Tiramisu – My version (alcohol and egg free)

Hi Again 👋

Yesterday I tried Tiramisu and I am very excited to share the recipe. It is very simple and economical. I did not use eggs so it made it extremely easy to there was no risk of consuming raw eggs – because I don’t like raw poultry products 😔

Tiramisu (meaning: ‘cheer me up‘) is an Italian dessert. It seems that the main ingredient in it is Marsala wine 🍷 but my guests don’t consume alcohol so I had to do a bit of research to find a suitable non-alcoholic alternate. The alternate is:

grape juice + vanilla extract + sherry vinegar

The substitute for the traditionally used eggs is to use mascarpone cheese and double cream. I did not however use mascarpone but instead used cream cheese and it was lovely 😊

Following is completely my own version:

Serves

15 ( at least)

Ingredients

Topping

• double cream 600ml
• Soft Cheese (cream cheese) 400g
• Vanilla extract
• Demerara sugar 5 table spoons🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄
• Cocoa powder 4 tsp
• Dark chocolate 🍫
• Grape juice 🍇

Savoiardi/ladyfinger layer

• Savoiardi can be bought easily from Lidl – a big pack
• Strong coffee ☕️ – I made very strong express, you will need enough to soak all your sponges
• Vanilla extract

Divide all the ingredients into 2 portions i.e. for your 2 layers.

Method

Make 1 big mug of expresso – keep making the shots until it makes a mug or you can use ground coffee. I did not use because espresso is much more flavorsome – plus I don’t even have it.

Allow it to cool down to room temp to slightly warmish temperature.

Take 300ml of double cream and add a tbsp of vanilla extract and whisk with an electric blender until just before it starts to make soft peaks.

Then slowly fold 200ml cream cheese and 2 tsp cocoa powder, 2.5 tbsp of sugar and then again whisk with electric mixer until it makes soft to steady peaks.

Take a big dish, I took a 38x26cm.

Dip the savoiardi one at a time to soak the sponge but do not make it soggy and then layer onto the dish.

Add a layer of cheese topping – use all of it.

Then use a peeler to shave and sprinkle dark chocolate to the cheese layer.

Repeat the steps of making the espresso and topping with the remaining ingredients.

You can also make it altogether but I found this was more manageable and tidy for me.

Again, add the soaked savoiardi, then add a cheese and dark chocolate shaving on top.

Refrigerate overnight for perfect taste.

Tadaaaa!!!!

Almost all of it disappeared in minutes, glad that I had a piece or 2 hidden in my fridge which I will enjoy with my tea this evening.

Try it!

Bye x x x

 

Banana Bread – another oh so easy!

A few days ago my colleague at work brought most delish banana bread. It was beautiful and opposite to what I had experienced baking a few months ago and given up on it 😒

I asked for the recipe to try for an upcoming tea party at my home. I tried it on the day and it was okyish! 🤭

I tried it again last week with some customization and it turned out lovely and today I tried it again. I had a few more things tested to try and make it richer and moister. This time it was not the best in appearance but it was super moist and nutty.

I find this recipe very useful because; very often I have ripe bananas at home and I hate to bin food. In my household wasting food is a BIG no – not allowed at all! So if you also find some ripe bananas that no one wants to eat, transform them into this beautiful bread!

Enjoy the recipe.

Ingredients

Butter 110 grams

Castor or brown sugar 2/3 of a cup

Eggs 2

Vanilla extract 1 tsp

Baking soda 1 tsp

Plain flour about 2 cups

Ripe bananas 4-5

Salt 1/2 tsp

Almond flakes ( I also tried coconut and oats) these items are optional though.

Method

– Mash bananas with a fork, use 5 bananas for extra moist bread else use 4 medium.

– Add melted butter, sugar, baking soda, salt and mix together.

– Add eggs and beat together

– Fold in the flour

– Line a baking dish with butter paper

– Bake for 40-50 mins in a preheated oven at 180 degrees.

– Allow to cools before serving and then cut into slices.

I love this because most items are available at home.

Have a great tea time for less and never waste a banana again ✌️

Have fun baking xxx

Our Cake Rusks – simplest and yummiest!

To my surprise, cake rusks are easiest to make. Can be made with minimum ingredients, most of which are available at home, almost all the time. Surprised, because all my life I wasn’t aware that they were made with so few ingredients and that also so easily. To me they were some mysterious teatime snacks from my childhood that were only available in Pakistan. YES! Only in Pakistan because the ones I tried once in Ireland are not the same and (and way too expensive for their quality and taste) so I never bought from here again. But many of my friends do buy them, out of love for this staple snack 😀 but of course, no need from now since you have this simple recipe at hand 🤚

Okay, let me first tell you (for those who don’t know already) that rusk is a hard biscuit and cake rusk is a caky version of rusk and it is loved at teatime in Indian subcontinent.

I came across its recipe on Food Fusion Facebook page. I tweaked the amount and time of the baking period to suit my liking plus I must mention that first time I made them without baking powder because I missed seeing it in the original recipe but even then they out turned out perfect, not sure how 🤔 so now I recommend using only 1/4 tsp to make them fluff a bit!

Ingredients

Butter 100g

Sugar 3/4 cup

Plain flour 1 cup

Eggs 3 at room temperature

Vanilla extract

Baking powder 1/4 teaspoon

Method

– Mix together butter (softened) and sugar.

– Whisk in eggs, 1 at a time.

– fold flour and baking powder into this mixture.

– Add vanilla extract and mix a little.

– Grease a rectangular dish and place butter paper.

– Pour the batter and bake in preheated oven at 180 degrees for 30 mins.

– Then take out and cool a bit. Cut into traditional rectangles.

– Put on a baking tray and bake for 10 mins on each side again.

– Enjoy with tea ☕️ Your kids will love them too.

Unfortunately, I did not take too many photos but the one on the top is good enough to show how lovely they were ❤️

Until next time, bye bye 🤗

A Little Bit About This Summer

Summer is Ireland is a myth. Lol. Not really, I mean we do have 3 months of warm sunny days with frequent light and heavy showers with the regular (chilly) wind. To be honest, there are few days that are actually bright and sunny with no wind. But it is also true that we can count them on our fingers. This year, we already have had some and few more to go.

No matter what is the status of the rain, wind or temperature, Spring and Summer are beautiful in Ireland as it is indeed a beautiful place to live.

I thought I would write down a series of posts on Summer as we have already done a few interesting things to celebrate the presence of sun. Hopefully more to come!

Let me mention first, that with the arrival of Summer I had to say good-bye to 2 of my wisdom teeth and the extraction for one of them did not go too well so I was sick for a good 2 weeks and lost some weight, blah blah blah.. But I want to keep that for a separate post as I also want to let others know what really to expect from a tooth extraction.

OK let’s go back to beautiful floral Summer.

We started it off with a lovely barbecue at our friend’s. It was a lovely calm day with no wind at all, giving me excuse to just sit down in my place with light chit-chat and delicious food while children were busy playing and men doing the BBQ.

What is Summer without a beach? Yes it is also true for Ireland 🙄 North Bull Island is our favourite beach because it is actually sandy (not rocky) and very accessible.

The girls went with the Dad to enjoy beachhhh…

At that point around, I was hit by my teeth extraction and after few days when I started to recover, we went for a casual walk in Phoenix Park. I loved the photos from that day.

Whether it is Spring, Summer, Autumn or Spring, it is incomplete for us without visiting the Kildare Village.  Not that I don’t like the shopping there but we love it primarily because they decorate the entire place according to the season. This year also, it was adorned in Spring/Summer theme. Here are some photos from the day.

With all this, we are also celebrating Ramadan, I don’t have any good photos to share because I was mostly sick to do proper justice to food in Ramadan except for the pakoras post that I shared a while ago. Still going on so hopefully will have more to add to my gallery.

Hope you all are enjoying the Summer while it lasts.

Bye until next time ❤️

Some Pakora Talk

All South-Asians know what a pakora (also called bhaji) is. It is a very common fried snack in Indian subcontinent. While it can be and is enjoyed throughout the year, it’s presence is vital in the month of Ramadan.

A typical Pakistani and I would imagine a typical North-Indian cannot imagine what might happen if pakoras are not found on the Iftar table (Iftar=breaking of fast at sunset).

A friend recently shared her pakora recipe. I really liked her technique and thought to try it on my recipe. So yeah, this post is about my pakora recipe and 2 chutneys to savor them with.

Ingredients

Batter

• Chick pea flour (besan)
• Red chili powder
• Turmeric powder
• Coriander powder
• Whole cumin seeds
• Dried fenugreek
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Water
• Lemon
• Herbs: coriander, mint, basil chopped
• 1 thinly chopped green chili

Veggies to use

• Spinach leaves
• Potatoes thinly sliced
• Potatoes chopped or diced
• Big green chilies
• Onions
• Eggplants/aubergine sliced

Method

Put oil in a deep frying pan to heat up for frying. For the veggie pakoras make the besan batter with water and all the spices; leave herbs and veggies. I keep a close-to-runny consistency because I do not want too much besan on my pakora.

Once oil is heated up properly, coat potatoes with the batter one at a time and put them in heated oil to fry. Once golden on both the sides take out on a kitchen towel. Do the same for aubergines.

Now mix together all the remaining items (herbs, diced potatoes, onions, spinach, green chilies) and get this consistency.

If you want more batter, you can keep the batter not-so-runny.

Now using a spoon or even your hand – if you prefer put small lumps of this mixtures into the oil and fry until golden and crisp.

Chutneys

Put these things together to make chutney # 1.

• Yogurt
• Mint chutney
• Vinaigrette

Mix all these to make chutney # 2

• 1 portion yogurt
• 2 portions crème fraîche
• Lemon juice
• Dill+mustard+honey
• Minced jalapeño

Serve with vegetable and fruit juice, they are great to energize after long hours of fasting. If you need inspiration, check out the link to my old post on homemade juices.

Have a great Ramadan.

Many more posts to come from Ramadan IA.

Ramadan Kareem to all 🌙

About My Daughter’s Birthday Party – DIY Party Favors, Games & More…

Contrary to my expectation and plan, I am writing this post quite late. This is about my beautiful daughter Saba turning 10. Her birth date is actually on the 11th of April but because the schools were off for the Easter break, we grabbed the opportunity and celebrated it on the 7th.

I kinda like doing themed parties and this time it was easy to pick because of Easter.

I was very excited to do the decoration and party favors. I always try to keep things simple and beautiful. I have kept my home decor every subtle and monotoned so that I can blast it with colors on different occasions and it will never look over the top and this way the decorations would stand out instead of just blending into the background or disappearing. Anyway, let’s forget about my home design ideas 💡 this post is about Saba’s birthday party, right?

Party Favors

For favors, I bought little blue and pink plant pots and some cute stick-on bows from IKEA.

Girls are often attracted to jewelry so I bought little character necklaces and put them in pastel colored cardboard boxes from IKEA.

I adorned the pot with the bow, added 1 necklace box, 1 box of jelly, and filled the rest of the space with chocolate eggs.

Decoration

Saba likes unicorns so I had that in mind and as I said earlier, I don’t like too much decoration, I believe things like party favors, food, plates etc should be attractive and colorful enough to serve as decorations themselves.

I only bought some silly smiley and unicorn helium balloons 🎈 and voila!!! them, with party favor pots made a beautiful sight. Here are infinite photos of the setup:

Party Games

For party games, Easter Hunt was an apparent choice. I filled some plastic egg shells with chocolates, ready to be hunted on the day.

Another one was making birthday cards for the birthday girl and the birthday girl to choose the winner of the best card.

Third game was pass the parcel. The parcel was however, not the real-many-layered parcel but just a cushion!

Party Food

It was easy to decide the cake – unicorn cake 🦄 🎂 For food I wanted to keep a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. There were cheese pops, margarita pizzas, chocolate rice crispy nests, cheese twists and chicken nuggets served with juice.

Party Time! 🎉

The party started at 11am and everyone was on time 😀 I hid all the Easter Eggs around the house and garden. Girls were super excited to search for them. I must say, they all were very interested in all the activities we did that day!

After this was the card making competition. Girls did a brilliant job and made beautiful cards for Saba.

This was followed by pass the parcel.

The winner of each of these games was given a special Easter hamper full of Easter goodies.

Then came the party highlight; the cake cutting!

At the end was food, which everyone enjoyed.

Some parents stayed for a while before taking the kids and enjoyed a coffee or juice and some chit chat before leaving.

We had a great time with all the parents and I hope that children enjoyed themselves! We appreciate the beautiful and thoughtful gifts received, Saba loved them ❤️

The Great Little Easter Egg Hunt

Hope you are having a great Easter Break. I like Easter break because you don’t have to do the morning getting-ready-for-school and school-drop off routines. You can stay in bed for a little longer too. This year was even better because my sister was with us and she minded the children 😌

Anyhow, keeping the children entertained is one big thing to do during such school breaks, particularly when you are working yourself and tired to death at 5pm.

Fortunately for us in addition to planning for Easter Egg Hunt we have my daughter’s birthday also that falls in April (11th), so it keeps us busy and in and out of the house.

This year I organized a little Easter egg hunt for my girls and 2 of their friends who live in our neighbors (also, they go to same school) 🙂

I loved doing a mini setup of Easter crackers, decorative eggs, giant giveaway Easter eggs and some chocolate to enjoy – thanks to the great deals that are available on all the stores during Easter season!

I hid the chocolate eggs and little chocolate bunnies all around the house and outside in the garden. Well, I hid them so when that I myself couldn’t find 2 of them 🙃

Anyhow, girls simply loved hunting the eggs. See some of the photos from that day. Loved the little bunnies hopping here to there 😄

Later after the hunt kids devoured the chocolates.

And finally the giant chocolate egg giveaway 😃

So this was Easter Egg Hunt for us.

Do comment, how you enjoyed your Easter?

I am happy that I will be back with another interesting post soon IA

See you all xxx

Sandwiches for dinner

I am in love with the idea of simple cooking trending these days. Numerous cooking pages on Facebook have millions of simple recipes that are healthy as well as quick and easy to make. I also have to share one such recipe.

Sandwiches using the rotisserie kind of chicken. I tried it tonight, let’s get the ingredients:

Ingredients

Buns

• Mayonnaise
• Greek style yogurt
• Fresh coriander leaves
• Fresh dill
• Parmesan cheese flakes
• Sliced olives
• Chopped jalapeños
• Garlic powder
• Ground black pepper
• Rotisserie/broiled/cooked chicken
• Sundried tomatoes
• Cheddar slices

Method

The sauce!

Put together mayonnaise, Greek style yogurt, cheese flakes, olives, jalapeños, dill, coriander leaves and garlic and black pepper powder into a thick saucy consistency.

Sandwiched!

Cook 2 chicken breasts or rotisserie chicken and slice wafer thin (or try to cut as thin as possible).

On bottom half of the buns put a thin layer of mayonnaise.

Put the chicken wafers on the buns.

And add a layer of sundried tomatoes and cheddar slices on each of them.

Put in hot oven for 6-7 mins or until cheese slightly melts down.

In the meanwhile, brush some melted butter on the top halves of the buns and oven at the same time.

Take out of the oven and add a dollop of the sauce on each.

Serve with coke and fries.

Do try!

Have a good evening

x x x

More than a Month of Celebration – A Beautiful End

Christmas, New Year, shopping and gatherings are not the only reasons for the holiday season to be special for our family; husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary also fall in these months. Making it extra special.

The birthday was a little family business, as always, where we cut this pretty red chocolate lava cake.

The anniversary night was spent in the city center with dinner at our favorite restaurant. It is our yearly ritual to go and enjoy the most delicious Lebanese food in The Cedar Tree.

If you like kafta, kebabs, hummus and other Levantine food items like mezze, I totally recommend this restaurant in Dublin.

This was followed by the traditional baklava. However, I must add, the baklava is not freshly made anymore and therefore we did not like it much – but I think the photo is still beautiful 😉

We had a little cake cutting ceremony as we came back home – which was a beautiful berry and meringue cake. See some of the photos below (don’t mind me being super obsessed with the cake, taking numerous photos). It was as delish as it looks.

With this, our happening holiday season came to an end.

Hope you are enjoying year 2018.

Bye for now!

x x x

A Mini Winter Break

November brought a sudden bout of cold and chill after a relatively mild Autumn in Ireland. We had a few days left in our holiday kitty at work and so husband and I decided to take a week off to spend a few days together while the kids go to school, which meant we had to plan something new – not necessarily drastically adventurous but certainly something fun & keeping a few lazy days in between.

First thing, we had to think of a way to tackle the chill that existed in our sitting room being located in the attic (our actual living room converted to a drawing-room, downstairs 🙂 ). After much consideration we decided to go for the Dyson Hot + Cool Link™ purifier heater and I must say it is a very efficient appliance. Probably, will write a separate review post on it after we get our first utility bill after, so that I have something solid to support the claim 😉

The weekend that followed our last working day was spent lazing in front of the TV. On the first Monday, I hosted a brunch to catch-up with few of my lovely friends. It was certainly fun because the menu I chose for the day was slightly off my otherwise typical menu. I tried a few recipes inspired from the well-known Tasty Facebook page. Let me tell you, my loaded nachos, guacamole, stuffed puffpastry and beefy pinwheels were very well-received, not to mention my new ‘a better than anything cake‘.

Next couple of days were spent watching movies at home and a few trips to IKEA. Husband introduced me to Ingmar Bergman movies and we watched Wild Strawberries –  a must watch if you are a lover of art movies, gives you some insight into ‘introspection’ – just put those subtitles on 😉

The IKEA trips are a bit of a nightmare for the girls but they certainly do get excited when we tell them, we shall be going to the café. I also enjoy eating there from time to time because of its affordable prices and girls certainly enjoy their trips to the drinks machine for refills.

How could we forget our dear old Marks and Spencer’s Café, so went there for breakfast one of those mornings.

One day we decided to go to Kildare Village after dropping the girls off at school. The decor there is always fascinating to match with the occasion; this time Christmas. We did not really go there for shopping but just hung around for a while, had breakfast, clicked some photos and returned to join a brunch at a friend’s.

Next weekend and the following Monday were dedicated to a never-ending indolence to restore our energies to meet the reality – once again 😀

That was it from our little break at home. How are you enjoying your Winter and this Holiday season? Do share 🙂

Enjoy!

x x x