Just bake and everything (and here’s the secret to ‘everything’).
Before Miss Everything sashayed to social media fame, there is one woman who is more famously known for having a cheery personality and that “and everything” line. That’s none other than TV journalist Love Añover.
For 20 years, Love has been a part of many Filipinos’ mornings as she covers the busiest roads in the metro, reporting traffic situations with her iconic boom mic, and so, ultimately, she was crowned “Reyna ng Kalsada.”
While her reign as TV’s traffic reporter is on hold in the pandemic, Love has spent most of her quarantine time in the kitchen.
It is hard to deny Love’s affinity for food and business. Coming from Leyte, her family clings onto food to sustain their life in the city. Now, her Instagram account seems like a catalogue of all her foodie adventures, from the ones she cooks at home to her go-to food in her travels.
“Bata pa lang ako, tinuruan na ako ng mama ko na magbenta. Yung mga banana cue and camote cue (Even when I was a child, my mother taught me how to sell. I sold banana cue and camote cue),” she says. “We really grew up with food as business but in a small scale only.”
In the community quarantine, Love now pours her extra time to creating baked goodies, and that includes the ultimate quarantreat, the ube cheese pandesal.
The only thing new about the ube cheese pandesal is its purple coloring. Everything about it has been practiced by Filipinos before.
“I have a friend in Pampanga, and we know naman that it is the Culinary Capital of the Philippines, and even before, they’ve been eating ube with pandesal,” she tells Manila Bulletin Lifestyle. “They spread the ube jam inside the pandesal and eat it for breakfast.”
Even though the new look of the ube pandesal brings the two iconic treats back to the spotlight, many are not convinced about the taste of the combo, including Love.
“How can this be ube cheese pandesal when I cannot taste the ube? Hind ito pwede,” Love says. “When cooking food, I believe that I need to please myself first to say that it is good. For me, kung hindi masarap, there is something I need to figure out. So for the pandesal, I improved the texture, I improved the flavor. Every time I bake, I discover things and I apply what I think is good.”
That was her quest to crack the perfect recipe of ube cheese pandesal began. After hours of hand-kneading dough and balancing flavors, she got the perfect recipe, thanks to an honest mistake in the kitchen.
“In my original recipe, I wanted to use cheddar so it would balance the sweetness of the ube. When we tried one of the batches, nagulat ako na nag-stretch ’yung cheese. I know that cheddar doesn’t stretch.’Yun pala, mozzarella ‘yung nailagay ng pamangkin ko (My niece used mozzarella),” she says. “Good thing is that mozzarella is my favorite. It turns out, that is what the pandesal needs.”
Not only does the mozzarella add a milky flavor to the pandesal, it also gives a velvety texture to it to contrast the bread’s crunchy crust.
To heighten the ube taste, apart from the concentrated ube flavoring she adds on the dough, Love also put a generous filling of Good Shepherds’ ube jam inside every pandesal.
“For me okay lang sa akin yung mahal as long as people will get what they are paying for,” she says.
Thanks to the growing popularity of her ube cheese pandesal, Love has a new means of earning a living apart from her TV hosting job. Her advice to homecooks who are also now pursuing their own brand this quarantine period is to build their brand with integrity and always provide good service.
“Treat your customers as if it’s going to be their last time buying from you. Definitely, you will start slow. Lahat kailangan may proseso, so make sure lang that your integrity, your consistency in your service is okay,” she says. “Ganito lang tayo now, we’re connected through the web. But when you keep your integrity intact, isa ’yun sa mag papabalik ng customers mo.”
Send a message to 0917-843-0221 to have a taste of Love Añover's ube cheese pandesal.