It always warms my heart to receive emails from my fellow bloggers for guest posts. I have known Pankthi for a quite some time now, when she used to the “techie mom”. But then, she took a break from blogging and then now is back with vengeance as “Cake and Curry”. I got an email from her asking if I would be keen on doing a guest post for her. Why wouldn’t I? I have loved doing guest posts and Alhamdulillah, in these five years of blogging, have never said “no” to requests that have come to me. I have been mentioning that I have gone slow on cooking, especially making desserts, though I still do on and off, mostly for family. When her email came and especially mentioning that she would want to start at the earliest, I as usual dug into my drafts. I still have…
Biscoff Cheesecake Tiramisu
Ah… now the third one for the 3 back-to-back Biscoff recipe series – the others being Cookie Butter Cake and Shrikand… This was not tough to choose and I had to keep it for the last. 😉 This Biscoff Cheesecake Tiramisu is a revelation to the say the least! I was on a tiramisu fix for a few months. All I would do was get the long finger and get making them. Hehe… Tiramisu is really addictive, isn’t it? Whoever agrees with me, please raise their hands! 😉 Now this isn’t an authentic Tiramisu since it doesn’t use mascarpone cheese. Instead it uses the thick cheese that comes in packs – call it Philadelphia or any other brand. So I decided to make it cheesecake style, but layer up dipped long finger in between as well, and what more, with a generous sprinkling of crushed Lotus cookies. As…
Cookie Butter/ Biscoff Shrikand
There was this post I was reading, and I thought I must share it here as I strongly believe in it: Sometimes, all it takes to cheer up a person is a kind word of appreciation of a good quality that he has. I feel that in today’s world, people have become really miserly with expressing appreciation. Even though by mind we may think good of the person opposite to us, we take a backward step in admiting it to them. What do we loose by doing so, I fail to understand. There are times when such an action from us is enough to raise that particular person from the throngs of depression into a positive outlook. Or it may have been a bad day for them, and that statement turns out to be a silver lining of hope for them. The goodness is many… let us…
Kayi Curry ~ Malabar Sweet Plaintain Curry
In Malabar, we cook a lot with plantains, aka kaaya, kaayi, nenthrapazham… it is known by various names. There are so many ways we recycle our ripe plantains – it becomes nirachathu, a part of paal vazhakka, a combination with kooka or semiya, tossed up with eggs or with aval or just with coconut, as a part of puttu or becoming pradhaman, and how can we forget the favorite way of many Keralites – pazhampori and if it’s for the Malabar, then it’s unnakkaaya! I guess I have noted down all the ways that I have tried them into my cooking, even though there are many more ways, which InShaAllah, I will . Every Keralite will stock up their homes with ripe plantains, mainly because they are a very handy breakfast when you don’t want to cook anything and gets transformed into a snack, for unexpected guests! Such a versatile…
Watalappam ~ Sri Lankan Jaggery Egg Pudding
As soon as the “Sinhalese Cuisine” theme was declared in the Blogging Marathon #84, the first and foremost recipe I wanted to make was the Watalappam, come what may! As I was chatting with Rizna for ideas for Sri Lankan food and I mentioned this one, she told me, “But that’s not Sinhalese?” Like I mentioned in the Kukul Mass Curry recipe, influences do make recipes not 100% “Sinhalese”. When Valli assured that we can do recipes that are prepared in Sri Lanka irrespective of ethnicity, my breath fell in place. Alhamdulillah, I could make the Watalappam finally! 😉 Watalappam or Watalappan is a steamed jaggery pudding, which sounds so similar to the kinnathappam made in our place, with the only difference being that the latter doesn’t use the coconut milk. It is believed to have originated from the Malays, who came to the country during Dutch rule….
Red Velvet IceCream Cake
Alhamdulillah, the blog is 5 today! I have written long posts every blog anniversary, but this time I will give it a break. 😉 I guess I am done with being emotional about the blog and look at it very practically from now on. 😀 As I go into this post, I want to share with you a little secret. I actually planned a super long post of the best recipe of each month since The BST started, yes, 60 months and 60 posts. But as I started working on the post and reached close to the end of the first year, I got so overwhelmed of selecting the posts that I decided to give it up halfway! 😀 I really couldn’t help it… So coming back to what I had originally planned for… This year, you may have noticed that the flow is broken. I am taking…
Cheesecake Granola Dessert Jar
I was really thinking of posting this on V-Day but I don’t celebrate it, then why should I wait till then! 😉 This was my attempt to salvage a failed attempt at making the wobbly cotton cheesecake. It wasn’t wobbly, nor fluffy, just an awfully sweet mirror of a cheesecake. Thankfully I had made a small portion, but still didn’t want to trash it. It was then this was born. I just had a small quantity of chocolate granola left which wasn’t sufficient to make up for breakfast. That is when I layered them into a glass bottle, stored it in the fridge for it to settle and had it as dessert. It was amazing. The cheesecake and granola paired so well, though I was a bit doubtful initially. Moreover, they looked really pretty as well. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it… Hehe… If you…
Mango Bread Pudding
Bread is something that is in my pantry at any given point of time, so the love for bread puddings comes naturally! Whenever I am lost as to what to make for dessert for the weekend, or have a pack of bread getting stale because I picked up an extra one without much thought, or I have a failed bread attempt, it immediately gets converted into bread pudding! 😀 How many like me, please raise your hands! A little search for “bread pudding” on the blog, will throw up a few options. Also this baked french toast was born in similar fashion. While placing the posts for the Bake-a-thon, my eyes chanced upon this amazing bread pudding I had made sometime ago and that left me wondering if I was posting this at a time when there are no mangoes, at least here. I was wrong in my…
Be My Guest – Cranberry Cobbler Dump Cake
The third Saturday it is, and time for a new guest on the blog! Would you believe we are almost closing on this year? 2017 has passed away in a jiffy… I really don’t know what to tell as far as the movement of the year in concerned. I am glad that I was able to restart the guest posting series in the middle of this year, and till now, we have had a new guest every month. 🙂 So coming to the guest for this month… I guess Ria of Kitchen Spells came by very naturally into the blog. I have been wanting to ask her to guest post but thought maybe I wasn’t ready for it more that she would’ve been! I dropped a message on our little Whassup group and within minutes, I got a message from her wanting to guest post for this month! 🙂…
Usbu Al Zainab ~ Crunchy Cheese Fingers
It is the tenth of the month, so time for the Muslim Food Blogger Challenge! Last month we completed a successful one year of this challenge, and here we are now entering into our second year, Alhamdulillah… We decided we must start this year sweet, and I had no other better option to choose than “Arabic Sweets”. The Arab world is filled with decadent, drool-worthy, tough-on-the-waistline options for sweets. Most of the desserts are very rich in every sense – either you have a lot of use of cream, loads of nuts, drizzles of sugar syrup, so on and so forth. But it is definitely an indulgence that you wouldn’t mind having and have trouble with stopping too! They are so tempting that saying a “no” after one bite is really tough. Even though I enjoy them on and off, I haven’t been really successful in making them…
Aseeda Bobbar ~ Emirati Pumpkin Wholewheat Sweet
Wishing my second home, UAE a very happy National Day #46 – Spirit of Union… I have been in UAE almost whole of my life. Even though my passport is Indian, the decision of my parents to educate us here and let us go through our life here, has caused this special attachment to this country. It’s been more than three years since my parents have said their “bye” to this country, but it doesn’t stop them from coming at least twice every year to not loose touch with this country. D’s friend’s have all retired and have gone back home, but he still wants to come and see around how life is. Life was much simpler when we were growing up. The fast paced growth of UAE at the advent of the twenty first century has changed the total face of the country. It is…
Tropical Trifle – Guest post for Love To Cook
Tropical Trifle – when you hear the name, what comes to your mind? 🙂 All tropical flavors, right? Trifle is one of my favorite dessert to make when I have a lot of guests coming. It is one of the oldest recipes on the blog (which deserves an uplift, but I am waiting for a party type gathering plus some extra time to photograph!) and I was really wondering why I never made variations and posted, apart from the Black Forest Trifle in cups, and yes, the Mango Trifle as well! This trifle screams tropical – coconut in every bite along with pineapples and cherries. The whole point is that it is so easy to put together and doesn’t take too much time. Just assemble everything, push it into the fridge and let it set during the time you concentrate on the other tasks on hand. It is…