Baked Eggs: For the lazy Sundays

There are some days when the thought of a breakfast is just too much. You are just out of bed and the thought of standing at the stove scrambling eggs or even whisking the eggs seems like a torture. You wish you were home, where your mother would have had breakfast hot and ready for you when you woke up. You mentally slap yourself for the thought, you are a strong and independent woman (man) who chose to live by yourself. So you trudge into the kitchen trying to wake yourself up enough, so you can think of something easy.

These baked eggs are so easy you can make them half asleep. Seriously, you can. All you need are some chopped veggies and some herbs.

Throw them all in, sprinkle salt and pepper on top, bake in the oven to how jiggly you want the eggs to be and Voila! You can also whisk the mixture a bit, it will look like a mini omelette.

Like them? Make them!

Baked eggs

easy peasy eggs for one lazy bum

Ingredients

• 1 egg (or how many every u like)
• chopped bell pepeprs
• chopped onions
• mixed herbs
• salt and pepper to taste
• butter to taste

Instructions

1. Mix in onions and bell peppers with butter and herbs and microwave (or saute) for a minute or two
2. Break egg into the bowl and add the veggies
3. Bake in an oven at 160 C till desired amount of jigglyness of egg

Yield: for 1 person
Prep Time: 00:03
Cook time: 00:05
Tags: eggs, breakfast, quick

Colour Blocked Cupcakes and a fresh start

I know have been kind of MIA on the blog. But post-graduate life does that to you. I have hardly been cooking much even when I go back home and P.S Cupcakes has kind of died out due to lack of time and unavailability of an oven on campus.

My Hakuna Matata tattoo and the neon cupcakes. 

But now in a month I will have my degree in my hand and will be pushed out into the real world, with a real job. And I am terrified! So terrified that when I went home this time, I sought refuge in the kitchen and in an old friend.

These cupcakes are Oscar approved

She wanted to bake multi-colour cupcakes and bake them we did. Being a fashion blogger she called them colour blocked cupcakes. And guess what? We had a bunch of them which had pastel colours and a bunch which had neons, so much for me keeping track of fashion trends huh?

Pretty cool huh?

There is very basic physics required to get these right. Place colours which have similar wavelength together. These colours won't mix together to form other weird browns or blacks. Bunch them according to the order they appear in a rainbow: VIBGYOR. Which is why I had Violet, Green and Blue together and Pink, Orange and Yellow together.

You can make rainbow cupcakes as well, but put very less amount of batter of every colour while filling them in. Also make sure you spread the batter evenly, you don't want random blobs of colour. Or, may be you do. I would.

 These cupcakes are lemon cupcakes which were filled with a lemon curd and had a lemon butter-cream frosting.

Don't be afraid to core cupcakes, just fill them with yumminess and put back the top.  It will get covered with icing. 

There can you make out that the cores were out? 

I used Martha Stewart's Lemon Meringue Cupcake recipe for the cakes. And David Leibovitz's recipe for the lemon curd. Feel free to use use Martha's but it just asked for more eggs. I made the butter-cream icing myself, the recipe for which will follow.

I am always going to paint my nails before I take food photos with my hands. I like how happy painted nails look. 

I am going to be posting pretty regularly now, so stay in touch. 

Aditi, writes a fashion blog, The Colour Whisperer. Do follow her.

All the pictures in the post have been taken by her.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

• 100 gm butter
• 200 gm icing sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp lemon/lime juice

Instructions

1. Beat butter till light.
2. Add sugar in batches and keep beating till the volume increases and the sugar is well incorporated.
3. Add milk and lemon juice.
4. Add more milk to thin out the icing, if you want it to spread easily.
5. To firm up the icing, add more icing sugar. You can now pipe it out.

Yield: Enough to lightly frost 24 cupcakes
Prep Time: 00:10
Tags: lemon, icing, butter-cream

Delhi

My college has a compulsory rural research project component in it, which in the words of a MICAn means HOLIDAY! So the destinations mostly are Mcleodganj, Goa, Konkan and Kasol. We do manage to get a few days off to visit an actual village and get some data out by interviewing people or by imagining that we interviewed people.

If you know me, then you would know that any excuse to travel is just an excuse to eat. I very conveniently took off to Delhi 5 days before I was meant to get there, so I could catch up with my best friend and eat my way around the city.

I visited Chandni Chowk, Paranthewale Galli, Karims, Hauz Khas Village and Big Chill.

The dahi chaat at Chandni Chowk was very different from what we get at Bombay. It had papdi and dahi vada in it.

The chaat wala who sold sooji ka pooris

Dahi chaat!

I have wanted to visit Paranthewale Galli since a college senior blogged about it, along with a picture of a brilliant Rabdi Parantha. The paranthas here are fried, rather than being toasted. I strongly recommend the Rabdi Parantha. 

From top: Mirchi parantha, Rabdi Parantha and Khurchan Parantha

Another place to visit, while in Chandni Chowk is Karim's. Go there for the kebabs and the amazingly soft and buttery naan. The best naan I have ever had. 

 Every one in Delhi will definitely ask you to visit Hauz Khas village. Do go there, there is a great ruin and a lake and a beautiful garden there. There are also a lot of these kitschy shops and boutiques and tiny but expensive cafés all around. Jayesh and I went to one such.

Café Zo, serves Mediterranean food. It also is overtly done up and the owners in a bid to make the place all mediterranean-y have put in textures on everything, so it is an eye sore, at least in daylight.

The food wasn't all that great either.

Lunch at Cafe Zo: Panko encrusted stuffed mushrooms, Greek Salad, Chicken Tajine with Couscous and Pizza with grilled chicken and caramelized onions. 

Another place which people insist you visit is Big Chill. It is full of these old movie posters and is known for its milkshakes. The servings are huge so DO NOT over order like we did. Not that you will regret it, the food is great.

Clockwise from top left: baked potato with cheddar and mushrooms, baked mushroom, cheddar and penne; fusilli with tomatoes, basil and olives; chicken lasagna and chocolate decadence. 

 Delhi has lots of awesome places to eat at. Go with a friend who knows the place and will take you to all the ruins and tell you about the architecture. Delhi is beautiful and full of stories. Your history text come alive.

P.S Cupcakes

Most Postgraduate colleges in India are situated in far off towns, or if they are close to a town, then auto rates are astronomical. All this leads to one thing: extremely hungry and starved for decent food MICAns. 

Pooja and I, thought of baking and selling cupcakes and cakes on campus. We sourced ingredients locally, bought chocolates from Bombay and brought all our baking goods from home. 

We call ourselves "P.S Cupcakes". From freshers' party gifts to birthday cakes and cakes just for the heck of it, we have covered it all, in a month. 

We baked these boob shaped cakes for a friend's birthday. 

This is the chocolate mud cake covered with ganache for another friend's birthday.

The brownie batter, before it went into the oven.

I leave you with my (our) new favourite recpe for chocolate cake, it is dense moist and a crowd pleaser.

Mississippi Mud Cake

Ingredients

• 125 gm dark cooking chocolate
• 100 gm butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup hot water
• 1/4 cup bourbon
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup self raising flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. In a large heatproof bowl, combine chocolate, butter, water and bourbon
3. Heat over boiling water, until the mixture is smooth
4. Allow to cool slightly, and add the flour and cocoa mixture
5. Mix in the eggs
6. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until firm to touch.
7. Use a chocolate ganache on top.

Yield: 500 gm cake
Prep Time: 00:15
Cook time: 00:40
Tags: chocolate, mud cake, egg

A photoshoot for the cupcake business.

So, I had posted about starting a small home-run cupcake business, right? So before that I created a Facebook page for it. Social media is a brilliant thing, trust me (plus I had to use my newly acquired digital media skills from my internship). So the page was well received and was shared by many and Tina (Piu), who is a senior from college, aka Sharan's friend, offered to do a photoshoot to promote the business. I agreed, obviously.

She and another friend, Vini came over on Sunday to watch and photograph me while I baked. They made me move out of my kitchen (!) to my bedroom (!!). The study table was brought before the window and all the ingredients were brought there.

I baked a chocolate cupcake with a peanut butter soft center and also mini-cupcakes with a vanilla icing. You will find the recipe for my cupcakes below, feel free to use your own frosting, but I frosting recipe is coming soon.

You can head over to Tina's blog for the pictures, here is also the Facebook album.

She also sent over a few pictures, so these are a few of my favourites:

I have always envied food bloggers who would have photos like this. So cool and all. Now, I have my own! 

Notice the nails?

A friend pointed out that this looks like I am talking to my cupcakes. Though no true at this moment, I do that quite often. 

I made coloured sugar! So easy and so pretty!

You can contact Tina anytime on her Facebook page. You should check out her wedding photography. Amazing!

What do you think of the pictures?

Devil's Food Cake cupcakes

By Sanjeev Kapoor

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp soda bicarb
• 60 grams butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 60 grams cooking chocolate
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line your cupcake trays
2. Sift all the dry ingredients together
3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beat till incorporated.
4. Melt chocolate in 1/2 a cup of boiling water and cool. Then mix into the egg mixture
5. Fold in the dry ingredients. Add the milk, lemon juice and vanilla essence, till all well blended.
6. Fill cupcake trays till 2/3rd full and bake for 20 mins, or till it passes the knife test.

Yield: 12 big cupcakes and 6-8 small ones

Prep Time: 00:10
Cook time: 00:20
Tags: chocolate, cupcakes, egg

Pancakes

Bombay is expensive. We all know that. But you start noticing how high the prices are only when you live in another city.

In Ahmedabad, students like me can actually think about going to a 5 star for a buffet. And we do, regularly. To the Courtyard Marriott. The breakfast buffet there costs Rs. 450 and they also have a 25% discount for students from select institutes.

So the all you can eat features fresh fruits, salads, 3-4 kinds of cheese, croissants, muffins, breads, any egg preparation, Indian breakfast, some chinese-y things, a huge range of fruit preserves, a range of muesli and chocos and fruit juices, waffles and pancakes.

Their pancakes are great, I love having them with a generous dollop of butter and trying them out with all the preserves and jams.

So, this post is really about pancakes. We have all tried to make them at home for breakfast and for dinner.

I like mine buttery and slightly salty. This recipe is just that. The outsides are so crispy and nice and the insides soft. It takes a while to cook. But follow the directions and it will be heaven.

A cupcake shop!

I know a lot of people who love food, they are the best kind, and most of them want to have a restaurant of their own sometime in the future. 

Future.. when? After we are all done paying our student loans (me), having slaved for the corporate overlord and or having satisfied your parent's expectation of having a nice, well-paying and settled life. Everybody needs some capital to start a restaurant business, and according to Mr. Bourdain 95% of them tank. 

Honestly, I can't wait that long, or even to see whether it will succeed or not. So, I have decided to open a cupcake store from home, only for a month.

Why? Because Navi Mumbai needs cupcakes. There isn't a single cupcake store here. 

All that said and done now, please head over to my facebook page to know about the menu and to know how you can order.