Cake House

I made it… I made it… Yayyy!!!!  At last, I made it. My all time favorite cake. I never thought that one day I would be baking a traditional Kerala Christmas plum cake, which is a long process of soaking the dry fruits in alcohol for a period of 6 months to a year, but today I am here with this recipe that doesn’t require to soak the dry fruits in advance and it’s an alcohol free cake so that you can try this instantly anytime. This cake tasted exactly like the cakes which we get in bakeries. I used to eat this a lot as a kid when we visited our native Kerala for vacations. Then whenever my D-I-L visited us, bought this cake. I loved this cake almost all the time I tasted. This fruit cake is rich and full of soaked raisins, cranberries, dates, cashews in apple juice which are well incorporated with the cake batter and sugar syrup and the amazing combination of spices which is then baked to a simple, perfect cake and by now your house will be filled with the aroma of the spice-fill...

W hen I started baking, I used to try to bake almost all the cakes and among them, I loved citrusy flavor of the lemons.  Whenever I go to starbucks, I used to order lemon loaf cake. Then one day I tried making the lemon loaf cake at home which came out successfully. Blueberries are my favorite among berries. I had so many blueberries left out in refrigerator after making cupcakes, smoothies and so on. So before it gets damaged I thought of preparing blueberry compote, so that I can store them and can use whenever I needed. By using my favorite ingredient and blueberry compote I thought of preparing something and so this delicious muffins are ready within minutes. Now these muffins have become a staple in my house. We can also make these with fresh blueberries. These muffins are soft, moist, lemony, full of blasted blueberries. These are my daughter’s favorite too. We don’t like to frost cupcakes. Plain is what we prefer the most. Blueberry Compote: Ingredients: Blueberries- 2 Cup...

I am really excited to post today’s recipe. It is a part of a monthly challenge, which a group of bloggers will be posting the different variety of dishes from a selected blog. This is the first challenge and the recipe which we are posting here is an amazing food blogger, a doctor by profession. In her blog, every small detail of an ingredient is very well explained. The food pics are like a feast for the eyes. Perfect, crisp pics and mostly middle eastern dishes. She is Sawsan blogger at “Chef in Disguise”. Check her blog, you will instantly fall in love with her food pics. It was very hard to select one dish from her blog, for the challenge, as there were many delightful and mouthwatering dishes and was very confusing to choose which one to try. After lots of searching, I got one which I was longing to try. Biscotti is one of my favorite baked snacks. I have tasted almond biscotti and thought of giving it a try. But for this challenge, I found this honey sesame biscotti, which loo...

Little Chicken Tarts I love little savoury tarts, so handy for snacks, party food and suchlike, especially now that Christmas is almost here. I also love chicken, maybe thinking of that old 60s favourite Vol au Vents and just re inventing them with a modern taste and twist. Anyway, I hope you like these and will try them over the festivities! This is my last post until mid January, I have too much baking to do for other things! Plus it will be good to have a break, while my husband munches away at the Christmas Cake. But have no fear. I will be back before you can snap your fingers. A very Happy Christmas to everyone and a healthy, prosperous New Year. Laurie xx Shortcrust pastry. Of course you can buy some, [all butter, of course], but if you have a food processor, it takes a minute and is so easy. I use this base recipe for everything. You can add some caster sugar for mincemeat tarts, or a little fresh grated parmesan, mustard, herbs, whatever. The quantities below makes 12, with so...

B aked apple roses are just like apple pies but which looks like beautiful red roses. These apple roses are surprisingly easy to make , gorgeous  presentation, best in taste.These make beautiful desserts for parties and kids will love them. I have seen these apple roses many times , but never tried it. My SIL who is an incredible cook and who likes to try out a new variety of dishes sent me the pics of these baked roses which she made. You can see her work in one of my previous posts, which is chocolate roll cake . I was so excited to see the pics as I would never try these because my daughter is not a big lover of apples and moreover if we buy apples, it would either end up in  a cake or we like to eat just like that. This is a very easy dessert, in which the sliced apples, sprinkled with cinnamon powder are rolled in puff pastry sheets and baked. If you feel while baking the apples are getting browned, keep them on the lower rack. This will help the puff pastry sheets to coo...