cashews

Sans Rival {Filipino Food Month}

Sans Rival -by amber's hands-

Last weekend was my birthday, so I made myself a cake. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might know that every year, I make this Marble Cheesecake. It’s delicious, but since it’s Filipino Food Month over here, I decided to make something different: Sans Rival.

I remembered this cake that my mom used to get now and again when I was little. I hadn’t had it in ages– my younger sister doesn’t remember ever having it at all– but I looked up some recipes and decided to give it a go.

Sans Rival is a Filipino dessert that is decidedly French in origin. Layers of daquoise (a meringue made with nuts) are sandwiched together with French buttercream. While French daquoise is traditionally made with almonds, this is made with cashews. Once all the layers are assembled, buttercream is used to frost the entire thing, and then it is adorned with more cashews.  Since I had never made this before, I consulted a lot of recipes but followed this one by To Food With Love most closely.

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Birdseed Bars

27616421086_854ef59e95_cSo Hubs’ birthday is coming up in a few days. I’m pretty sure that now his birthday will always be a little overshadowed by Little Man’s since they’re only just over a week apart. Luckily Hubs isn’t fussy about his birthday and is happy to have a simple night on the town with me. Yay. But I thought that before I got myself all dolled up, I should give you all an easy recipe that can carry you through the weekend.

For Little Man’s birthday, one of the things I made was birdseed bars. Besides being delicious and healthy, these bars are also gluten-free and dairy-free! And they’re sweetened only with honey. They are really easy and very versatile.

I got the idea from a birdseed bar I’d had from our local health food store. I looked at the ingredient list to have an idea what to put in it, and just made it up from there.

Let’s get started! (more…)