Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

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The tropical flavors of pineapple and coconut in this pineapple coconut birthday cake are sure to please family and friends and make any occasion special.  

Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

I have been facing writers’ block for a while. There is so much going on that I don’t know where to begin. This space has always been snippets of my life and a recipe. While I have recipes to share, its difficult to put down in words what all has been going on. I have been sitting with this post for a couple of days, and since nothing is coming to me, I will start this post by talking about this pineapple coconut birthday cake and leave it at that.

4th July was my dad’s birthday and since I was home for his birthday, I wanted to make a cake for him. I decided on a soft, fluffy coconut cake I had made for one of his previous birthdays, this time with a crushed pineapple filling and a whipped cream cheese frosting.

I worked on the cake recipe when I was working on my home based baking business, The Pink CakeBox. The recipe is adapted from here. The coconut cake is soft and fluffy because it uses a mix of oil and butter, and mildly flavored with coconut extract which gives the cake a lovely coconut flavor. The pairing with pineapple makes it a pina colada sort of cake, which is what I love about this pineapple coconut birthday cake.

A lot of people are not particularly fond of buttercream frosting. While I love buttercream frosting with a rich chocolate cake, for more tropical flavors or fruit based cakes I prefer either a simple whipped cream frosting, or my current favorite this whipped cream cheese frosting which is made from cream cheese and whipping cream. Its light, with a slight richness from the cream cheese. Its not sweet at all, and is great for piping too.

To decorate the cake, I used a small star tip and made 9’s all across the cake. Its a simple technique with beautiful results.

Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

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Vegan, sugar free, gluten free Date Truffles

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Gluten Free, sugar free, vegan, raw Date Truffles } | The Novice Housewife Diwali, one of India’s biggest festivals, is right around the corner. Known as the festivals of lights, Diwali celebrations generally last 5 days, with Indians all over the world celebrating it in their own special way. Diwali signifies the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness.

Diwali is kind of like the Indian Christmas, with the days preceding Diwali marked by people cleaning their houses, lighting it, shopping new clothes and buying gifts/sweets for friends and family.

I had read somewhere that there is actually a scientific reason behind the cleaning of houses before Diwali. Since Diwali is celebrated somewhere between mid-October to mid-November, right after monsoons end, the cleaning makes sure all the germs and infestation that monsoons brought with them get eradicated with the whitewashing, and other pre Diwali cleaning activities. In fact a lot of Hindu traditions that we follow blindly these days are backed with a very logical reasoning that we are not aware of. Gluten Free, sugar free, vegan, raw Date Truffles } | The Novice Housewife Growing up, Diwali for me meant new clothes, lighting candles and diyas, putting lights up, cleaning every nook and corner of our rooms because else the Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi won’t pay our house a visit, going to the Gurudwara to light candles and then bursting crackers at home.

I, being terrified of crackers, would just just burn the sparklers and be happy while my dad and brother would burst the more scary crackers. As we grew up and realized how terrifying the noise is for animals (we had a dog who had the toughest time during Diwali), besides the air pollution that crackers cause, we stopped bursting crackers altogether. Just to continue a little tradition we celebrate Diwali now by lighting a sparkler or two, and maybe an anar for fun. Besides that we just light the house and distribute sweets to our loved ones. And eat good food and lots of sweets!

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English Madeleines

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English Madeleines: Mini Sponge Cakes bathed in jam and rolled in desiccated coconut | The Novice Housewife

When I posted the picture for these english madeleines on instagram I mentioned that my house smelled of my childhood. And it surely did. In fact when I was washing the cupcake pan, it still smelled of the memories from my younger days, even though the madeleines had been removed and set aside a while back.

My mother used to make them when I was a kid. My brother and I loved them – bite after bite of buttery goodness. Although the original recipe calls for baking the batter in Dariole Moulds, my mom used to make them shaped like a regular cupcake- since she did not own a dariole mould. And then bathed them in jam and desiccated coconut. So I made them the same way in cupcake pans- not because I do not own dariole moulds (I actually don’t) but because that’s they way I remember english madeleines to be.

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