Tag: baking

Holiday Babka Wreath

Makes one extra large babka or 12 servings. We love creating sweet and savoury recipes in equal measure. So, for our last recipe of the year, we’ve created a brioche-style babka* layered with a lightly spiced puree of winter fruits, and served it with a bacon-laced baked brie. Slathered onto the slices, the molten cheese enhances the […]

Christmas Kransekake

Makes 18 rings This Christmas, how about an Xmas tree you can make, decorate, and then eat! And since a Norwegian kransekake (pronounced kran-zay-kah-kuh) looks like a tree, it’s perfect! Meaning “wreathe-cake”, it is basically a tower built with ring-shaped cookies. Crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, the cookies are similar to […]

Gajar ka Halwa

Makes 8-10 servings. Gajar ka halwa (Indian carrot pudding) is to an Indian winter, what Pumpkin pie is to an American autumn. As soon as the weather cools down, the much-awaited, tender and sweet Delhi red carrot hits the market and the aroma of gajar ka halwa fills the air. My carrot pudding is a […]

Surmai en Papilotte

Makes 4 servings. Despite any worry its elegant French name might induce, “en papilotte” or baking in paper packets is one of the easiest ways to cook surmai or seer fish. As the fish bakes in its packet, it steams in its own juices and absorbs any flavourings you’ve added. This results in an incredibly […]

Ice-cream Sondesh

Makes 96 servings (32 servings of each type) Ice-cream Sondesh. Just the name gives me happy chills. Made with fresh cottage cheese that is steamed and then refrigerated, this sweet treat from Bengal is addictively soothing. Fun story—there’s no ice cream in ice-cream sondesh—it owes its name to the simple fact that it is served […]

Bounty Hand Pies

Makes 16 x 4-inch pies Come September, households across India begin planning festive menus. A usual suspect is a half-moon shaped, coconut-filled, fried hand pie called ‘karanji’ (gujiya/bhaja puli). It’s utterly delicious and available at every sweet shop, so why would we bother making it? Instead, we’re going to ring in the seasonal feasting with […]

Black Cake

Makes a 9-inch bundt cake The first time my husband and I met, he was wearing an all-black suit (shirt as well). Back then, I didn’t realise just how black-obsessed he was (his wardrobe is basically 30 black t-shirts). To feed into his black fixation, I made an all-black cake for his birthday! Much like […]

Cinnamon Rolls

Makes 9 rolls; 2 ½ x 2 ½ inches, each Pssst! Have you heard about the perfect cinnamon rolls? You know. Sticky bottoms swathed in melted butter and fused together with treacly cinnamon-sugar? Golden-brown crusty tops scored by pale intersections where the rolls are standing cheek to cheek? Tender, just-about-baked-fluffiness all along the coiled length […]

Meat & 3 Veg Tapas

Makes 4 servings. Fried sausages, roasted potatoes, caramelised onions, and sautéed peas snugly sit together in this tapas-inspired, family-style spread, served not with gravy, but with an entire wheel of oozy Camembert cheese! For this dish, I cook all the elements in cast iron, except for the baked cheese dip. That way, the outsides of […]

Brown Butter Wedding Cake

Makes a 3-tiered, stacked mini wedding cake. Usually a feature of Christian nuptials, today, the cutting of the wedding cake is a part of popular wedding culture, irrespective of faith. We got married in 2016, way before the world changed. Back then, we chose a bitchin’ Star Wars themed cake, over the traditional white wedding […]