HAPPIEST FIRST BIRTHDAY, IAN!

This post has taken me the longest to write.I really don't know where to start or what to say.I want everything to be perfect when it comes to our Ian Vaava.I see myself stretching my limits to the maximum (I always thought I knew where that maximum limit of mine was,oh well!) when it comes to doing things for our baby.I am sure it's the same with almost all parents.

Can you believe that he's been with us for more than a year now? I still very clearly remember telling you about his arrival last July. I still remember the way he looked at me when I first laid my eyes on him.His eyes were wide open and he was looking straight into mine,lying down on my chest ...all bundled up.Our bundle of joy!He was and still is, the most wonderful smelling thakkudu kuttappan!

That little darling of ours just turned the BIG ONE last Monday,22 July.The party was not until Saturday,the 27th when all our close friends came together for a Picnik Birthday Party on an Island by the Mississippi. It was good fun. Ian had a lovely evening with his friends.I don't have any photographs from the party,our photographer will send them to us,shortly. Once we recieve it, I'll share some with you all!

I baked 2 cakes for him.The Mr.Bear cake inspired from Bakeaboo was for the big bash and the other one was for his little party at home.I wanted that cake to reflect what he is. So I jotted down all his current favourite words on top of the cake, so that,we will always remember what he liked and blabbered at that age.I wanted it to look as homemade as possible, so the decor was bare minimum. The dots you see around the edges of the cake was piped when he was on my hips, so the line has gone haywire! :-)

Menu for the First Birthday Party

Carrot - Lemon Cooler

Sesame Crusted Chicken Salad Tea Sandwiches

Chinese Spring Rolls

Curried Crepes with Curried Veggie Filling

Petite Caramelised Mushroom & Onion Tarts

Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches

Veggie Sloppy Joes

Cheesy Jalapeno Cornbread

Coleslaw

Birthday Cake

LEMON - POPPY SEED OLIVE OIL CAKE

Let me tell you something other than food first. Ian Vaava took his first few unassisted steps and walked towards me last week! Ever since, he's been trying to reach his attention grabbing places on his own. Sometimes,I catch him running along the couch just barely touching it with his tiny fingers! I don't think he knows what he is doing but I am super duper excited! So is Jobin.

Now the cake. This is one of the prettiest,unadorned cakes that I've baked. I mean, just look at it. Look how marvelously speckled it is. Black dots against the lemony yellow! I found it so hard not to stare at my fat slice before eating it.

It is so beautiful,slice after slice.


This cake is super easy to make. Mainly because it's a one-bowl recipe and it does not need an electric mixer. All it needs is a wooden spoon/whisk to whip up this wonderful speckled lemony cake batter. The recipe is super simple to fix and it hardly takes any time.Then there's a twist to Melissa's recipe. It doesn't call for butter,instead, extra virgin olive oil. I was excited to try this recipe,mostly because of the olive oil part.

I wanted to know if the taste of olive oil would be strong,so I tasted some of the batter just to have an idea. It was very faint,I mean if someone else made the cake batter and asked me to taste it, I would have never guessed there was olive oil in it. On that note, let me tell you, I am an olive oil lover. I love dipping my bread into it. If you think you are not going to like it's taste, you can substitute it with another oil, like vegetable or canola. But, I really think you will like this cake as is. Try it, you will like it for sure!

LEMON - POPPY SEED OLIVE OIL CAKE
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
Zest of 2 lemons
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons plus 4 teaspoon lemon juice
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

Method: Preheat the oven to 350 F /180C. Grease and flour an 8- inch loaf tin.
In a medium bowl, rub together sugar and lemon zest until they resemble wet sand. Whisk in the buttermilk, 3 tablespoon lemon juice and the eggs. Whisk the dry ingredients into the batter followed by the poppy seeds and olive oil .Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour or until done.
As soon as the cake is warm to touch, invert it onto a cooling rack. Turn cake right side up.
Whisk together 4 teaspoon lemon juice and 1/2 cup confectioners sugar and brush it over the top and sides of the cake. Let it cool completely before slicing.

This cake, truly is wonderful. If you cannot find poppy seeds,omit them and bake. I can assure you the taste would remain the same. We adored this speckled cake,so did our friends whom we shared it with. Ian Vaava was waiting for me to finish photographing the cake so that he could dig into it. I am so happy that he enjoys whatever we give him!

INDIAN EGG CURRY / NADAN MOTTA CURRY

Some of you may have noticed that I call eggs 'Motta' instead of 'Mutta' in my mother tongue,Malayalam. We always called 'Motta' a 'Motta' at home. Initially, I was unaware of it until my school friends made fun of me whenever I said so. Anyway, I still continue calling it the same. It really doesn't matter as long whatever you make out of it turns out good!

I love pairing a motta curry with Chapathi. I can eat many many chapathi's in such instances. I am a Chapathi lover, if you didn't know that already. I can eat it 3 times a day. I also absolutely love making Chapathis at home, especially the kneading part. I equally love the portioning of the dough, rolling it out , smearing some oil, folding the dough, rolling it out into squares/ triangles/ circles depending on my mood and fancy and finally cooking it and seeing it puff up on my precious round cast iron skillet. See, I even enjoy typing out the whole Chapathi making process. I simply love it! Oh, and if you want to see that precious round cast iron skillet of mine, you can, in my 5 Minute 2 Ingredient Pizza photographs!

Now, getting on to the Motta part of the curry. This is made with hard boiled eggs. I feel the need to stress of the word 'hard' boiled eggs. It doesn't mean, the eggs are boiled until the yolks end up being rubbery, hard & chewy. I hate such eggs and always makes me want to throw up. There's a way you can make perfect hard boiled eggs.It's super simple. If you follow the steps correctly, you will always have the perfectly cooked eggs.

This curry of mine,is way too different from what Amma makes.I always fail at replicating her's here, in my kitchen. So I have to be satisfied with this version of mine, which is really good, in it's own way. One thing I hate about Motta curries when I eat out is that most people slice their onions lengthwise and don't saute it long enough that they maintain their shape and don't melt into the sauce. I like the onions and tomatoes to be diced so that they can blend into the sauce but still maintain a crunch of it's own. Yes, I'm a bit weird! Also, if you want a South Indian touch to this curry, you can garnish it with curry leaves. Or else, garnish it with cilantro!

INDIAN EGG CURRY

My own recipe

Ingredients:
4 hard boiled eggs (recipe at the end)
1/3 cup oil
2 large onions, diced
2 medium tomatoes,diced
1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
1 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 cup water
1 cup thick coconut milk OR heavy cream OR whole milk
Salt to taste
1 sprig curry leaves  OR a handful chopped cilantro
Method: Heat oil in a large pan,with sides.Once the oil is hot, add the diced onions along with a pinch of salt and saute until they turn soft. Add the tomatoes and continue cooking,mushing it up occasioanlly until all the water from tomatoes have evaporated. Add the spices and cook for 2 minutes,stirring.Add water and cook until it reduces a bit.Add coconut milk/heavy cream/whole milk and let it heat through completely. Adjust seasoning.Add the boiled & sliced eggs into it. Garnish with curry leaves/cilantro and serve hot!
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How to boil eggs perfectly, everytime: Take a saucepan with tall sides and fill three quarters of it with room temperature water/ tap water. Drop in the eggs carefully.Keep the saucepan on the stove and turn on the heat. Bring it to a rolling boil and turn down the heat to medium.Set the timer for 12 minutes. Turn off the stove and take the saucepan off it. Pour out the hot water and refill the saucepan with cold tap water and let the eggs sit in it for 5 mins. Peel the eggs and use as desired.
If you don't pour out the hot water immediately after the eggs are boiled and let it sit in there for a long time, the yolks will turn greenish-gray.

Jobin wanted me to make the egg curry in a different way but when I set out to make this, I warned him that I might deviate from that route and go the way it forms in my head.And that's exactly what happened. The curry was finger licking good.It had the richness of the coconut milk, mostly because I use the tinned coconut milk.If you like your curry to be on the thin side, add more liquid as you please. I mean, any curry recipe should act as a base for you and you can always modify it to your liking! I didn't share this with Ian Vaava as I didn't want to set his mouth on fire :-) He is too tiny to handle this amount of heat!
 

VEGAN / EGGLESS CHOCOLATE & VANILLA MARBLE CAKE

Things are all good here. How about you,all? We are very busy planning our Someone Little's Big Day,which is this month.The menu is fixed and now we have to get other things done. As the days are approaching  our Baby's Big Day,I am kind of feeling sad thinking he is no more a tiny fellow! He will be a year old ! How fast the time flies, right?
Sigh!!

I baked this cake well over 2 months ago and the photographs were still in my camera until last week. It's not that I don't get the time to write here, it's just that I chose to spend more time with Ian Vaava. He needs me much more than my blog baby!
Oh well! I changed something on the blog today. Did you see it yet? No? It's something on the right hand side bar. Okay, now that you just saw it, let me tell you... Jobin did it :-)

This cake is quite good for the fact that it doesn't use butter,milk or eggs! It's not that we prefer eggless bakes, its just that I like to try different recipes to compare with the ones I've made in the past. When I saw Hetal & Anuja bake this up, I made a note in my mind to try it out because it looked very simple and delicious!

The texture and taste for this cake is spot on. It is intensely chocolate-y and at the same time vanilla-y! The batter for both the flavours are almost the same. Look at the recipe closely and you will see what I am talking about. So it's just the mixing part that's left! I prefered making a bundt cake and topped it with some Chocolate Ganache. You can frost it or eat it plain. It is delectable, either way!

CHOCOLATE & VANILLA MARBLE CAKE
Ingredients:
Chocolate cake batter
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon coffee granules
1 cup hot water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoon oil

Vanilla cake batter
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup hot water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoon oil

Method: Preheat the oven to 350/180C. Prepare a 10-12 cup capacity bundt tin.
For both the batters, the method remains the same. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, mix together the wet ingredients.Now, combine the wet and dry together until you get a smooth batter. Once both the chocolate and vanilla batter is made,pour them alternately into the pan and swirl the cake batter with a butter knife gently, for the marbled effect. Bake for 35-40 mins or until done. Cool completely.Frost as desired.

I made this for a friend of ours when they came home for dinner,on a Friday night. They loved the cake and she asked me if it's okay if she could take some home with her! I was more than pleased to do so. Ian Vaava as always, enjoyed each crumb of this cake. I baked the same cake, again in a weeks time for Jobin's  niece's First Holy Communion. Everyone seemed to have liked it! :-)

I am hoping to be in full swing action,on the blog, very soon!
 

DEVIL'S FOOD CAKE...for me, from him(them)!

Phew! Where did our month, May go by? It was one of the busiest month's in our lives. We were travelling back and forth the whole month starting from May 3. We got home only by the last week of May and by the time we settled in and got back to our usual routine,May got over. Which also means there was a Birthday cake baked for me by my wonderful husband of 3 years and 3 months :-)

Jobin, as always reminded me that I should let him know what I wanted him to bake as my Birthday cake. This year, the reminders popped in every now and then because I am so engrossed in raising a Little Boy in our house now. I am totally in love with him . I just sit and gaze at him ...whether he is sleeping or playing . And if he happens to blabber something to me...oh! then I just go weak in my knees !

Well, I've been falling weak in my knees a little too much actually. This blog was abandoned. I never even bothered to check my page for the whole of last month,unless of course when somebody wrote to me asking for tips of certain recipes or for links to certain recipes. I don't recollect the last time I drafted a post. I don't recollect anything for that matter! I think that's the power of having a Little Man in the house!

Getting back to the cake before I forget why I am here. Since Jobin asked me again and again, I knew I better give him my list of 'wants' so that he can plan his time for baking and frosting the cake. So I chose a cake which was on my mind for a while and texted the name to him. See, we are those couples who just cannot stop texting each other even when he works just a block away from our home!

So Devil's Food Cake it was,by Nigella. It was fun watching him bake along with the baby. Of course, I was right there in the midst of all the measuring,spoons dropping down etc with my trusted camera to capture all those fun moments which we will cherish life long...and maybe encourage our Little Man to do the same,for his beloved someday!

DEVIL'S FOOD CAKE

Ingredients:
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup boiling water
9 tablespoon soft unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs

Frosting:
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cubed
11 oz dark chocolate

Method: Preheat the oven to 350F/180C and prepare 2 8inch cake tins.
In a small bowl, combine cocoa powder and brown sugar together. Add the boiling water to it and stir to combine. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy on high speed. Dribble in the vanilla and beat well to mix. Add one egg followed by a scoop of the flour mixture.Add the other egg and beat it in. Keep mixing and incorporate the remaining flour mixture. Finally, stir in the cocoa mixture. Divide the batter between the tins and bake for 30 minutes or until done.Let the cake cool completely, on a wire rack.

Frosting: In a large saucepan on low heat, bring the water,sugar and butter to a soft boil. Add the chopped chocolate and swirl the pan. Let it sit undisturbed for 1 minute. Stir the frosting so that the chocolate melts from the heat. Let it cool completely. The saucy chocolate frosting will turn super thick and glossy.

*Start with the frosting first. It will take sometime for it to thicken up. I used the refrigerator to chill it.

Frost the cake layers as you wish!

My Husband's Wife of 3 years and 3 months baked his favourite cake for his Birthday,which was in May but never got around to posting it here! I am sure she will be working on it very soon :-)

This cake was very very good. It was soft and moist. The frosting had a fudgy texture to it because of the brown sugar and it never sets hard (well, unless you freeze it!). Ian Vaava got a chunk of this chocolate-y goodness because we were trying to get a good photograph of me sharing it with him. He was very quick with the first bite that we ended up with a photograph which had nothing to do with it! So he got a second share and he had a chocolate mustache after that! He hates having any food on his face, so he promptly wiped it off...on my arms!

The cake stand that you just saw was sent to me by Jina D'cruz, a reader from Houston,Texas. Thank you so much, Jina! It's just beautiful!
 

2 INGREDIENT NO-MACHINE VANILLA ICE CREAM

Iam a person who likes to do things from scratch, especially cooking and baking. So if I have to deal with an ice cream machine to churn out some good ice cream, I think of the days I will have to face in India when I feel like making one. Same is the case with puff pastry sheets! I feel the need to make my own, thinking about the days back home. You can call me a bit obsessed...about thinking too much :)

So the other day, I bought a can of deliciousness. Sweetened Condensed Milk. I love that stuff and I remember eating a bowl full of it when I was little.Of course, I felt sick after that . I do the same even now. No, I don't eat bowl full of it, instead lick the tin clean, once the contents are poured out. And yes, I still feel sick because it can be a little too much. So I pick up my mango pickle and eat that. Then everything seems to find it's own balance.

I love reading the things written on food containers. The tin told me that it had some recipe behind it's wrapper and it did have one, this recipe. A recipe for a quick and easy ice cream. I wasn't very sure about the flavour combination it had so used my favourite choice of flavouring, Vanilla. I always use the real vanilla and stay away from imitation stuff because the real thing has so much flavour and the way it shines through the end product is amazing! Try it sometime. You will be amazed!

This ice cream, like I mentioned before has just 2 ingredients. That is if you don't count the flavouring as another ingredient.Then it becomes three.Whatever the name maybe, the method of making this ice cream and the time needed is hardly any! Of course, it needs some good time in the freezer to set up though. You can flavour it however you like. Cookie dough? Rippled Chocolate? Oreos? M & M's? You can use this for sandwiching cookies for making your own homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches! The possibilites are endless. You just have to start making it. Here's the recipe,for it.

2 INGREDIENT HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM

Ingredients:
2 cups heavy cream,chilled
1 tin (400g ) sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (or any of your choice)

Method: In a large bowl, beat the chilled cream to stiff peaks. Fold in condensed milk and vanilla. Pour the entire batter into a 1 litre capacity bowl with lid and freeze for 6-8 hours until set. Enjoy!

It was surprisingly warm today, in Minneapolis. I hope we are done with the snow for this year. So when I tried photographing the ice cream, everything was melting really fast. I think I managed to do a good job and got some photographs before it became really soft.

So that day, when Jobin came home after work, I thought of taste testing it. I gave him a scoop of it and he was quite surprised. After relishing it he asked me if it was homemade and even before I could say anything he said,'Of course, it has to be!'. That's my husband. Now,our son.He was sitting on his Appa's lap and watching the whole thing...with his mouth very wide open, almost drooling. He got his share and demanded more. Since I made it at home, I knew exactly what went into it and how safe it was for my little Vaava to have it. So he still gets his share everytime after his meal and he enjoys it to the last drop!