Ramadan and Eid, all came and went. I have no words to say. The feeling of emptiness and numbness is real. The difference in the atmosphere when the devils are tied up during Ramadan and when they are free is totally to be felt. We had a very silent Eid. On Thursday night, we went over to a friend’s house to apply some henna and came back really late, so we hardly slept for an hour and a half. Then up and awake, to get ready to go the masjid for the Eid prayers, breakfast at my ammayi’s house and eventually we stayed there for lunch too. It was my cheat day after so long, but I made sure I didn’t go overboard, hehe… Ate whatever was in offering but very limited portions. The second day, we started our Shawwal fasts. For those who don’t know, here are…
Chocolate Brownie Cake
How do you treat your wedding anniversary? I treat it more like a day for introspection. When life starts for a couple, it is all rosy, irrespective of how rocky the start may be. We started our married life on some twists and turns but we lived through it, we enjoyed through it, we took life one day at a time. 3 years later, Rasha showed up into our life. I don’t know if I will call her the turn-around point, but how much ever I think otherwise, she is. HD started going into his own route of doing business and it is the same till date. Life has been a bit too fast, with very limited time that we get to spend with each other and more often, it is a fight for that little time we get. It is not easy if the hard work you…
Brazilian Carrot Cake | Bolo De Cenoura
It’s been a few months since I have participated in the Fantastical Food Fighting challenge. The reasons were many but I wouldn’t like to loiter around it. The best part is that you can choose to participate if you feel the theme is interesting. This month’s theme was one where everything came into one – a personal favorite and a date where I had no other posts scheduled! Hehe… This month, the theme is “Carrot Cake”. I have already mentioned before that carrot cakes are my favorite – not the American style cream cheese frosted ones – though it is on my to-do list – but the homely cake umma used to make. I can sit and eat the whole cake in one sitting, if I got a chance to do that! But then that’s not how life is, right? You take and enjoy one piece at a…
Saffron Milk Cake ~ Guest Post for “Cake N Curry”
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…
Drømmekage | Danish Dream Cake
After a soup and a main course, it has to be a dessert, right? And what more than this soft, melt in the mouth cake which is so aptly titled as “Dream Cake”! While I was searching for desserts for the Scandinavian Cuisine theme for the Blogging Marathon #86, I was totally confused between which one to choose. From their chocolate cake to apple cake to the round pancakes, each seemed to be really tempting. Finally, I gave in to this cake when I saw it here. What really attracted me to baking this was the delicious coconut topping and the less fat sponge. 🙂 This cake is said to have won the a nationwide cake competition in Denmark in 1960, and ever since then has been a very well received and enjoyed cake in the country. How can’t it be a cake of dreams! A super soft…
Easy Fudge Brownies
Most of the time, fudge brownies are associated with melted chocolate, but what if you have no time to really wait for it to melt and cool? I remember mentioning that during last Eid-ul-Fitr, we had an impromptu trip to Muscat to see my friend. Despite HD telling me that we may go, I wasn’t sure and then finally he broke the ice at 9 am that day morning, that we would leave by 3:.30 pm. You can imagine my panic – I hate going empty handed, that too to a best friend’s house and I had no time to go out and buy as such. In between preparing lunch, I searched through for an easy brownie recipe and ended up on this link on King Arthur’s website. Those who have tried recipes from their site will vouch how reliable they are, so I went ahead with it,…
Cookie Butter Cake | Biscoff Cake
I have been trying to do the three-back-to-back series now every alternate month, since I am already doing the Blogging Marathon posts that operate in the same idea and I don’t want to clog up my posts unnecessarily. Hehe… This month, while running through my list of drafts, I had only one theme that came into my mind and that was “BISCOFF” or simply called, cookie butter. I had mentioned in a few posts that Biscoff is a craze now here. It is drizzled like a sauce over crepes, waffles and pancakes, made into freak-shakes, is a flavoring for soft serve ice creams, and what not! I found out Biscoff during my vegan days since it is marked as a vegan spread. Mind it that not all cookie butters are vegan, it’s only Biscoff that is. I have tried a few other brands that were better priced than…
Mary Berry’s Marble Loaf
Sometimes I forget about the last Saturday of the month, and then all of a sudden, it hits me that it is time for the book review! This time, I decided to choose a baking book that was purchased due to my admiration of the pretty woman in “The Great British Bake Off”. I don’t know if I sound lame but I never knew there was a program by that name till the news that Nadia won the title in 2015. It just kept making rounds on Facebook so I got down to watching the show on YouTube and I so loved it. It now comes under the list of programs that I binge watch when I just want to be crawled up on the couch! My eyes constantly went onto the warm and calm looking Mary Berry and I started searching more about her, only to know how…
One Bowl Chocolate Cake | Easy Chocolate Cake
This weekend, the little one turned “not-so-little”. Azza is now officially 7, so what she got as her birthday gift is a lecture where she has to start helping thaatha with her chores and start praying as well. 😀 I don’t know whether she liked it or not, and her expression gave out nothing! Hehe… Everybody would tell me that girls tend to grow up faster, and I seem to have seen it with Rasha more than Azza. Azza still acts kiddish, compared to Rasha at that age. May it’s because she is the younger one. Whatever said and done, observing that her features are changing, considering that she has lost her milk teeth and they are being replaced by rabbit like huge teeth and it is overall changing her face, makes my heart twitch a bit. Don’t we search for the childish traits in our kids’ faces?…
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…
Almond Apricot Cake
When I enrolled for the Bake-a-thon with Valli in October, I was in a lot of thought. How would the whole thing be? I have been a part of the Blogging Marathon for a few months now and it is a more themed activity, but this was thirteen days of baked goodies, with no specific theme as such. Since I had drafts available – referred to as “magic folder” by the BM team 😀 – and I thought I would be able to pull it out, I jumped into it and I am glad I took the plunge. Now looking back at all the posts I did for this marathon baking initiative, I am glad I participated in it. I sincerely hope I have done justice to it and selected the best of the baking recipes that I have tried, tested and succeeded in my kitchen. Do check out…
Coffee Cinnamon Rolls
Cinnamon rolls took a long time to grow on me. I never liked them, I really have no reason why. Almost all malls have a Cinnabon outlet here and I would walk past them covering my nose. I never liked the smell that came out of the outlet. It smells too artificial – no offense to the Cinnabon lovers out there, it’s just with me! Each time the girls would want to try, but I just would drag them away because I simply didn’t want to buy it for them. The love for cinnamon as a spice and flavor grew on me only very recently and I have to thank blogging for the same! I now love the smell of cinnamon in bakes, and at times in my tea too, but still I couldn’t get off the thought of the smell of the rolls. Hehe… I finally baked…