Marble cake.. perfect for holiday season

Hope you'll had a wonderful Christmas :) holiday cheer is still in the air...people visiting their near n dear ones..cooking together, enjoying meals together, shopping together and what not!! enjoy your holidays.....
an easy breezy cake to enjoy with your evening cup of tea when you catch up with your kith n kin....

You'll need:
All purpose flour: 2 cups
Butter: 1/2 cup (1 stick) softened
Sugar: 1 cup
Baking powder: 2 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Eggs: 2
Milk: 1 cup
Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
Cocoa powder: 2 tbsp

How to make it:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 by 5 pan and set aside.
Swift together all purpose flour, baking powder and salt.
In a bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well until everything is well mixed together.
Mix in vanilla essence.
Add the flour mixture in batches, alternating with the milk.
Set aside 1/3 of the batter. Pour the remaining batter into the cake pan.
Mix cocoa powder into the reserved batter, until well blended.
Pour spoonfuls of the cocoa batter over the white batter. Using a knife, swirl the cocoa batter into the white batter to give the marble effect.
Bake for 30 to 35 min, until an inserted wooden pick comes out  clean.
Transfer pan to a rack and let it cool for 10 min.

Enjoy your piece of cake. This is how i get mine in my fav coffee shop :)

Thattai- a savory snack

I love salty spicy snacks...I can munch on them endlessly...my mom always scolds me for eating chips right off the packet....but that is the fun part..not eating by portion :)

sounds lame?? i know..i still do that....even these days when I go home even before having my morning cup of coffee, I attack the chips canisters which will be definitely there in my mom's kitchen shelves....mostly with jack fruit chips or some other seasonal chips....of course home made :)

coming back to this savory snack, Thattai, I have eaten this many times, but have never made them at home...

thanks to our neighbor who gave  us some this diwali along with some yummy sweets :)

had bookmarked the recipe since then, but only got a chance to make them recently...

effort wise, I would say it is a bit tedious, bcoz each n every single piece has to shaped separately...a little bit more time consuming than the usual snacks, but can definitely be made once in a while..

Here's the recipe:

You'll need:


Rice flour: 2 cups
Urad dal flour: 1/4 cup **
Red chili pwdr: 1 tsp
Salt: 1 tsp
Ghee: 1 tbsp
Water: 1/2 + 1/8 cup (or enough to make the dough)
Chana dal: 3 tbsp (soaked in water for 1 hr)
Sesame seed: 2 tsp
Asafetida: 1/4 tsp

** To make urad dal flour at home, dry roast ural dal till it turns golden brown. Let it cool and grind into a fine powder.

How to make:


Drain the soaked chana dal.
Mix rice flour, urad dal flour, salt, chana dal, sesame seed, chili pwdr and butter. Knead this into a dough by adding water little by little at a time. Cover and set aside for a few min.
After a while, take small balls of dough (half a lemon sized) and press them into small paapad size.
Place the dough on a cling film and press by hand to form small flat circles. Poke these using a fork to prevent from puffing while frying in the oil.

Heat enough oil in a pan for deep frying. When the oil becomes piping hot add the thattai one at a time, frying each side for about 1 1/2 min , until they turn golden brown. Drain and let it cool.
Store in an air tight container.

How to fold a fitted sheet!!

hey, this post might sound silly to most of you...but a few like me would be happy to know how to fold a fitted sheet...
this happens every time I do the laundry, i struggle to fold the fitted sheet neatly and next time I take it out I get a completely creased sheet....
are you with me on this one....see the easy steps to fold one...
Martha Stewart is there to help....

http://www.marthastewart.com/269141/how-to-fold-a-fitted-sheet

a piece of cake, rite?

you'll have a good one :)

My li'l one turned one!!

A few weeks ago, my li'l one turned one :) One whole year of motherhood days for me(mostly happy moments and occasional low ones too)....we threw a small party for a few friends of ours...so was busy putting together some party decorations, somethings with a personal touch, like a birthday banner with  every month's photos of my li'l one's first year...and few other silly stuffs to make the party hall look colorful...

i guess I get this from my mother...to add a personal touch to anything and everything you do...and my dear hubby,the last man in the world to appreciate it.....okay, so you get where I am going with this, rite?
Anyway, the birthday party was great...we had fun...even my li'l one enjoyed it to the fullest ,except for the occasional screams when a balloons burst...she can't stand sudden loud noises...like a whistle from the cooker, or the vacuum cleaner or even the hair dryer....strange, huh?

okay, coming back to the cake, i guess that was the highlight of the party...we had been to a few b'day parties before, even one last weekend, and have always enjoyed a slice of the yummy b'day cake....and the hunt began for the cake...went to the bakeries in the usual places where we had seen the b'day cakes..but all had the regular white or chocolate cake with the theme you say...(for our li'l one we wanted a sesame street cake)...but we were pretty sure the b'day cakes we had eaten before were not mere white or choc cakes...they were much tastier than those...anyways, long story short, a few days before the party a friend of us (who had thrown a b'day recently) suggested to get the tres leches cake.....bhoom...what in the world is that? oh, my!! but luckily he also said where to find it....okay, that helps :)
 I consoled myself feeling, I am not the only one in the whole wide world who didn't know about Tres Leches cake..even the pioneer woman didn't have a much idea about it ..

here is more about it from the very talented pioneer woman
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/09/tres-leches-cake/

So, now you ask me why such poor pictures, even though we have a Nikon D-SLR with some XYZ lenses and all....aaaha...don't make go there...plz don't...

you'll have a good one :)