until I tire of it? I had a lot of phases: fried chicken, corned beef, Mah-Ling, Spam, tomatoes, green beans, peas, broad bean, mung beans, etc. My blood was also half soy sauce and calamansi juice because I will dip almost anything in that sauce. Take for example, one of my favorite Filipino dish,  Pritong Talong (PREE-tong Ta-LONG; talong = eggplant; prito = fried). It’s as simple as what the name suggests: Fried. Eggplant. No salt. No pepper. Just wash, cut, and fry in oil.

Our Philippine eggplants are long and slender, similar to the Chinese and Japanese ones, and they’re cut in half lengthwise and crosswise, leaving you four pieces per eggplant. You can also use the much plumper variety, American globe, for frying, just cut them across, about a third of an inch in thickness.

Now depending on who’s cooking, it can be very oily, and that’s one thing I avoid. The older I get, the more naturally averse I am to oily food. What I do instead is to fry them in little oil and then steam by adding a small amount of water, just like when you cook potstickers.

The Method: Put enough vegetable oil on a frying pan, just enough to coat it. Heat on medium. Place eggplant slices (about 1/3 of an inch thick) sliced side down and cook until it it begins to turn brown on the edges. Flip to the other side, and wait until the edge starts to brown. And then quickly add about a tablespoon of water per slice of eggplant in the pan and quickly cover the pan until all the water evaporated. Transfer eggplants onto a plate. Coat pan with oil with every batch of eggplants cooked.

The sauce is just soy sauce with calamansi juice, lemon or lime juice. The salty and tangy sauce with the slightly sweet eggplant is a match made in heaven. Filipinos are huge rice eaters, and the fried eggplant is one of rice’s concubines. Give me plain steamed rice with fried eggplants for breakfast and I’ll be happy. Unless you make me some Tortang Talong (Eggplant Omelette), which I also love. I’ll be posting about that soon!

What about you — How do you cook your eggplants?

• Dutch Appletaart [recipe]
• Bill’s Big Carrot Cake [recipe + techniques]
• Homemade Twix Bars [recipe]
• Cranberry Bean Soup with Farro and Fresh Tomatoes [recipe]
• Cheese Straws [recipe]

Goldilocks is a well-known institution of baked goods and pastries in the Philippines. Even though I can easily go to their Vancouver location to get my mocha cake fix, I’ve always dreamed of baking a copycat so I can enjoy it anytime at home and knowing the ingredients in the cake I’m eating.

Finally, this summer, I set out to do just that. I got insanely lucky on my first try of the series and the flavor and texture was right on. My family declared it identical to (and even better than) Goldilocks. It was too good to be true and I can tell you that I got teary eyed on the final tasting of the buttercream after tweaking the flavors. Just to be sure, I’ve baked it numerous times since that first time. It helps that another batch of cake is requested before the current one gets eaten, so I don’t have to bury my face in mocha cake. Hah! One cake is just not enough. In fact, I’ve been asked not to post it on the blog because it really does taste like the real thing.  However, what kind of food blogger am I if, after all the testing and perfecting, I don’t share it? That pretty much defeats my purpose for this site.

So here it is, one item off my To-Cook-and-Bake-From-Scratch list:

This was my sister-in-law's birthday cake.

The mocha cake from Goldilocks defined my love for cakes at an early age. What cake do I want for my birthday? Goldilocks mocha cake please!

Back in university, whenever I felt down, all I needed was a quick jeepney ride to Philcoa to order a half roll of mocha cake and — gasp — finish most of it myself. [Either that, or Betty's Sans Rival.] I was shameless and guiltless in my 5 foot frame and in the 90-pound mark then. These days, I don’t want to think about that, but I still want to a slice of mocha cake or two with my cup of coffee.

The cake is light, fluffy, and soft, and the icing is a luscious combination of extra smooth coffee and cocoa, buttery but not greasy. To get the authentic taste, you will need to use Nescafe coffee granules. You can also use espresso granules (= coffee taste is bolder and more pronounced) or Starbucks VIA Italian roast (=icing has bitter and sour notes), but it’s up to you if you want to use what you have available. You will also need amaretto, an Italian almond liqueur to finish off the flavor and must not be skipped. I’ve never tried to substitute it with anything, so I cannot advise you on that for now. I’ll try making this with almond extract next time and see if that can be used!

Please enjoy!

The recipe can be made into a two-layer 9-inch round cake or a roll. I’ve included instructions for the roll in the recipe Notes if you want to take a stab at it.

   Get the recipe for the Mocha Cake ala Goldilocks

It’s 2am and I’ve just finished packing up the brining bag for the turkey, made with pineapple juice this time. Tomorrow, the cooking symphony will go like this (ideally):

• bake pumpkin pie
• bake herb cornbread stuffing (I don’t like cooking the stuffing in the bird.)
• roast turkey
• cook cranberry sauce
• cook maple-glazed carrots (maybe…)
• make appetizer of tuna salad in lettuce cups
• make gravy

All these for our Thanksgiving Dinner. Yumm.

My cook-in-crime (a.k.a. brother) is unexpectedly indisposed because of an ankle sprain, so the rest of us will do our best to get things in order. :)

Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends!

Every year there are new things to be thankful for — small successes, big successes, baby steps, long leaps, changes, fulfilled dreams, etc.  –  but what I’ll always be thankful for are my family and friends, because without them these are all meaningless. Thank you and love you all. xoxo

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now off to bed I go.

• Curried Onion and Spinach Pizzas [recipe]
• Braided Coffee Cake [recipe]
• Lahey’s No Knead Bread [recipe + technique]

Some of you might find the concept of eating avocado outside the constricts of a vegetable salad or a Mexican dip bizarre. On the contrary, when I moved to North America in the late ’90s, I had a mental gag when I discovered that my beloved avocado was made into anything other than a dessert — fresh spooned out of the skin, as an ice cream or a filling shake. Worse, it was sometimes being touted as something really fattening. Yikes.

This is my all-time favorite way of eating avocados: sprinkled with sugar and powdered milk (preferably Nido) and straight into my mouth. Creamy, dreamy dessert!

I'll eat you without dieter's remorse.

Have you tried this before? What other food do you eat differently than others do?

On a sweet avocado related note, I was more than thrilled to learn that avocado can be used as the chocolate fudge cake icing in a raw diet. It does taste so rich and good as a ganache!

Sorry Fuss-Free Friday was late. I have to admit that the day just crept up on me this afternoon. If you have other fuss-free recipes to share, please leave the link in the comments section. Thanks and enjoy your weekend!