I had mentioned regarding my tryst with my one and only pack of hazelnuts in this biscotti post. I also did mention that I used up the rest of the hazelnuts in trying to make one of the most loved spreads in the world. Of course there is no point for guessing, it has to be Nutella, right? 🙂 I must confess I am no Nutella fan. I belong to the category who can’t stand eating Nutella, condensed milk or Biscoff from the spoon. I may eat Horlicks or Boost but not these. I really have no reason why. Sometimes, our aversion has no explanation, isn’t it? But I love using them to cook or bake. Here are a few Nutella recipes on the blog, among which my personal favorite are these super easy puffs with banana – so delicious that you must try them for your children….
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,…
Chocolate Persimmon Overnight Oats
I haven’t done overnight oats in a long time. So when I saw Sarah’s information email saying that this month, the theme for the Fantastical Food Fight would be “Overnight Oats”, I just wanted to participate. I love overnight oats and since I have been on a quantified eating of late, swapping my rice with oats was usually not a preferred option, so oats had to take a limited offering at times. I don’t know how better I can explain this. 😀 Anyway, there were this persimmons that I had reserved to try this muffin recipe for the Bakeathon that concluded last month. However it didn’t happen, since I had no mood to bake them whatsoever. Happens, right? I just wanted to eat them rather than cook with them. Hehe… Then I thought, why not I use them in overnight oats? I decided to make a chocolate version,…
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…
Sticky Chocolate Brownies
Back to back recipes that I baked for distribution… 🙂 I have a very small circle of best friends. One used to be in Muscat – I have written about her a few times on the blog, and is now back home settled into her life. As this post goes live, she is back in Muscat for a couple of weeks, but I won’t be able to go see her. 🙁 The other one stays 20 minutes drive from my place. Still the hassles of meeting up is real. She struggles with her girls, I with my busy schedule. But once in a while, I do put my hair down and just jump at her place. We both have been together since grade 7, and we are diagonally opposite to each other in every way. I really mean it. We keep getting asked how we have stayed friends all…
Vegan Cocoa Scones
When I had started blogging, I was in a shared kitchen with umma. She wouldn’t allow me to bake as such, since she is diabetic and she would say that my baking would actually not allow her to be strict with herself. I would wait for her and D to go for their walks so that I could do the baking. When they would return back, the smell of the bakes would be wafting in the house and she would give me that look – I guess we all know what that look is, yes, the same thing we use with our children too now! 😀 Life is which goes around, comes around… 🙂 Once D retired and left the country for good, HD found a decent apartment close to where his business is, so we shifted. It’s been four years now in this house, Alhamdulillah. As soon…
Chocolate Coconut Cake | Low Carb, Refined Sugar Free
When I was planning my posts for the Bakeathon, a blessing in disguise came in between. 😉 I was invited to a meet-up session of ladies following keto and paleo lifestyle for their weight loss. Even though I had a very brief stint with keto which wasn’t very encouraging, I decided to just show up with this delicious cake that I had baked specifically for the ladies to enjoy. I had intended to come back as soon as I meet the host but it turned out that the whole get together was so interesting, that I ended up sitting till the end. 🙂 Has that happened to you? It was a little intimidating for me when the hostess requested me to give some motivation to the group as to how to stick to an eating pattern and exercise for weight loss. I am still learning a lot of…
Rocky Road Bites
I could have moved away from the chocolate theme, while doing today’s post for this month’s Fantastical Food Fight challenge. Sarah had messaged us that this month, the theme would be “Candy”. It is obvious because December is considered to be a sweet month and candy is surely a part of it. After a little bit of confusion, she clarified that candy could include fudge, squares, bites, anything that looked like a candy. I was initially planning to sit out of the theme, since I am not much into candy making. The time I had baked the Fudge Brownies for our school meet-up, I wanted to make something else for the kids. My eyes fell on the pack of marshmallows that Azza had finished 80 percent and wouldn’t eat the rest since it didn’t appeal to her anymore. It always happens, isn’t it? They want everything but then…
Easy Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls
Ever since I have started posts this month, I haven’t shared anything much personal. Maybe because there hasn’t been anything interesting… 🙂 One thing I started doing this month is journaling a statement every day. It is basically one question, that needs to be answered in a couple of statements, depending on your state of the day. Even though I haven’t been regular with it, I have stuck to it 80% of the time and can feel how relaxed that jotting down a couple of sentences is making me. I am trying to stick to it and do it on a daily basis from now on. I am seriously thinking of doing a statement and sticking it next to my bed, so that each time I go to bed, I check it and ensure that everything is done. Just trying to emphasis a bit more on my mental health……
Chocolate Flan Cake
Deciding to participate in the Bake-a-thon 2018 actually helped me clean up some of my to-do list. One of them was definitely this flan cake or magic cake, as it has been called in some places. Whoever came up with this fantastic idea needs to be patted at the back. When you want cake and pudding together, but don’t want to make it in several pans, all you do it is bake them together and let the magic happen! The base is a normal chocolate cake, and the top is a creme custard, duly topped with a caramel topping. Now what happens? Here we apply a little bit of our chemistry knowledge. Haven’t you heard of density? Yes… so since the density of the cake batter is heavier than that of the flan batter, in the process of baking, the cake magically moves up and the flan pushes…
Fudge Brownies
There are always recipes that thrill us to the core, that we can’t wait to post them. 🙂 I guess there is no better time that post it during this Bakeathon! The Easy Fudge Brownies have always been a hit with many who have tried, but those brownies don’t have chocolate and butter melted, which I always feel is the essence of a brownie. Most of us have our own brownie preferences, and I have loved every brownie recipe I have tried. My most favorite one is this fat-free brownies – if you haven’t tried them, I urge you to try them as they are really fudge like and melt in the mouth… But this recipe also deserves its own place… I have always wanted to have a fudge brownie recipe on the blog. But the amount of recipes on the internet is quite scary. I went…
Malted Nutella Bread Pudding
With due permission from Valli, I decided to move yesterday’s Bakeathon post to today, since I didn’t want it to clash with the MFB post. I somehow don’t like the idea of having more than one post a day, though I have done that a few times in the past, but not with a full heart. This time, I made sure I asked Valli and as soon as I got the OK, I just went ahead with scheduling the post on the next day. 🙂 The recipe today is an amalgamation of a lot of factors – leftover bread getting stale, wanting to finish a bottle of Nutella nearing expiry date and then not liking the bottle of chocolate flavored Horlicks that I had bought. Horlicks is actually my cheat meal. Especially with nights getting quite chilled now, I always wish for a warm drink before going off…
Chocolate Labneh Cake with Chocolate Ganache
I believe there is no dearth to recipes of chocolate cakes, definitely no. 🙂 So today, I go ahead and post my current favorite. I mention “current”, since my preferred chocolate cake keeps changing whenever I bake a new recipe and fall for it. 😀 I first loved the Steamed Chocolate Cake, till I made the One Bowl Chocolate Cake, and then the vegan one and the eggless one are constantly in the competition. The final cake I fell in love was with buttermilk, and now, it has got replaced by this… 😉 To make the story short, I love chocolate cake. I only have one condition – they need to be soft, fluffy and moist. Somehow the dense cakes like the devil’s food does not appeal to me much, even though I love brownies. But I guess, slowly I am slowly warming up to those type of…