From My Kitchen

My yoga teacher yesterday presented me with a yoga belt and very sweetly mentioned it was a gift in return for the chocolates I once offered him. So I offered to bake him a cake, something that he can’t easily buy of a bakery store in India. A couple of weeks back I found Deborah Madison’s recipe for a Poppy Seed Cake from her book ‘Vegetarian cooking for everyone’. I was waiting for the right occasion to try it. Today I am back home at 4 pm and what better thing do I have to do then be in my kitchen. With the Bombay rains tapping on my window, today seems perfect. So how should I describe my new experiment? Lets put it this way - this cake is so so yummy ! Perfectly moist. Just a little crunchy and not so sweet. The original recipe uses black poppy seeds, I didn’t have enough in stock at home and couldn’t find it at my neighborhood grocery store, so I just used a mix of black and white poppy seeds ( posto, the one we use in BengaIi food ) I had handy, and for the buttermi...

Morwenna my friend in Australia is the reason I cook. Her home in Dunsborough a small town West of Australia always smells fabulous and inviting of fresh baked cakes. I loved them and she loved to make them for me. She  introduced me to a whole new world of baking. So from then to now I am practicing for the day kids come back from school and want to be on top of my kitchen counter digging out the perfect muffin or brownies or just a slices of my Banana Walnut Cake. I picked up this recipe during my stay in Australia and it is yummy. Ingredients 125 g butter 3/4 cup castor sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla essence 1 cup mashed banana (ripe to overripe bananas) 1 + 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1 + 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp soda bicarb 1/2 cup chopped walnut Method all ingredients should be at room temperature cream the butter, sugar and egg with a hand mixer until light and fluffy (3 minutes) add the essence and banana and whisk again (1 minute) add all the dry in...