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I have been away for long yet again. This time I do not wish to offer any excuses. It’s sheer LAZINESS. Well if I may say, the weather is also partly to be blamed for my hibernation. I am so frustrated – it is supposed to be Spring but the weather here has been absolutely unforgiving. [...]
Satisfying a picky eater is not an easy task. Little A hates veggies, so I try different ways to incorporate them in her diet. I add grated carrots in Savoury Pancakes which she eats with no fuss. Similarly I add grated Daikon, carrots,spinach,beets in tortillas( to the dough). Pumpkin puree comes to help in [...]
I have been absconding from the blogging world for over a month now. We were busy moving and with all the packing, unpacking and setting up, things were just crazy. My little one kept removing everything I packed, making me rework multiple times. I had a tough time packing her toys…she was so mad at [...]
CROISSANT is arguably one of my favorite pastries and it can make me drool any time of the day! Simply love this crescent shaped buttery pastry. Usually Croissant and Puff Pastry are considered to be most difficult to bake and I was under the same impression for a very long time. Over the past two [...]
Off late I have been busy with too many things. Sadly, baking and blogging weren’t the top priorities.It was Valentine’s Day celebration all over the blogging world,I saw so many wonderful recipes, posts, photographs and I just couldn’t resist myself in joining the bandwagon. I know I am late, but then what the heck I [...]
January is usually a month of New Year resolutions and staying healthy is one of the most common one. Gyms record the highest number of new memberships. True to the spirit of this season I have made an attempt(yet another!)to be health conscious. Apart from completely switching to olive oil, I have tried to minimize [...]
I am sure each of us has one or the other food craving? Isn’t it? There are times when I have the most irresistible urge to try out something and would probably go mad if I can’t have it! I still recall vividly during my initial stages of pregnancy when I had a sudden craving [...]
I must confess that if it was not for Daring Baker’s Challenge I wouldn’t have “dared” to bake so many things. Even in my wildest of dreams I wouldn’t have thought about making-Armenian Nazook,Batternberg Cake,Dutch Crunch Bread,Povitica….and so on. DBC is such a wonderful platform to give folks an opportunity to pursue and hone their [...]
Subzero Wind Chill Grips Midwest – MN endures tremendous amount of cold weather. So far this winter was a mild one, we had only one subzero low all winter!.But now Sunday through Tuesday is supposed to be the coldest days in the last four years.It’s about -15F/-19C now and going to be 3F/-16C tomorrow. I [...]
The WHOLE GRAIN bug seems to have caught me too. It’s been a while that I have been thinking of switching to whole grains but somehow it never happened. A few weeks back while shopping at Whole Foods I was overwhelmed looking at different kinds of flours available there. I immediately bought – rye, spelt [...]
Winter here is characterized by cold and sub zero temperature. Dec,Jan and Feb are peak winter months. Surprisingly the weather hasn’t been bad as expected. It doesn’t seem like January so far. The weather is going to be great the entire week; it’s in 30F’s. Wow am I dreaming or what??:) I am not a [...]
We as a family love Indian food. My sister in law had come over to visit us and I was in a cooking spree. One of the things that she wanted to have before she left was an Indianized Pizza. So I made her a “Vegetable Pizza with Indian spices”. I made the pasta sauce [...]
Wish you all a very Happy and a Prosperous New Year! Phew! Time just flies. My husband and I were talking about the year that went by so quickly. The year for me started with the birth of my little nephew followed by an eventful spring and fun filled summer! We made sure we were [...]
Few months back, I was on a shopping spree at my favorite store – Sur la table, I had picked up two Panettone Papers. It has been my dream to bake one at home. I had the perfect recipe, all the ingredients and more importantly the time to bake, but it was sheer laziness that [...]
Snow Storm today….more than a feet of snow already and it’s not over yet. This reminds me of a similar snow storm two years back at a time when we were expecting our little one. I vividly recall the tense face of my husband who had to shovel our drive way every two hours just [...]
I love the Holiday season – its fun,festive and everyone’s just happy during this time of the year.Starting from Costumes+Halloween party + Candies to thanksgiving+ doorbusters+blackfriday shopping to Cakes+ Santa+ lights +some more shopping and last but not the least the brand new year – A New beginning , a New Hope. can this get [...]
The other name for Procastination is “me”…lol all I wanted was a Summer break….soon it became a fall break and now I had to push myself hard to get back to blogging before a longggg winter break.Our Summer was well spent,enjoyed every bit of it. Wish it lasted for long, its freaky 18F|-8C now. I [...]
Empanadas it is ! Empanadas are something that’s very common in my house. Most often I have made the fried ones with a simple and delicious potato filling. I have baked a few times too, but the fried ones have always been our favorite. This time when I saw the empanadas challenge in the DBC [...]
Guess my break was longer than I expected it to be.Both my husband and my daughter were unwell in between and then once they got better I was occupied with too many things.Blogging completely took a back seat. Here I am, back now with this month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge. Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host [...]
We got our little one’s ears pierced when she turned one. Much to my surprise, it was rather a simple process that took less than a minute. She being asleep made the job even easier. Just when I thought that I had knocked off an important milestone in my daughter’s life, one of her earrings [...]
BATTENBERG CAKE is a very light sponge cake with checkered patterns. The cake is covered with Marzipan and when sliced you’ll see the different sponge colors. The very common one is with pink and yellow squares (said to represent the four princes of Battenberg).I have had this Cake earlier,but never knew it by its name. [...]
I am sure each of us has some recipes that never turn out right; well at least I do have a few. To start with I can never make good kebabs using lentils. Have tried and wasted enough and now given up. I have also never made right textured caramel… End up thinking “did I [...]
CLAFOUTI pronounced as kla-fu-te is a French Country dessert and is very easy to prepare. Since Bing cherries were in season, I couldn’t think of anything other than “Cherry Clafoutis”. Oh boy working with the cherries was a nightmare; I am talking about pitting it. I don’t know if its just me or is it [...]
I really wish I had a magic wand that would easily change things!. Hmmm guess that’s too much to ask for. All I need is some energy to charge me up. I just recovered from Bronchitis and now little “A” is down with cold and fever. Poor thing is so tired and wants me next [...]
We can’t seem to get enough of California. It was just last month that we were at San Diego and Los Angeles and this time it was SFO. We were there to visit our friends and it was so much fun. The weather was perfect. It had the hustle and bustle of New york and [...]
Challah and me – I have baked a three strand braided Challah before and thought this would be a fairly easy challenge. I went through photographs and videos by Ruth and was intrigued by the six and the four braided round ones. My dough rised perfectly and I was super thrilled going to the next [...]
HONEY CAKE brings back a lot of fond memories. There was always a competition in studies between my brother and me. Who ever scored higher marks would always be treated with the yummiest Honey cakes. I dont know why but back then my family was crazy about these cakes. So on the day of our [...]
I am an avid follower of Ben’s blog – Whats Cooking Mexico?. One thing that clearly stands out in his blog is his ability to relate to the end reader and provide a wealth of valuable information. His blog gives you a whole new perspective on not just the food but the culture and tradition. [...]
I am a big fan of Mexican cuisine, well who isn’t ? I came across Ben’s blog while searching for authentic Mexican recipes long back.I wasn’t into serious blogging then. A few months back,I got to his blog through one of the guest posts that he had written for another blogger. From then on I’ve [...]
I have been attending the Festival of Nations(FON) for the last few years. The FON is the largest and longest running (this year was their 80th year) multi-cultural event in Minnesota celebrating cutural diversity with food,music, ethnic dances, Bazaars etc. It is held at the St.Paul RiverCentre,downtown St.Paul, MN during the first weekend of May. [...]
We took a small vacation to San Deigo and LA. With my little one settled down well, my routine is fairly predictable now. It was a great escape from the monotonous daily routine. The best part of San Deigo is its beautiful weather, year around with an average of 70 F. Days are warm, evenings [...]
Just a while back we baked the flaky Croissants from Paris, crunchy Dutch Crunch Bread from Netherlands, lovely Povitica a sweet bread from Croatia, which by far has been my favorite kind of Bread. And now its time for another stunning delicacy and this one is from Armenia. When it comes to Daring Bakers Challenge [...]
Whipped Cream is something which kids definetly love. As a kid,I used to love the cream biscuits actually used to just eat up the cream filling and throw away the biscuits. My little one is no different. She does the same with Oreo cookies. The reason I chose to use a whipped cream fillng for [...]
Pita is a kind of a bread which is very popular in the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries. It is a round pocket bread which when baked puffs up and flattens as it cools. A very popular greek food is Falafel Sandwich were the falafels are stuffed inside the pita bread.This is one of my [...]
Stir Crazy – Fresh Asian Grill is an all new restaurant opened in MN,USA recently. This place is located inside Mall of America in Bloomington. They focuses on Pan Asian Cuisine and have a varied menu. Though I am a vegetarian, I can relate to non vegetarian menu to some extent. Even [...]
Dutch Crunch doesn’t refer to the type of bread, but rather the topping that is spread over the bread before baking. In Dutch it’s called Tijgerbrood or “tiger bread” after the tiger-like shell on the bread when it comes out of the oven. The final product has a delightful sweet crunch to [...]
Scotland is famous for their exotic Whiskies, but have you heard about their delicious Butter Shortbread? We picked the Walker’s Scottish Pure Butter Shortbread a few years back and both of us loved it instantly. Now my li’l one has taken a liking for it too.With the right amount of sweetness along with the perfect [...]
When it comes to Baking often times the prepared items are sweet, remarked the Husband!. He was suggesting if I could make him a snack preferably non sweet and healthy. So after pondering a while I decided to come up with something….ended up being ” Spinach and Cheese Savory Buns”. It tastes best when fresh [...]
I have been working on changing my blog a little basically the layouts,designs and themes. Initially, while setting up this site, I had some help but not any more. Its quite fun to learn new things,whack my brains and work on things on my own.I am not a techie and all these html,css coding is [...]
Povitica ( pronounced as Po-va-teet-za) is nothing but a sweet bread with a nut filling. A dough made with flour and yeast. It is then rolled and stretched out as thin as possible. The walnut filling is spread, its rolled and then baked in a bread loaf pan.It is also known as Nutroll, Potica, Kalachi [...]
Similar to Puff Pastry, making Croissants from scratch is quite a challenge. It takes hours to make, involves a lot of effort, but end of the day when you have a bite of these gorgeous croissants,each and every minute spent baking, makes it worth it! Rugelach and Croissants are my all time favorites. I never [...]
The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at Chocoley offered an amazing prize for the [...]
To identify subtle difference between two seemingly similar things is an art in itself. Especially in food,there could be so many dishes with similar ingredients,texture,appearance yet there is a difference. Should I say subtle? While I try experimenting different cuisines on my guinea pig( read Husband)how I wish he knew what exactly [...]
Frasiers is something that I came across the first time at the DBC forum. And I was quite thrilled to bake one. But I must say this wasn’t the best cake I have ever baked. I wasn’t quite happy the way my Frasier looked, no doubt it tasted excellent but the look wasn’t quite appealing. [...]
Better late than Never – I didn’t want to miss out on this month’s challenge too. Somehow managed to work on it today. My site was hacked,took some time to figure it out. Its up now and here is my post. Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. [...]
The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. There is something about Coffee Cakes,the more I taste the more tempting it has been for me to experiment. A Classic Coffee Cake [...]
The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. There is something about Coffee Cakes,the more I taste the more tempting it has been for me to experiment. [...]
They say “time is what prevents everything from happening”.Well I blame it to “time” too.Of late I have been taking too many breaks,have been too very busy with things. Cooking,Baking,Reading,Blogging and everything interesting has taken a back seat. I somehow managed to force myself and participate in most of the Daring Baker’s [...]
