Baking with Merry

Yes! My little girl turns 2 today....*smiles*...Can't forget the day, when the doc told me "It's a girl"... To be frank, I was actually shocked!!!I expected a boy again ....But now, I am happy having my little princess since her love and affection towards me is totally different from my boy's....*smiles*.....Oh Oh!! time surely flies, especially with kids...they grow up so fast that you don't even seem to notice it, until their next b'day.....*winks* Now, for her birthday, I wanted to bake a cake...I had planned it months before and was searching for a cake recipe...I zeroed in the Red Velvet Cake with Mascarpone Cheese Cream Frosting...I stocked up with all the necessary ingredients for the Red Velvet Cake except for one small and the most important item - the red color!! I searched every department stores and bakeries in my place for a red color, but in vain!! So, I had to think about something else and that's when I happened to see N

Wishing All My Readers a Very Happy, Tasty and Prosperous Onam Hope everybody had a filling Ona Sadhya along with tasty Payasams...Here at my home we had almost 15 curries for the Sadhya and Ada Pradhaman in the end.... Usually, it used to be Semiya Payasam . This was my first try on Ada Pradhaman and it was a success....*smiles* Ingredients: Recipe Source: My Papa Ada - 200gms Thin Coconut Milk - 4 cups Thick Coconut Milk - 400 ml Jaggery - 3, large Ghee - 3 tbsps Cashewnuts - 8-10 Raisins - 2tbsps Cardamoms - 3-4 crushed Method: Wash the ada in water. Boil water and add ada to it, along with a pinch of salt. Once the ada is half-cooked, drain it in a strainer. Pour some cold water to the ada and keep aside. {The same way as you would cook spaghetti} Melt the jaggery, by adding little water. Filter it. In a pan, boil the thin coconut milk and the jaggery (melted and filtered) together. Add the half-cooked ada to the milk and jaggery mi

Strawberry milk, especially the store-brought ones always awaken nostalgic feelings in me… I was a fussy-eater during my childhood and I just hated drinking hot milk with malt-based products!!…So, my dad used to get me packets of Digdaga or Al-Rawabi’s plain or flavored cold milk….Among the flavored ones, I loved strawberry...yum yum....  The taste of that strawberry milk still lingers in my mouth…it was truly delicious!! (memories are coming back, so I better stop the tale here) Even now, I would go for a strawberry milkshake (if it’s available) every time we dine out…And if ever I buy strawberries at home, a milkshake with those is definite since even my kids too love it!!! I know it is ridiculous to have a milkshake in a wine glass…Well, it was my son’s weird idea….*smiles* Ingredients: Recipe Source: CJ Strawberry - 10-12 Chilled Milk - 1/2 cup Strawberry essence - 1 tsp (optional) Sugar - 4 tsp Method: Add the chilled milk, strawberries, essence (i

It’s been quite a while since I have baked anything. For the past few weeks, I didn’t feel like baking anything, though my kids kept on poking me for a cake. Finally, last week I managed to bake this wonderful brownie, which I had seen on Nestle Milkmaid's FB account. The picture was quite tempting and I couldn't help myself from baking it. Now, every time I set out to bake a brownie something goes wrong somewhere….Don’t know why!! But, always the end result would be just great…. This time also there was no exception; I finished preparing the batter and poured into the tin and was about to keep in the oven and suddenly the electricity goes off!! I waited for 1,2,3 hours and still there was no sign of power coming back…Finally after 4 hrs it came back and by the time I preheated the oven, there it went off again….*arrghhh*…I got so irritated…and by this time I lost hope in my brownie….Again I waited and after an hour or so, the power was back….With no much