This blew my mind.

These happened!!!!!
Wohooooo.


Okay recipe - The cupcakes are White Cupcakes, the same ones I used for the peanut butter cupcakes.

The frosting is butter cream.

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp yellow food coloring
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp milk

and the Batman cutouts are from ready made fondant that I bought. But if you don't have readymade fondant, you can make it or you can make gumpaste. Recipe of gumpaste is given in the post about the Batman cookies.

Black food coloring is not available in the market. So mix equal parts of yellow, blue and red food coloring and voila. Black. :)

Some pointers -
1. Fondant sticks easy. So when working with Fondant, ALWAYS use parchment paper or if you don't have that then sprinkle your working counter with icing sugar. This should help the fondant to not stick.
2. The thinner your fondant, the easier it will be to work with. So make sure you roll it thin, but not so thin that it tears.
3. Fondant tears easy. So when working with fondant, it is important to refrigerate every step along the way. Refrigerate for 15 mins after carving, then refrigerate after painting it black.
4. I made the silliest mistake. I didn't let the paint dry and I put the fondant batman piece on the icing. DO NOT do that. The paint will run and make yellow full of spots of black, we don't want that. Let the paint dry and then carefully place the cut out on top of the icing.

If I end up being a serial killer.

So you know when serial killers get on death row, they're given a chance to eat whatever they want. It's called " one last meal".

http://imgur.com/gallery/7ddjs


If this ever happened to me, I have a LONG list of what I would want to eat.

1. Blueberry Cheesecake, Apple Crumble, and Chocolate mousse from Big Chill. And lamb chops also!

2. Shawarmas from SDA.
3. Sarojini Nagar Momos.
4. Half bacon and half sausage pizza from Joey's.
5. Chola Kulcha from school.
6. Hot Chocolate from Mrs. Magpie
7. Phuchka with mishti jol from VP
8. Mutton chaap and Paratha from Zeeshan
10. Arsalan ka mutton biryani
11. Ghiya at Aarushi's house
12. Kapil's Mom's Aloo Parathas with Aloo Sabzi with chocolate pudding
13. Red Velvet at Elma's
 14. Anmol's Quadruple Chocolate Cake
15. Rudraksh's mom's chocolate cake WITHOUT NUTS. JUST FOR ME.
16. Madhav's mom's Spaghetti
17. Auyon's mom's cheeni paratha
18. Cheese Omelette that Anubhav makes.

Who likes Peanut Butter?

So my favorite sammich in the world is peanut butter and jam. And I was just talking to him about this last night so today morning I was bored and needed something to do and needed to make him something bake-y cause IT'S HIS BIRTHDAY TOMORROW! WOHOOOO. AND I bought peanut butter just yesterday, so purchase excitement was still there. Thus, these were born :)

Jam filled cupcakes with peanut butter frosting :)

Okay so I looked this up online and there wasn't any recipe that I liked. So I decided to combine 2 different recipes.

These are plain white cake cupcakes.

I followed this recipe to the T and got amazing results. I halved the proportions though, to make a batch of 6.

The peanut butter frosting is also fairly simple.

1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp cream cheese

blend this until you're happy with the consistency. i blended for about 6 minutes.

Now coming to the jam filling.
After you're done with the cupcakes, you take them out and let them cool. Once they're cool, take a knife and make a whole in the center of the cupcake. Now pull the top of the hole out. With the back end of a spoon, scoop out how much ever you want. Fill this hole or whatever you want to call it with jam and then take the cupcake bits that you scooped out to cover the hole. Okay man I have used the word hole too many times.

Then ice the cupcake. I tried piping. Failed miserably, so maybe next time. So I just used a spoon and spread icing on top of the cupcake and sprinkled it with sprinkles and voilaaaa.

And hopefully tomorrow, I'm going to put a candle on one of these and sing happy birthday to the hottest person in the room. And maybe put a little frosting on his face. ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SQUIGGLES I LOVE YOU.

Tralalalalalala RED VELVET CHEESECAKE!

Sooooo.
Let's just say that I'm a genius. :) My special friend told me that he loves the red velvet and the cheesecake I bake. Why not combine the two? I thought to myself. And that night, in my head, I sorted that idea out and now, I present to you the reality :)

My first self invented recipe ever. :)

[ Baby, I hope you're proud :) ]

Refer to the cheesecake post, follow the instructions.
Scoop a cup of the batter and keep aside aside.
Add 1 tsp Red food Coloring + 1 tbsp cocoa powder + a dash of vinegar [ optional. vinegar is just to accentuate the red color] to the batter kept aside.

Layer tin with crust.  [ This time around, I added a little bit of sugar and cocoa powder to the crust. And then I layered the bottom of the tin with the crust and put it in the oven for 10 mins at 175C, just to make sure it was nice and firm, if you're doing this, make sure the crust is completely cool before you add the batter]
First pour the red batter and then the non red batter. Take a spoon and swirl.

Bake in a water bath for an hour and 20 mins at 150C. Refrigerate. Cut. [ The water bath just sounds fancy, and when you say things like that, people actually take you seriously. It's nothing, just put some water in a baking tray and then put the cake tin onto the tray and done!]

TADAAAAAAAAAA.

Varun's not quite Red Velvet.

So! My " friend " Varun is in town for the summer for a bit, and he wanted to eat my Red Velvet Cupcakes. I mean, not my cupcakes, the ones I bake :p People who know both him and me would be able to understand why it was important to clarify.

Anyway, so disaster happened. And I realized that the bottle of red food coloring I thought I had wasn't actually food coloring but strawberry essence. WHICH btw, is my latest discovery.

So this is my not quite Red Velvet cupcakes ka recipe

1 cup maida
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 TBS strawberry essence
1 and a half tsp vinegar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp coffee powder
1/2 cup butter milk ] [1/2 cup milk + 1 tbs vinegar]
LOTS of cocoa powder to fix the damage done.

Okay very simple. Cream the butter and sugar first. And then add everything else.
Mix mix mix.
Grease a cupcake tray. Put in cupcake paper. Fill them half way through.
Bake in an oven, at 170C for 25 mins :)

Better than Biryani Mutton.

I'm calling this what I'm calling it because this was an impromptu decision. [ In no way am I implying that this mutton is better than Biryani, it will be a sin to even compare] I was all set to make Biryani, and then, my door bell rang and it was a delivery man delivering a parcel to me. That parcel contained something I'm going to cherish for a VERY long time. My first ever cook book! I've bought cook books before, but I haven't ever been gifted one. The book's called " Oh! Calcutta Cookbook" , and as the name suggests, the book's full of bengali food recipes. [ Oh! Calcutta is a Bengali restaurant, my dad's favorite]

A bengali loves mutton. Actually, anyone with taste buds loves mutton. Bengalis just love their mutton more than usual.

Making mutton is easier than I thought! It's a little tricky, because you have to constantly pay attention and you can't let yourself distracted [ the mutton will end up burning if you do], and temperature is a big deal and so are the measurements. But hey, I hadn't made mutton before, and I was determined to do it without any external help, so paying attention to detail was something I had to do.

The recipe
Again, like most meat recipes, it has 2 parts.

Note : I used 500 gm of mutton!

The marinade-
Very simple.

One chota cup of dahi [ I used a 100gm mother dairy thing]
20 gm ginger paste
15 gm garlic paste
[ if you don't have ready made paste at home, you can use the powdered ones that they sell in the market. Or just make your own paste, like I did. Very very simple. Ginger + 1 tsp water + mixie for 15 seconds and done! Same thing with garlic]
1/2 tsp garam masala
A pinch of nutmeg

Mix all of this together and put it in a box [ which has a lid] and put the mutton in [ after you have cleaned and washed it] and make sure all the pieces are nicely coated with the marinade.

Put the lid on. Put inside the fridge.

Now the recipe says marinade for an hour, I chose to marinade for 3 and a half.


The curry

Put 100 ml of mustard oil in a kadhai and heat. Wait for 2 mins and add about 500 gm chopped onions to it and fry till they're nice and brown. Add marinated mutton to this along with 5 gm of whole garam masala + 10 gm garlic paste + 1 tsp ginger paste. And cook for 15 minutes. MAKE SURE YOU DON'T BURN THE MUTTON. IF IT STARTS TO BURN, DON'T PANIC. IT'S OKAY. Move on to the next step as and when this happens.

After 15 minutes, add a chota bottle of coke worth of water to this and constantly keep stirring on medium heat..

TASTE. [ the gravy] The recipe books don't ask you to taste, and I think that's what fundamentally wrong with cookbooks. You can't blindly follow a recipe. Taste, every step along the way. Do what you think you should. If you want to make adjustments, DO SO. Without thinking about what the book says.

I didn't like how it tasted, so I decided to add 4 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, a little bit of nutmeg, and one table spoon of red chili powder.

I also added potatoes cut in quarters that I par boiled in the microwave for 7 minutes.

Once you're happy with how it tastes, let the mutton simmer for about 25 minutes [ depending on how soft you want it] and tadaaaaa, done! [ 25 minutes is how long it takes for mutton to be thoroughly cooked. if you want it softer, cook for longer]

Another pointer is the gravy. Add more water if you like your mutton with a lot of gravy. Let it reduce if you don't. I chose to reduce it. In Bangla, mutton without gravy is called Kosha Mangsho...which is what this dish was originally called.

I served this with rice.

I used Basmati rice, that I boiled in salt water, along with some tej patta [ bay leaves?] and cloves. And then once it's cooked, add ghee to it and it will taste and smell beautiful.

DONE!

I guarantee that this will look and taste and smell amazing. It will blow your mind. It definitely blew mine.
And I'm hoping it blows my boyfriend's mind also when I make it for him. He's a bengali, so we take mutton very seriously.

BATMAN COOKIES HELL YES!

I always told my boyfriend I'd make these for him. He has a strange obsession with Batman, which has been passed on to me.
We might not be together anymore, but this is something I wanted to do. For him.
A batch of Batman cookies :)

I have been trying for FOREVER to perfect these. I even went to the Metallurgy department of my college and made myself a Batman stencil, to make life easier.
[ Didn't work, but that's a different story]

And finally. After 2 failed and very disappointing attempts, that almost got tears in my eyes, the cookies have been perfected.

Thank fucking god.


3 parts to this.
The cookie - A plain round sugar cookie.
The yellow bit - Yellow colored royal icing.
The batman cut out - Gum paste painted black.

Let's tackle this one by one.

The cookie. [ makes a small batch of 6, a big batch of 12-15, depending on the size of the cutter you're using. I used a steel bowl, had nothing else]

1 egg
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup + 1/4 cup maida
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients to form a nice and soft dough. Roll out the dough on a surface that has been coated with flour.
Cut out in any shape that you want.
Bake in an oven for 8 minutes [ exact] at 200 degrees.

The icing - It's very basic and simple. Also, very quick. I used Nigella's recipe for Royal icing that can be found HERE.
I didn't make the entire thing, I halved the proportions. And once it was made, I beat in about a teaspoon of yellow food coloring and it was done.

The Batman cut out.
This is the most tricky part of this whole thing and I'm not going to lie, for someone who lacks even an ounce of patience, this was like climbing The Everest.
I used a paper stencil as reference, you can print the Batman logo out and cut it out and use it on top of your gum paste to shape it.

Here's how you make gumpaste
2 cups sugar
1/2 of 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tbs gelatin powder
1/2 tbs honey.



This is a little tricky, but if I could do it, I'm sure anyone can.

Put the gelatin and water in a saucepan and let the gelatin soak till it becomes foamy.
Put this saucepan over LOW heat and add the honey and keep stirring till all of it has dissolved and the mixture is clear. [ I added a teaspoon of homemade black food coloring to this, to get the Batman black. Black food coloring is equal parts of red, yellow, and blue food coloring. Google taught me that]

Take this off the heat and add the sugar in it and keep mixing until you can't mix anymore.
Then, take the dough out and keep kneading [ on a surface that has been sprinkled with sugar] till it stops sticking to your hands.
And a lot of kneading later, your gumpaste is ready.

Roll this out, and get it to be as thin as you possibly can get it to be. Use a rolling pin or press down with a flat plate or something. Just get it to be thin. The thinner the gum paste, the easier it is to carve.
Then put the stencil over it and use a knife to carve it out.
VERY CAREFULLY place the cut outs on a plate.

Ice the cookies and put the cut out on top of the yellow icing.
Refrigerate.

And if you're as amazing as I am at this whole baking shindig, your cookies will look something like this.