MOCHA CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES & INDIA WINS WORLD CUP 2011!

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We won! We won! India got home the Cricket World Cup after 28 years! What football is to Europe, super bowl is to the Americans, cricket is to India. Its a religion here- and every one goes crazy with competitiveness when it comes to cricket. And yesterday was the final of World Cup 2011- where India took on Sri Lanka and made history when Dhoni, India’s captain (and my current crush!), hit a six to cross Sri Lanka’s score of 274 with still 6 wickets left in hand. Its such an exhilerating feeling and still sinking in! The last time we won, in 1983, I was not even born and had only heard and seen pictures of Kapil Dev, the then Indian team captain, holding the coveted Cup. I am so proud to be an Indian today and I think I share this sentiment with  1.2 billion Indians. Team India you did us proud!

Today was my third day of the massage treatment and I just did not want to go. I slept  real late- the excitement of winning the World Cup made it difficult to sleep last night. In fact, I have been sleeping quite late these days. For the past few weeks I didn’t get time to sit on the internet too much. And ever since I am back at my parents place,  I realised there was a lot of blogging to catch up on. So, I have been busy thinking what else can I make. And as a result, I’m surfing through all the lovely food blogs out in the web world. And once you start doing that, there’s just no end! Plus, going through all the lovely blog sites at night leaves me so hungry that it becomes  difficult to sleep with a growling stomach.

The cookies baking in the oven

The cookies baking in the oven

As a result of incomplete sleep for the past few days, getting up early today was a task. Also, it’s not a relaxing kind of massage that I’m going for. The old lady who does it uses all her strength and it is quite painful. In fact, day before I hurt my knee really badly (I’m very clumsy and keep bumping into stuff), so when I went yesterday morning I told her to massage gently. But she didn’t. In fact, she put even more pressure! I oohed! & aahed! but she continued, saying that this would help the swelling to go.  And well it kind of did, but I don’t know if it was a result of time or the massage. They do say, though, that since she uses so much pressure and probably because of the heat generated in the body, it helps one lose weight!Well, as they say – no pain, no gain and since I am already seeing some results I pushed myself to get up and go for the massage.

I told you about the tea party my mom had kept for her friends. Besides the caramelized onion tartlets, I also made some mocha chocolate chip cookies that day. I did not want to make regular chocolate chip cookies, and found the addition of coffee to the cookie batter a good twist. I found the recipe here. Kate’s site is beautiful- very creative with mouth-watering photographs. I saw a lot of recipes on her site and they are all going on my to-do list!

I did, though, like always, goof up with this recipe too. I know, such an easy recipe and I make a mistake here too! Well, I accidently left the oven on grill setting instead of bake and as a result the tops browned and I thought the cookies got baked. When I took them out and was putting the second batch- I realised the goof-up! I could have put them back in- but I thought of keeping the almost baked cookies for a cookie dough ice cream, which, hopefully, I’ll be making tomorrow. By the way, the cookies were a hit. Everyone enjoyed them!

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CARAMELIZED ONION TARTLETS

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Happy Fool’s Day! I am not a great prankster- though I have done my share of pranks on people- some really good ones. There’s one in particular, where I pulled a prank on my friend G- though looking back at it now- it was not a good thing playing with her feelings like that. Sorry G!

Today I thought I would make a fool out of V- and it did work for a few minutes but then he realised the date and blew my cover! And that’s it- somehow my brains nor my mom’s have been able to come up with something believable to fool people. I blame it on the massage I went for in the morning (like a true capricorn girl, there’s always something I can put blame on). The massage has left me too relaxed to get those brain cells to work. What’s with the massage, you ask? Well, since I’m in Kerala- the land of ayurvedic massages- I am on a week long detoxification program- 7 days of early morning(!) hour long massages!! This is what vacations are all about!!:)

My mom is also undergoing a treatment at the same place. Of course her reasons are different. She has osteo-arthiritis and the massage center has a course where they use certain techniques that help cases like her’s. Its a 3 week long course where in the first week certain special herbs, put in a potli (a small sack), are dipped in hot oil and then rubbed all over the body. The second week they put some kind of medicinal rice in the potli and dipped in oil, they rub it on the whole body. The third week is a massage with  an ayurvedic oil. Along side,  some ayurvedic medicines are given to cleanse the internal system. An old lady does the massage and oh boy she has some strength! My mom’s massage is more gentle, considering her condition- but mine wasn’t- nonetheless it felt nice!

I did get to some baking yesterday. My mom had some friends of hers coming home for tea in the evening and thought it would be the perfect time to make something. So I baked a lemon pound cake, some mocha chocolate chip cookies and these caramelized onion tartlets.

The tartlet shells are such a breeze to make and they are made with just one ingredient- well make that two if you count the 1 tablespoon butter. No! it’s not an april fool day’s joke- its actually true. The tart shells are made of rolled out bread slices. Add any filling to it and you have a great snack on your hand to serve for your guests or well, to eat it on your own!

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Mets la main à la pâte!(YEASTED MERINGUE COFFEE CAKE) My first at Daring Bakers!

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For the past few days, ever since India beat Australia in the Quarter Finals World Cup Match cricket has been the talk of the town. From Facebook updates to my college chain mails to newspaper articles- wherever you go – the India Pakistan match is the topic of conversation. I can only imagine the excitement in my hometown Mohali, where the match is being played today. The advertisers, airlines, hotels, all are cashing in on the much anticipated match. Jokes on Afridi and his men are doing the rounds among Indians on social networking sites while the Pakistinis are doing the same on their pages for the team in blue. The mind games have begun on both sides. After long I have been excited about a match- I think there is something about playing Pakistan that triggers every Indian’s blood and the do or die spirit takes over. Defeating Pakistan is for most Indians like winning the world cup. Every Indian today is praying that India wins- I have no more nails left to bite!

Putting the excitement aside for a while, I completed my first Daring Bakers challenge, although a little late! *Victory clasp!*

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Jamie found this recipe on a piece of yellowed paper in her dad’s collection of clipped out and hand-written recipes from the 1970’s, no source, no date, and she tried the recipe and it was brilliant!

This entry was supposed to be posted on the 27th but since I was busy packing, travelling, shopping, packing again and more travelling, only now I got the time to bake for the challenge. I enjoyed myself thoroughly in this challenge. The recipe yields two cakes and thought I would do one savory version and one sweet.

While the sweet dough kneaded to form a sexy (as Ria and Jamie put it)!, elastic and smooth dough, I had a tough time with the savory dough- I just could not get the elasticity called for in the dough. I used the bread maker’s dough cycle, then used my own muscle strength and boy how I used them! I’m sure tomorrow I’ll have sore muscles- yes I had to knead THAT much!

I also had trouble with the dough rising. It took longer than usual and did not rise as much as I hoped it would. One mistake I did with the sweet dough, which could be a reason for the not rising problem is that when heating the milk with water and butter- the milk almost boiled and it was still quite hot when I poured it in the flour mixture. But, that still does not explain why the savory dough did not rise. Maybe the yeast?! Hmmm…..Anyways the dough eventually did rise.

In the savory version I thought of putting cheddar cheese and have mentioned so in the recipe but when I got to rolling of the dough I realised that I had no grated cheese on hand. Pressed for time as the match had started (the long rising time changed my whole schedule- I was supposed to have been done with baking by the time the match was to start), I put parmesan cheese- but would still recommend the cheddar cheese.

I decorated the savory yeasted cakes by painting on it using a coffee-yolk mixture. (To see how to paint on your bread check this out!) For  painting I did not have a brush. I used an unused lipstick brush from my kit. Of course I washed it thoroughly. The things I do for baking!

The oven still gave me problems while baking- it does not heat evenly. So I had to make sure that I keep shifting the trays. It also took me longer than the stated time to bake the yeasted cakes as they were not getting brown from the top-nor was the hollow sound coming. As a result the sweet yeasted cake got burned from the bottom. I miss my own oven!!:(

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