Sweet Tooth Journals

Today is 24th April 2014. On this day, a little more than five hundred years ago King Henry VIII began his reign as the King of England. This came to be known as the Tudor Era. The Tudors had huge class divisions, and while the lower call could hardly afford a humble meal the upper classes enjoyed the luxury known as desserts. The upper classes mainly consumed candied fruits and mince pies as desserts but desserts such as cakes, ice creams and jellies started to emerge.  The Bakewell Tart or the Bakewell Pudding is basically a shortcrust confection made during the Tudor era in England. Recreate the Tudor magic if you will! Bakewell Tart INGREDIENTS Raspberry Jam                 50 g Almond Flakes                  25 g Glazed Cherries                10 nos FOR PASTRY: Flour                             150 g Butter                           100 g Salt                              3 g Cold Water                     As Required FOR FRANGIPANE FILLI

Today's birthday boy is William Shakespeare and he just turned 450 years old!!! William Shakespeare is probably the most famous playwright, poet and actor of all times in the English language. In honour of this great bard's 'name day' I present to you a delicious dessert from Shakespearean times. The Shrewsbury cake, which is a classic English dessert named after Shrewsbury county in England,  is actually a kind of cookie and is known today as Shrewsbury Biscuits. Easy to make with the correct balance of flavours these cookies are mildly sweet and very buttery. "Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?" , says Shakespeare. Who are we to stop this birthday party? Bake on!! ^_^ SHREWSBURY CAKES Ingredients: Flour                                500 g Sugar                                250 g Butter                              250 g Eggs                                  2 nos Salt                           

The very first time making a three tier wedding cake, but unfortunately there was no cake to begin with! The cake was substituted with thermocol circles in order to prevent spoilage during display. The covering for the cake, along with the decorations and wedding cake toppers were however all edible. We used pastillage and royal icing for the entire cake.  The theme I chose was the luxurious reign of Queen Marie Antoinette for the wedding cake. I have posted below the cake in the making and the final product. These are some of the elements for the cake: Roses Wedding Toppers Brooch These are the steps involved in the assembly of the cake: The Final Product -  Fron t The Final Product - Side This was my very first time with something this big so comments are appreciated!!! :)

Happy Easter everyone!! ^_^ I have had a boring Sunday without any Easter festivities or special food. Missing home. This got me reading up on Easter. Well, everyone knows Easter is celebrated both as a Christian holiday to commemorate Jesus Christ rising from his tomb and also as a Pagan holiday to celebrate the arrival of Spring and new life. For some people Easter is a day for church going, religion, reflection and faith. For others it is a day for festivities and celebrating life. For yet others it is very simply about Easter Egg hunts, Chocolate Easter Bunnies, Marshmallow Chicks, Hot Cross Buns and all kinds of sweet treats. A sweet treat designed for Easter is the Simnel Cake. Not many people who do not follow the religion or celebrate Easter at home know about this cake. Even I only remember seeing it once at a display case in Flury's when I was very little. I remember seeing it because the name struck me quite funny as I kept rolling it on my tongue. The name 'Si

Ever felt like you absolutely needed to eat something sweet, and yet time crunch and your own lazy self got the better of you? I am referring to the real dessert craving which a spoonful of sugar cannot satisfy. If you have felt this way, I am also sure that you have at some point looked for an easy to make dessert recipe on the internet. But alas. While some sites have led you to believe that there is no such thing as an "Easy To Make Dessert" , others have given you false hopes of "2 Ingredient Dessert Recipes" that use two premixes as the two ingredients. After scouring the internet and experimenting in the kitchen I have come up with four recipes that was both easy to make and have only two or three ingredients. Here they are: Banana and Peanut Butter Ice Cream Ingredients: Bananas                 4 nos Peanut Butter         4 tbsp Fresh Cream         50 ml Method: Blend all three ingredients in a food processor till smooth and creamy tex

I heard the news from a friend who casually pinged me on Facebook this afternoon. "Gabriel Garcia Márquez is dead" the message read. And so he was. He died yesterday at the age of 87. The first memory I have of Márquez is the collection of books which bore that name on my mother's bookshelf. As a child I thought 'Gabriel' was a woman's name and simply assumed the author was a 'she'. When I was in the seventh grade however, I found a short story collection by the author in the senior school library. I started reading the first story in the collection "Eva Is Inside Her Cat". I will not pretend I understood anything the author tried to say, but the macabre style of writing drew me. I did not read Márquez in the three years that followed but the memory of the glimpse of macabre I had experienced that afternoon remained my library secret for a long time. The first proper novel I read by the author was "No One Writes To The Colonel".

Today I feel like blogging so I am going to go on a roll and blog my heart out!! Who knows if I will be able to keep true to my word, the unreliable blogger that I am. Thought you should also know about the adventure I mean to embark on in a month's time. I plan to give selling cupcakes a shot over the summer!!! I am super excited and immensely nervous to say the least. I am going to make and sell the cupcakes from my home in Kolkata, India. Lets see how it works out for me... Here are the posters I made for the sale. They have the Menu and everything. In the bleak possibility that any of you are in Kolkata between 20th May and 5th June PLEASE contact me!!! Thank you!! ^_^

Five months is a really long time. What it means is that I have not written at all throughout this entire semester. But the semester has a month left in it yet and I will write as often as I can. In order to make up for my negligence I offer a beautiful recipe as expiation. It is the recipe for an Apple Sauce Cake which we made in practical class recently. The recipe provided wasn't all that great, but I have always had a flair for 'minor alterations'.  The resultant cake was what one of my classmates described as "Christmas in the mouth!" and even the greatest dessert haters (Yes. They exist!) could not resist it. It is a dense, sticky plateful of sinfully rich goodness. APPLE SAUCE CAKE Ingredients: FOR CAKE Flour                                                         300 g Castor Sugar                                              200 g Butter                                                        100 g Egg