Baguette Bread Pudding for Mother’s Day

I realized how lucky I am when I was browsing through all my old photographs. My parents have inevitably been a part of every milestone of my life.  Be it my first singing performance in front of a large audience, Annual sports day, or  my graduation day ceremony, my wedding (ofcourse), at the birth of my daughter, her first birthday, the launch of my first book ( a post coming up soon with the details) and so on. I feel blessed and so loved by a set of parents who have helped, guided and supported me in all my life’s decisions. 13th May being Mother’s Day, I take this opportunity to tell them how infinitely lucky I feel to have them in my life and how much they mean to me.

These days, they are visiting us in Bahrain and it has been the most relaxed, stress free period in a long, long time. Mimi had a small accident where she fell of the sofa and broke her right elbow. The impact of the fall was quite severe and her right arm had to be plastered for 3 weeks. I was at my wits end when I couldn’t figure out how I was going to manage her, my work, home and everything else. I do have the most dependable nanny in the world but I was still apprehensive considering how Mimi was going to spend her whole day at home when I was at work.  So I asked my parents to come down and they obliged without a thought. They had a lot of pressing commitments back home but when it comes to their grand-daughter, they pushed everything in the back burner and hopped on the first flight to Bahrain. They have been here for the last 3 weeks and we have another week with them. I feel sad already thinking that they would be leaving soon and soon there will be  heart-shaped void for a long, long time before things get back to normal. Mimi’s cast is off and my parents have been a great influence when it comes to teaching her new things, our language and every little detail. Mimi has started speaking a lot more and expresses herself more clearly. When my parents leave Mimi will miss them more than ever.

While they are here, I made sure I  made every day count, especially the weekends. My dad is extremely fond of baked goodies so I made him an apple cake, raspberry brownies, the chocolate cherry cupcakes, Palmiers ( post on the way), hopefully a cheesecake and some fruit cake before he leaves. My mother is passionate about cooking and loves to watch me in action so that she can go back home and try some of it on her own. She gives me ideas on how I can improve something or change ingredients. She has a creative streak in her which she unleashes effortlessly in the kitchen. My father has a way with words and he gives me ideas about how I can write new posts on my blog on varied topics. Both of them read my blog with great interest and give me their honest opinion about it.

So you see, it is a win-win.

I know I am going to miss them terribly when they leave and I cannot wait to plan my next trip to see them in Kerala. Though it is Mother’s Day tomorrow, I would want to wish my dad also because they are a team; my mom and dad. They have do things together, take decisions together and there not a single instance that I recall where they haven’t stuck together during the thick and the thin. These are the values they have passed on to me and my brother – Family always comes first.

 I made them some baguette bread pudding and they loved it more than all the other baked goodies. Bread and butter pudding has been my eternal favourite as long as I remember. My mother used to make a non-baked version of the bread and the butter pudding which I used to love. Unfortunately she doesn’t remember how to make it after all this time. That is the reason why she encourages me to detail it all down on my blog for posterity.

The baguette was a few days old and that really enhanced the flavour of the pudding. Also, it is important not to be stingy when it comes to butter because bread and butter pudding requires loads of butter-love. I added cranberries because I wanted their tartness to shine through the dull sweetness of the custard. I remembered to soak the cranberries in rum overnight and in the morning they had soaked in all the alcoholic goodness.  I blow torched the bread pudding to give it a brownish-black crust because my hubby loves a little burnt taste in his bread pudding. Burnt sugar on the top provides the much needed textrue to the otherwise ooey-gooey bread pudding.

Though Mimi doesn’t know it is Mother’s Day tomorrow and what it means to our relationship, I know for a fact that she would run to me when I come back from work. The delight on her face is beyond compare and lights up the dreariest day. I look forward to that reaction every single day after I come back from work. A few years down the lane, I am also looking forward to the hand made beautiful cards she is going to make for me

Wishing all mothers a very Happy Mother’s Day because this day like every day is  a testimony of the fact that we are the moving force in our child’s life. We have the power to mould them into the individuals that they are today or would be in the future. To carry out this  immense responsibility I wish from the higher power to give each one of us enough strength and determination.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting ( Birthday Post-1)

It was my birthday a few days ago and it was wonderful. I can go ahead and claim that it was the best birthday that I would have had in a decade. Unexpected and infinitely fun, this birthday goes down in my birthday history books of records at the very top until ofcourse another more fantabulous one comes along.

Birthdays and me, don’t really have a thing going as long as I remember. I was never the one to look forward to one, more so after I crossed the “30″ milestone. Its been a week now that my birthday’s gone, but the good taste and feeling still remains, lingering in the air somewhere. I catch a whiff of it sometime and you can see me smiling for no reason at all. It was that wonderful. You may also know that I enjoy doing a lot of analysis. I have to know why something was good, or bad, or why it happened or what was the best way of going about it etc.

There are few straightforward reasons as to why this birthday was so much more amazing than the other ones:

1. The biggest reason is my parents are in town. How can a birthday be anything less than wonderful when your parents are with you. They lavished all their attention and love on me (for a change) otherwise everybody has eyes and ears only for Mimi.

2. My husband promised to bake a cake for me ( rest of the story follows later in the post)

3.  My daughter, Mimi can say Happy Birthday to you now and can sing it even better

4. I got plenty of gifts which include a much sought after cake stand, a gold ring, shopping vouchers, flowers, delicious home baked  chocolate cakes, a lovely bag and dinner at one of the best restaurants in town. It cannot get any better than this. I profusely thank my husband, Amit, my parents, my friends Namit, Anamika, Ashish, Gayathri and Pooja for making it so memorable.

5. I think the most deciding of all factors was that I was expecting nothing. Zilch.

A few days before my birthday I noticed that people at work brought cakes to office on their birthdays, so I thought that I should join in on that trend and push some of my bakes on my co workers. I turned to one of my least used baking books – Nigella Lawson’s ” How to be a Domestic Goddess” and flipped open to the Chocolate Cherry cupcake recipe. What caught my eye was the morello cherry jam that was used so generously in the recipe. I love the taste of Morello  cherry Jam and instantly knew that it was going to be a great recipe to try. But I didn’t fancy the chocolate ganache frosting and starting thinking of other ideas for frosting the chocolate cherry cupcakes.

Do you see the lovely photo of the cupcakes and the one with has the recipe written in it? Its the work of my friend Namit. He comes up with the most glorious ideas that help make my blog look a whole lot better. All these photographs were shot by him since I had no time to take pictures and was sure that there was no post coming out of this one. But he made sure that not a single bake was missed. Hearty thanks to you Namit.

Now to my story where my hubby promised me that he would bake a cake for my birthday. Well, he must have had a few sleepless nights after he made this promise to me during a rush of emotions. I was quietly enjoying  him getting anxious and uneasy as my birthday approached. For everybody’s information, he can’t cook AT ALL. He can make his tea and instant noodles and his culinary expertise ends there. Finally on the day before my birthday he came home with an envelope and handed it over to me. On opening the envelope I saw shopping vouchers. He apologized about not being able to make a cake for me and instead pleaded me to make do with these shopping vouchers. I stared hard at him for sometime while my brain did some quick analysis and soon came to the conclusion that these shopping vouchers would definitely make a better gift considering the latest collection that I had an eye on at Zara and Mango. I quickly accepted his gift with a lot of gusto! When I think back I realized he bribed me and I accepted it without a thought. That is what 7 years of marriage does to you, I suppose.

Shopping vouchers Vs Hubby baked cake —> Shopping vouchers win hands down!!

Look at the cake stand. Lovely isn’t it?

The cupcakes came out moreish and were appreciated all round. My co workers came back for second or third helpings and I was sold out by the end of the day. I think that is a good indicator to how wonderful these were. You could distinctly taste the fabulous flavour of Morello cherry jam which made it so enchanting. The white chocolate frosting idea was completely mine. I used Lindt white chocolate with sour cream and icing sugar to create a confectionery sort of sweet icing. I wished I had a piping bag, it would have made the frosting even more appealing. The crumb of the cupcake was soft and cake like. I would highly recommend making these on special occasions and guarantee that they would be a huge hit. In case you have some kirsch then it is even better since the flavour of kirsch provides a well rounded smooth cherry flavour.

I have another post lined up which will entail the Party details. Cheers until then!

Dorie Greenspan’s Almond Biscotti

This is one of those rare treats that my hubby truly enjoys and actually insists that I bake this more often.  Biscotti require double baking and that is where it puts me off.  But that’s double standards when I am so patient with my breads and their multiples rises but none for my hubby’s favourite biscotti! So I decided to make this biscotti for my hubby to see him devouring it. He did not forget to thank me too.

Last year I made biscotti (twice) around the same time when were all under home arrest; self-induced. The first time it was an almond biscotti which vanished off in a jiffy and the other was a chocolate biscotti which was an equally good contender. The Almond biscotti I did not mention in my older post because I have none left  but I was quick enough to take some pictures of the chocolate biscotti. But that was last year.

This year, I searched and searched in my archives for the same almond biscotti recipe and I couldn’t trace it. I was feeling so disgruntled because I clearly remembered my hubby telling me he preferred the almond one over the chocolate. Hmmmpppfff..

Call it divine intervention and I do believe in this miraculous mumbo-jumbo; I was flipping through Dorie Greenspan’s book ” Baking from my home to yours” and there I found an Almond Biscotti recipe that I hadn’t ever laid my eyes on before. I have gone through this book more than a dozen times but never saw this recipe!!

But it solved my problem in a jiffy. I set on the task immediately and finished the job in mere 1.5 hours ( including the double baking and the cooling bit). I realized I have come a long way since last year where it took me so much time to put the ingredients together to start baking etc. Now I am much more at ease and so much more confident in the process.

These may not be the prettiest looking biscotti but the flavour was spot on. All the credit to the almond flakes and almond essence. This got rave reviews from my hubby, his colleagues at work, my friend, Gayathri and my daughter. So even if they weren’t that perfect looking, I was pretty happy.

Recipe for Almond Biscotti

Ingredients

All purpose flour – 1 1/2 cups

Baking powder – 1 1/2 tsp

salt – 1/4 tsp

Yellow cornmeal – 1/2 cup

unsalted butter at room temp – 8 tbsp

sugar -  1 cup ( I used 3/4)

eggs – 2 large

Pure almond extract – 1 1/2 tsp

almonds , sliced – 3/4th cup

Preparation

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 F/ gas mark 4/180 C. Line a baking sheet with parchment

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the cornmeal and whisk again to blend.

3. Working with a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment,  beat the butter and sugar until very smooth for 3 minutes. (Mine did not become too smooth because it is cold here that even at room temperature the butter was quite solid. I thought at this point, that this project of mine was heading for a doom. But I soldiered on anyways.)

4.  Add the eggs and continue to beat, scraping down the sides to incorporate everything. The mixture will turn light and creamy –( BUT mine did not. That didn’t deter me. I went ahead like Dorie had got it wrong.)

5. Beat in the almond extract.

6. Now incorporate the dry ingredients in 3 lots and slowly. Let it mix until everything is just combined. Add the almond slices and combine well. ( At this time, I got the sticky dough out and used a spoon to combine the almonds well)

7. Using your hands or a spatula, work the dough into 2 logs about 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide, each.  ( I got smaller ones and I think it was because my butter +sugar+ egg mixture wasn’t the dream like creamy and fluffy)

8. The logs that you shape will be more rectangular than domed. It will bumpy, uneven and rough.

9. Place both of them with a lot of care into the parchment paper of the baking sheet

10. Bake for 15 minutes or until the logs are lightly golden but still soft and springy to touch.

11. Transfer the baking sheeting to the rack and cool the logs on the baking sheet for 30 mins.

12. If you turned off the oven, bring it back up to 350 F/ gas mark 4/ 180 C AGAIN.

13. Using a spatula transfer the logs to a cutting board after they have cooled for 30 minutes and then using a serrated knife, cut the logs into 3/4 inch thick slices. Return the slices to the baking sheet – this time standing them up and slide the baking sheet back to the oven.

14. Bake the biscotti for 15 minutes, or until they are golden and firm. Transfer them to the racks and cool to room temperature.

I think the cornmeal gave it that special crunch and the almonds lend the wonder depth of flavour. The sweetness was just right and I feel biscotti obsession coming through. I feel I need to try savoury ones and ones with pistachio and other nuts. Watch this space!

Nutella Pots and A Blog Award

Blogging happened to me purely by chance. One balmy afternoon, at my parents home, whilst observing my 5 month old sleep peacefully under the rhythmic whirring of the fan, I had this incredible urge to say a few things. The whole household was asleep and there wasn’t anyone I could speak to. I browsed through a couple of blogs on the internet and marvelled at how much people wrote and how well, too. On a whim, I decided to create my own and Slice of my Lyfe ( I did not get ‘Life’ since it was already taken) was born. Post after post I felt, I had so much to say and my blog was taking it all like a good sport. Nobody read my blog in the beginning except a few friends who knew about it. I didn’t care. I never got any comments. I still did not care. I loved that I was able to pour myself out to the world without the world judging me at any step. It was an incredible feeling.

In my nearly 2 years of blogging, I feel my blog has shaped itself into what it is today; a food blog. This is my 145th post and it deserved a toast. I didn’t feel, I needed to wait for it to cross a 150 or a 200 to celebrate because 145 as a number is just as good. My blog is all about me and my inspiration and that inspiration I sought from inside of me. I felt it was important to recognize my own progress and take pride in my accomplishments ( even at the risk of coming across as being completely self-absorbed). I also felt it was important to share my achievements with others and brag a little. People who find something valuable in my blog and come back again and again to read it understand this about blogging and do not take it in any other sense. The recognition and support of these positive souls around me nurtures me and motivates me to give the best that I have.

One such friend that I made in the blogosphere is Cassandra of Food My Friend. We have supported each other by going to each other’s blog and discussing our love and passion for food and related things. A vegetarian, a bunny lover and an impulsive holiday booker, that is Cassandra for you. Most importantly she is somebody who takes pride in creating her own recipes and being a perfectionist while she is at it. Do take time to check out her lovely blog.

Cassandra was ever so kind to bestow my blog with The Liebster Blog Award. Thank you Cassandra for this lovely Award which would be my first in all this time. It makes me feel very special and happy to be recognized with an Award such as this.

A little about the Award : Liebster is a German word meaning darling or beloved. The Liebster Blog Award is to recognise your favorite up-and-coming bloggers . It requires a little rule-follow which is as under:

1.Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2.Reveal your top 5 bloggers and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3.Copy and paste the award on your blog.

So to spread the love, I have a list of five bloggers ( not in any order) that I feel are terrifically passionate and it shows through their blog.

1. Nashira – who  blogs at nashplateful is a brilliantly talented cook. I say this with a lot of force because I have had the good fortune to sample her food and gracious hospitality when I went visiting her in Doha. A mother of two boys, Nashira is passionate about photography and can spend hours perfecting a shot. She is the only blogger that I know who uses a point and shoot camera and still comes out with DSLR kind results. She is somebody I totally relate to and can talk to for hours. Hop over to her blog to see yourself get addicted to Nashira’s casual chatter in her posts and luminous photography.

2. Ameena – who blogs at FancythisFancythat is a mum to the adorable Maya. Ameena writes about her everyday quirks in little postlets ( that is what I call them) which actually run quite deep. There is so much lesson and meaning to what she writes that if you didn’t know better, you would only laugh it off and forget about it. I take her blog very seriously and I earnestly feel she has a great chance at being a life coach ( I am sure Ameena, herself may be quite surprised with this admission of mine).  Take a look at her blog and decide for yourself.

3. Gayathri – blogs atFood and Fiction and happens to be my first friend when I landed in this alien land ( not alien anymore, I love Bahrain). . After a business degree and five years of working with a Corporate, Gayathri decided to give it all up to be home maker and mum to an adorable 2 1/2 year old. Gayathri and I share a deep love for baking and reading. Her blog is a testimony of her passion for baking cakes and writing little fiction pieces. Only if she took herself seriously, I believe she has it in her to publish many of her written pieces.

4. Anamika – blogs at Taste Junction  had a flourishing career in the advertising industry, but took a sabbatical to move with her hubby to Bahrain. A mum and home maker now, Anamika divides her time cooking up some delectable food ( which is lip smacking good) and taking fabulous pictures of the same. Anamika’s eye for detail and aesthetic has given me the necessary inspiration to improve my photography capabilities. Anamika enjoys writing as well in her spare time and it would be worth your while to read it in her scribbles section of her blog.

5. Arva - blogs at I Live in a Frying Pan and is probably the biggest foodie I have known in the virtual space. Her passion for food shines through from her posts about the quaint little places that she discovers in Dubai. I find myself in splits every time I read her foodie adventures and admire her for that since I know how difficult it is to get people to laugh. As I have mentioned to her umpteen number of times before that she has that special ability to make any sort of food look five-star quality and that says a lot about her photography skills.

Now after that felicitation, I think I need to toast these beautiful people with some Notoriously Delicious Nutella pots for their consistency with blogging and endless zeal for life.

These Nutella Pots are just right for occasions like this. Sweet, creamy and full of nutella goodness, this bi-coloured custard can only whet your appetite for more. Without further ado,

Recipe for Nutella Pots

Serves 6

Ingredients

2 eggs+2 egg yolks

1 tbsp castor sugar

1 tsp cornflour

600 ml milk

75 gm plain chocolate

4 tbsp of nutella  or any hazelnut chocolate spread

To Decorate – grated chocolate

Preparation

1. Beat the egg yolk, eggs castor sugar and cornflour together until well combined. Heat the milk until almost boiling.

2. Gradually pour the milk on to the eggs; whisking as you do so.

3. Melt the chocolate and nutella in a bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water, then whisk it into the eggs.

4. Pour into 6  ramekins  and cover them with tinfoil. Place it in bain -marie /roasting bin after filling it with boiling water that comes halfway up to the sides of the ramekins.

5. Bake in a preheated oven, 160C/ 325 F/ Gas Mark 3-4, for 35-40 minutes until the custard is just set. Remove from the tin/bain-marie and cool. There after, chill the ramekins in the refrigerator until required. Serve decorated with grated chocolate.

This is a make-ahead dessert and so easy to put together. The two colours of the light and dark chocolate settle on their own and in my opinion is the ‘wow’ factor of this pudding. You have to make it to believe it!

Happy Blogging!