Food Escapades: Puto Cheese

After much debate on whether or not to bake (I was feeling lazy, even for baking), the kitchen saw the resurrection of some goodies last Thursday night. I had been craving for some puto cheese for a few days then and, rather than buy, my usual direction was to make them.

 

The recipe is fairly easy to do. All you need is flour of the cake-purpose kind, baking powder, white sugar, eggs, some water and, as I prefer it, a lot of cheese, cut, beforehand, into half-centimeter thick slices. You begin by mixing the dry ingredients together with water in a clean bowl. Once you’re done with that you can get start with the eggs.

 

For the recipe, you will only use the whites of the egg. Separate the egg whites without harming the yolks in any way you can; it’s very important that you don’t get any yolk into the whites. CAREFUL should be the resounding word in your head when dealing with egg yolk and white separation. You can try the basic technique of catching the yolk back and forth with the egg shells, just be careful not to burst the yolk’s protective membrane while doing so. Since I am a failure at this particular technique, what I do is catch the yolk with my hand and let the whites seep through my fingers into a bowl. It’s messy but it gets the job done. 

Once you’ve completed the egg white isolation stage of the recipe, you’ll need an extra bowl, a mixer, and some sugar. Use the mixer the beat the egg whites while gradually adding the sugar. The recipe calls for the whites to be “stiff and fluffy” so you’ll have to keep at beating until so that when you turn your mixer upside down, the mixture holds into stiff peaks. You can learn about beating egg whites here.

 

By now you’re ready to start folding your egg white-and-sugar mixture into the flour mixture from before. Mix them well until there are no more clumps and you’re almost done. 

Place paper liners on your molds (the molds I use are cupcake-like in shape and come in separate pieces, usually made of heat-resistant plastic or metal) and scoop the batter into them then top with the pre-cut cheese; I opt to put as many as the mold will hold without spilling the batter because the more cheese there is, the better.

 

Now all that needs to be done is to steam the puto cheese for a few minutes, let cool, then have at ‘em.

 

This has been a Thursday post brought to you by The Purple Madhouse.