Chewy gingerbread man cookies

Soft and chewy gingerbread man cookies with holiday spices, made from scratch . We went a step further and baked a christmas tree cookies, reindeer cookies, with the same cookie dough, but different cookie cutters. This makes for a great edible gift during the holidays.

Teen loves to bake, and she loves gingerbread cookies. I have no idea what happened to our gingerbread man cookie cutter from last year. We looked n looked n looked… 

Went looking for one at the local kitchen store, only to see a miniature - it was the size of my pinky. Very cute, but imagine an army of gingerbread men ….We had almost lost hope and then I saw a little box which had an assortment of cookie cutter and smiling happily was the gingerbread man. I still don't know what I did with my old one, but am glad to have found one to replace the lost one. 

Teen wanted to make a meringue icing, but I convinced her to get the ready icing tubes with different colors. I know, I know….don't give me that look. I am terrible at icing and frosting and I have promised  to work on it this year. 

I am sure before the holidays are over teen will be back with some kind of an meringue frosting dessert recipe. I only hope she finds time to bake. 

These are the most adorable cookies she has ever made. Totally in love, we she might make another batch for her friends as edible Christmas gifts. 

Eclairs : Pâte à Choux Puffs

Yum

It was a sunny afternoon and I had been playing outside in the shade of the lychee trees. Trying to sample a few raw lychees and finally driven away by the caretaker of the orchard. I don’t remember climbing a tree, I was afraid that if dad found out, that would be the end of playing with my friends for the rest of the summer. Thinking back, I regret not doing it.  There was a short cut to the orchard, a narrow walk way with barbed wire that one of us had to hold and the other duck down to enter. It was the coolest place to play hide and seek. Moreover, we were not yelled by the neighbors to dial it down, as that would have interfered with their afternoon slumber. Most days I would be back home before sunset, it was an unsaid rule that was the law of the land when I grew up - at least at my place. Some of the other kids were allowed to play till much later. Most days, a friend or two tagged along to sample goodies from mom’s kitchen: it was no big secret that she was a great cook. 

That day I walked alone and saw my sister reading on the porch, her nails freshly painted, every hair in place: she was always perfectly put together. I walked past her, brushing against her neatly placed slippers, disturbing them. In normal circumstances she would have called out to our mother, but she was too engrossed. Shhhhh! Dad was not home yet, so I had no reason to bury my nose in a book to display my ‘pursuit of knowledge'. He disliked time-wasters and if he saw me loitering around he would always say, “Do something constructive with your time.” Mother was in the kitchen, prepping for dinner. I opened the refrigerator and found a box that came from the most exotic bakery in the neighborhood. “Pastries”, I was delighted. It was not a special occasion, why were there pastries in the refrigerator? I decided not to question the good things in life, so I opened the box and saw six beautifully arranged eclairs. I had seen them at the bakery but almost always bought the black forest pastry instead, a favorite. I was a bit disappointed not to see black-forest pastry in the box. But not disappointed enough not to sample the lovely, gorgeous eclair. I took them out and gave one to mom, one to my sister, and kept one for myself. It was the best thing I had ever had, so creamy and just a hint of chocolate on the shell. The memory of the taste of the first bite brings back a smile. Back then we had no idea what calories were, if it tasted good - you ate it. Both my sister and I were so skinny that we could afford to eat a dozen each. 

When teen told me that she will be baking eclairs, it brought back some fond childhood memories.  I was not sure it was a venture she was capable of taking alone. To my surprise, they turned out amazingly. It’s definitely not rocket science, and the filling is absolutely to die for. Mildly sweet, creamy and subtle flavor of vanilla, perfect dessert with a cup of coffee.  She did not do the chocolate on top, as we loved the texture and taste and did not want to overpower it with chocolate.

Cinnabon Cinnamon rolls for Mother’s day

Super soft and delicious Cinnabon, just like the ones in the super market.  Love the cinnamon flavor and these are addictive. 

Teen loves to bake and sometimes she comes up with the mostest craziest (there is a word called mostest, I insist;) ) ideas at weird times of the day. For example on Sunday afternoon after a heavy meal when am zonked out of my wits, she wants to bake some exotic cookies. She says she can do it all by herself and she does - but there is always this high pitched voice, “Mom, where is unsalted butter, there is only salted, you said we had it” and before I react it will be followed by “oh! I found it” I love to nap on Sunday afternoons and am pretty serious about my beauty sleep. After I tell her am napping her usual response is, “ jeez, you are not even doing anything” Daddy Jois is always sympathetic to the teen and makes me feel like Cinderella’s step mom, but in vain. I don’t budge my comfy sofa. Don’t judge me people.

Oh well I digress, so teen walks in to the kitchen at 9.25 Thursday night and announces, "I am baking Cinnabon….I want it for breakfast tomorrow”. “Not now” to which I hear, “why not”. Well, here I am dealing with a teen who has the gift of the gab and you should never attempt to answers her question “why not” my usual response is “ because I say so” and after a bit of grunting it usually goes in my favor. But I thought about it and asked myself why not, this is what memories are made of..when she will look at these pictures ten years from now, she will remember that night, both of us awake at midnight and peeking into the oven, watching the Cinnabon rise. To her surprise I said yes, and she does not like to be watched (read supervised) when she’s in the kitchen and I let her be. I still don’t let her keep stuff in the oven, that’s just the paranoid mom in me. I was really surprised, that she pulled this one off. I think this is a great recipe and am glad she baked it as we enjoyed our breakfast the following morning.

I was given 20 minutes to photograph it and hence the cream cheese frosting is missing from the pictures, but knowing her, she will be baking this very soon (read  Mother’s Day) and I will add some more images with the yummy super delish frosting. What a perfect post for Mother’s day, if I may say so myself.

Cinnabon is usually associated with cold fall evenings, and a cup of coffee. I will take it any time of the year with hot or cold coffee.

Also some good stuff this week. My photography for Idaho potatoes got published, thanks to Monica Bhide  who asked me to work for her on this project. Here is the link, check it out. Recipes by Monica Bhide and photography by yours truly. I really enjoyed photographing this for them.

Also thanks to all of you who took the time to write a review on 'A life of Spice’ on Amazon and goodreads.

Chocolate N Coffee Mousse

Light, airy, fluffy and creamy that is a mousse for me. I love chocolate and everything about chocolate. Chocolate and coffee make a perfect pairing and I love the silk smooth texture. 

I have been indulging in this mousse so much so that I feel I might never touch chocolate again. Which is such a lie…Just as I had finished snapping my images….I had 2 helping of this delicious rich, creamy, airy mousse.

The recipe is adapted from Bobby Flay and I was hoping for a rich dark sinful color. But somehow to be honest…when I mixed the egg whites and the chocolate, it did not incorporate perfectly…tiny micro tiny  bits of chocolate were in the mousse. I was a bit disappointed …..wait for it. But, the moment I took the first spoonful I was sold…the tiny bits melted on my tongue,  (not large enough to be bitten) when it melted in my mouth…it was a burst of flavor. When I make it again, I do hope I repeat the mistake, I just loved it. The chocolate was not very hot and I had removed it from the stove 2 min before I folded in the whipped egg whites, I am sure to document this for myself, so I do the same thing next time.

This is a very simple recipe and even my teen can make this with her eyes closed ( ahem! I did mess it up a bit) As I dig into it spoon by spoon while keying in this recipe, am so glad I made this.

Disclaimer : I am not to be held responsible for overindulgence !! 

Lemon and pistachio cookies

I can turn a happy cookie post into a weather rant, but be rest assured nothing like that is going to happen. Long story short, yesterday was a snow day; got over a foot of snow, with sub zeros that was bone chilling. Teen had a day off and lots of time on her hands, she wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies,  after some deliberation she decided on these amazing lemon cookies. This is very similar to the Indian naankhatai. This was quite a hit in the Jois household.  Super delicious, melt in your mouth cookies.

Just one of those days where I have nothing much to say,  am just itching to do something creative today, so after a long time I just might take out my sketching book…in the meantime you guys enjoy the cookies, teen baked for you.

Cheesy Garlicky Pull Apart Bread

I can’t believe it is going to be Christmas even tomorrow. I have be working on getting the house in order and baking some cookies while sipping some mulled wine. With all that work and prep, we wanted to have something light for dinner so I decided to make some soup with some ready bread and olive oil, trying to save some extra calories to munch and overload the next few days. Teen wanted to bake some cheesy garlic bread that she had pinned  for a while, every time she wanted to bake this, I said next time. I wonder why we did not bake this earlier, ( am sure teen is going to say, I told you so) this is sinful, absolutely sinful, loved every cheesy garlicky bite. So much for a low cal dinner :) well it is that time of the year. Am glad teen baked it, loved the flavors and can’t wait to try different variations.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, hope you have a wonderful holiday season. Am looking forward to a wonderful 2015 and wish you guys the same.

Orange Pound Cake

Last weekend my teen baked an orange cake for us. I just love citrus, I have to have either an orange or grapefruit every single day and I am serious when I say everyday, I can finish a whole crate of oranges in a week and still want more. Well, you get the point. When teen asked me, if she could use 4 oranges, I was not sure If I would love the cake as much as I love the fruits that goes in it. But frankly did not want to disappoint her so agreed and played along. Am I glad I did, because this cake is the cake of the year, I just love it, it is SUPER MOIST.  Don’t go by the photographs, as I could hardly do justice to it. It was hard for me to keep my hands on the camera, all I wanted to do was eat this thing. It is a great recipe for the holidays. I am going to be baking this for Thanksgiving. It’s a no fuss recipe and you can make it ahead of time, stays very moist.

Since am literally running between ten things here today, I am going to stop writing and go straight to the recipe. But first I must thank Anjana from ‘Happy and Harried’ for the recipe.

Stir fried Noodles

It was a lazy kind of afternoon, finally teen and I were bumming around in the living room, watching an old movie (read boring). Finally teen wanted to make something and I was too lazy to step out of the living room. I had planned a simple sandwich for lunch but finally teen had a different plan. She wanted to make chow mein, I prefer juicy, moist noodles and am not particularly fond of chow mein. Can’t believe am saying that, I almost survived on chow mein when I was doing my post graduation. None of us had money to eat anything else, it was the cheapest dish on the menu.  

Coming back to today,  chow mein was ruled out and I was really not in the mood to browse for recipes, so we improvised and the result was lip smacking. We stir fried the veggies and added ginger and galangal for flavor. This is the first time I am using galangal. It looks like ginger and is a rhizome like ginger but the taste and texture is very different. It is a tough root and hard to cut, the flavor is a mix of citrus and lemon grass. I just loved the flavor. It is  a seasonal produce so I am planning to pickle it in vinegar. I might even do a post on it. The noodles were lapped up in no time. 

It’s almost August and I am so not ready for fall, I am still holding on to summer, to start with we had a late summer and looks like an early onset of fall. The tomatoes are still green and  my impatiences are still kind of tiny.  On the other hand my herbs are doing so well.  I think I should use them up before the first frost burns it all. If you have a post on how to preserve herbs for winter, please share it, thanks! I am looking forward to warm slurpee soups :) If noodles is your thing, you are going to love the curried noodles. 

Chipotle Mozzarella Sticks (It’s baked!)

There has been a lot of action in the Jois kitchen: crowded counter tops, dishes piled up in the sink and the aroma of freshly cooked food lingering around the household. Finally teen is often (very often) seen lurking in the kitchen trying out her culinary experiments.  In three years she will be off to college and it goes without saying I will miss her a lot. I have tons of time to clean up then, now is the time to enjoy and make messes. My friends who know me well will be quite shocked to read this. I am not only embracing the mess around me but even enjoying the hustle and bustle that goes with a messy kitchen. Well, this post is really about finally teen, and not the mess in our kitchen.   She has show her displeasure that I have not been speaking much about her on the blog. Even though she has now become an almost regular contributor to TnS.

Someone is really fond of cheese and when we are at the deli section, I see her spend a lot of time at the cheese bar. She picked up some fresh mozzarella, a few weeks ago, I had no idea about the plans and in a couple of days I saw her working with it. She made the mozzarella sticks and froze them for almost 2 days, then one weekend evening, when I had my feet up ready to watch some mindless telly, I was asked to take pictures - and it was now or never. So out came the camera, no thinking, no planning and I was given twenty minutes, 15 images later I came down to crumbs of half eaten mozzarella and a plate with hot mozzarella sticks and marinara for me. (awww moment). 

Finally teen has not only been busy in the kitchen but she and her friends have developed an app (available on google play). It is an app that monitors your calories and includes social media to motivate you, pretty cool app, here is the link if you want to download Fittastick. Version 3.0 is currently in the works.  

Creamy Chipotle pasta salad

June is a month of nostalgia and memories.  Reminiscence of my childhood, of hot summer afternoons, of family vacations, of endless philosophical discussion with my father. It was seven years ago that I lost my father in June. I don’t know when in these seven years I let go of the pain and embraced myself with happy thoughts of him.  I just loved my long conversations with him, little did I know that those dialogues will become my most cherished memories and I would refer back to it like an old book. Thankfully  there was no e-mail back then, I just love to read and re-read his hand. His letters were never short, nor were they mundane, in some way they are age-less and the lessons in them are so relevant even today.   It took him several days to compose those letter and they almost always had a sequel. His last letter was written when he was 75 and he told us ( my sister and me) ,”this might be my last” , “if am around till 80 you might probably receive another one”….even though I have re-read most of his letters, I have not had the courage to re-read the last one after he has gone.  Every year I tell myself to wait another year…. 

He was a botanist, he loved his plants and would love to capture them, I think somewhere in my mother’s place are hundreds of slides, most of them captured by him. The argus light meter has seen more summers than I have, it belonged to dad. Seeing my love for photography my sister gifted it to me, it is one of my most priced possessions. 

I just had to do a post for dad this June…. When ‘finally teen’ said she was making a pasta salad, I was thrilled to post it, it somehow tied all the three generations together. He was always very creative and encouraged us too…am sure he would have loved this.

This salad has more pasta then veggies, when I had my bowl, it had more bell peppers. Finally teen loves her pasta and I think it shows ;) now over to finally teen for the recipe. Since finally teen is a regular visitor in the kitchen, always trying out something, I must do a section ‘from the teen’ what do you guys think ?