BIRTHDAY UPDATES!

Hello everyone,hope you all are doing good! Every time I tell you guys that I will be regular here, I end up doing just the opposite! We were in Kannur for the whole of Summer and got back about a month ago. While we were there, I was literally buried in orders for my Doughnuts, Brownies,Jams, Cakes & Desserts! It was a lot of fun and work. I got to meet a lot of you this time when you came to pick up your orders, at various Malls, at Supermarkets etc. It felt really good to put a face to your name!

Before we left for Kannur, Jobin & I celebrated our birthday's in the month of May. We baked each others cakes, like we do every year. The kids were really excited about it, more than us actually. There's something about cake cutting & candle blowing for them and of course, for us. Turing a year older with my beloved family around was definitely the best way to celebrate my birthday! For his birthday, I baked a Fresh Pineapple Cream Cake with a naked cake style appearance of sorts. And for mine,they baked a moist Yellow Cake with Chocolate Buttercream. This year, I was actually home for my birthday,so we celebrated mine a few days early,before we left. :-)

While we were in Kannur, we celebrated Ian's 6th Birthday. It was a small birthday party with a few of my niece's & nephew's. Ian wanted a Mario cake this time and I was pretty sure that we will not get anything related to that in Kannur. So I carried a few things along with us when we went home. Jobin had come down around Ian's birthday and we travelled extensively and reached Kannur a day before his birthday. So basically, I had only one day to prep and host the birthday party. The menu was designed around what Ian enjoyed the most. Since Amma was around to help with everything, it was such a breeze. The only person I can work smoothly with, is Amma. No one else understands my workflow or how I think in my head!

Menu for Ian's Birthday

Mario Birthday Cake 

(Chocolate cake with Chocolate Buttercream)

Guava Punch

Monaco with Onion & Garlic topping

BBQ Chips

Chicken Lasagna

Batura

Chicken Ghee Roast

Channa Masala

My little brother Ritchie, now works in Dubai and was home for a month while we were home. So we all got to spend some quality time together and the kids had a great time having their Uncle around them. His birthday is on September 25th and since he would be spending it alone, I felt like celebrating his day while we were together. So I made a Chocolate cake layered with cream cheese frosting, covered with Nutella buttercream and finally covered with Chocolate Ganache with little swirls of Nutella buttercream on top. When Appa asked me the name of the cake, I was lost and he was like,' If you needed to make this again,do you know how?'. I nodded in agreement! :-)

Then when we got back home in Minneapolis, I started planning for Zara's 2nd birthday party. I knew I wanted it to be a Tea Party,so Tea Party it was! We had a bunch of our good friends over and Zara had a really nice time! There were a lot of kids this time,which is always a good idea, so the noise level was really high with joyful screams & laughs! We have a life size playhouse in our backyard and therefore, most of the kids were playing inside it. The weather also co-operated so all in all, it was a spectacular day!

Menu for Zara's Tea Party

Teddy Bear Cake

(Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Buttercream)

Madeleines

Strawberry Cheesecake Macarons

Glazed Orange Scones

Sausage Rolls

French Onion Puffs

Cucumber Cream Cheese Bites

Egg Salad Tea Sandwiches

Waldorf Chicken Tea Salad Sandwiches

Malabar Chatti Pathiri Bites

Stuffed Paneer Buns

Peach Iced Tea

Passionfruit Lemonade

It really feels good to come back here and share some photographs and updates about our life in general. Ian is in First Grade this year and loves going to school. Zara is one talkative child! She speaks non stop, fluent Malayalam so it's so much fun to have her around during the day while Ian is in school. She is a big helper and loves to do the chores I give her around the house. If you really like to catch upon more about us, please follow me on Instagram where I share a LOT of snippets from our daily lives!

I hope you all had a fabulous Summer and is ready for FALL! It's been a really cold day here today. Brr!