A Birthday Cake !

My close friends lil baby boy turned 1 couple of weeks before and I made this birthday cake for him.I baked three vanilla sponge in 11 "9 inch pan to serve 20 people.The filling was chocolate ganache in one layer and vanilla buttercream in the second layer.I covered the top layer with fondant after spreading a thin layer of vanilla buttercream on the cake.I made the teddy, ball and the duck with fondant adding a pinch of cmc to fondant .If you add more cmc the figurines will dry and become hard and it will be not good for eating.

Since it was my first attempt on big cake I panicked a bit when I ran out of time.I made a mistake by doing all the filling and decoration the same day of party to avoid keeping the cake in the fridge,but I was wrong,You should always plan ahead and do atleast half of the job a day ahead.I had some more ideas like some building blocks or alpha blocks and a simple choo choo train,and some spots or patterns to fill the white space,but I didnt get time to do any of that.

Paneer mutter masala

We were on holidays last week in Barcelona (Spain) and it has been amazing.We escaped from 5 days of U.K's wet weather to glorious sunshine ! Spain has so much to offer but we decided only to go to Barcelona and have a relaxing 5 days and not to run around from place to place..
Sagrada familia a church by Gaudi who is a famous architect impressed us a lot,he is genious who has contiributed so many precious buildings to the city, and all his works are unique and mindblowing.The sandy beaches in barcelona reminded me of beaches we have back home.Barcelona has some mountains to climb if you are into hiking,but we being lazy decided to take cable car to the top of one mountain and it was lil A's first cable car ride and he was super excited ! Dolfin show and sea lion show in barcelona zoo was another highlight of our trip,eventhough I knew that dolfins are famous for it intelligence I didnt expect this much from them !The food in barcelona was amazing,I thoroghly enjoyed paella,which is a spanish favourite and Tapas which is kind of their starters...this is the first time in a long time I didn't miss my food ! First recipe that i checked after coming back was for spanish paella,and has bookmarked few of them,will try them soon and will be here soon :)The language was bit of a problem,most of them don't speak or understand English and we were not prepared for that, first night after we landed we went to a restaurant for dinner and everything in the menu was in spanish and we didn't understand a single word of it,finally we ordered something without even knowing what we ordered and the waiter took his mobile and translated it to english for us ! we learnt a lesson that day and that night I did a bit of homework in our room,translated some basic english to spanish and wrote it down in a paper and it was much easier ! I loved the people in Barcelona,they are very relaxed and friendly , so to conclude I would say Barcelona rocks !
Coming to today's recipe,its a hit among my friends and family and I love this with rotis/chapathis.

Ingredients
Paneer - 250 gm(cubed)
Green peas- 1/2 cup
Onions -3
Tomato - 2
Cashew nut - 1/4 cup
Cumin seeds - 3/4 tsp
Ginger garlic paste - 1 1/2 tsp
Kashmiri Redchiily powder- 1 tbs
Turneric powder- 1/4 tsp
Coriander powder- 1 tbs
Garam masala- 1 tsp
Kasoori methi powder- 1 tsp
Coriander leaves
Milk - 1 cup or more
Water ( as required)
salt

Preparation
1. Boil the tomotoes ,peel the skin and puree the them in a blender.
2.In a pan fry the paneer flipping the sides till slighly brown maybe a minute or so on two sides and keep them aside.( skip this step if your panner is not soft crumby paneer)
3. Grind the soaked cashewnuts with little water to make a smooth paste.
4.In a pan add some oil and sputter cumin seeds. Add chopped onion saute the  till brown and soft. Add ginger garlic paste and saute till raw smell goes
5.Add  all the spice powders expect kassori methi and cook until raw smell of masala goes.Add tomato puree and let it boil.
6. Add the milk and  water and when it comes to boil add paneer and green peas and cook for 1-2 minutes.
7.Add kasoori methi powder and cashwenut paste .Bring it to boil.