Making of Ballerina Hello Kitty cake :)

How  r u all ? With all the festives around the corner u all must be busy cooking and baking and having fun rt ? Does Halloween calls for a party ? It was a definitely a spooky thing which I never liked before but things have changed now as  Lil A is being enthuthisatic about it. He want to  carve a pumpkin like last year and want to dress up and have  a party ! If Halloween makes kids happy then why not join the fun right ? 

Coming to todays post, my friends lil daughter turned 3 this month and I made this cake for this little hello kitty girl who love Ballet dancing. I think more than baking I enjoyed decorating this cake and making it girly ! Like everytime, eventhough I wanted to take step by step pictures, I only could few. Maybe with more experience, I  might be able to multi task, taking step by step pictures and doing the decoartion side by side. So just to give you all an idea how I did it, I am sharing few pictures which I managed to click :)

Drew Hello kitty on a White paper and cut out the outine.

 With the hello kitty outline, I first cut out an  whole hello kitty outline in fondant, before cutting the  templates in the pictures below.

Cut out the face, dress, arms and ballet shoes.

Roll out fondant and place the templates on top and cut out the fondant.

Stick the fondant face, arms, shoes etc on fondant outine.

Ballet dress frills were cut out using the Frill cutters and streched out with tool going back and forth.

Chocolate fudge cupcake with dulce de leche buttercream and Cocktail night at Gilbert scotts

Remember, in my previous post I mentioned that I will be doing a detailed post on the exciting goodie bag voucher I got from SMW food photography event?? So today I am going to ramble about that fun day I had with my blogger buddies Nisha, Suchi, Manjiri and Gayatri.

Night out with friends is fun, especially with like minded blogger friends, so when we all found out that our goodie bag had this exciting voucher for a free cocktail at Gilbert scotts, we all decided not to miss the chance to go to the famous GB scotts and to taste their 1873 cocktail. On our arrival, we had a table  reserved for us. All thanks to Natasha, marketing manager for that :) We sat down and settled in our table admiring the beauty of the decor. This victorian style restaurant had so much to offer, the ornately painted high ceilings, revolving door, ball chandeliers etc etc. We were thrilled when we were given a hotel tour including the kitchen by Mark Cesareo, the restaurant manager. While we listened to the great history of the hotel, we clicked a few pictures too.This hotel named after the famous architect George Gilbert Scott is luxurious with beautiful decor thorough out and has got a magical charm.The intersting bit was that this hotel was bombed three times  during World war 2 but it remained unharmed !! Mark walked us thorough the restaurant, private dining hall, beautiful hall way, stairway and the great kitchen. Being in a kitchen of such a busy restaurant, watching  chefs cook was so exciting and was definitely the best part of the tour  for me. So with a content heart, we  headed back to our table and enjoyed our cocktails and some cocktail  bites. It was a perfect evening in everyway! 

BELL CHANDELIERS

PRIVATE DINING HALL

KITCHEN

BAR

                                                                                            Image coutsey - Gilbert Scott

RESTAURANT

                                                                             Image courtsey - Gilbert Scott

Coming to todays post, I made these cupcakes for submitting it for Bloggers buzz BBPC assignment. Since we were asked to post a cupcake picture and a recipe I decided to come up with something I havent tried yet. After lots of thinking finally I decided to try  chocloate fudge cupcakes and for frosting I decided to go with dulca de leche buttercream as I had some Nestle caramel waiting to be used in my freezer. I am so happy with the outcome, the cupcake itself was so delcious and I dont see any need of frosting but since it was for an assignment I decided to frost it and they were absolutely delicious !

Ingredients( for cupcakes) makes 12 mini cupcakes

Recipe for cupcakes adapted from  - Easy desserts by Marks and Spencers

Plain flour - 112 gm

Almond flour / ground almond - 27 gm

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Salt - pinch

Plain chocolate - 42 gm (melted)

Unsalted Butter - 112 gm (softnened )

Light muscavado sugar - 112 gm

soft Vanilla fudge(diced ) - 57gm

Eggs - 2 large

Boiled water - 1 tbs

Method

1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt and keep it aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Beat two eggs lightly and add them gradually to the creamed butter.
4. Add sifted flour and fold in.
5. Mix almond flour in 1 tbs of boiled and cooled water and fold this in to the batter.
6. Add melted chocolate and fold in.
7. Add diced vanilla fudge and fold in.
8. Line a cupcake tin and fill the cupcake liners with 3/4 th batter and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree celcius for 20- 25 minutes until tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

For Dulce de leche buttercream ( for decorating 6 mini cupcakes)

Butter - 100 gm

Icing sugar - 200 gm

Double cream - 50 ml

Meringue powder - 1 tsp

Dulce de leche/ nestle caramel - 1 1/2 tbs

Vanilla extract - 1tsp

Salt - pinch

Method

1. In a mixing bowl add 1/3 rd of the sugar,salt, meringue powder and mix.
2. Add cream to it and beat for 5 minutes in an electric mixer with paddle attachment.
3. Add remaiining sugar and beat for 3 minutes.
4. Add butter little by littel and beat for 5- 7minutes
5. Add vanilla extract, dulce  de leche and beta for 30 seconds in very slow speed.

F 2.8, ISO 100, SHUTTER SPEED 1/60

sending this post for BBPC # session 2 assignment

Great British Chefs SMW food photography workshop

Couple of weeks back a bunch of  food bloggers got really lucky when we got an opportunity to go for a social media Photography event hosted by Great british chefs in association with  google local at Google's London Office. Being a hard core foodie and wannabe food photographer I was so excited about the whole event. I went for the event with couple of my blogger friends and we were so glad to see a whole lot of food bloggers there. We were all welcomed by Mecca Ibrahim head of Social media at GB Chefs who organised this beautiful event for us. After few minutes of socialising with other bloggers over cocktails and canapes, the workshop began with a small welcome talk by  Ollie Lyod, C.E.O of  GB chefs. Other  highlights of the events were inspiring  talk by the award winning Michelin star chef  Chef Marcus Wareing,  food photography workshop by David Griffen who is well know food photographer and last but not least the delcious canapes , cocktails, dishes and drinks.

It was indeed a privilege to be in the same room with Marcus wareing, when he came on to the stage and  asked us whether we have any questions for him, he would have never guessed the first question would be a tricky one, he was asked  about his thoughts of food bloggers, for which he replied after a pause !! I thoroughly enjoyed his replies for all the questions he was asked too.

We were so lucky to get some great photography tips from David Griffen. He talked about lighting, compostion and Post processing. He showed us that to take a good picture we dont need a big fancy camera or even a digital camera. The mobile pictures we were shown proved that he was right. For post processing David recommended using Snapseed and showed us some brilliant examples. In future if I can take pictures half good as his I would be a happy girl :) Anyway I am going to keep all those tips in mind when I take food pictures and hopefully I might be able to do better !

Afterwards we were taken to the canteen to photograph and ofcourse eat the dishes from Gilbert Scott. All thanks to the Head chef Chantelle Nicholson of Gilbert Scot and sous chef Felix   for the wondeful dishes :)

To sum up it was a wonderful night indeed and we came back home with a goodie bag with an exciting voucher  and a small treat. A detailed post on how we used those vouchers and some exciting pictures will be  up on blog next..so stay tuned !! Till then here are the few pictures of the wonderful dishes we had that day for you to enjoy.

Butternut Squash,sage and  brown butter tartlets

Oxtail slider

Falafel

Rabbit and prawn pie

Mrs Beeton's Snow egg

Gin and lavender cocktail

BEN 10 Cake and How I made it :)

Last weekend was a special one for us, it was our lil ones 5 th birthday party. I have been busy planning the party and organising it and finally I can relax now...its all over and it was a great party indeed. Throwing a birthday party is not that easy but with little pre planning anyone can throw a great party without any stress. This time we also got to fix all the mistakes we made last year which helped us in successfully executing this one. I am so happy that all the kids who came for the party had a great Magical experience with the Magician and great fun with the instant balloons she twisted upon their request :) 

It was basically a kiddie party with full focus on kids. All the party food for kids were almost the standard party menu which we see in kids parties here and it  involves no cooking :) So everything was bought readymade and it made my job easier. Here is the list of food I served for kids

Chicken sandwiches

Cheese sandwiches

Jam sandwiches

Mini Pizza's

Cocktail sausages

Grapes

Carrot sticks

Cucumber sticks

Crisps

Cake

Juice

There was an adult platter for parents too ...

Pepperoni pizza

Mozerella and Spinch Pizza

Wontons

Spring rolls

Prwan toast

Mango Juice

And about the cake, it was red velvet cake with Cream cheese frosting  and I am so glad I finally got a bit of red colour this colour this time, I always had trouble getting the colour, as none of the colours worked. I also wanted a Natural colour since adding artificial one is a strict no to me. This time also when the came came out of the oven  I didnt see the red colour outside so I was a bit  disappointed and I even told my friends about the disaster, but the next day when  I cut the cake for levelling and decoration, voila there was this red colour inside !! 

After lots of thinking and confusion finally my boy said  he wanted a Ben 10 cake for his party. Eventhough I tried to convince him that making a Ben 10 quite a lot of work,  he insisted that he wanted Ben 10, So I had no choice other than making one. This time I decided to do a  fondant cut out for Ben 10 rather than making a figurine,  I could have easily bought Ben 10's edible picture from shops but I wanted to take this as a challenge and I thought incase if I screw this up I can always order one edible picture from our cake shop nearby :) But I was quite happy with the way it came out and he loved it. 

Here are few pictures of my step by step progress, I only managed to click few as  it was a toughh really tough work for me ! It tested all my patience, and if you look closer you can definitely see my lack of patience here and there :)

Using the print out of the picture I rolled fondant and cut out the outine.

I cut out the hair and the trousers and watch from print out and used that to cut out fondant  hair, trousers, sleeve  and watch from  black, green and white fondant.

I drew the outine, nose, ear, pupil  and fingers with an edible black pen. Eye brows and eyes were made swith mall fondant cut outs.The ghostly figure on the watch was drawn with a black edible pen. Finally sticked some polka dots and gave a border and wrote is name :)

Also before I sign off  here are few pictures from our party !

Thai Red Chicken curry

Couple of days back I ran into an old friend of mine at a bus stop, after few minutes of catching up, our topic moved onto Food. She was from Thailand , so the  first thing I asked her was about  good Thai eating places around. She replied that  her close friend was a chef in  one of the  popular restaurant around and eventhough its popular she said its not the authentic kind of Thai and she wouldnt reccomend it !! I guess thats the story of all resturants outside the homeland :)

So my next question was about the famous thai red curry paste as I absoultely love  Thai curries, especially Thai red curry. When I asked that  I was expecting a recipe of Thai curry paste from her but her  answer was quite surprising, she said she buy it from the  Thai section of Asian grocery shop where  I go. So thats was it, I knew I will be picking the paste and making the curry soon. So during this weeks trip I picked Thai curry paste, Palm sugar and fish sauce from the shop. I was apprehensive about how it would taste but I am super glad I cooked it as it was one of the tastiest and quickest chicken curry I have ever made. No sauting onions, no roasting  or grinding , just fry the paste, add conout milk, chicken and some veggies and simmer, a delcious curry will be ready in well under 30 minutes ! 

Ingredients
Boneless chicken - 500gm
Thai red curry paste - 100 gm
Oil
Carrot - 1
Green pepper/ Capsicum - 1/2 ( I didnt use it )
Baby corn - 5-10
Beans -5-10
Palm sugar - 4 tsp
Fish sauce - 1 tsp
Coconut milk - 400 ml
Water - 1 cup
Sweet basil leaves - few (optional, I didnt use it )
Thai red chillies ( to garnish )

Method

• In a saucepan add oil and fry the thai red curry paste for 1-2 minutes.
• Add chicken ( cut into cubes) and veggies ( cut lenghthwise ) and saute until its well coated in the curry paste for 1-2 minutes.
• Add coconut milk, water and bring to boil.
• Add palm sugar, fish sauce and cook it covered until chicken and veggies are cooked.
• Finally add some sweet basil leaves and turn off the flame.
• Garnish with chopped redchillies and serve warm with steamed rice 

Bloggers Buzz Photography session 2

Life has been crazy busy last couple of days, it got so busy all of sudden so I hardly got time to check out  my blog baby..but here I am again with my short story of Bloggers Buzz phtography session 2.Two weeks back, a bunch of us bloggers met at our fellow blogger Suchi's place for BBPC session 2, those who are wondering what that is about, here is a brief description .. Bloggers Buzz is a conducting a photography workshop on a monthly basis led by Nisha thomas of My kitchenantics and we are learning a lot from her and also from each other. Food photography  has never been so interesting to me before. This month we covered how to shoot food pictures with diffused back lighting and we choose cupcake theme for our pictures. We were asked to take few cupcakes with us and shoot it with diffused back lighting. Under Nisha's guidance we shot pictures in different angles with different styles. Overall it was a productive day and in the end we got to eat cupcakes what our friends baked and the  lovely Paav bhaji Suchi cooked for us. I had  a stuffed tummy that day and probably I was on sugar high from all the cupcakes I ate ! 

This month we also learnt about post processing and it was done by Suchi of  Kitchen karma.She made a great tutorial on how to edit pictures in Pic monkey on Bloggers buzz website and she has done a fabulous job making the tutorial and making it so easy to follow and understand for anyone. So do check out the tutorial and about the diffused lighting  here

Also find below few of the pictures I clicked during the session :)

Cupcake by me, Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream 

I used the same recipe of my vanilla cake for cupcakes which you can find here and also find the recipe of vanilla buttercream here.

Cupcakes which Manjiri of Slice off me brought for the session.

Cupcakes by Gayathri of Mummy and Me

Cupcake by Nisha of My Kitchenantics

Kozhi Pidi/ Irachi pidi/ Rice dumplings in Chicken gravy

I used to dream that when my lil one starts school full day I will get  into some serious blogging and do a lot of cooking. Its almost  2 weeks since he started school and  still I havent done much of blogging or even cooking. When my parents were here my kitchen was soo busy and lots of cooking did happen but now expect in the morning my kitchen is all so quiet and my house is soo silent except the noise of  some cars speeding by ! So I guess getting into that mood might take some time as I am in the  holiday withdrawal  mode reminiscing all the good times we had the past 2 months. Now that I have a few hours all by myself I am also looking for options to make myself useful other than just sitting at home which  has also taken its toll on  my hobbies, but anyway I am sure about one thing whether I am  free or busy I will never abandon this little blog of mine :)

Anyway coming back to topic...Have you ever craved for something which you have never cooked or tried ?? Well one fine morning I got a craving for eating this from nowhere, I wonder how it came but that day  I ignored it beacuse if my laziness, but few days passed by and it was still in the corner of my mind and after a week or soo the craving  hit back with all its strength which  left with no choice rather than making it. So after googling it I came across few  recipes here here and here and  I adapted the recipe from all three to make  my own :) I am glad I did as we all loved it and now even if I crave for it I can rely on my blog to whip it up in a jiffy :)

Ingredients

For pidi/ dumplings

Rice flour - 1/2 cup

Water - 1 - 1 1/2 cup

Shallots - 3-4 

Fennel seeds - 1 tsp

Grated coccnut - 1/2 cup

salt 

For chicken masala

Boneless chicken - 250 gm

Onion - 2( finely chopped)

Tomato - 1 small( finely chopped )

Fennel seeds - 1 tsp

Ginger -garlic paste - 1 1/2 tsp

Red chilly powder - 3/4 tsp

Turmeric powder - 1/8 tsp

Pepper powder - 1/2 tsp

Coriander powder - 1 tsp

Garam masala or  chicken masala  -  1 tsp

Salt

Curry leaves

coriander leaves

Green chillies - 1 or 2

oil

For coconut gravy 

Coconut oil - 1 tbsp

Grated coconut - 1/4 cup

Whole garam masala ( small piece of cinnamon, one clove, one cardamom, one bay leaf )

Thin coconut milk - 1/2 cup

Thick coconut milk - 1/4 cup

salt

Method

Making of Pidi

• In a bowl take the rice flour, add salt, boiling water and make a dough. 
• In a Mixie make a course paste of grated coconut, shallots and  fennel seeds.
• Add the paste to dough and mix well, knead and  make a smooth dough.
• Take a small ball of the dough( 1 tsp ) and roll it into a ball and gently press it down and make an impression in the middle with the thumb.                                                                           
  
  
  
• Steam it for 10 minutes.

Making of chicken masala, coconut gravy and the final process.

• Cut the Boneless chicken into small cubes.
• Marinate the chicken cubes with chilly powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, chicken masala, pepper powder, ginger garlic paste and salt.
• In a saucepan or cheena chatti /kadai add coconut oil and add fennel seeds and when it releases smell add  finely chopped onions, curry leaves  and saute until onions are brown and soft.
• Add  chopped tomatoes and cook until mashed and becomes a paste.
• Add marinated chicken, salt and cook until chicken is done
• Meanwhile in a nonstick pan add coconut oil and add the whole garam masala and saute for a minute or so.
• Add grated coconut and roast it until golden brown. Once its cool grind it into a paste.
• Add the grinded paste and the thin coconut milk to the cooked chicken.
• Add the steamed pidis/ dumplings to it and cook it covered for 3-4  minutes.The masala will be coated well into the dumpling now.
• Finally add the thick coconut milk and when its about to boil turn off the flame.
• Garnish with coriander leaves if you like.

SERVE WARM AND ENJOY !!