Fresh Pineapple Upside Down Cake

It's not that all i do is bake cakes. Its just that baking cakes gets me excited enough to come here and leave a record of it. And so a couple of months after my last post i come back here to talk about another new cake i baked and how good it turned out. This was my first attempt at baking the much famed pineapple upside down cake, my first attempt at making caramel and i had absolutely no expectations about this whole attempt resulting in an actual cake. I had lots of hopes of course, but no real expectations. I was prepared for a gooey mess that would fall apart when taken out of the cake mould and was then delighted with the perfect colour and shape of the entity that proudly stood in front of me at the end of 45 minutes in the oven.

Healthy Carrot Cake for a birthday

I have been MIA (been so eager to use that word) and will stop trying to justify my absence. You are used to my apologies by now, aren't you? Its just that i have been lazy and uninspired. You know, that realisation that i am adding nothing to this blog by talking about what i eat. Then again i read recently in another blog's comments that the purpose of a blog is to write and not about others reading it, that's what inspired me to finally make a comeback and put my thoughts out here.

What i would like to remind myself today is that i have started out on this mission of trying out new foods and documenting the results here a year ago and it has been a fulfilling experience, especially when not much else was happening in life. Not only have i cooked up new foods that i would otherwise not have, but i would like to think that i brought happiness to people along the way with my baking experiments. So in keeping with the tradition, i baked a healthy carrot cake for my mother-in-law's birthday last week.

Back from a trip to nostalgia

Gauva tree near Grandma's place, close to this tree, and a butterfly fluttering by.

When you have made lots of friends and you plan on making a disappearing act, you should leave a word lest they worry about you. And while i have done the disappearing act a few times now since starting the blog less than a year ago, i seem to have still not learnt the 'leaving a word' part. I had gone off to my parents place again last week and spent nearly a whole week eating, shopping, and visiting relatives; and despite my best intentions, i simply had no time to come back here and say hello.And i have other excuses too, like my camera battery charger going kaput and such other lame ones. So anyway when i saw a mail from a blogger friend today enquiring if all was OK, i was guilty and ready to post something even if it was nothing interesting and no recipe.

And while my only intention was to do a quick post, as soon as i logged into blogger, i started opening links of recent blog posts that i missed and that seemed too good to ignore. I was sufficiently distracted and started to feel guilty again that this post has nothing to offer, that i am talking without having anything to say. So i won't mind if you too have nothing to say about it. Hope you have been well.

This is the tree that bore these fruits

Easy Home-made Frech Fries

I have been cooking so much lately, i have had no time to talk about it. And these french fries have been featuring prominently as evening snacks most days of the week, ever since i discovered them about two months ago. I saw them featured on The Pioneer Woman and they looked delicious. Not its easy to say no to fried potato whether they are really in front of you or just virtually in pics. But then i am also one for shortcuts. I usually don't have the patience for pre-planning. So while the source recipe tells you to soak the potato cut into fries for at least an hour and then fry them twice once in hot oil and next in very hot oil, that sounded too long winded and cumbersome to me. And it asked for a thermometer to measure the temperature of oil. There i gave up. But i didn't give up entirely.

Purple Grape Jam with White Bread Loaf

I had been eyeing this jam for a couple of months now and i had been sceptical of baking bread for even longer. Then i saw my friend bake bagels from scratch and knew it was time for me to draw some inspiration. I had been telling her that i would bake a bread from her blog because she was doing it all too easily and all too frequently.  I may have been postponing it because nobody was asking me to do these. If i did make both bread and jam from scratch, it would be solely for me. The husband won't touch bread especially when it has jam in it (will eat Subway breads only!). And is not much of a breakfast person either. I decided i should do it for my own satisfaction. Boy was i happy. I finished making jam at 5 in the evening, then made these for the husband to snack on and finally pushed my bread into the oven. Fresh bread came out at 8 pm. And i didn't have the patience to wait till breakfast to try these out. So my dinner came in the form of purple jam lathered over freshly baked and sliced bread. I have no complaints. Making something from scratch going slightly out of your comfort zone gives tremendous satisfaction. And for me, i have not done anything so elaborate just myself after getting married. Usually when the husband is out and i have to cook only for myself, i have only ever made Maggi noodles or eaten left over rice from the morning or convinced him to bring me takeaway. So to go out to such lengths to prepare something only for myself wasn't bad at all. I should try it again sometime.