Pinku-Enchanted Life

Having an infant in the house means you get used to waking up at odd hours and acting as if nothing is amiss. Today the infant was actually kind and gave me about six hours straight night sleep (a huge rarity these days when the normal is to get up every two hours) so when he wailed at 5:30 and wanted a feed I got up in an instant. Having fed the baby and put him back to sleep I noticed the time was almost six and sleeping now meant being late for work so I decided to bake instead. I had just baked a winter fruit cake (Orange) and now I wanted to try my hands on a winter vegetable; the red juicy carrots. There was only one hitch I had run out of eggs. That is when I remembered the flax seeds which have been lying unused for a while now. Here are the ingredients I gathered: 1 cup white flour (maida) 1.5 cup grated carrots (the red juicy ones) Half cup powdered sugar (take a lil less if the carrots are really sweet) Half cup olive oil 2 tbsp flax seed powder 2 tbsp curd 1 tsp baking powd...

My toddler is hyper active and over intelligent so time and again we are told to keep her occupied with multiple tasks that engage her both mentally and physically. Finding time from all the household chores to spend time with the kid becomes a challenge and the best solution I have found is to get her involved in what I am doing. Baking is one of my much loved activities during winters and so from an early age the girl has helped me bake (she is all of 4.5 years right now). Whisking is her special task and she hates handing over the whisk to anyone. Once when her dad baked me a cake on my birthday, she tasted it and commented that, 'its good, but would have been better if I had done it'. So coming back to the point, winters have set in and the past weekend we got out our baking stuff and got ready to get happy. Oranges are the girl's special love and she has been looking forward to the fruit hitting the market so we chose that as the flavor we wanted to experiment with. We...

The four year old fancies herself as Suzuka the intelligent girl friend of the ever whining Nobita from the Doraemon series. Amongst the many abilities of Suzuka who is a brave, compassionate and intelligent girl is her ability to bake cookies. So when Aarini decides she wants to do an activity she has to but of course choose cookie making as the ideal activity to indulge in.  I picked a simple recipe I have been meaning to try out for a while now and provided her the ingredients and stayed with her as my lil baker went about with full zeal. Waiting for the cookies to bake 18 minutes is a long time for a 4 year old. Recipe: 1 cup whole wheat (atta) 1/2 cup powdered sugar 2 tsp cardamom powder 1/2 cup ghee and olive oil ( I mixed both as I was short on ghee) Some chopped almonds for garnishing  Sieve the atta and cardamom powder together and keep aside.  In a separate vessel mix the oil-ghee combo with the powdered sugar and whisk till a creamy consistency is achieved....

Brownies are those gooey chocolaty things that one digs into with or without reason. To have a brownie is sheer indulgence. The high chocolate content gives me the perfect kick and while I will eat only a small piece of cake, a brownie is always in the bigger is better category. So it happened that I was holding onto a cupful of rum soaked dry fruits & spices which were leftovers from the Christmas cake.  I didn't want to bake more plum cake for two reasons. One the process is lengthy and secondly I had baked quite a few in December and didn't feel like doing it again. A brownie seemed a better alternative. I replaced the usual walnuts with the soaked fruits and hoped it wouldn't be too weird a taste. Well the outcome was a finger licking good brownie with just a hint of rum to take its addictive qualities a notch higher. Ingredients: 125 gm Maida (white flour) 1 TSP Baking powder 200 gm i.e half tin condensed milk 3 TBSP Butter 2 TBSP Cocoa Powder (I used Cadbury's...

Christmas for me is incomplete without some serious plum cake eating. Since for the past year or so I have been baking with a vengeance I thought this year the Plum cake too should be home baked.  Research on the hows, do's and dont's took me through various books, blog posts and videos and I finally figured out a recipe that I was reasonably sure would work for me and was close to the taste and texture I had in mind. To me a good plum cake is a dark, well baked almost over baked, moist, filled with dry fruits kind of cake which is rich in spices and has a distinct aroma. Sharing herewith the recipe. Do give it a try and let me know how it goes: Ingredients: To Soak the Fruits ( do this atleast 4 weeks before you expect to bake. Remember to stir it atleast twice every week) 2 cups - chopped dry fruits - include all that you like. and then some. Add lemon and orange peels if you can, they add a lovely fragrance 1 1/2 - cups liquor - I used dark Rum, you can choose to use red wi...

I love reading Rhea's blog . Its a simple food lovers blog and her recipes are no fuss, delicious, DIY even for kitchen novices kind of recipes. Its been a while since I read her post on sponge cakes and remembered the cakes my mom used to bake for us kids. Those days a home baked cake was a HUGE treat and especially so for me since I never did like the cream soaked versions that bakeries sold. The whole delight of waking up in a house smelling of baked goodies was just too good. Mom mostly baked when we kids were sleeping as we used to otherwise bother her too much. :) Now my daughter is the same - though guess I am smarter as I put her to work whisking which keeps her involved. So since reading her posts I had been meaning to bake a sponge cake but since its considered too basic a cake I didnt dare to bake it for the Cook-off at the Anandomela so it had to wait. Then some dearly loved friends announced that they are in town and the perfect opportunity for the Sponge cakes presen...

Image from Google " Growing up we had one TV channel DD and double censorship reigned. One imposed on the content by govt. the other on viewing hours by parents. Our real entertainment was friends. Whether playing games, munching on snacks made by one of the moms or retelling pranks played or books read. Friends were what kept us involved, engaged and happy. We didn't know of friendship day then, friends were everyda y.  Now with multiple channels of entertainment and engagement I guess we need a special day to remember our friends as well. So that's how I have spend my hours today reliving memories of friends the very many I met at various points in time. Some I am in touch with some sadly not. Hope to correct that someday." Was my FB post on the occasion of Friendship day and many friends remembered the simpler, saner times we lived in with a tinge of nostalgia.  And I thought I was done with the celebration of this occasion created I suspect by some greeting card c...

Let me start with saying I hate bananas. Always have. Somehow its a fruit I can never get myself into eating in any form and that includes even with ice cream.   So when I said I want to bake a banana bread my household was in splits. Me and bananas just didnt match up. I was however adamant that bake the bread I will. The fact that it was whole wheat, no sugar and very little oil convinced me that try I must. As part of the plan I forbade anyone to eat up three bananas I had kept aside for ripening to the fullest. And on Sunday got down to baking this bread whose recipe I had found at Chef At Large from a fellow member whose name I have forgotten. Ingredients Milk ......................... 2 cup ( I used toned milk) Banana ................. ....... ..3 well ripened Flax seeds .................. 2 tbsp Pure vanilla extract....... 2 tsp Coconut oil ................. 4 tbsp Honey ....... ................. 6 tbsp Whole wheat flour....... 2 cup   Baking powder ..................

During graduation one of our texts was D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and in it we were frequently told how an oven and baking as an essential part of a kitchen in the early 20 th century was a very powerful allegory. It stood for the whole act of giving birth and shaping a child. It seemed all too far fetched to me back then. All those lessons came back yesterday when I and Aarini attended a cake mixing event at The Park. Both of  us were pretty excited about this outing, as it was only about her and me and I had promised her there would be lots of ‘ happy birthday ’ her word for cakes. It was a pleasant October morning neither too hot nor cold and we set out on our long drive to The Park in the center of town from our home on the south western fringes of Delhi. Aarini had a lot of questions about the red bus, green bus and blue bus that we spotted on the way which needed answering. Every small thing evokes a question in her and I try my best to give her an answer that’s not far...