carrotsandcherries

After lot of thinking, I finally finished my second daring bakers challenge. I was thinking whether to do this month's challenge or not, because there was already lot of baking that was going on here at home. Mostly for the Christmas gifts :) (I really hope that they enjoyed it .......) Two days back I finished baking the stollen late after we had finished eating dinner. I made it eggless, shaped it in the traditional shape and I made only 1/6 th of the original recipe....yes I did scale down all the ingredients ! I wasnt so happy about the result, the bread was eatable, a bit dry and it looked like I should have shaped it into a loaf. So below are the ingredients that I used to make the stollen, All purpose flour - 130 gms Luke warm water - 10 ml + 30 ml Active dry yeast - 4 gms Milk - 40 ml Mascarpone cheese - 25 gms (I used this in place of butter) Raw cane sugar (brown sugar) - 20 gms Salt - 1/8 tsp Cinnamon powder - 1/8 tsp Orange zest - 2 pinches Vanilla extract - 2/3...

Cheers !!!! to all the people who never give up in spite of facing several failures :) This is so apt for someone trying to make macarons :P One day, I found these "glamorous" looking photos of a dessert on one of the food blogs, it was neither a cookie nor a cake. Something so different, that tempted me to give it a try (to make it !). I say glamorous because, it looks so attractive with the colour combinations of the shell and the filling / ganache. It tempts you to just come and have a little bite...... I will melt away in you mouth it says.....hehe The more and more I read about it, the more I was lured to making it. I have made it for 3 times till now. The first time I made it I had not read so much, I did not realise that I had to age the egg whites (very stupid of me indeed !!!!). I used the fresh ones and even thought the taste was fine, they were flat and it had a shell but the bottom were like spread and basically flat big feet ! My husband and myse...

Pizza .......hmmm I have made it from scratch for like 3 times in my life. This time the pizza came out well ...yaay !!!!  ahem ..... excuse me, just got a bit excited. Bread is a bit tricky to make. Baking is new to me, I will not say completely but it is. I wanted to prepare pizza exactly for 2 persons and voila !..I had it, - I scaled down all the ingredients - Changed the steps of baking, because I do not have a pizza stone and the pizza was not quite having the taste. and I did get a decent pizza. Finally !!!! I did everything by hand, no machine ! Basic pizza dough - For 2 pizzas(thin crust) - 27 x 18 cm All purpose flour - 200 gms plus dusting Salt - 1/3 plus 1/4 tsp (we will use it together, easier for measurement) Active dry yeast - 1/3 tsp Olive oil - 1 tbsp Water, chilled - 140 ml Sugar - 1 tsp 1. Mix all the dry ingredients together and then pour in the oil-water mixture and combine to a sticky dough. 2. Knead till the dough is smooth, it leaves the s...

This is a continuation of the last blog (Daring cooks challenge). This is one of those very simple tasty dishes. This is what we need, Colocasia / arbi / sembu - 300 gms dry coconut - 1/8 cup shelled, peeled and dry roasted peanuts - 1/4 cup green chillies - 2 (dont get scared ..... they were not at all spicy, I could just eat them directly !!) onion, medium size, finely chopped - 1 garlic - 1 big clove, finely grated or even paste will be good (I was lazy :P) Cumin seeds - 1/3 tsp Corriander powder - 1/3 tsp oil - 1 1/2 tsp salt - to taste method: 1. Cook the colocasia, peel it, slice in into roundels and let them dry. Dont try to use them immediately because the dish will become slimy. 2. Coarse grind the peanuts and dry coconut. 3. Heat oil in a pan, add the cumin, garlic and slit green chillies; fry for 10 seconds. Add in the onions and fry till the onions are well cooked. 4. Add the corriander powder and mix. Then add the colocasia mix well, add the ground...

This is my first daring cooks challenge and this is a very quick post. I made the simple poached egg using the recipe given  here . I served it for dinner with herbed garlic-dal rasam (South Indian soup) and colocasia fry. Here is how it looked, Thanks for visiting my blog :)

It is snowing, freezing and raining and...... it looks like mother nature is a bit confused......... :P The temperatures are ranging anything between -4 to 2 °C here. The wind is chilly, but not quite like last year. I have become so lazy because of all this and I don't even feel like stepping out of the house. Winter is one season that makes every person feel lazy, tired (hey, I am becoming downright lazy now a days ! too bad.....) Enough of that lazy talk :P.... I have been dreaming food ! (now that is something different ........I mean not so normal in my life). Even though I admit that I am a big time foodie, that is not something I have ever dreamt about, I mean different sorts of combinations just whizzing away like crazy in your head. And you looking for opportunities to test them. Well, I am still in the process of testing those combinations. While all this was going on, there were two egg yolks chilling out in the refrigerator. Now I had to do something with them and wh...