Chocolate Burfi

I know, I know, I said I am going away and won't be posting anything. But I just had to share this recipe with you. For those who don't know what burfi is I have tried to define it, this is what chocolate burfi means,

chocolate = bliss, divine, I-love-you-even-if-you-are-fat

burfi = awesome, drool, dribble

chocolate+burfi = Heaven

Now that the technical part is all done lets get down to business of making this piece of heaven.

Ingredients: Source- Amma

1 tin condensed milk

Cashewnuts a handful

Cocoa powder 1/2 C

Butter 50g

Sugar 3/4 C

1) Grease a plate or baking pan.

2) Toast the cashew nuts.

3) Add the condensed milk, cocoa powder, butter and sugar in a kadai or thick-bottom vessel.

4) Start to stir on low heat.

5) Stir, stir, stir...

6) The mixture will start to thicken and your arms will beg you to stop. Don't. You are burning 20Cal/min, keep going. Add the cashew nuts at this stage.

7) The mixture will start to come together as a ball- don't over do it, you will end up with chocolate itty-bitties!

8) Immediately pour into the greased plate.

9) Smooth the surface.

10) Cut it into the size and shape you want.

11) Cool completely.

If you find that when you cut the slices, the mixture is still gooey, take it back to the heat and stir again. If it crumbles horribly...well...then...its chocolate chips :|

I have not altered the pictures in anyway, they are straight out of the camera, so you should get the same colour!

Course 3, Cake 1

I have nothing interesting to post. No insane thoughts, ramblings or rants. Nada. Zip. Yeah even I am shocked. So I am just going post pictures of the cake I did in yesterday's class. I am doing course 3 which is all about fondant. We were supposed to do this cake,

The Wilton book has some really amazing cakes but this one did not appeal to me at all. I had some free time this week and pretended to be this master chef. I wanted to do a mehendi (henna) cake with a big bow (I know bow and henna don't mix, but whatevah) so I drew out my design on a paper,

I decided to use the 1st pattern dunno why. So this pattern repeat with a nice bow all done in burgundy ought to look like this,

Went to class, the teacher said that specific bow has to be done 3 days prior to decorating, damn! So I settled for the less exciting bow,

Made a pearl border in which all pearls were of different sizes :| Came home and sat doing the mehendi design on the cake.

It took me 3 hours to get the right colour, right consistency and the right look. And so there my finished cake,

There are some lines which are a bit crooked (hate that) but overall I think it looked good. I was using cake box mixes for all my cakes (lack of time) this time I made a carrot cake from Martha Stewart's site. OMG it was awesome (I ate all the trimmings) well, anything that has 3 sticks of butter ( :O ) has to taste good! This cake itself is 4 layered with cream cheese frosting in between.

Some final notes;

1) I heart fondant, its so much better than buttercream decorating wise. You can do anything you want and if its smudged it can be fixed, unlike buttercream.

2) Drawing on paper- easy and reproducing that on a cake -hardwork.

I going away for a few days to get away from this disgusting weather (did I tell you guys how much I ABHOR winter?)

Some place sunny and nice. I will be back with loads of pictures. I have a feeling this tree might want to join us. Poor thing.

Parents tell me something

I have been thinking about this a lot and I want parents to give me an answer (don't worry its not something serious!). Well, last year we had some friends over. One couple had 3 kids (ages 3-5). The two boys were v. naughty they ran around the house smashing anything they could lay their hands on. Amazingly the parents didn't control (is that the word?) the kids, they just sat around watching them wreck my house. My poor husband was behind the kids the whole time. We do not have kids, my house is not kid friendly. We have wires, plugs points and cords all over the house (not kid safe), the last thing both of us wanted is one of the kid getting his finger stuck in a socket (In fact I saw the brother and sister playing with an extension cord when I stepped into the bedroom to get something). Add to our misery we live in a freaking apartment with not many kids. People living in apartments in this country will know how sound travels. Both of us were afraid that the tenants living below us would complain to the leasing office. It made no sense trying to stop these super energetic kids from playing, and seemed more wise to take them downstairs. Well that didn't happen. Why?

" If there are kids, there will be noise and people should accept it" said the Dad. I was speechless (which is v. rare). Then he proceeded to tell us how on a recent trip to India the kids were getting restless and started kicking the seats in the front. The lady who was in that seat turned around and asked the father to make the kids stop. The father told the lady, "I can't, I can't control the kids. What do you want me to do? Where can I take them?"

He then proceeded to dis that woman. Apparently she was an American and according to him, Americans have no patience. Why? Because the kids kicked an old Indian woman (God knows how many people got kicked on that flight!) and she said, "oh its ok after all they are kids". J looked at me and I looked at him. That was our only reaction!

First of all saying Americans have no patience is such BS. Patience is not something connected to race or religion. It depends on the person. I am an Indian and if my seat is being kicked constantly I would definitely ask the parents to do something. Imagine people, the journey to India is a freaking 16 hour flight with 1 stop over and 3 different time zones. You would have just finished dinner in flight # 1, hop onto the next flight and get ready to have breakfast in flight #2! Strange smells begin to emanate from fellow passengers (gag), there is nothing interesting to watch on those damn 3" TV, no trees or cars outside the window only stupid white clouds, legs slowly begin to cramp, you are no longer interested in the peanuts or orange juice (C'mon you drank 10 of those already!), you can't feel the roar of the engine or tell if the stupid thing is moving at all! I hate the journey, the only thing that keeps me sane is the thought of meeting my family (and pigging out on street food!). Being a grown up if I've issues flying I can imagine what torture it must be for kids. I can understand how tough it is to look after 3 kids and keep them entertained for 16 hours. But I believe that once you decide to become a parent, you have signed that "agreement" to be in charge of them 24/7. You cannot blame another person for your kid's discomfort and misbehavior. I am just curious what you guys think.

Do you think its fair to ask others to adjust while the kids are creating a ruckus?

How do you guys manage to keep kids entertained on long flights?

Colouring books and video games can keep kids aged 5 and above entertained, but how do you manage smaller kids?

PS- I have an extremely naughty nephew and one day he was just going bonkers. He kept pulling my dupatta and used it as a rope to hang from my neck (like Tarzan). I kept telling him to stop it (in my nicest voice) he didn't stop. I had to smack him :| And his mom (God knows where she was all this time) came in and saw her son crying. She instead of telling him it was wrong to misbehave started to dis me (Hello!!??? are you blind?) one thing she said was, "You guys will know only when you have kids." WTF!!! I have managed to keep away from her and her son from that time onwards!!

Who said thesis is fun?????!

This post if for all those who said I didn't do any research/thesis is fun.

List of formatting corrections that needs to be done by this Friday.

After struggling with MS Word for 4 hours, I called J and made him come home early. He is working on this thing now and all I can hear is, "Oh dammit!", "Insert the page number you moron", "which fcking person designed this fcking thing?,"uhhh..I hate it, I hate this stupid fcking thing" and other such colourful phrases. Technical matter is so much easier to write/edit than disgusting margin/page number/figure only 2" by 3" and other formatting crap ugh!

A happy news (nope not preggers), I made Handvo! Woohoo my first ever Gujarati dish. I pestered poor Arch some 2-3 times, had doubts all stages! Like a proud girl I say, my first Handvo :D clap, clap, clap! Thanks Arch.

/

She asked me bake it in a muffin pan but I was out of paper liners and the last thing I wanted to do is wash that muffin pan. So I baked it in a 9" pan and made a aluminum foil tent over it :P. She made mint chutney so I made mint chutney :D

Both of devoured 3/4 of that big 9" thing in one sitting! Yummylicious! Get the recipe here.

Bourbon Biscuits!

Do you guys remember Bourbon biscuits? As kids we used to separate the biscuits and lick the chocolate cream that held the two biscuits, then eat those sugar crystals that were sprinkled on the biscuit then finally we got to the actual biscuit! My mom used to make Bourbon biscuits quite often. I got the recipe from her sometime ago and decided to give it a try today.

Ingredients:
3 tsp cocoa powder
250g all purpose flour
120g butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
120g sugar
2 tsp honey

for the cream:
25g butter
50g powdered sugar
1/2 tsp cocoa powder

1) Preheat oven to 375 F.
2) Cream the softened butter and sugar till fluffy and light. Mix in the honey.
3) Sieve the flour, baking soda and cocoa powder.
4) Mix the dry and wet ingredients together to form a soft dough (add milk if it doesn't form the dough).
5) Roll out the dough on a parchment paper covered surface. Cut into 2" long biscuits.
6) Sprinkle sugar on the biscuits and bake for 15-20 mins.
7) Cool on a wire rack.
8) Mix the butter, sugar and cocoa powder and smear it on the cooled biscuit. Cover it with another biscuit.

Notes:
1) The biscuit by itself was very crisp but a bit too sweet (I wonder why!). Next time I'm going to decrease the quantity of sugar and up the amount of cocoa instead.
2) I would increase the quantity of cocoa in the cream also next time. Or omit the cream totally!

I cannot recollect the taste of the biscuits that my mom made, but if it were this sweet then its no wonder why we got all hyper when she took out that over of hers!!

Blogs dictate my dinner menu (somedays!). Arch posted her kasuri methi aloo gobi today and I made it for dinner.

Very, very tasty! Get the recipe here, thanks Arch!