Carrot Cake

My dads finally agreed to us adopting a cat. We finally went in to the veterinary clinic to take a look at the cats and kittens. No more Persians just Omani bin cats, a lot cuter and a lot more fun. Hopefully I shall have new cat by the end of the week :D

In other news my friend Nuzha was in town. We used to bake and cook together a lot when we were younger, so it was nice having her back here. She used to make a mean cookie cake that she seems to have conveniently lost the recipe for :P Stop hiding it from me Nuzha!!

Unfortunately she was not in here for long and we couldn’t really cook together. I did however make her some carrot cake muffins; she always has been the green tea drinking, calorie counting healthy one, so it was appropriate.

Carrot Cake

• 1 cups sugar
• 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups grated carrots
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup dried and chopped prunes
• 1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Beat together the sugar, oil and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time.

Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet.

Add the carrots, prunes and hazelnuts to the remaining flour and mix well. Add to the batter and beat slowly till combined.

Scoop the batter into 9 large muffin cups until 3/4 full and bake for 20 mins or until a cake tester comes our clean. Cool on rack before frosting.

Now I know carrot cake is generally frosted with a cream cheese icing but I have been eating A LOT of cream cheese frosting lately. I wanted something lighter. So I decided to make an orange buttermilk frosting.

Orange buttermilk frosting

• 1/4 cup softened butter
• 8 oz. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 Tbsp buttermilk
• 1 Tbsp grated orange zest

Beat butter at medium speed until creamy.

Gradually add add the sugar until blended, followed by vanilla, buttermilk and orange zest.

Increase speed and beat until smooth.

Panna Cotta

It was one of those extremely lazy days; a lot to do but absolutely no mood to do anything. The sister-in-law has been around so we’ve been spending our morning talking and watching TV. The plan is that we cook together from now on. Also since she is around, my brother just might take the initiative to use his hands in the kitchen.

I wanted so desperately to stop idling and make something so I thought Panna Cotta;

Sometimes when I watch cooking shows on TV and I hear of food that I have never made or eaten before, I immediately seem to assume that’s its too exotic or complex for me to create. I think the problem is that I generally over complicate things in my life.

To be honest I thought it would be extremely difficult because it looked so beautiful. Fortunately it was not. Very simple, very tasty. The first day I tried it out I made lavender infused Panna cotta topped with stewed rhubarb.

Lavender Panna Cotta (serves 4)

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tsp lavender buds
• 1 tsp gelatine bloomed in 1 tbsp water

Bring to boil in a saucepan all the ingredients except the gelatine

Remove from heat and let the lavender infuse the mixture

Strain the mixture and add the gelatine to it, stirring quickly

Let the mixture cool for about half an hour (or till lukewarm)

Pour the mixture into ramekins and refrigerate for at least 3 hours

*Make sure you do not pour the hot cream mixture into the ramekins as the gelatine will separate

The first trial run being a success I later made a Coconut Panna Cotta with a strawberry purée. This time I used coconut milk instead of the normal milk and added 1/4 cup of dedicated coconut. Also as an alternative to putting the fruit on top I chilled the strawberry purée at the bottom of the ramekins before pouring the cream mixture on top. The possibilities are endless...

Veggies in a cake

I need to make some good vanilla sauce. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for the last few years. I think it’s safe to say that it is impossible to find proper vanilla extract in Oman. All you can find is the not so great vanilla essence. Vanilla pods.. well you can forget about it.

Good news is that I was able to find vanilla in Sri Lanka.. Who knew? That too at a spice garden somewhere along the way to Sigiriya… perfect for this recipe.

Recently I saw a really delicious looking Rhubarb cake on Man Vs Food. It was an upside down Rhubarb cake with this brilliant bright pink caramelized mushiness. I highly doubted Rhubarb would fly well with the family but I had bought a packet of frozen Rhubarb and had to give it a shot.

When it comes to cakes and desserts, I try my best to stick to recipes. My experience with making something up is almost non existent. For this reason I obtained a recipe online…

Rhubarb cake with rich vanilla sauce…mmmmmmm

Firstly the cake … SUCCESS (Note to self definitely make again)

The cake was very light and fluffy, sweet but sour at the same time. My brother (who thought rhubarbs SHOULD NOT be allowed in cakes) seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. In fact he almost sounded upset when it was over. The cake is made of a soft bottom layer and a sugary crumbly top. The sauce hmmm… wasn't really blown away by it, mostly because I found it very sweet. If you are going to give it a try you might want to reduce the amount of sugar you put in.

Have a go ; http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Special-Rhubarb-Cake

Velvety reds

Im back in Oman and this time for good (till the next leg of life) ! Im done with the first part of architecture and I'm back home hoping to do everything I ever wanted to and had to put off because of Architecture.

What I didn't mention in my earlier post is that Lakeland has opened in Oman. Lakeland is a UK based store that sells kitchenware. It opening in Oman is good news to ALOT of people and I am hoping it wont close any time soon. Shops have the bad luck of having to shut down quite often in Oman. Hopefully that shall not be the case this time.

Thanks to Lakeland I was able to buy a whole bunch of things the last time I was here ; pretty cupcake holders, disposable piping bags, nozzles, parchment paper and a cook's torch. I used the cook's torch to make a not so successful creme brule and the pipping bags to make gnocchi. However I shall not talk about what I did or what was. I aim to be much more productive that I generally am so here goes.

My cousin Shameema is in town and she has been baking a lot. I don't usually make cakes and most things pretty but since this is a new year and a new leg of life :P I decided I should try and do things I don't generally do.. (lets see how long this goes).

Red Velvet it was!

Red Velvet is my favourite cake so far and so using bakerella' s recipe we decided to give it a shot.

http://www.bakerella.com/cupids-arrow-cupcakes/

Bakerella's red velvets obviously look a lot cute-r but I thought at the end of the day we did pretty well. My hand held beater decided to give out half way through beating the cream cheese frosting so we ended up with bits of sugar granules in the frosting. Other than that there were no other glitches.

We reduced the about of sugar in the recipe from 6 cups to 4 cups and we still found it insanely sweet and would have preferred a cheesier taste, so next time I'd definitely change some quantities.

Shameema and I plan on tackling this insane looking Raspberry Rose Vanilla Cream Cake day after which should be 'interesting'. The look of the cake on Tartelette's website intimidates me! I foresee bad things happening.

I have a rhubarb cake in the oven.... happy times :D

Oman just got better!

Sometime life will give you really ugly sour lemons

Oman brings out the cook in me. When I’m here I hardly ever feel like cooking. My mental status has a lot to do with cooking. When I am happy I cook. When I am sad I just bum around, sleep, and watch A LOT of nonsense. The other reason would be that I have all my utensils back home and it’s so much easier to cook in a kitchen you are comfortable with. But the biggest reason of them all would perhaps be my student budget :D My dad supports me a lot when it comes to cooking. He basically has gotten me everything I’ve ever asked for, for which I’m so very grateful. Ingredients are the core to any good food and without my dads willingness to spend and take me around looking for tiny minute things I would not be able to make most of what I do.

This summer I had a few hits and misses; a few recipes that I will keep in the bag for later and some that I am slightly afraid to try :S
My friend Simone and her sister Cherisse were in town staying with me for a while and I decided to take up the courage to make lasagna; something I don’t remember ever making in my life; something that I am really really afraid of.
Surprise surprise it turned out horrible. I honestly don’t think I understand the whole concept of lasagna. If I used a no cook/no bake lasagna sheet how do I get the top most sheet to cook while baking? Grrrrr and plus I made a fish lasagna, which was relatively mushy. Sigh so one miss there! Thankfully Sim and Cher were nice enough to eat it. I did however make pumpkin soup which has always been the tastiest and easiest soup to make, ever since Sim and I made it earlier this year. Pumpkin soup will always stay in the bag :D

The other HORRIBLE miss was pumpkin and spinach rotolo. So I was having some friends over and I wasn’t content with searching only paella so I decided to make the rotolo. It was very RISKY! I knew it from the onset. I had never made pasta from scratch and I was making a vegetarian pasta dish for a bunch of guys. So I started rolling the pasta and it was horribly dry and tough, so I thought ‘ok you don’t want to screw this up. Start over’ so I redid the dough and it was the same again and this time I was thoroughly confused. I continued and it became worse. By this time I was behind schedule so I rolled it and put in the pumpkin, spinach and ricotta rolled it and put it to boil. Well as you’d expect, it was a FAIL!! The pasta did not cook AT ALL! I cut it and it was tough and disgusting which was really really depressing because I had people over. Anyway Marie salvaged it by cutting them up and sticking them in the oven. The dough was tough but atleast it was eatable. I don’t think it went down very well with the
crowd as well. They didn’t seem to like the filling.
I really do wish I could go for a pasta making class. I frantically want to learn how to. Rotolo…. Yes I want to try it again but the filling I loved (Im a big pumpkin and ricotta fan) Ill definitely used that again for cannelloni or something.

This is what the rotolo was SUPPOSED to look like ;

:(

BUSY BEE

I've been really busy.
I was hoping on cooking alot and taking lots of pictures but as usual; i ended up cooking but didnt take any pictures. i dont quite understand why i constantly do this!!! So as lousy as it seems im going to have to tell you about what I’ve done without any pictures L
So this summer was my brothers wedding… in Sudan. Had the best experience ever and ate some amazing food! I had no expectations going there and I had the time of my life.
I had some really really good feta too!!! :D i really didnt want to embarass myself with my cheese addiction but it was almost impossivle to stop eating!... (im salivating thinking about it) plus i had these pickled olives with this crumbly feta that was perfect.. not too salty ohhhhhhhhhhh... it was brief heaven!!

In other news im in my final semester and as much as i love the thought of finishing up with uni for a while im haunted with whats next... work?study?where?how?WHAT WILL I STUDY??? Should I be completely psychotic and do something in culinary??Sigh if only. I really wish I could ditch this entire architecture thing and do something that I really would feel happy doing. Questions questions… never answers. I suppose in someway I know the answers myself. I’ll probably have the courage to quite something I spent 3 years doing and completely redo my degree again in something completely different.

????????