MIXED FRUIT SWISS ROLL...for 3 years of Blogging!

Please don't go away reading the title,pretty please!I promise you ,there will not be any speeches given on this special day. Even then, I do have to say that I'm very happy about it and I owe a big thanks to you , dear readers! I haven't been participating in any group baking that I used to for the last 2 months,  I promise you, I shall return to it very soon! :-)

Jam rolls/ Swiss rolls has been something which my aunts used to bake. We never rolled anything  sweet at home except for these yummilicious Coffee Cream Wheel .This was the time when I never quite liked anything with jam in it, so I stayed away from any such rolls. Later, when my taste buds developed I had a liking towards all these jammy treats especially My Favourite Jam Tarts  , Jam Filled Cookies and also Bakewell Tart .

When I think of it , all the veggies that I disliked when young is my favourite, now! Bittergourd was something I disliked terribly and I love it with all my heart,now! Have you observed such stuff about yourselves? I bet there are plenty for you to tell me! :-)

MIXED FRUIT SWISS ROLL
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c -1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp cornflour
5 tbsp mixed fruit jam, stirred well

Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a 9x13 inch/ swiss roll tin.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs & sugar for 12 mins, non stop.Add the vanilla and beat for another 1 minute.Add the dry ingredients and fold it in.Pour into a prepared tin and bake for 10-15 mins or until the top is golden and is springy to touch.Pull it out of the oven and unmould it onto a tea towel sprinkled with sugar.Roll it away from you, along with the towel. Hold it there for 10-15 second.Open the roll and let it cool completely.Spread the jam and roll once again.
Slice and serve!

Verdict: I have lost the number of times I have used this basic sponge recipe given to me by Amma. It's so versatile.You can roll it, layer it,mould it or better still, eat it plain! This roll was very very soft and we really liked it!

FROSTED OREO COOKIE CAKE SLICES ...delicious!

Are you all Oreo lovers? I bet many of you just shook your head and said, No! I was one among you all till I tasted the ones we get in US. It is very delicious and just cannot be compared with the ones we get in India. I have no idea how can you make it so tasteless, it really taste like chalk to me, not that I've eaten chalk before, you know,just for you to get an idea! :)

I baked this cake 2 months ago and it was photographed with an intention of making an appearance here which it never did until today. It's a very basic cake recipe where in the cookie crumbs are added. When I took a bite of it, I thought to myself that it would have been 1000 times better if I had made with the REAL Oreos, the ones which tastes like a piece of heaven in your mouth. I love the double stuff! Nevertheless this cake and the yummy icing tasted fabulous!

Look at how grainy the cake is! I absolutely loved the colour the cookies gave to the cake and the icing. I got this recipe from Amma's twin sister Daisy a.k.a Daisy Mummy . She got it from someone whom I've never met so cannot give you the exact source of it. Now you must be wondering why do I go in detail to tell you the source of each recipe. It's just because I've been taught to give credit where and when it's due ;) I always write the name of the person from whom I got a recipe, next to the recipe. It's a habit that I cultivated from a very long time, even before these food blogs came into existence! :)

FROSTED OREO COOKIE CAKE SLICES 
Ingredients:
For the cake:
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp Vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 c milk
7 Oreo's crushed with hands

Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a 9x9 inch square tin.

Sift together the flour & baking powder.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar till creamy. Add the eggs and Vanilla and beat till fluffy.Add the dry ingredients and milk alternately ,starting and ending with flour. Fold in the crushed cookies.Pour this batter into the prepared tin and bake for 25-30 mins or till done.

For the Oreo butter frosting:
1 c sugar, powdered
1 c butter
4 Oreos, crushed with hands

Method:
In a small bowl, beat together sugar and butter till fluffy and pale. Stir in the cookie crumbs and spread it evenly over the cake. Cover the sides too, if you'd like .

Verdict: A very good cake with an equally good easy icing! Try it, dear Oreo lovers and be Oreo happy!

So as I mentioned in my previous post , there was a Cook-Out with me, planned by the YWCA,Kannur. It was  a fund raising event and I am so happy that I could contribute. There were 51 attendees for my class (my biggest number till date!) and I was very happy to cook for all of them!! :)  This time around, Amma was my assistant! :-D

Menu: Mini Cheese Pasta Rolls ,Easy Rice Roti's,Murgh Methi Malai ,Coffee-Chocolate Triangle Cake  & Vanilla Pannacotta with Pomegranate Sauce .

Tomorrow would be my last session of classes in Kannur and I am ending it on a sweet note with a luscious Cheesecake,layered and filled Shortbreads,some Scones and a creamy Pudding with a fruit sauce! A reader of mine, Maya, will be joining us tomorrow to learn from me :) I sincerely hope she finds what she came looking for :)

MEDIA MENTION & A COOK OUT!

Ibelieve that a photograph can speak volumes more than words do. Do you agree? Even if you don't,please agree this time as I am quite lazy to type out today :) You would have read about it here before  and it was always been a dream of mine to be featured on Vanitha as that was one magazine I grew up reading, even though it was Amma who subscribed for it :)

This article appeared on the current issue of Vanitha and I was so excited about it. Amma saw it first and she soaked it all in before Appan could see or else they both would have been having a tug of war with the magazine. Later Appan decided to surprise me and he shuffled up the pages. But it was long before I woke up. They both waited thinking I would come down soon and since that didn't happen,Appan decided to come up and wake me :-)

He just whispered something to me and I ran downstairs to see it! :) It was such a happy day for Amma and myself as we both were featured in it along with our recipes.All our phones have been ringing non-stop for the last 3 days with relatives and friends ringing up to congratulate us.Our family friend and fellow food blogger,Rinku Naveen , surprised me with her Kalathappam that evening. She came home and rang up to tell me that she is waiting outside :) It is one of my  favourite tea time snack.

As you can see above, there's a Cookery Class hosted by yours truly arranged by the YWCA ,Kannur on 3 October.These posters have been stuck on walls here and it's so funny when people recognise you after that!  I have no idea how many people are going to be there but I know one thing for sure, you will get to see a snap of my class :-) The menu has been fixed and sent to the organisers. So, now all I have to do is go take the class :-)

Have a good weekend!

COFFEE- CHOCOLATE TRIANGLE CAKE...for an 18th BIRTHDAY!

It's my little brother's birthday and he turned 18 today. He's grown up so much from the last time I saw him. He is 6'3" now but is still the same soft hearted little boy we know. He still irritates me the same way every time I bake a cake or every time he wants me to bake a pizza for him. I was doing the swirls on his birthday cake very calmly and there he comes asking for a big piece of the cake. I told him 'NO!, you can't today!' and he goes,'I want that cake today and not tomorrow, so give it to me!'. Argh! That irritating little brother! ;) He even warned me that he will be attacking the cake while I am fast asleep dreaming of all things possible. That ended my hope of sleeping peacefully last night :-D

Oh yes, in our house we all know what cake we are getting for our birthdays because we cannot hide it from each other as we have just one fridge which is raided by all of us for some goodies or the other every now and then!
This is a technique I've been waiting to try from atleast 13-14 years now and today was that day! It's a very very simple technique and I'm up for these things anytime! You would have seen that in my Checkerboard Cake  & Honeycomb Cake . Call me crazy but I love standing near the cake analyzing how to slice it so that I can get the design I have in mind. You will find me walking around the cake, bending down to get it to eye level, standing up scratching my head...as if it's an experiment. Oh yes! all these are my little experiments :)

I saw this cake many many moons ago for the first time in my favourite little town called Panjim, Goa. It was in my dream store called 'Pastry Cottage'. Me and my cousin,Tia, the newly-wed now, went there together and I was in a complete paradise. I must have stood there and gazed at all the different varieties it had to offer and the one thing which caught my complete attention was the 'Chocolate Pyramid' cake. I stood there and wondered how on earth did the baker manage to get those vertical stripes when Amma make horizontal ones.

I got out of the store with a vision in my mind...If I ever open up a Cake shop, this is how it would be. Really, it was my wonderland. I wanted to go there this time when we went to Goa but we were so hard pressed for time with all the wedding preparations, rehearsals and above all, meeting all my family on Amma's side. We all stayed at the Panjim Inn and had a gala time. We are quite large with 75 members and still counting so you can imagine what fun it would have been to get together and stay under the same roof. I pity the neighbours! ;-)

The beautiful crockery you see in the photographs are my Grandmother's .Appan came up with this brilliant idea of searching through her crockery collection to match the cake for today :-) She has this amazing collection of the best crockery possible and this is just 1/5th of it. I inherited her craze for crockery and cooking :-) The one you see above is handpainted and Made in England and they were bought by her in late 60's early 70's.There are plenty more in her collection and some of them are so exquisite that we can never find such pieces now.I'm sure she would have been gleaming if she was alive to see this here. I bet she is the one who is pushing me into all these things that lead me to winning the title,'Pachakarani '. Even Amma believes the same :)

This cake was made in a jiffy with a sponge cake & a ganache recipe which is engraved on my brain. Wake me up at whatever time of the night  you want and ask me to bake a cake for you, I'll bake you this one :-) I must have baked this sponge some 100 times and it's worked for me always! Just make sure you beat the batter on high continuously for 12 mins...no breaks for phone calls please ;-)Let me not try and explain and then confuse you with the how-to for the 'triangular' part of the cake. I learnt this by reading a lot of material from the library all this while and finally found a link online which will make things a LOT easier for you :) I should have checked for it online instead of all the work I made my brain do :-)

COFFEE - CHOCOLATE TRIANGLE CAKE
You will need:
1 large Coffee sponge cake (Recipe source  -Amma)
1 large portion of Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:
For the Coffee sponge cake:
6 large eggs
1 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour/maida
2 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour
1 tsp instant coffee powder

Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C .
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar on high for 12 minutes resulting in a very thick mousse like batter. Sift the dry ingredients over it and fold it in.
Pour the batter into a prepared rectangular cake tin and bake for 30-35 mins or till the skewer inserted comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then flip it over onto a cooling rack and cool completely.

Once cooled, cut the cake into half horizontally and then into 3 which will give you 6 small rectangular pieces of cake.

Ingredients
For the Chocolate Ganache:
250 ml fresh cream/heavy whipping cream
250 g dark chocolate

Method:
Chop the chocolate into equal sized pieces and reserve them in a heatproof bowl.
Bring the cream to a boil and then pour it over the chocolate pieces. Let stand for 3-4 mins.
Stir till you get a nice chocolate-y cream. You can chill it for 15-20 mins to get a thicker consistency which is what I prefer.

Verdict: This cake was superb! I know it's just a plain coffee sponge and a good ganache, but it was really really good. That's because the cake layers were super thin and every layer was sandwiched with a thick layer of ganache which resulted in the melt-in-your-mouth texture. I will not recommend soaking the layers for this kind of a cake because it will be super messy to cut to form a triangle. Therefore use a cake which is not dry.

We loved it! Appan said,'This cake is awesome!How did you make it so good?'. Amma asked for a second piece and knowing the cake-hater that she is, it sure must have been good. Ritchie, the birthday boy, a man of very few words stood there and gobbled up 2 pieces in a row. I had my share of this cake after the photo session was over and Ritchie found me smiling and he asked me why :-) The entire cake was cut and devoured in less than 20 mins!

I'm pleased with the photographs here because none of them were edited! :-)

POSTCARD FROM KASHMIR - LAKE NAGEEN

Iam back home,in Kannur. Got here late last night and I still feel that I am moving even if I sit on a chair :) The whole trip of ours (Amma & myself) was so much fun! We had a wedding to attend in Goa and then the reception in Delhi, so we thought of visiting our relatives and family who lived in between :) So for the last 2 weeks we travelled from Kannur to Goa to Delhi to Haryana to Agra to Gwalior to Kashmir back to Delhi and finally back to Kannur.

It definately feels good to be back home, to stretch your legs and to sleep on the same bed you have been sleeping for years together.I didn't know we missed our home much until Amma started making lunch this afternoon. She was sauteeing Tindoora/Kovakka for a  Mezhukkupuratti and our home was filled with the aroma of coconut oil! Seriously, there's no place like home!

So here's a photograph I took from Lake Nageen. Please do not mistake it for the Dal lake which is the most popular one among the Indian tourists. Lake Nageen is less crowded and therefore is preferred more amongst the foreign tourists.We decided to go there because of it being less crowded. Actually we were the only tourists who were there at that time therefore it was a very pleasant experience.The 'shikara' (the boat you see in the photograph)is very comfortably done up that we can actually sleep in it :)

I shall be back with some more photographs for all those who haven't been to the 'Paradise On Earth' - Kashmir.

Till then,

THE 'TITLE' I EARNED...PACHAKARANI 2011

There's so much to tell you all, so very much! Sadly that will have to wait as I'm travelling right now covering 3-4 states in a day's time, in India.I'm off to Kashmir tomorrow to spend sometime with my family, Jobin's sisters family. So when I return, I shall update you with some pictures that I took from here and there during my small trip. Also, I must tell you that I am so badly tanned by the Goa sun! It seems it was raining there all this while but the days we were there, the sun was shining gloriously and I feared I would look like a pakora in my bestest cousin's bridesmaid dress, which I did in the end :-)

Okay, now about the picture you just saw above. Some of you must have read it on newspaper or read about it on Facebook There was a competition that me and Amma had enrolled  for and we were lucky enough to be selected together. It was such a happy moment for the two of us ! There was a preliminary round where I baked a Triple Veggie Quiche & BBQ Chicken Meat balls. I came first in the 'Malabar' zone and was qualified for the finals at the State level. Amma came second. Then the finals were held in Kottayam on Sept. 6th at Windsor Castle. I made my forever favourite Chatti Pathiri & Mocha Chocolate Mascarpone Verrine. Those were my winning dishes. I never thought I'd win. I just wanted to participate along with Amma as it's very rare for a mother-daughter duo to reach finals together. All these dishes were made on the spot so we really have to prove it to them that we can do it :)

The title I earned is 'Pachakarani 2011' which means I'm the Queen of Cooking for 2011 at the Kerala state level. It was conducted by a very popular Malayalam magazine 'Vanitha' in collaboration with Whirlpool.It's such a huge honor for me as there were so many seasoned cooks competing along with me for that title. We were judged by the Executive Chefs of Taj & Dietitians. I've been to the finals of the same 4 years ago in 2008 where I came 5th. This time, I was able to prove better :-) I am so happy for Amma too since she bagged the 2nd place :) We were the most happiest souls on earth that day.

When this photograph came on the newspaper, we were travelling so Appan had to scan and send it to me yesterday once he reached home :)

Will be back with more updates,shortly! I hope all of you are doing well! Thanks to all who wrote to me after seeing this article on the newspaper :-) You guys make me feel so loved & special!! Thank you :)