Chocolate Excess

This is a cake which I made years ago and did not want to  make again because of how difficult the cake is to deal with. It crumbles and breaks easily, I don't know what I am doing wrong with this cake. This is a old pic, maybe 3 years old.

 So here I have made it again, as it is one of the most delicious cakes I have made or had. I tried to make it look a little pretty but in vain :(. When my sis got me this box of Lindt thins, my mind went back to a gorgeous blog which had used it to decorate a cake.

Cream horns/rolls.

Cream rolls! Everyone's childhood favourite I'm sure. I still remember tucking into these one after the other during our yearly visits to my grandmother's place in  a small town in kerala. With growing up, came the knowledge of healthy eating, bad margarine and etc. So, everytime I pass a local bakery and eye these beauties I have never been able to bring myself to buy it just wondering what they use instead of cream.

And so, I decided to make these myself and give my children the joy of eating these as well and with a easy recipe at hand I was good to go...

The pastry did not turn out as well as I hoped it would. It did not really puff up as a puff pastry would, but for a first time this would do I consoled myself. Amul fresh cream as we all know would not behave,  it melted as soon as I piped it into the corn shells after I had spooned some strawberry jam inside. The recipe had a custard cream as well, which my children liked better.

Boston Banoffee Pie

Being the youngest sister has a few disadvantages, one of them being having to have repeated heartaches when each of your elder sister gets married and moves to another home and in my case, to different cities! But it has its many advantages as well :), one of it being getting treated with the various goodies from the cities they come from.

One of my sister was settled in a small city in kerala and this city had a lovely bakery where they would make the most delicious caramel tarts. I could eat it by a dozen. They were small tarts filled with what I figured was cooked condensed milk and bits of cashewnuts. It is one of the best desserts I have had :).

One fine day , the husband of another sister got her a gorgeous dessert book. She left it at home and I being the dessert maker I was, started trying out different recipes from it. There were not many recipes I could try as the ingredients were not available in the small city I was living in. Having tried all the gorgeous and possible desserts, I laid my eyes on this recipe. I gave it a try, failed miserably at the pie crust but fell in love with it. It almost tasted like those caramel tarts! I made it a number of times and each time the pie shell would stick to the pie tin and give us the most messy pie ever. Finally disheartened I stopped making it.

Now, more than a decade later I was craving to make this. My sister had lost her  book and google could not help me either. It only gave me cake versions of it. Few years later the book was finally found hidden in a carton, I pleaded to  my sister to click the recipe and send it to me. Even then it took me a year or more to finally make it and here it is. But again it wasn't a happy ending as I used dark brown sugar instead of light. Delicious nevertheless :)

triple chocolate mousse

Chicken Bread

Eid ul fitr cakes 2012

How embarassed am I to put up the chocolate cake pic. Its one of the most silliest handbag cakes ever. But I wanted to make a special eid cake for the girls and  dolls and castles were off the list. A smart handbag cake was developing in my mind. I had seen a recipe for smooth icing in my moms icing book years ago when I was a child. I requested mom to please send me the recipe. When I had a look at the recipe, I was pleased to know it was like fondant. Something you could roll and shape as you liked. But it only had butter, sugar and lemon, And so I began making it with dreams of a pink handbag cake with pearls all over. The dream was very short lived, one taste of this icing and I was heart broken. It tasted awful. I would no way compromise on the taste of my girls' eid cake for the sake of how pretty it would look!

So I just covered the cake with buttercream. Gave the icing different shades of beetroot extract and cut it into flowers. Disheartedly stuck some pearls here and there and shoved it back into the fridge.

When my girls saw it, they were thrilled and screamed handbag cake! I was glad and thanked the Almighty that it did look like one.

The pic below is Tres leches as the dad deserves an eid treat too : )

China Grass and some phirni. ~ Iftar treats ~

Spinach and Cheese borek. Slightly burnt but super delicious!

Basboosa

Wheat and Jaggery cake!

Lemon Bread