Chellu's Kitchen: July 2013

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Shortbread Spirals

Another one of those recipes from a kid's recipe book that Chellu has been behind me for many days. In the recent past we have had quite some disappointments with baking especially cakes and muffins from the book and so I've been quite hesitant to try any recipe from the same. Finally after her many attempts I got convinced to give it a try again. I'm always amazed at how failures don't seem to bother kids..they want to keep trying again and again cause its the process that they are so interested in as against the results. Chellu's determination brought in much success with this one . The end result has been amazing! An it sort of looks like bhakarwadi!

And in today's cooking we also did quite a bit of maths with understanding ratios, estimating time w.r.t chilling the dough and baking. She read the entire recipe and also thanks to her we googled and found out more about what's caster sugar. She had also done an inventory check of the items needed and made a shopping list of what's needed.

Thursday 4 July 2013

Baking with Zoya and Hema

A few months back Hema came in to show us how to bake cookies and gave us the simplest recipe : 1 part butter, 2 parts sugar , 3 parts whole wheat flour.
The girls had the loveliest time kneading the dough and using cookie cutters to make various shapes. And then they also decorated it with sugar granules and gems. Thanks to Hema , we has repeated this recipe over and over again and have gifted it to close friends and family. And always very happy with the results!

I've always noticed that simple recipes cooked with a lot of love and enthusiasm can be the best things to gift and share with your loved ones. And its easiest with kids !

Shruthkirti attempts Rasgulla at home

The craze for Rasgulla started a few months back. Don't know where she came to know of the dish but she got obsessed with it. Went on youtube, selected a recipe. And much to our surprise selected a hindi version with English captions on it. Dutifully ( For a good 1 & 1/2 hrs) wrote the recipe by pausing at each and every line. This was during the phase of crazy writing where she was writing something or the other every day,mostly love letters to her mom & dad.
Since then she has been behind me to make Rasgullas at home and somehow in my head that seemed a frightening proposition. I have all sorts of conditioning in my head about what can be made at home and what can't..probably because I have always tasted these dishes only at marriages or parties or restaurants. Never seen anyone in my family cook some of this stuff at home. And now Chellu is slowly breaking this conditioning ..and is started with baking - cakes, muffins, BREAD!! and now the latest is Rasgulla.. I kept putting it off till a few days back she sat with me and patiently explained to me that it is not as hard as it looks . The look is her eyes finally broke my fear and laziness and I decided to make her wish come true.

Yesterday we kicked off the process. Bought some milk since that's one ingredient that's no longer available anymore in our house. We watched the recipe on youtube again and it seemed really easy. We set off to do it and Chellu was the one who did most of the tasks. I supervised and helped her a bit.The part I contributed the most was making the dough soft. She also took over the gas part of the cooking for most of the time. She would also go and check out the recipe video from time to time to ascertain that we were on the right track. The Rasgullas came out fantastic and once again I'm all in admiration of this child who is so driven with her passion to cook. When she is cooking she is a diffn child. Her whole being glows in her enthusiasm. It is during such times that I experience true learning with her. When body, mind and soul are in tune. I am always amazed at how she starts something out of her pure interest and covers all the ground in research to make it to happen.

Here are the pictures.