Walnut and Pumpkin Seed Bread

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 This 100% whole wheat bread recipe adapted from BBC Good Food magazine is packed with pumpkin and flax seeds.

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Recently a one star review on my business page on zomato (an indian website on the same lines as yelp) just reconfirmed my belief that most people these days are reviewing for the sake of appearing cool and just do not have the patience to understand somebody else’s situation.

So the whole thing started on the Monday that went by. I had an order that I was busy working with. My phone was in the other room on charge. Generally if I am working on an order I do not keep my phone with me, because while baking I know I can not take a call lest I forget all about my cake in the oven. And sometimes while rushing through orders it becomes really difficult to attend phone calls. The moment I get free I call the people whose calls I have missed. If my phone is with me I message in between saying I am tied up and will call soon. That day though my phone wasn’t on me so I only saw the calls an hour or so later. On calling the first number I had missed two calls from, the person on the other line informed me that she had already placed an order with someone else for a cake. I said no problem, hopefully next time. I called the other number and it turned out to be the same person. This time I apologized and explained that I was busy with an order and again mentioned that hopefully next time I can bake for her. All this happened in a span of one and half hour of her initially trying to get in touch with me.

The next thing I know the said caller had left a one star review on Zomato saying that I had shitty customer service and that I was misguiding people with a phony address. I have no idea what she meant about a phony address, because no where I have mentioned my address just my locality. I do not want to put my home address on a public forum for obvious reasons. And just because I did not take her call she goes around slandering my business and my customer service. I get it. It can be frustrating trying an establishment number and have no one pick up. But I am not an establishment with a customer service team. I manage everything from baking, decorating, accounts, handling clients on my own. Besides trying to have a personal life as well. Even after explaining this to her that I was a home baker and I do not have people to attend my calls as a reply to her review, she replied that I never apologized to her for missing her calls (which was not true and even if it was, did that give her reason enough to slander my business with shitty customer service?). After that I saw no point in paying any more heed to what she had to say.

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A review: Katy Sue Design Moulds

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Review of Katy Sue Design Moulds

As most of you who have been following my page know that few months back I started my home based baking business in India by the name of The Pink CakeBox (yes I know there is a fairly famous Pink Cake Box in the US, and honestly it did not strike me till only after it was too late to change, but we are not related – I wish we were but we are not).

Baking and decorating for TPC is the reason why I have been away from blogging these days. I try my best to post as often as I can, but this place still keeps getting neglected. I do miss blogging immensely, and while I enjoy baking for others (especially when you receive wonderful feedback), I do miss baking and cooking for myself. I also do miss styling and shooting the food I make. And truly wish I could do it more often.

To keep the blog more active, I did mention that I will post about my cakes and bakes here once in a while. So today I am sharing a review of these new Katy Sue Design moulds I bought from a local store in Chandigarh, Chef’s Gateway.

Though not many, but I do have a few silicon moulds for my cake decorating- you know the cheap ones- some bought off ebay or amazon, or a local craft shop that carries stuff that is made in china. For the price, they do get the job done fairly fine, but after spending a good deal on these katy sue moulds, I realize that quality does come with the price. And while the katy sue moulds are more expensive, they do deliver a good quality product and I am sold.

Generally I have to fairly dust the mould with corn starch to get the desired shape out and even then it does not always come out perfect, but when I used these moulds to make the pots, I didn’t use any dusting and the shapes came out fine. The same held true for the frame mould (the final product shown in the picture above). To be on the safer side, a light dusting will not hurt.

I am including a step by step process of using these molds, but in case this is not as helpful, there is a video tutorial on youtube which should explain the process better.

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Savory Vegetable Pie

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When my my parents were living in Allahabad, there was a lady my mom told me about who made really scrumptious pies. She was sweet enough to send two savory veg pies for me when I was around. The crust was buttery and rich and when I read the recipe she had kindly sent with the pies, I realized why. The dough contained a 1:1 ratio of fat to flour.

Generally, pie recipes start of with cold butter being cut into flour to resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Then water or egg (or vodka) is added to make the dough to come together. This recipe starts off the same, but instead of water the lady added low-fat cream (25% fat content) as the preferred choice of liquid. Its definitely more fattening, but it does taste good. So good 🙂

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