How Instagram’s algorithm taught me how to bake

It all started with a harmless photo of a freshly baked sourdough loaf that a friend posted. He said it was “good with butter.” Cool, I thought. I tapped the photo to like it and then scrolled past. 

A few days later, a different friend posted a photo, this time, of their sourdough starter. Two photos were all I needed to ask: What even is a sourdough?

So, I did what would soon change my life: I searched for “sourdough” on Instagram.

I fed the algorithm.   

Just like that, my explore feed was immediately filled with photos and videos of sourdough starters, sourdough art, sourdough selfies—sourdough everything! The dog photos have turned into crumb shots. Yoga videos were now bread scoring slow motion shots. My Instagram ads were no longer coming from retail brands, they were now from online flour stores.

And what am I to do? The algorithm has obviously decided what my fate would be!

I took an old pasta sauce jar and tried to grow my own starter. Following tips from Instagram posts and comments, my starter was soon doubling, and then tripling in size. It took seven days of daily feeding. That was easy!

And since my starter was fairly easy to grow, I also expected my first sourdough loaf to be just as straightforward. I mean, I’ve already seen 251 Instagram videos of different sourdough shaping techniques! It can’t be that hard, right? Never mind that my only experience with bread was making banana bread.

To no one’s surprise, my first sourdough loaf was a disaster. It had zero rise and it was rock hard when it cooled that I couldn’t even slice it! It was painful having to throw my loaf in the trash knowing that I spent so much time on it but there was absolutely no way any living creature (that’s not a pest) could consume that.

I tried again. 

With zero expectations this time, I decided to reduce the dough’s hydration. I had no idea what “hydration” was at the time but apparently, according to one baking influencer, reducing the water content should make the dough more manageable.

It rose beautifully. It didn’t have an ear (the crunchy flap that forms and peels back while the loaf is baking) but it was edible. Like, avocado toast edible! Whaaaat. The best part? It also looked pretty enough for Instagram!

This euphoria (also known as temporary overconfidence) of getting something right was what got me to start an actual baking checklist. From croissants to sourdough cinnamon rolls, I wanted to try baking them all!

I learned how much of a pain in the ass making croissants are and how it’s probably better for me to just fork over a couple bucks at a local bakery instead of slaving over two days just for me to inhale it all in half a day. Meanwhile, even though making coffee buns involves 73 steps, the recipe is reliable, it doesn’t take forever and a day to make, and gives you these absolutely soft and buttery, fluffy buns. The best part? No bakery in my city sells them.

But if there’s one thing I’m in a love-hate relationship with, it’s got to be sourdough. Remember when I got it right the second time? I thought that meant I’ve “mastered” it. And what a revelation it has been. Many weekends later, I’m still here trying to figure out why my loaf didn’t rise as much, why my scoring failed, or why it just looked like a sad, burnt piece of round blob. 

For reasons I’m still trying to understand, despite its never ending set of challenges, I keep wanting to make sourdough loaves. At this point, I don’t know if it’s pride or just genuine joy from making them. Either way it’s become one of my favorite things to make. Maybe baking is making me crazy but there’s something about the long process of preparing your dough and then getting that sweet reward of a beautiful (or horrifying) loaf at the end of all of it.

But anyway, my plan was to take it slow and bake one new thing each weekend. But then I started seeing something become extremely popular in Manila… No, not the face shields—the ube cheese pandesal trend happened.

Variations of the ube pandesal were on my feed every single day: ube cheese pandesal, ube leche flan pandesal, ube macapuno pandesal. What can you not put inside an ube pandesal? I couldn’t just sit and look at them!

While I was lucky enough to find a local ube jam seller in North Carolina, it turns out finding ube jam was the least of my ube pandesal problems. It still took me three long weekends of failure after failure before I ended up with a presentable ube pandesal.

Once I had my first successful ube pandesal though, I decided a new challenge was in order. Why not make my life 10 times harder and send these baked goods to friends? Receiving baked goods in the mail sounded like a much needed break from this terrible year.

That was almost eight weeks ago.

I have since sent a variety of pastries and bread to friends all over the US. And before you think this is a baking success story, please know that to this day, if there’s one thing I’m consistent at doing, it’s having baking fails every single weekend. 

Thanks to Instagram, I’ve been on this uncontrollable cycle of baking for the last four months. So if you’ll excuse me... I still have to refresh my feed to check for new baking inspo I can try and “nail.”


✺ Words and photos by Peanut Dela Cruz ——

AN ABSOLUTE N00B AT BAKING, PEANUT HAD ZERO EXPERIENCE MAKING ANYTHING THAT INVOLVED THE OVEN SIX MONTHS AGO. THESE DAYS, THANKS TO THIS QUARANTINE LIFE, YOU CAN FIND HER ON INSTAGRAM PLAYING YET ANOTHER WEEKEND GAME OF: DID I BOTCH THIS BREAD OR NOT? CATCH HER BAKING ADVENTURES ON @SKUSHNO!

The Cookie Digest: 5 types of quarantine cookies we love—all from Quezon City

I chipped my tooth while eating a chocolate chip cookie earlier this year. As this article’s headline already spoils, this incident only strengthened my love for these butter and chocolate monstrosities even more.

Okay, so you may be wondering how exactly that happened. The thing is, I like cold, day-old cookies. I think the cookie’s moisture is lessened and its sweetness and texture become more complex overnight.

If you’re curious which cookie culprit I’m talking about, this one was from ’Mo. Its chocolate chunks turned rock hard after a night in the fridge and I bit right into it. Next thing I knew, I had a shattered tooth. 

While that unfortunate cookie incident forced me to take a leave from work and get an immediate dental fix, it didn’t stop me from continuing to eat my unhealthy breakfast choice. I simply let it warm up, soften for a few minutes, and proceeded to finish what I started.

It’s a stupid story—but one that I think would help establish my credentials to round up part two of this cookie digest. I loved Belle’s cookie list but I noticed most of her favorites were shipped from Makati. This Fairview girl just wasn’t willing to pay for the expensive delivery fee, and so I tried to search for the best home-baked cookies in my area.

I honestly didn’t know where to start. I’ve never ordered cookies from home bakers before.

Pre-quarantine, I’d get myself a cookie whenever I could. I’d buy a box of cookies from ’Mo whenever I pass by a stall in the mall. Before I get my bill at Scout’s Honor, I tell them I’d like a box of 1 Bite 2 Bites and a Deep Dark Secret to go. My Cold White Brew always came with a Dark Chocolate Craft Cookie at Bo’s Coffee. And on birthdays, a Double Chocolate and Chocolate-dipped Cookie always found themselves with my Purple Oven cake of choice.

My favorites are what you’d call basic. But I knew what I liked from a cookie—dense, fully incorporated dark chocolate chunks (chocolate chips sticking out is a disgrace!), buttery but not flat, chewy with a bit of bite.

I knew the best way to get started: recommendations from friends. Once the suggestions were in, I searched for them on Instagram and committed to scrolling through their feeds. My algorithm eventually helped me out after a couple of saved posts and I was surprised to find that there was just too many cookie bakers based in the North!

Here are the ones I enjoyed biting into the past month, ones that have me clearing my future dessert schedule so I can have more:

The Marshmallow Test

This one filled my room with the scent of vanilla, an instant trigger of endorphins. I was immediately drawn to MDJ’s Birthday Cake and S’mores cookies because I have the attention and appetite of a child and its oversized toasted marshmallows looked so inviting. Spoiler alert: One piece is definitely not enough.

You’ll really get to taste the classic Yellow Cake batter mix in their sprinkle-loaded cookie version. It’s also on the chewier side of the cookie meter. On top of that it’s unapologetically sweet but the vanilla-boosted, marshmallow stretchy dough is a real treat. The Birthday Cake is for your inner child and the real kids in your home.

Their S’mores cookie is soft and comforting. This take on the campfire favorite really makes you slow down on the chewing so you can appreciate its mix of flavors. The sweet, caramel and cinnamon taste of the graham bits really lends the dough more body, while its crumbly texture gives it a good sensorial mix. There’s also a handful of Hershey’s chocolate chips in every bite.

Grandma’s Cookies

I judge a cookie by the way it looks and Chef Kin’s Chocolate Chip Cookies are beautiful! When you open a box of cookies, you immediately smell its dark chocolate goodness while it reveals the most gorgeously textured golden brown color.

These taste as rustic as it looks. In my head, I imagine this is the cookie kids boast about, something they look forward to whenever they spend weekend afternoons with their grandmothers. It’s the type of cookie that feels like it’s been perfected through time and generations, a classic that everyone would enjoy.

It isn’t sweet at all, even though each one is loaded with different intensities of dark chocolate chunks and chips. It also has that distinct density of flavor—a thick and creamy taste in every bite—which reminds me a lot of oatmeal cookies.

I’m happy to report you can hoard dozens of these and they taste the same more than a week after! This is just the type you’d love to fill up a cookie jar with—you never want your home to be without it.

The OG

Ocho’s The Godfather cookies are palm-sized perfection. We tried different cookies every week and this was among my sister’s favorites. She loved it so much she would wager for a piece whenever we played some games (she’s 5, if you’re wondering). I’m not surprised though, this one is really a standout.

The Godfather has all the elements of a good classic: Quality butter you can taste, an insane amount of chocolate chips that make your cookie gooey at the center, crisp on the edges but with a perfectly soft under-baked middle.

What’s amazing about this cookie is that it retains its texture even after a night in the fridge. You’ll still get to enjoy that soft and gooey inside and its instant-melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chunks. It comes with a handful of flaky sea salt and I think my sister reviewed it best: It’s good, but with salt it’s better!

Cookie Experiment

Heart Baker Biang’s newest experiment, the Dekada Brownie Cookie is one tough cookie to crack. Its flavor profile is something I still think about weeks after tasting it. Is it a cookie? A crinkle? A circular brownie? Although, one thing I’m certain of is that this complex creation is worth a try.

It only uses handmade bean-to-bar chocolate from Dekada (hence its name), mixing 50 percent to 70 percent variants for a decadently rich cookie. This one definitely has that unique and prominent fruity, earthy, and bittersweet flavors of our very own locally-grown cacao.

It’s gorgeously chocolatey brown—smooth and shiny all over except for its salt-encrusted center (Maldon Flaky Sea Salt, because this recipe only calls for the best). I like describing this creation as truffle batter—chocolatey as the bite-sized bits, fudgy as a brownie, as dense as a cake pop. It’s a chewy chunk of goodness you can’t quite describe until all its flavors melt in your mouth.

Runners-up under this category are Heart Baker Biang’s Chocolate Mint Chip (a taste of the holidays all year round) and Chef Kin’s Choco Butternut Crinkles (Dunkin 2.0 with the richness of a classic crinkle).

The Levain Copycat

This one is a household favorite and I’m sure your families would love it too. I didn’t think anything could excite me in quarantine until I received a box of Fresh Doughly cookies (no exaggerations here). What they bake is what you’d call a cookie mound—giant, perfectly domed and textured, fist-sized cookies. It reminds me a lot of the iconic Levain cookies people line up for.

Let me take you through its cookie anatomy: It’s chewy overall but it doesn’t fall apart. Its batter got a bit of that dense, cake-like texture but still balanced with the right amount of gooeyness. The middle is generously filled with chocolate chunks that it feels like a molten lava treat. And as the perfect finishing touch, it’s topped off with a pinch of salt.

✺ Photos by Vinz Lamorena

We dedicated the month of July to small up-and-coming food businesses—here are our favorite discoveries

Financial stability is tough these days, and the shift of support to small-time businesses is obvious. They are, without a doubt, the next big thing.

We’ve seen the demand for online services and contactless products rise the longer our quarantine period got dragged out. Filipinos chose to spend their money on home-based brands that are starting to grow as household favorites.

I opened my purse to a lot of small businesses last July—choosing to sugar-load my already-unhealthy quarantine diet whenever the weekend came. To be honest, having a food delivery arrive at my doorstep on Friday afternoons became the highlight of my week.

If you’ve placed an order online for any food trends as of late (that includes banana bread, baked sushi, Korean-inspired cakes and chocolate chip cookies), then there’s a high chance that your ad algorithm has caught on and is now conditioned to show your upcoming craving. Ads of new food offerings and new online stores are sure to cut through your daily scrolls.

As more days pass, more online businesses are cropping up—adding to an already endless list of homemade goods to try. If you’re like me who has gotten the hang of GCash transfers and Lalamove pickups, then chances are, you’re ordering from these small businesses with some sense of advocacy too.

Every order is a win-win situation. Every order you make is either helping a parent have a side income for their child’s online class requirements, is supporting a friend to survive another day as an under-slash-unemployed, or a portion of a bestseller’s profits go to underprivileged communities.

Personally, I chose to buy baked goods and savory snacks mostly from people I know and places I’m familiar with. Suddenly my friends and friends of friends have perfected their recipes for us to have something to rave about. Although, I did cap my spending to only P1,000 per order. I was also strict about this habitual spending being a once-a-week treat.

My friend, Karlo Cadang, did his fair share of small biz orders too. Being the food photographer that he is, he documented his eats in the most drooling ways possible. Together, we compiled a list of all the small businesses we’ve supported in July, all of which have gained a reorder status of confidence.

Oven Sisters

Each cookie baked by Oven Sisters is delightfully buttery with crisp edges and a chewy center. It’s also dotted with a generous amount of chunky dark chocolate morsels. There’s a fair amount of chocolate in every bite so it heavily requires milk on the side. Their classic Chocolate Chip Cookie can pass as the homemade twin of the well-loved, palm-sized Mo’ Cookies—each piece is basically an oversized dose of endorphins you can bite into.

My order also had half a dozen of Chocolate Walnut Cookies. It’s thicker, fluffier, and a whole lot denser. It’s a lot less sweeter and buttery, but equally as good—this one has more of a bite to it, with an extra crunch from the walnuts. These two flavors are now officially available as nibble-sized cookies too!




Milkii

Most iced coffee and milk tea orders now go up for P150 to P190 a pop. That’s why when Milkii first introduced their fruity line of yogurt-based drinks, they surprised everyone with crave-worthy guzzlers that are offered in such reasonable, affordable prices. Clearly, the next time you want a sip of something sweet, their 400-ml drinks are the best choice to satisfy your tastebuds.

The perfect way to describe the Milkii experience is like drinking a smoothie bowl. In each bottle, you’ll enjoy a thick and creamy consistency, with gobs of fresh fruit and tapioca sinkers adding some chewy and chunky textures to the yogurt drink. They don’t scrimp on its layers of fruit either—it’s a mix of sweet, tarty and milky flavors in one gulp.

Besides its cute, minimalist branding, Milkii supports the fruit vendors in their local communities. Their drinks don’t just taste good, you feel good after purchasing them too.

Gang Gang Chicken

When F&B influencers post their feast of the day, I welcome the cravings they send my way with a huge side order of skepticism. With the boom of small food businesses, most of the posts we see on social media seem too much like a flex more than it is a proper review. There’s more mention of thank yous than there are of tasting notes.  

I discovered Gang Gang Chicken on their PR day, aka the delivery day when said influencers are due to post their version of flat-lays and unboxings. Did their strategy work? I’m glad it did. I ordered about a kilo of boneless Korean fried chicken immediately, and I enjoyed nothing but yangneom-glazed perfection that entire weekend without ever getting tired of it.

Each boneless bite was massive, crispy, and generously coated with flavor. Their quarter serving can feed at least three people, or it can last you a few episodes during your K-drama binge. It’s best enjoyed with beer!

Pan De Nice

This is an upgrade to your local bakery’s take on doughnuts. Each sugar-dusted treat is filled with a hefty amount of rich and silky flavored cream. Made with overnight fermented dough, it’s puffy, moist, and with a subtle tartness that perfectly balances its sweet center.

I enjoy them two ways. I like them fresh and warm, eaten right after it’s delivered. I also go to town on them after they’re chilled overnight, when its creamy center transforms into a mousse-like filling, giving you a more complex mix of textures for a more interesting bite.

I recommend that you try these flavors, ranked from highly recommended to variants you can order less of: Vanilla Custard, Dark Chocolate, and Matcha. Expect these Pan De Nice doughnuts to be a major hit! You can ask its loyal customers, they can tell you for a fact that these doughnuts don’t last very long.

I even got a dozen on my second doughnut delivery because I knew better. Sadly, the fillings weren’t as generous as they once were. While its dough and filling are more well-proportioned now, it was that excessively messy, extra creamy goodness that made these doughnuts worth it.




Nini’s Oven

Their Sushi Bake is perfect to binge on during your cheat days—creamy, meaty, and loaded with flavors. Just a word of caution: You’ll never stop craving for it once you’ve tasted it.

Nini’s Oven has the perfect sweets to balance off their savory offerings. Their brownies have the best texture with its crackly, flaky exterior and chewy and delightfully bittersweet center. They also bake Caramel Bars that taste a lot like the bestsellers of Max’s Bakery—chewy, fudgey, and melt-in-your-mouth. 

Best part? Everything’s affordable you can probably order every week!

The Linden Bakery

Their Burnt Cheesecake is perfectly creamy and light from its center to its crust. I’m not gonna lie—I skipped meals so I can enjoy slices of this in a single day. The Linden Bakery’s 7-inch serving is a mouthful. It’s got a light velvety cream cheese base that’s packed with complementing flavors.

Although it doesn’t have that molten, gooey center, you’ll still enjoy the balance of flavors it serves on the table. It marries the subtle sweetness of a caramelized top with the striking smokiness of scorched exteriors—a swirl of flavors that you’ll get to taste in every bite.

The price is also not as heavy as the quality it promises. It’s only P950 an order, and you can tell just how many pounds of cheese went into this cake the second you taste it.

Kuya Fred’s

Kuya Fred’s stand is my where my dad gets his favorite post-jogging treats whenever he burns some soles around the UP campus. The famous food cart located at Ylanan Street is now available online and they sell our favorite street food by the kilo. Fish balls, squid balls, kwek-kwek—these are all part of their frozen goods menu. It comes with the sweet dipping sauce and crowd-favorite vinegar concoction to fool-proof the street food experience at home.

I eat off the pan whenever I’m in charge of cooking. We all know it tastes best when its puffy and piping hot. I like searing one side (so I can have that toasted flavor and crispiness), while leaving the other half pale (for that chewy texture and distinct floury taste).

The Grey Stuff

The go-to dessert place of UP Los Baños students from the past, present and future. Everything The Grey Stuff comes out with is surely a bang-for-the-buck deal. A dozen of cookies with a P160 price tag? With a recipe using one of the best local chocolates out there? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but I can’t believe you get the unequaled taste of Auro chocolates for cheap with every order of baked goodies from Grey’s.

You probably heard this before: The chocolate makes all the difference. One bite of their cookies and I embrace this as the ultimate truth. Their cookies are normal-sized (about two inches in diameter), but it always feels like you’re eating a palm-sized chocolate monstrosity. A shard of chocolate comes with every bite. Every cookie has a rich and creamy experience waiting in every round.

Their Double Chocolate Cookies and Molten Lava Brownies age so well too. Its top and edges develop this crispy and gritty texture over time. It does become a bit crumbly but the taste of the dark chocolate becomes more pronounced and complex. While the Classic Chocolate Chip maintains its moist and dense cake-like texture even a week after.

Other things you should try from this Laguna-based baker: The Strawberry Shortcake, Leche Flan Cake, and Vanilla Cream Puffs.


✺ Photos by Karlo Cadang and Vinz Lamorena

For the love of chocolate: Heart Baker Biang’s Ultimate Triple Decker is 4 layers of heaven

The Ultimate Triple Decker by Heart Baker Biang, a small business based in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, has made every day sweeter than usual since I got it. To make you understand this dessert better, it’s simply a four-layered cookie pie in a tin can—except there’s really nothing simple about it.

One bite gives you too much of the good stuff. First, you sink your teeth into a decadently smooth chocolate ganache that seamlessly merges with gooey fudge brownie, then you get to its center of generously lined Oreos, while a bed of salty-sweet chocolate chip cookie dough waits at the bottom of it all.

What makes this dessert ultimate is its use of a variety of chocolates, making you experience the best of the ingredients’ bittersweet tastes and creamy textures together. There isn’t one layer that isn’t made up of chocolate. I love (and immensely enjoy) the density of the dark chocolate layers and having the cookie dough’s generous chunks of milk chocolate suddenly hit your palate.

I often found tin-canned pastries and desserts a bit too expensive for the sizes they’re offered in, but this one is worth more than what you pay for. The Ultimate Triple Decker goes for only P500 and is a special made-to-order request from Heart Baker Biang. It’s also available in Matcha for P550. They use a mix of quality, local and imported artisanal chocolate, and you’ll get to taste that in every bite.

The home baker behind this indulgent chocolate creation shared it was an experiment born out of the dream cake trend. “My family and I were so hyped up about those trending cakes only to end up disappointed that it only had one texture to it,” Biang Francisco recalled.

“We wanted something with fudge, crunch, buttery goodness, and the mix of sweet, salty, and chocolatey—basically all the good stuff with a play on textures. The Oreos fit the bill cause our family loves Oreos too,” she shared. This statement just makes me want to be adopted by the Francisco household as their official cookie taste tester.

Biang recommended that you heat up a serving of the Ultimate Triple Decker in the microwave for about 30 seconds for the ultimate sweet tooth experience. If you’re a fan of molten chocolate desserts, give this method a go! But I say, it’s best eaten straight from the fridge.

This way, the ganache, brownie, and softened Oreo layers are pretty solid, and have become this melt-in-your-mouth truffle-like bites. It’s got a good mix of taste and texture that’s quickly evened out by the firmness of the chocolate chip. You can also leave it out to reach room temperature so the cookie crust softens into a dense, cake-like texture.

However you choose to eat it, don’t leave out the most important step: top it off with flaky sea salt. This now-popular dessert garnish makes the entire experience feel so gourmet. It also gives it a surprising briny crunch in between bites.

Whenever I add salt to the Ultimate Triple Decker, its combination of flavors reminded me a lot of the shortbread bars I love getting from 12/10 in Guijo, Makati. This one’s more of an ode to the greatness of chocolate flavors though.

It’s honestly so indulgent that I only allowed myself a single spoonful every time I crave for something sweet within the day. That kind of restraint didn’t last long. Once I decided to cut them up into 1-inch squares and sprinkle each with a pinch of pink Himalayan salt, the discipline had worn off.

But still, I was surprised by how much I’ve already eaten these past three days without ever getting tired of its taste in the process. I probably have to go get checked for diabetes now.

The Cookie Digest: A roundup of the 5 best cookie experiences I’ve had on lockdown

Discovering a sweet, chocolatey round for every mood

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Was it even a lockdown if you didn’t buy a designer cookie? Was it even a lockdown if you didn’t buy one, then immediately get hit by mouth-watering ads on your social media? Was it even a lockdown if you didn’t buy one, get hit by said annoyingly enticing cookie ads, and, well, give in?

It was definitely a quaran-cookie situation for me. At any point in time, you can find stuffing my face with the aforementioned sweet pastry. People started flaunting their heightened productivity and creativity on social media this lockdown, creating masterpieces and building businesses—meanwhile, I found my purpose laser-focused into one goal: the cookie hunt.

I don’t know what it is about finding a perfect cookie. It may be the thrill of buying several in a month, one after the other. It may be the indulgent experience of never running out of cookie varieties to munch on. It could also be the fact that there is not one perfect cookie—some days you’ll find yourself craving for chunky bites with a walnut crunch; on other days you want them as chewy palm-sized treats with gobs of chocolate chunks.

And guess what? I’m ready to share the results of my self-imposed quarantine project with you: The Cookie Digest, a short list of cookies for every lockdown mood.