I am a terrible procrastinator.

Or, if you look at it from another view point, I’m really good at procrastinating. I try to stop, I really do. But the very fact that I have an internet connection doesn’t help me at all. Yes, I am talking about tumblr, twitter, facebook, pinterest, and just about every other website that sucks you into a black hole of non-productivity and leaves you scrolling and clicking for hours on end. I’m ninety percent sure, that one day there will be a legitimate psychological disease called “Internet Addiction”. I can already imagine the the infomercials  youtube/blogger advertisements: “Is the internet ruining your life?”

But don’t get me wrong, while these websites enable procrastinators, they also have a good side: they are amazing sources for all sorts of inspirations and ideas, from life hacks and inspirations quotes, to recipes and beauty tips. Pinterest was where I got the recipe for these amazing chocolate caramel shortbread bars.

I’ve modified the recipe quite a bit, because initially while reading the recipe I felt myself slowly morphing into Paula Deen because of the sheer amount of butter in the recipe. My revised version isn’t entirely healthy, but these bars are definitely worth the calories.

Chocolate Caramel Shortbread Bars

adapted from Annie’s Eats

Shortbread
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar

Caramel
7 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk

Chocolate
8 oz chocolate, finely chopped (I used bittersweet)
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into peices

To make the shortbread layer: 

1. Preheat oven to 325 F. Line a 9×13-inch baking pan with parchment paper.

2.. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.

3. In a large bowl, beat the sugar & butter together until well combined and slightly fluffy.

4. Then, gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter & sugar mixture, and mix it together until well combined. Transfer the dough to the prepared pan and press into an even layer over the bottom .

5. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and cool completely. ****note: don’t pour the caramel over the shortbread until the shortbread completely cooled, otherwise, it’ll take a really long time for the caramel to cool down.

To make the caramel layer:

1. Combine the butter, sugar, corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk in a medium saucepan, over a medium flame. Stir occasionally until the butter is melted.

2. Increase the heat to medium-high, & bring the mixture to a boil.

3. After it is brought to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens and turns a light caramel color (approximately 10 minutes).

4. Pour the caramel mixture over the cooled shortbread and spread in an evenly. Wait for it to cool down completely, then allow to chill for a little while(because if the caramel layer isn’t solid enough, it’ll mix in with the chocolate and you won’t get those solid layers of chocolate and caramel).
To make the chocolate layer:

1. Create a double boiler by placing a heatproof mixing bowl over a pan halfway filled with water. Place on the stove, on a medium to high heat, until the water is boiling, then reduce to a simmer.

2. In the bowl of the double boiler, add the chocolate, corn syrup, and butter.. Give the chocolate a couple minutes to melt and stir occasionally, until everything is melted and the mixture is smooth and glossy.

3. Pour the chocolate over the chilled caramel and spread into an evenly, and smooth it out.  Let the chocolate set completely before cutting it up. 

~Deepshikha Das

The past few months for my have flown right buy in a flurry of school, changes and revelations. My parents finally agreed to let me wear contacts , I’m getting my braces off in a matter of weeks, and I’ve stopped procrastinating so much. While that is great, I’ve also had a revelation about going off to college. Initially, college seemed amazing to me, to be able to start over new, by yourself in a different environment, and meeting new people. But the more I thought about it, what I loved about college suddenly started to be the very thing that also frightened me about college. I would be miles away from my family, friends, or anything that was even vaguely familiar. Is it odd that I wish I was my geeky little freshman self again, so that I would still be ages away from going to college? As great as it is to try new things (something that food has definitely taught me), the overly sentimental part of me still wants to cling on to the small world I live in right now. 

But I do want a fresh new start, just like spring, and these cupcakes. The seasons and my thoughts definitely inspired me to find and make these cupcakes, and I think they’re the perfect spring snack. Spring reminds me of light, bright, and fruity tastes, and these cupcakes have all of those flavors. The light and fluffy angel food cupcakes are topped with whipped cream and a couple of strawberries and raspberries.

Angel Food Cupcakes w/ Whipped Cream  & Berries

Recipe Adapted from Alton Brown

4 dozen cupcakes

• 1 1/2 cups sugar (or castor’s sugar)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cake flour, sifted (if you don’t have cake flour, you can make some! 
• 12 egg whites (the closer to room temperature the better)
• 1/3 cup warm water
• 1 vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• Whipped cream
• strawberries & raspberries (any sort of berry you want, those two are just the ones I prefer)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. If you have regular sugar: Blend the sugar for about 2 minutes until it is superfine. if you have castors sugar, you can skip this step
3. Sift half of the sugar with the salt the cake flour in a medium bowl and set the remaining sugar aside.
4. In a large bowl, use a  whisk to thoroughly combine egg whites, water, orange extract, and cream of tartar for two minutes. Then, using a hand blender, slowly sift the reserved sugar into the eggs beating continuously at medium speed to achieve medium peaks
5. Once the eggs are whipped to medium peaks, sift the flour over the mixture, 1/4 a cup at a time. Repeat until all of the flour mixture is finished.
6. Carefully spoon mixture into an lined cupcake tray and fill 3/4 of the way up. Bake until the tops of the cupcakes are turning slightly golden, and you can insert a tooth pick between the liner and the cake and have it come out clean.
7. Cool completely & top with whipped cream and berries to your liking :)

Happy spring & I hope you all enjoy :)

Deepshikha

Every New Year, rather than making resolutions, I take a moment to reflect on what I’ve done in the past year, and I was flipping through my agenda. In the summer before freshman year, I bought this agenda that I’d intended to use for the school year. It was a fairly plain one, about the size of a novel and covered in camel colored canvas with a little pocket on the front. Little did I know that I would end up using this agenda for the next three years, and how attached to it I would become.Three years later, the pages are covered in my hand writing and random little scribbles, the spine is no longer a spine but rather a mass of tape, and I had doodled on the cover so much that it looked like I had attempted to color the entire thing with my pen. Looking at the ratty old thing I still managed to call an agenda, it amazed me how far I had come in the past three years and how fast that time had passed. I remember as freshman I thought I wouldn’t make the next four years. I’m now a junior in high school, taking my SATs and ACTs and getting ready for college.

Moving along to the food portion of this post, these are sun-dried tomato and Kalamata olive tapenade crostinis. Sun-dried tomatoes are one of my favorite things, and they play a huge part in this tapenade. They’re slightly salty and mostly sour accented with a tinge of sweetness, the olives add a deeper flavor to the mix, and the brie complements it all by adding an earthy but creamy undertone. I really love the complex mix of flavors in this, and this has definitely become one of my favorite snacks to come home to after school. Plus, it’s really quite a simple recipe, and great for parties (you can definitely make this ahead of time, and just make sure you have a loaf of bread nearby!).

Sun-dried Tomato & Kalamata Olive Tapenade

adapted from this blog

NOTE: I actually feel like this tastes the best a day after it’s made, because the garlic’s flavor is absorbed much more into the tapenade.

Earlier this month Hurricane Sandy swept through the east coast leaving people and their homes devastated. Admittedly I was not in one of the worst areas during the hurricane, but I was definitely affected by it. My heart goes out to those who lost everything because of the hurricane. I only lost power for a week, and it was hard enough living that way, I can’t even fathom what others are going through.

In the end, this experience left me with many things to be thankful this thanksgiving. That includes my parents, my sister, my friends, my home…I suppose I could go on, but I’ll sum it up into one sentence: I’m thankful that I have everything and everyone that I need in my life. Quite honestly, not many are as fortunate as me, and even though I do complain frequently  and face problems, I only deal with a fraction of what others have to go through in life.

I know this post is a little early for a thanks giving post, but this was the only time I could do it, and I’m trying to keep posting frequently! So, dear readers: Happy thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful meal with your family and your friends :)

For this post I baked these maple blondies, and quite frankly, I am in love with maple flavored anything right now! It’s just such a wonderful flavor to enjoy during the fall, and I’ve been trying to put maple syrup in or on literally everything. I think I may be a little ridiculous, but it’s just so delicious. These blondies are very sweet, however, not heavy, because the texture is much lighter, so in the end it all balances out.

Maple Blondies

Adapted from Southern Lady Magazine via Baked Bree

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 10 Tablespoons melted butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon maple flavoring
• optional: 1 cup pecan or walnut pieces [ I didn't include any in the blondies I made in the picture, because I was making these for someone with a nut allergy, however I highly reccommend putting in nuts if you like them :) ]

Instructions

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl & set aside.
2. In another, whisk together the butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, until well mixed.
3. Add the eggs, and the two flavorings, and whisk until combined.
4. Add a half cup of the dry ingredients to the wet and blend until combined
5. Repeat step five, until you’ve added all of the dry ingredients to the wet.
6. If you are adding nuts, stir them in now.
7. Spread into a 9×13 pan that has been coated with cooking spray.
8. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy & happy thanksgiving!

Deepshikha :)

But I was only a kid, and eventually had to face the scary reality of growing up. Upon entering high school, everything became a lot more serious. There were so many aspects of life that changed, but just to sum it it: high school is all work no play. Needless to say, Halloween became toned down, almost to the point of non existence. Nearly everyone is too tired to bother dressing up, or too lazy to do so. The whole day is full of serious, work, with minimal holiday influence. In the end, Halloween has turned into almost a normal day for me. However, this year, I’m definitely attempting to have some holiday spirit, and I made these little spider web fudge bites for a party that I’m attending.

These fudge bites, are super easy to make, and are just a simple variation from my cheater’s fudge recipe. They’re really perfect for parties, because they look cute and Halloween themed, but don’t take much effort to make. I also created gifs demonstrating some of the steps, so that it’s easier to follow!

Spider Web Fudge

makes approximately 24 pieces 

• all ingredients for this cheater’s fudge(click here for recipe)
• a mini muffin tin
• cupcake liners (to fit in the muffin tin)
• a tooth pick
• two piping bags (one medium sized w/ a large tip and the other smaller with a thinner tip) or two zip lock bags(instructions to prepare them are in the recipe)
• 3/4 cup white chocolate
• a spoon

1. Split all the ingredients for the cheater’s fudge in half. We’re doing this because white chocolate tends to cool fast, so it is easier to work with one half of the batch first.
2. Put the baking cups into the muffin tin.
3. So following the instructions for the fudge up to step three, make the first half of the recipe, and mean while, create a double boiler for the white chocolate, by filling a pan halfway with water, putting the while chocolate in a separate bowl, and setting that bowl in the water of the pan. make sure NO water touches the white chocolate, because it will not melt properly.
4. After you’re on step three for the fudge, and the white chocolate is melted, take the fudge base, and scrape it into the bigger piping bag, and pour the white chocolate into the smaller piping bag with the thinner tip. if you are using a ziplock bag: take the smaller bag, and cut a very small amount of the corner off to create a very small hole, be careful not to cut too much, it is very easy to underestimate the size. Then take the larger ziplock bag, create a larger hole, you should be able to put your finger through the hole and still have  small amount of space around your finger. You will put putting the fudge in the larger bag, and the white chocolate in the smaller bag. From this point on begin working quickly, because the white chocolate will harden over time.
5. Pipe the fudge into the cupcake liners, keeping the point of your piping bag/ziplock bag at the center and letting the fudge spread out from the tip and moving the piping bag up gradually until the cupcake liner is almost full. Pipe the fudge into all of the cupcake liners until you have nothing left. Then take a spoon, and even out the surface of the fudge. demonstrated below in the gif…(I apologize for the bad pictures, I was using one hand to take pictures, and the other to demonstrate…).

• Then, taking the white chocolate bag, pipe a swirl on the surface of the fudge, as demonstrated below in the gif.
  swirl

  
  

• Then taking the tooth pick, drag it through the fudge, starting from the center and pulling outwards, as demonstrated in the gif. I know in the gif, i simply pulled the toothpick through and then immediately went to make another line, but I recommend wiping the tooth pick between every line you draw, because there will be little bits of fudge and white chocolate stuck on there, and if you wipe it off, it will make the fudge look a little bit neater…

• Put the tray into the refrigerator to cool, then repeat again for the second half of the batch, or just make one half :) You can remove the cupcake wrappers fairly easily if you want to remove them, or just leave them on there.
• Enjoy!

~Deepshikha

The past few months have passed in a whirl of SAT prep work, sweet sixteens, summer assignments, taking long runs and reading books. It sounds so typically teenager-ish but it was amazingly relaxing and great break from all the stress, work, and deadlines of school. And in this time, I also learned many things:

1. It’s hard to stop procrastinating. Really. I thought my procrastinating habit was because I was stressed during school, and that without any stress during the summer, I wouldn’t procrastinate on my summer assignments. That  is the worst lie I ever told myself.

2. Photographing anything frozen and prone to quick melting is hard.  Really. Originally I’d intended to do an entire ice cream series for you guys, but after spending about five minutes trying to scoop a perfect ball of ice cream, only to have it melt and slide all around the bowl… I know the trick to photographing frozen things is to work fast, but its pretty hard.

3. Italian ice is great. Its super easy and quick to make + it really cools you down on summer days. They’re also easier to photograph than ice cream, because you don’t have make it look perfect, just serve with whipped cream garnish, and that is the end of it :)

Anyways, here’s the recipe to an ice recipe that I’ve made several times over the summer :) It’s very simple, but it tastes great, and is easy to make so here you go…

note: I’m not quite sure that this dessert should be categorized as an italian ice because it does contain milk & ice cream, however, it does resemble italian ice more than anything to me, and has a similar texture…

Cookies & Cream Ice

Serves two

1 big scoop of vanilla ice cream

4 oreos cookies

1 cup of milk (whole is preferable, but 2 % is great as well) & two table spoons (keep separated)

1. In a blender blend together all of the above ingredients until smooth, then pour it into a ice cube tray, and freeze until completely solid (this should take a three hours or more depending on how cold your freezer is)

2. Remove frozen cookies&cream mixture from ice tray and place in blender and add two table spoons of milk into the blender, and then blend the mixture until smooth :)

Keep cool & enjoy :)

Deepshikha :)

I’ve always had issues spelling banana.

It’s just the fact that I never quite remember when I need  to stop with the na’s.

It’s also the reason I lost my second grade spelling bee, which was really quite embarrassing .

But the good thing was, that my embarrassment eventually made me want learn from my mistake, and I finally taught myself how to spell bananas through a song, which I still sing to this day whenever I need to spell bananas.

Heck, I still sing it when I even hear the word bananas, and it was what I stood around singing while mixing the batter for this banana bread.

In my family banana bread is something that everyone loves.

However it’s very rare that you will ever find a piece in my house, because its consumed

within two days of baking it, and we just love it.

My only qualm with it: its very dense and heavy, which i hated for a while. Until I found this recipe.

This particular recipe is lighter than most banana breads which I absolutely love. It still has a good amount of density in it, so its not very fluffy and cake like, essentially hitting an equilibrium in terms of bread density.

The recipe:

Banana Bread:

adapted from food network

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 overripe bananas
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup walnuts broken into small pieces ( not too small or you won’t be able to taste it, but if you make the chunks too big, you will have trouble cutting the bread into proper pieces later) can also be substituted with other nuts i.e. pecans, or if you don’t want nuts they can be removed or replaced with chocolate or butterscotch chips.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. In a medium size bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
3. Mash 2 of the bananas with a fork in a small bowl, and leave them off to the side.
4.  With an electric mixer fitted with a wire whisk, whip the remaining bananas and sugar together for three minutes to make a fluffy/light mixture (in a medium sized bowl)
5.  Add the melted butter, eggs, and vanilla; beat well and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
6. Mix in the dry ingredients.(don’t over blend!)
7. Fold in the nuts and the mashed bananas that were set off to the side before with a rubber spatula.
8. Pour into a greased and lined baking pan, and bake for approx. an hour, make sure to check with a tooth pick(insert a tooth pick into the center and see if it comes out clean).

Cool the bread completely before slicing

~Dee

White Cake 

Adapted from Whisk Kid

• 2 sticks (226 g) butter, room temp
• 2 c (426 g) sugar
• 5 egg whites, room temp
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 1/2 c (426 g) flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 1/2 c (355 ml) butter milk at room temperature
• Red and Yellow food coloring.

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Oil and line some 9″ cake pans(however many you have, I only have two so I reused them)
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Cream the sugar and butter, then add the egg whites and add them a little at a time. Add the vanilla and mix until fully incorporated. Then, alternating between wet and dry, add the milk and flour mixture in two parts.

Divide the batter amongst 6 bowls, (i just used my one cup measuring cup, and divided it up  among six bowls, but you can do it by weight as well, just make sure you weight the bowl you’re using before you put anything in it, and then weight it after you’re done preparing the batter, then subtract the weight of the bowl before from the weight of the bowl after, and then divide it by six and put that amount of batter into each bowl).  Next add the food coloring, here are the ratios for it

1st bowl: add as many drops as red food coloring as you want until it looks vibrant enough to you.

2nd bowl: add and yellow food coloring, and keep it to a ratio of 2 red drops to every one red drop(so basically if you ad five yellow drops, then you have to add ten red drops, that way it makes it more of a reddish orange). Don’t start out with ten yellow drops then, have to put in twenty red drops, the mixture will probably be overwhelmed by red, and it won’t look too different from the plain red. Start out with about four yellow drops and add eight yellow drops, until it looks like an orange tinged red to you.

3rd bowl: add red and yellow food coloring in equal amounts to make a regular orange.

4th bowl: add red in yellow food coloring, in the reversed ratio thats in the 2nd bowl, so basically 1 red drop to two yellow drops, to make a lighter more yellowy orange.

5th bowl:  add just yellow food coloring

6th bowl: just leave alone. it’ll be your white layer (  I made a white layer for my cake, however I just ate it plain instead of using it, because I ruined it because i forgot to line the pan before i put it into the oven.)

I’ve only given you the  ratio for the colors because I did this entirely by how it looked to me, and if the color of the batter was vibrant enough, so, keep in mind, that whatever color you see in the batter is exactly the color it will be after it bakes, it won’t darken or lighten or anything.

When you remove them from the oven, let them rest on the cooling rack, in the pan, for ten minutes, then remove it from the pan, and cover it and put it in the fridge to cool quickly, and then frost them with whatever you like.

Tip for frosting: Do a crumb coat, since this is a extremely colorful cake, any stray crumbs from the cake will look really bad if it gets into the icing.

for those who don’t know: a crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that you put on the cake and let it dry so that a layer forms around the cake to prevent crumbs from straying into the whiteness of your icing.

Happy Mothers Day!

~dee

I’ve spent many times in my life sitting down in the dark with my little sister watching movies. Movies fascinate me, with film making stories come to life. I haven’t had time for movies as of late, actually I haven’t had time for anything. However, this weekend, I finally managed to find some time for myself, and sit down to watch The Help. I absolutely loved the movie, it was sweet, had a good amount of laughs in it, along with a good amount of meaning as well. Also, the vintage clothes and the whole setting of the movie was great. One thing that really caught my attention was a chocolate pie that one of the characters, Milly, had made. So, as a result, I decided to make chocolate pie [not the special pie for Hilly(; ].

Chocolate silk pie is a symphony of rich, smooth,  chocolate, with a buttery graham cracker crust to top it all of. I’ve tried this recipe with a traditional pastry pie crust, however  found it to be not as amazing in taste. The filling and the crisp graham cracker crust are a perfect pairing, like peanut butter and jelly. The filling of the pie is perfectly rich,  smooth, and melts in your mouth. It’s absolutely amazing.

French Silk Pie

adapted from Pillsbury

• 1 Crust (crust recipe below) (you can use a store bought one, or a regular pastry pie crust, but believe me it tastes better with a graham cracker crust)
• 5 oz. semi sweet chocolate
• 1 cup room temperature  butter(do not use margarine)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs(pasteurized)

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January has passed by in rushed afternoons, studying as the sun crept down the sky. I missed having time to relax, read, or even to bake. As you can see baking hasn’t quite been in my schedule as of late, and I started to miss spending afternoons stirring up ingredients, feeling the warmth of the oven against my face, and biting into my creations just as they came out of the oven. Finally after weekends of studying relentlessly, I finally found myself an hour of time.

With this extra time, I made these familiar little cookies. I grew up with them, watching my mother bake them at nearly every special occasion, however I never quite liked them, or appreciated them. Soon, my family’s life became a lot busier, and my mother stopped baking the cookies for a while and the tradition was forgotten.

But only for a while.

A couple of months ago, in December I had to complete a school project about my family’s traditions, and the very first thing I thought of were these little cookies. I did not have much time that particular weekend, and my mom was more familiar with the recipe, so I asked her to make them for me. When I finally bit into one I realized how much I had missed my mother’s cookies, and remade them for my family.

Almond Cookies

• 16 tablespoons butter at room temperature (I used browned butter, but that’s purely optional)
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup of ground almonds

1. Toast the almonds until golden brown.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and the brown sugar together until fluffy, then add in the egg yolk, oil and vanilla, and mix well.
4. Add a half a cup of flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix in well.
5. Repeat step three until all of the flour mixture is mixed in.
6. Add the almonds to the mixture, and mix in well. Scoop 1/2 a table-spoon for each cookie and roll them into a ball and space them out on a cookie sheet evenly.
7. bake at 350 degrees farenheit for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.