Cheese

Cake Orders – Jungle Theme – Brown Butter Cake with Cardamon Mascarpone Cream

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Spring is in air. The greenness, freshness, delicate fragrance, aren’t you enjoying the beautiful time of the year? Belgium is just warming up, with occasional showers which makes the green look greener.  How are you all enjoying your spring? I’m quite occupied in learning dutch, redeeming the slumbered language part of my brain, believe me people it is one full job in hand, but it’s certainly fun (I say this to myself, as process of self encouragement)! In addition to language- the so called fun, craziness of life, cake is and will always be there on my priority list. This cake was one of those cakes that I dreamt all along the days until it took shape. The Forest theme cake was designed for a two year old little one, who’s  name means forest. I have to admit creating every bits and pieces of this cake was an intensive fun. My creative thoughts ran really wild along with wild life modelling. It also brought my hidden childhood love for wildlife. Though I would be really scared in reality to take pictures of wild animals, I really wish I have the courage to do it. If not in real life there is always a fantasy world, so creating modelling of adorable wildlife made me a happy girl!

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Baby shower – Carrot cake and button cookies

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I have been happily busy since end of June with bbq, baby shower, meeting food blogger friends, friends from Finland and Austria….we have been enjoying Belgium summer with great chocolates and beers. I have never been a beer person, but there is something about Belgian beers, its slowly growing on me, especially the fruit and light ones!
Ok folks, until I keep enjoying with my 3rd batch of good friends who will landing this Saturday in Belgium. I will let you stroll thro’ the pictures from baby shower party, which I organised (Oh it was fantastic to play with blue and white). I loved playing with fondant again after a big failure from my first trial. I’m quite happy with the results this time, though I still need to work more on the fondants.     Those butterflies were made using the fondant print and I left them to dry between the chopstick to give it a feeling of flying. For some butterflies I used single colour fondant and some I mixed few colours. (Be a baby and play!) The menu for the evening was carrot cake with orange flavoured cream cheese frosting, vanilla cupcake with mascarpone frosting, button cookies, Indian home made biscuits and lemon pineapple punch.  Note, how to turn normal use and throw cups to pretty ones, wrap a fancy tape around the cup and top with some stickers, they were adorable…Also meet my old hobby crochet.
If you still on the sunny side of the world….happy summer and happy baking!

I need cheese – Passion fruit cheese cake

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Its beautiful time here in my city, thought it is freezing cold (will be reaching – 30 C this week), no complaints,  i’m enjoying the scenic beauty with thin layer of ice on trees, which makes the place look gorgeous, just like star studded trees when few rays of sunlight falls on them. Wish I could take few pictures, but I don’t dare to do it, after one experience of burning my fingers. Anyways, as always winter time is always high calorie food for me. Bowl of soup I’m never happy, there should always be something to bite or cheesy that could make me feel warm.
We had a wonderful Asian fusion dinner party during weekend, yet again I was doing the dessert my fav! Sometime back I was in Porvoo a beautiful old city in Helsinki, my friend had passion fruit cheese cake, the cake looked extremely gorgeous that I some wanted to redo it at some point, couldn’t find any better day. Though that cake was baked version, I went for unbaked version. I didn’t intend this recipe for blog post, unexpectedly it turned out be fantastic that I dare to post with a bad picture. Passion fruit gives beautiful freshness and flavor I’m falling in love with it!  One year old baby couldn’t stop eating she was jumping on the table to eat more. Please ignore the pic and go head with it, butter, biscuit, cheese, cream, crunchy passion fruit seeds and winter…. with some margarita may be? …perfectly cozy!

Ingredients

180 gram digestive biscuit
50 gram butter
200 ml fresh cream (full fat)
400 gram cream cheese ( philadelphia cream cheese full fat)
100 gram sugar
4 passion fruit.
1 tspn of vanilla essence

For jelly glaze
100 ml water
1 tbspn sugar
Pulp of 1 passion fruit
1 1/2 tspn gelatin powder soaked in 1 tbpn of cold water

Method
Pulp 4 passion fruit and strain the juice out (give more pressure to strain all the juice).
Grind biscuit and butter together. Line the bottom of 18 cm cake pan  with butter biscuit crumbs, gently press them uniformly so that they are firm. Refrigerate it for about 30 mins.
In the mean time combine, sugar fresh cream and vanilla essence and beat them until stiff single peaks are formed. Next soften cream cheese in a separate bowl, very gently, better use hard mixer. If you over do them the cream cheese will become runny.
Now gently fold in fresh cream, cream cheese and passion fruit juice together until they are uniformly mixed.
Spoon the cream cheese mixture and spread evenly on the cake crust.
let the cake rest in the refrigerator

For gelatin glaze
In a heavy bottom pan, add water and sugar let them simmer on medium heat. Occasionally stir them till sugar dissolves, next add in passion fruit pulp and gelatin soaked in water. Bring it to simmer till the gelatin dissolves.
Let the glaze to cool in ice water bath till it becomes syrupy, them immediately pour it on top of the cake. Cover with fresh wrappers and refrigerate it. Serve the cake cold with warm tea or a cock tail!

Merry Christmas – Red Velvet Cake

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For past couple of days I had been running like a headless chicken… I hear “yeah me too” from you all….Well reason was mum arrived on Sunday and she is going to staying with me for three months “Happy Dance”. I was in rush to clear the chaos, attending Christmas parties, organising my unorganised schedule and climate being super cold here, I had to take some extra efforts for mum’s warm cloths (it’s going to reach -30 this weekend). Thought I packed mum with warmers, snow storm horrified her! She ended up saying when will I go back to India? on the day she arrived :O. And since I didn’t want her to rush back immediately to India, took a day off saying working from home, to give her some company and make her feel better but ended up making red velvet cake …mum cleared up the whole kitchen mess! Lucky me isn’t it? :)) You see I was actually working! (My boss doesn’t know I have a food blog )…ha ha
Anyways, Red velvet cake was in my do list for many months, finally it got chance for this Christmas. Being honest it wasn’t red but brick red velvet cake, but the texture, flavor was awesome. Mum loved it, I know mum’s are biased to daughters……I handed half cake to my Finnish God Mother and she asked for the recipe ..big yay! so I’m basically not bothered about the color failure…
Here is my Santa Clause with some gift and a piece of brick red velvet cake wishing you Merry Christmas. Have a peaceful and fun Christmas with your Family and friends..Greeting from Finland :)

On A Date With Pear – Parmesan With Pear and Wine

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Whenever the feel of my PhD going stray starts to creep within me, instantaneous revitalizing element is to treat myself extravagant or do completely out of my thinking. That’s when during working hours shamelessly I end up searching recipes. My desktop either show pale boring LaTex screen with my head tug into it or food picture with palm on my face! The moment any good link is found will quickly pass it over Vinoo thro’ skype she does the same. One day we were going thro’ our chat history to play word mingle, we could hardly find any written messages there, it was basically all food link. Likewise she sent me this link from academiabarilla, when I was in search of pear recipes. We decided to try it out on the following weekend.