I do sometimes thank God for making me keep posts pending to get to an opportunity. If you see, I rarely celebrate any personal occasion of mine except the girls’ birthdays or our anniversary. And today happens to be our anniversary number 15, Alhamdulillah. I almost forgot about it, actually speaking. Every April 14, I have done a post and actually, every year, the posts reflected how exactly I felt about him. The past six years I have been blogging, our marriage has been topsy turvy of sorts. I guess that happens to every family at some stage. At times, you wonder, how stupid you were to be or stay married to the man or the woman you are now with. But then after a few hours, the thoughts just tide over and gets replaced with something else. I guess that’s how life is, we need to wait for…
Cookie Butter/ Biscoff Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I haven’t been sharing much on the blog because it’s been the usual hussle-bussle. I won’t say nothing is happening in life… There is a lot happening but somehow I don’t want to sink myself into it. It is always better to try and stay afloat, rather than push yourself down and feel awful about it. From the start of the year, things haven’t been really positive, and that has stalled even my weight loss. I am not able to put in as much discipline into my eating as I had done last year, and this is frustrating me to the core. But I am trying to stay focused on myself and keeping myself on line, making sure that I don’t lose all the hard work that I have done last year. Maintenance is as important and sustainable at the stage I am in, I guess… 🙂 Talking…
Easy Pizza Rolls
For this week’s theme of “Kid’s Delight – Snacks and Bites” for the Blogging Marathon #98, I am jumping in with these Pizza Rolls that I baked for Rasha’s class party along with the Brookies. You must be wondering what did I make for Azza then. She came home saying that her teacher asked her to make some “healthy sandwich” and that too only 12 of them. I was a bit concerned. Only 12? And that too sandwich? I asked her again and again, and she kept saying “yes”. I ended up making chicken salad sandwich for her class, which didn’t take much time as Rasha’s goodies took. Anyway… 😀 Rasha actually wanted pizza. But then making mini pizza is a small pain, especially for a class party. So I convinced her that I would make rolls, so that they are easier to carry and eat. After thinking…
Brownie Cookie Bars | Brookies
Some recipes are meant to jump forward and make others wait. This is one. I will start this post with a story. 🙂 On February 14, the girls had their school class party. I can’t believe that this academic year is already ending for them. I have seen both of them go from “at least a little serious” to “not at all serious” phase. I don’t know if it is a thing of worry. Rasha has always been super cool about her studies, nothing bogs her down, not even low marks. But Azza was always concerned about her marks and her impression in front of the her teachers. But now she is losing it as well, and it is worrying me. She still gets upset at low marks but it doesn’t bother her as much as it used to. And they are moving into higher grades… 😕 OK,…
Eggless Carrot Cake
There is something called “warmth”. It is not necessarily only in our own relationships, but it reflects from even pure strangers. Have you felt that? I started experiencing it when I got into blogging and got to meeting a lot of blogger friends. I experience the same while posting stories on my Instagram handle. I never expected total strangers to actually echo with whatever I share. I try to keep it as raw as possible, because life can be very undermining now especially when everybody else’s looks very rosy. I don’t share much of myself but sometimes I do, and it feels good to be instantly recognized in between the crowd. I sincerely appreciate those who come and ask about me, and give me a heads up. It happened at a masjid over the weekend and umma was caught off guard. I couldn’t explain to her how she…
Wholemeal Bread
I am just glad that the first recipe for a full-on bread is going live on the blog today. 😀 I have made a lot of yeast-based bakes, but those are usually buns or recipes that weren’t something like a breakfast bread. I have tried so many bread recipes but each of them were a fail for so many reasons. The highest reason is my impatience. You need to knead your bread sufficiently and not add too much of flour. The time when the dough becomes non-sticky and elastic, is the time to stop. That is the time when gluten is formed and the bread will rise and look fluffy. There is a lot of science behind bread baking but I am no scientist and I don’t wish to take away the joy of cooking by mixing in science. 😀 But somehow, bread baking can be very stressful…
No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake with Shortbread Crust
The expectation on a food blogger is immense. Each time I have guests at home, somehow they come to know that I run a food blog, and then they expect me to give them some awesome food. 😀 I don’t blame them. Nobody seems to understand that what I post on the blog is not even something that I cooked recently. My family will vouch that they haven’t eaten anything that is appearing now on the blog. I hardly make anything special these days. Life has become such a roller coaster ride. Weekends are as busy and time pressed as weekdays are. At the moment, I am focusing on a few more projects, which hopefully will materialize well, InShaAllah. My baking and cooking has literally taken a backseat. I haven’t lifted up my camera ever since my parents have landed. I actually feel sad when my props and…
Creme Caramel | Flan
I have always written very long posts for almost all my milestone posts on this blog. I have celebrated the blog birthdays, and then each time I achieved a number of posts on the blog, etc. Of late, I stopped celebrating. It started to make no sense to me. Should I say that they started to mean nothing to me? As this post goes live, the blog has completed 6 years old. I should have posted day before yesterday, but I wasn’t in a mood to clog up the posts on the blog. I wanted to give the posts some time, and myself some time too… Last year was a fight of sorts. I fought to keep my spirit of blogging. I fought to keep going. There were so many reasons to it. I started the blog as a diary of recipes for myself, and then it slowly…
Spicy Oven Baked Chicken
If it is the tenth of the month, then it surely has to be the Muslim Food Blogger challenge post. Month after month, it does become a challenge to select a theme and put it forward to the ladies in this small group, but Alhamdulillah, they seem to be enjoying the themes and that is what matters. 🙂 This month as per the usual flow, we were supposed to be cooking from a Muslim blog. The chosen blog for the month was “Afelia’s Kitchen“. Afelia happens to be a Bangladeshi UK citizen and shares some interesting recipes on her blog. I found out the blog when I was searching for the Bangladeshi cooking we did a few months ago, where I cooked the Murgir Korma. I had bookmarked to try a few recipes from her blog during that time and thought it was a lovely blog to explore…
Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
The last post of the year, and it just happens to be the last post of this year’s Bake-a-thon too! Every last post is meant to be a look back into the year. I really don’t know if I liked 2018. Even though the year started pretty decently, past midway, it came with a lot of stress related to how things are moving. I better not dwell around it – these are things that will happen. We find ways to deal with them and move on. The highlights of this year was surely my weight loss and then B’s wedding. We had a very good time and met up a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a long time, Alhamdulillah. It was a day that went really well and we went off to sleep with such a settled mind… 🙂 And of course the weight loss… I…
Eggless Chocolate Cookie Butter Cake | Chocolate Biscoff Cake
Today’s post for the Bake-a-thon 2018 comes up with a story, but it is a sad one. By the way, can you believe that we are on the second last post for the Bake-a-thon? This time has been super fast. I have totally enjoyed baking, clicking, typing and scheduling the posts for this series with the chocolate theme. I hope all of you loved all the posts that I have done for this series! It has left me drained, literally speaking, but drained in a good way, Alhamdulillah… 🙂 So coming to the story for this cake… I usually bake and take something when I go visit my friends or relatives after a long time. It is like breaking the ice too, right? I always prefer home made goodies instead of buying a box of chocolates. It makes it feel a lot more personalized. I have mentioned before…
Flourless Chocolate Cake for One | Sugar Free
All the recipes that you have seen in the Bakeathon this month have either been made to treat my cousins, give to friends or colleagues, for my girls… In short, it was always for distribution. Don’t you think it is unfair if I don’t treat myself to something chocolaty when I have baked so much for everybody else? 😉 Here comes in the Flourless Chocolate Cake, that will serve only one. Yes, only one person, and that was me. I can’t explain the process of how I had to sneak bake this and eat this in between a weekend cooking mess in the kitchen. Especially, chocolate has this nasty habit of leaving off its aroma as it bakes. So my sniffy Azza kept coming in and peeping into the oven – I didn’t turn the lights on! – “Ummi, is something baking?” And I would just do my…