DAY 61- LITTLE ARTIST'S SPECIAL BREAD-BUTTER PUDDING..

And so on Sunday I went for my 1st Art exhibition ever..
And frankly , I'm glad that it was my first introduction, into the world of beautiful art, because i swear i have never seen such a pure display of heart felt colors in motion..

Zeke, Zene, Vivaan, Angaad, Kiara, Rihaan were some of the artists displaying their paintings , under the tender and patient nurturing of Sonali, who they have been with for some time now...
The kids had some of the sweetest work you could see..
Zeke and Zene have been working with 'Aunty Sonali for some time now...
Zeke much longer , while Zene like any younger sister would hang on the table and just be there throughout the class..
Asking tons of questions...frankly like most girls i know..

Till one day Aunty Sonali, gave her some paper and colours and we all realized that she has just been soaking in all that Zeke was being taught...

It was lovely ,the whole ambience..
The beautiful paintings, the little fingers pointing at their creations, the proud Mama's and a few of the Dada's...
Friends of the little artists...
All buzzing around like little bees...and I swear the paintings were really lovely...

And I must say that I went home with one of the best paintings at the show...
Why because 8 yr old Vivaan who is the son of my best friend Mini,painted it for me , for my birthday..
Its a painting of this man holding a baby...something that I saw in London ,and fell in love with on sight, a Lladro figure..
And Vivaan painted it for me...
Bless him...

So like all excited and enthusiastic mum's..
Everyone of us made a small batch of goodies for the 'Art Exhibition"..
Manasi bought sandwiches and chips that we all attacked..
Mini bought delicious brownies...
I made fudge, apple crumble and really easy hazelnut and chocolate bread puddings, in tiny molds , with some Creme Anglaise sauce...

Well , I have eaten bread pudding from the time I was a kid..and frankly its like French toast but , you can bake or steam it...
After eating bread pudding for years, and being completely fed up of it ...
I started making it a few years ago again...

It's only after becoming a mum .that I realized why I was fed this at most given occasions..
Well, it has eggs, milk and bread, as its main ingredients..

And If I can put all this in one morsel in my kids mouths, I'm a happy bunny..
Well as you all know ,I'm a chocoholic and my kids love Nutella , so I now add that to the recipe, also some orange juice and Cointreau for extra measure...

And it has such a comforting, wholesome and home taste to it..
That frankly its our home favorite..

So I am going to give you, my version of what I made for the kids...
You can also add a few nuts like almonds or pistas..it really tastes nice...


Ingredients..

Milk - 500ml
Butter - 100 gm
Eggs - 2 , plus 1 yolk
Sugar to taste...
Bread - 10 slices
Nutella - spread as much as you like in the middle of the bread, so that when you cut it into 6 pieces, every piece has a little nutella
Freshly squeezed orange juice
Cointreau if you feel like it..

Well I needed 1 slice of bread cut up into six squares for every one and a half little mold..
So fill your mold depending on its size...

METHOD
Pre heat oven to 180 degrees..

In a shallow vessel, mix the milk, eggs and sugar...
Melt the butter and add it to the above mix...
Add the juice of 1 freshly squeezed orange...
Add cointreau to your taste...
Smear 10 slices of bread with nutella and, cut them into six squares...
Dip this into the milk mix and pile it into the molds...
See that the bread is moist and filled to a little less than the top of the mold..
Bake this in the oven till it rises up and is golden brown and slightly crisp...
It should take approximately 20-25 minutes...

This is a great fun dish to do with kids, they love breaking the eggs and mixing it with the milk, and frankly even if you go a bit wrong, you really don't go wrong..
So Zeke and Zene, went for it with a vengeance, were dirty , with splashes of milk on their clothes and everywhere and of course the kitchen was a mess..
And they were both giving one another instructions on how it is done...
Well what can I say...Guess they hear me talking about food a lot...
And they were so excited because they knew we were taking this to their art exhibition...

So after I put all the little bread puddings in the oven..
The three of ours showered , changed and got ready ...
And after much shouting and trying to pack the fudge, the apple crumble ...we were waiting for the little bread puddings...

I cant even explain to you or describe to you , the aroma that my kitchen was filled with..
Hmmmmm....that warm orangey-chocolatey flavour..that wafted through..
And so as soon as I took, all these little puffy babies outa the oven..

We dug into it, immediately....poured a little Creme anglaise and some Hersheys Chocolate syrup..
And dug into a bite-ful of just the most comforting morsel of crispy-soft goodness, the hazelnut and the, slight tangyness of the orange exploding like tiny stars...

This has to be eaten fresh out of the oven on to a plate and into your mouth...
So off we went Zeke, Zene. apple crumble, fudge and 36 puffy little bread puddings in the boot of my little Red Bug...
We drove from Versova to Juhu, loudly singing, 'Wake up Sid"..
We love that song...
Thank God , we were not really singing to Sid , because he would have run away ...screaming ha ha ha ..

So After a really long time, here's presenting. 'Little Artists Bread-Butter Pudding"...yummy and if can say so, ever so slightly better than my Mommies, with a whole lot of smiles and yeah..yeah..yeah.. only from, "Maria's Kitchen"...

DAY 36 :ALPHA AND OMEGA SINS IN A ROLL

Woke up this morning with mixed feelings , this week has been great fun, I walked the ramp for the very 1st time on the 20th Sept 2010 at the Lakme Fashion week for Payal Singhal my stylist from way back when i was with MTV, we'll a lot lot lot has changed since then.......

And then today was the last day of my Spanish class, at Instituto Hispania Mumbai, no i did not learn to speak Spanish like i hoped to, but that is entirely my fault, but i met a bunch of varied and wonderful guys and girls and this is the most fun class i have done ever, i never ever wanted to miss class because it was full on entertainment, every body with all the enthusiasm to learn this beautiful language "Spanish", and every morning each would bring to class their unique brand of humour and their quirkiness, and in the middle of this Babylonian chaos, we had sweet soft spoken Tarana our "professor" who i think was going mad....but she managed to teach us all more than we expected....Vamos Vamos being the hot" favorita" expression for our unruly crazy fun bunch of "estudiantes "

And the cast of the class

Debanshu and Sukanya , the brother and sister duo who were always bickering sweetly, Debanshu of course shares his birthday with my little boy Zeke , so i was always observing him with much interest...and Sukanya who was great with the language...and was ready to eat the stuff i took to class with much enthusiasm...

Ranjini, the ever helpful one,who also paid for my coffee many times, thanks a ton...
(I do not drink coffee at all , but having coffee in class with everyone was just too much fun and a ritual that i wanted to be part of)

Kanika, the one who was the most studious amoungst us all and always did her home-work, and always sent me sweet encouraging messages, like a good mum does....

Siddesh, the rock star from Vasai , who was very funny and wrote hilarious conversations, about "what if" kinda situations..

Mansi , the pretty one who also is a chef, think most of the guys had a crush on her...

Anand, i always thought he was quiet, but he was mad funny had a great sense of humour and wanted to dance "en la jardin"

Uttara, the one who looks like "Freida Pinto " and was fabulous with picking up languages...

Maryn, was the voice , the boom , the constant chatter , the last word after we have been told to "shut up", she is adorable and kept the class alive ....

Sujay, the extremely intelligent and well behaved boy and the class topper, with a sweet innocent smile

Megha, i know she may not like this but , she was the baby of the class, still is in school and thankfully cannot do the finals like me ha ha ha , thanks for the company.....and the bad attendance....

Raina, the always in a hurry, just moved to Bombay, harrowed home-keper , but fantastic with her language

And Tarana our proffessor, who is just a doll, thank you so much for all your time and your effort, "eres un sol".....

And now .....MTV was so long time back that most of the stuff i had forgotten, Payal had moved on to New York , gotten married has a little boy and now has her own line called "PS", which is more loved by her husband than his 'PS2",ha ha ha , we lost touch , but thanks to FB , we kinda knew what all of us were upto, so when she sent me a message asking me to be part of her collection , i readily said yes...
"Chinki" as she is lovingly called by her friends , had a real funky sense of style and a sparkle in her eye and a spring in her step and it just made me feel really wonderful that she thought of me after all these years, thanks to Payal , i actually walked onto the Lakme alley of fashion, think she was even more nervous than me...
I loved what she gave me to wear and how normal , non fussy and easy she was to work with...Thank you Payal from the bottom of my heart...

And so this week made the same recipe as the cinnamon buns, but changed the filling...
As a dedication to Payal and her feminine, flowy, sexy, beautiful clothes, i made a filling of strawberry with chocolate , because it is sweet , tangy and very very seductive ....

And for my Spanish class an orange and chocolate filling , for their sense of adventure and fun...

I just used, orange and strawberry jam respectively and broken bits of chocolate, into the filling...

And poured a mix of the ingredients below on it.....
100 gm cream cheese
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
Bring all of the above to a boil and as soon as the buns are out of the oven, pour this mix over them and leave to cool...

Yummy, blissfull, gooey, little rolls of 'Strawberry and Orange sin" only from "Maria's Kitchen"

DAY 32 :LAZY DECADENT CINNAMON ROLLS

Today was a wonderful free day after very very long, so actually spent the day trying to catch up with my Spanish but eventually was in the kitchen trying out new stuff, that i found with the pioneer woman, its so very satisfying to be able to make something tasty from sweet nothings,spent most of my morning playing tiger mama to my cub Zene, we then spent a lazy lazy time watching TV, and then there were a few things that i wanted to make, so googled and found some amazing sure shot recipes, so went ahead and cooked and baked till my kitchen looked happy, oh also growing kangkong in my garden and basil and lemon grass so really happy about it... have been just running from the time school started in June , and so love this break, actually i bunked class....ha ha ha

So here goes

Lazy decadent cinnamon rolls
1cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup sugar
yeast
2 cups all purpose flour and an extra cup on the side
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
plenty of melted butter
1/4 cup Castor sugar
powdered cinnamon

Mix the milk , vegetable oil and sugar in a pan over fire and stop heating it just as you feel its going to boil, leave it to cool for at least an hour...
When the mix is luke warm add the yeast , i always add an amount i really do not know how much, but it somehow comes out right...let this mix sit for about 3 minutes or till you see the yeast acting up...
add the flour to this mix , but don't forget to keep aside that extra 1 cup of flour..
This should be set aside undisturbed till it doubles in size...
Now you add the extra flour , the baking powder, the baking soda and the salt ,it becomes a beautiful soft malleable dough...
now we are ready, so sprinkle some flour onto your work table, and roll the dough thin and in the shape of a rectangle...when you feel its thin enough , pour onto it a generous amount of melted butter and them the cinnamon powder, please don't be stingy with either , oh and no we are not on a diet and never will be , so now that we have settled that, we now start rolling in the dough towards us , and slightly tight, what i did is i let the butter freeze a bit so that it did not all spill out as i rolled the dough....
Pinch the seam to seal it all, then cut the roll in 1'' pieces and arrange them away from one another in a well greased cooking tray...
Cover with a wet muslin cloth and let it rest ...In about an hour , these rolls will have puffed out and look ready to put into the oven ...
I baked them for 20 minutes at 170 degrees, but you need to keep an eye on them, because all our ovens behave differently...
As soon as they came out of the oven i poured this frosting i made with a mix of sugar, milk , coffee and some maple syrup...

And then waited a bit , like 5 minutes so that i do not burn my hands and pulled out a piece and bit into a very warm piece of aaaahhhhhhhhhh with frosting pouring down on it....
Wonderful, yummy and really delicious "LAZY DECADENT CINNAMON ROLLS" only from "Maria's Kitchen"