As a kid, I just loved French toast. I had a Master for Arabic and religious studies who would come every evening for an hour, but on Sundays, it was every morning and as much as it would never excite a 7 year old, it still had to be done and now I realize how important it was then. Anyways, my teacher or Maulana was always served a good breakfast every Sunday morning. My mom would mostly make the awesome French toast, or omelette or sunny fried egg with parantha for my teacher. My teacher was very found of his Sunday breakfast at our house, I could always make that out with the way he ate and I mom also made sure that the teacher was well fed… Something that we all have lost with time. Today’s time is so busy that feeling that way for a teacher or even the guests.
Now comes the fun part, my mom had a clear breakfast designed for us daily. It was a done deal and my mother wasn’t those who would cater our demands on daily basis. My Sunday class would be at 7 AM and I would usually have my breakfast after the class. the funny thing was that every time my mom would make French toast, I would ask my teacher to excuse me and run to the kitchen to ask my mom to make the same thing for me, because I always felt that if she can make it for him, she will gladly make it for me too, and she did. But now that I am all grown up, my mom laughs at the fact that she always knew that she will find me in the kitchen 5 minutes after the breakfast was served to my teacher. I guess some memories from childhood might be a little embarrassing to share, but almost all childhood memories are sweet and always bring a smile to your face.
This is one of my two types of French toast and my boys like both kinds. French Toasts are easy to make with bread slices dipped in egg, milk and white sugar mixed together. If you are a little more experimental like me, add a little cocoa powder and cardamom powder to it. My boys like me serving this French toast with chocolate sauce. You can always make a little change to it to suit your taste.
Christmas always bring so much happiness. I just love this part of the year, which spreads wonderful positive feelings around, everyone is so busy shopping for their loved ones or people like me love their favorite brands going on sale. its just a great festive time.
I still like believing in Santa and as a season tradition, my kids always get a picture with him every year. The decorations around, the special cakes in Bake shop, the special food being served in restaurants that’s mentioned as holiday special make the season even more fancier.
My Christian friends in India always made something called “Plum Cake” and that was also a Christmas special in Bakeries in India. I usually make that at home, since it isn’t an American Holiday special, but considering an american special, and something that my kids like, I baked a Chocolate walnut cake for the holidays.
I have put some generous amount of chocolate sauce on it, since cakes with nuts are better when decently moist and since this cake has no icing. A little sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar give it a more holiday special look, which is completely optional and a little border of red and green m&m’s add to the season color.
Its always an instant hit, loved by people of all ages and just so delicious that honestly, you don’t need a reason to bake it, you just do.
Indians can move out of India, but their love for their country and food never goes away. Most Indians travel to India to meet their country to relive their days and enjoy their respective cities, meet family and friends and to enjoy their favorite foods, most importantly street foods and sweets.
Most friends who travel home always bring back loads of sweets with them, including us. We always get our favorite sweets from India. There are some wonderful sweets that I get from Rajasthan and some awesome delicacies that Mr. Parveez gets from Bangalore/ Bengaluru.
One of the mawa’a sweets that I loved from childhood is the half chocolate and half mawa’a. I still enjoy eating them when I am in India, and not just me, Mr. Parveez and boys enjoy them equally. The only problem we faced is that since the sweet is made from milk solids, we could never carry them with us, since milk products, unless they are sealed pack which isn’t possible from our favorite sweet stores.
Living in another country and not having the privilege of enjoying sweets and other foods as much as we would like to, and that pushes people like me to try and cook our favorite dishes at home.
And, one fine day I tried making our favorite burfi at home and they came out pretty good and almost same as what we get from our favorite stores. The recipe is pretty simple and the steps are also easy to follow. You just have to make sure that you cook on low heat so the khoya is cooked evenly and doesn’t ooze out any oil. The layers can be set by placing the chocolate burfi on the mawa’a burfi by brushing little water to help glue them together.
A very easy recipe and definitely comes out wonderful.
Banana split is always a special treat for Ice cream lovers. When we talk of Ice cream and children, chocolate flavor is the first thing that comes to our mind.
Mr. Parveez and I loved taking walks to a wonderful Ice cream shop near our first home and that’s when we got the hang of Banana split. Though our life before children, we would get a scoop of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. After our boys joined our Ice cream lovers club, the scoops changed to chocolate only. Usually, the chocolate Ice cream would be finished by my boys, and Mr. Parveez and I would enjoy the Banana…I guess joys of Parenthood…LOLzzz. Now, this was only when we went out for ice creams. At that time, I couldn’t even imagine that I would be making so many varieties of Ice creams myself, some day.
And, then one day I started with my Ice cream experiments. Initially my Ice cream recipes contained egg. Though the Ice creams came out fantastic, but somewhere I felt they weren’t just as good as I desired them to be. Also, the fact that I knew they contained eggs made me feel that I was eating raw egg…LOLzzz. Not just that, I could never decide if I could actually smell the egg or was it just in my mind. So, with all that confusion, I decided my Ice creams had to be egg free. I started experimenting more, and after numerous failures came up with a recipe as good as store bought. I did come down to the conclusion that for that perfect creaminess Gelatin or Agar Agar has to be used in the recipe. I used Halal Gelatin, but if you are using the vegetarian substitute, Agar Agar can be used in same amount as Gelatin.
After that, one day I felt the mom in me felt that my kids weren’t consuming enough fruits and I started coming up with various ideas of making them eat more fruit. This is when I decided that I should serve then Banana split when I give them Ice cream on weekends. And thus, this Ice cream recipe. Enjoy!!!
