DESSERTS,  TRIFLES

TRIFLE TALES…OF VISITING BLOGGERS & SWEET THINGS!

2009/03/23 / 55 Comments
“All work and no blog makes a blogger a dull worker.”

2009 03 15+nachiketa7
A few days ago I had a visitor. She called one day to say that it was high time we met since we lived in the same city, & she was landing up that weekend! Her name is Nachiketa, she blogs from Delhi, & is quite the crazy baker! She is one get up & go girl, with an infectious level of enthusiasm & energy. I think I was like that a decade ago. She’s been following my blog for a while, is passionate about baking, & equally passionate about learning. 2009 03 15+nachiketa6 She works as a senior product manager, is full of beans, and blogs @ The Variable … is as variable as the name suggests. A finger in every pie, & time for everything … for family, for friends, for acting in theatre, for entertaining her little 2 1/2 year old niece, for baking cakes after getting back home at 9pm, for visiting Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi on a Sunday, for lovingly taking care of her car… & of course for pursuing her baking hobby!2009 03 15+nachiketa5She arrived with baskets of things, bits & bobs related to baking, silicon ware her brother had got from Melbourne, decorating sets her aunt had sent … she had a ‘plan’!! And here I was thinking we would just sit & chat, but what arrived the previous night by email was an ‘agenda’!! Yes, you heard right, here was a lady with a mission & she meant business! We set the ball rolling quite as soon as she arrived, & did manage to achieve a load that day. Somehow threw together a low scale lunch as well…2009 03 15+nachiketa2
So what did we do? She wanted to learn how to bake bread which didn’t happen because there was no electricity most of the morning. Thankfully I had baked an artisan loaf earlier in the morning, so we sat & looked at it, discussed it, looked at the dough in the fridge etc. Then we immersed ourselves into cookbooks & more cookbooks. I shared with her the little I know about taking pictures, the light box, editing in Picasa, making collages etc.

2009 03 15+nachiketa1

We had a hurried lunch of grilled chicken, penne in a mushroom sauce, a corn salad in buttermilk ranch dressing, & garlic artisan bread. Dessert was a delicious strawberry yogurt panna cotta which surprisingly set very well. I was unsure because I had eyeballed amounts due to the lack of time, but it was ‘goblet– licking’ good!2009 03 13+strwberry+panna+cotta4

Post lunch we hit the kitchen. She really wanted to get a window on decorating cakes & cupcakes. I had made a batch of vanilla cupcakes the previous evening to give us a platform for practice! The good girl had baked her version of a Zebra cake & brought it for my kids, but she wanted to frost it first. Here’s what I taught her to do…like it?2009 03 15+nachiketa8

Made a ganache to top the cake with. I eyeball amounts of cream & chocolate for ganache now. Threw in about 200gms of dark chocolate & about 150ml of 25% low fat cream into a saucepan, melted everything over low heat, strained it & then let it cool. We covered the cake with the ganache once cooled & of good spreading consistency. Too thin & it will just flow off, too thick & it’ll be lumpy, & sometimes take crumbs off. We did the sides first & then the top, smoothed it out with an offset spatula & voila … we had a platform to decorate! I thought I’d teach her the easiest & quickest way I know to decorate a cake in literally five minutes. I took a bar of dark chocolate at room temperature & grated some chocolate curls out of the medium slots. Put them in the fridge to harden up. Next put about a tbsp of thick whipped cream in a baggie, snipped off a corner, started off making a spiral from the centre outwards, & them marbled it. (You can see step-by-step pictures in a much earlier post here). 2009 03 15+nachiketa13Once that was done, we sprinkled the edges with the grated chocolate. The lady wanted a strawberry on top. So I sliced it fine, left it attached at the base, fanned it out, & placed it in the centre! The cake looked so good when it was ready, & tasted fab too. Nachiketa had added some coffee & cinnamon to spice up the flavours & extra chocolate too … all in all, it was YUM!! The kids had seconds, & tried, without luck, for 3rds!!

2009 03 15+nachiketa10

Next we attacked the cupcakes as the day was rapidly coming to an end. We used the left-over ganache, after softening it in the microwave for 10 seconds, & inaugurated her new decorating set to frost these. Take a look!2009 03 15+nachiketa9It was fun!! We did a cut-out butterfly on one, piped ziz–zags on another etc, & then used sprinkles to top them off. Another 5 minute excercise because we were short on time.
2009 03 15+nachiketa11
I had some batter left over after making a dozen cupcakes, some cream from making the ganache, some ganache, & some strawberry coulis + jam from the panna cotta. I baked the left-over batter in a square baking pan, & made a layered trifle pudding the next day. I cut out flowers with small flower cookie cutters that Nachiketa sweetly had given me, & layered the trifle. 2009 03 17+trifle2

Will post the trifle & yogurt panna cotta recipe soon … both part of my strawberry overdrive! Oh yes, and there’s some frozen strawberry yogurt coming up too!! Sweet dreams!

Posted by Deeba @ PAB

About me: I am a freelance food writer, recipe developer and photographer. Food is my passion - baking, cooking, developing recipes, making recipes healthier, using fresh seasonal produce and local products, keeping a check on my carbon footprint and being a responsible foodie! I enjoy food styling, food photography, recipe development and product reviews. I express this through my food photographs which I style and the recipes I blog. My strength lies in 'Doing Food From Scratch'; it must taste as good as it looks, and be healthy too. Baking in India, often my biggest challenge is the non-availability of baking ingredients, and this has now become a platform to get creative on. I enjoy cooking immensely as well.

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55 Comments

  • Happy cook

    2009/03/24 at 6:51 pm Reply

    I can imagine both of you sitting there and eyeing the bread and also eyeing the dough in the fridge too.
    Beautifully decotated agg, i think i like the zebra cake with the decoration than the plain ones and it is a very beautifully decorated.

  • Snooky doodle

    2009/03/24 at 7:31 pm Reply

    oh that was surely nice day spent. Very productive too. The cake looks awesome and the cupcakes so cute. the trifle is yummy, I would lick the glass 🙂

  • Poornima Nair

    2009/03/24 at 8:46 pm Reply

    Wish I lived in Delhi, I’d invite myself over :)…you guys accomplished a lot in a day…the frosting on the cake is perfect, looks beautiful.

  • Bunny

    2009/03/24 at 9:33 pm Reply

    How nice you had company for the day Deeba, the cake is beautiful and so are the cuppies!! You two certainly accomplished alot that day!!

  • Soma

    2009/03/24 at 9:36 pm Reply

    I am totally at loss of words.. that cake! I wish i could do this atleast once in my lifetime, & i wish i lived near you, so i could make my agenda & come:-)everything looks gorgeous, & definitley shows the great time u guys had. waiting on the recipes. see why i told that i learn from all of u?

  • Dawn

    2009/03/24 at 9:38 pm Reply

    I am so bad at my cake decorating skills. Even my cupcakes are, at times, not so great. I’ve been meaning to sign up for some classes, somewhere. I love the decorated cake the most here.

  • Elenka

    2009/03/24 at 10:27 pm Reply

    Ugh, you, Deeba, are no good for my diet !!!
    I guess I’ll just have to cut and paste another recipe from you. Can’t help myself.

  • Nicisme

    2009/03/24 at 11:02 pm Reply

    What fun! I love to meet fellow foodie bloggers, and how brilliant that you did some cooking together!
    Lovely cakes!!!

  • Donna-FFW

    2009/03/24 at 11:42 pm Reply

    Oh what fun. Oh, Im so jealous. I would have loved to have been there and learned all those techniques!! Gorgeous cakes, sounds like an awesome day!

  • Helene

    2009/03/25 at 1:32 am Reply

    I would have enjoyed the day with you as well. Looks like so much fun. And I love everything you made.

  • Divya Kudua

    2009/03/25 at 2:21 am Reply

    All I can say is…lucky Nachiketa..I agree with Nags-you should conduct workshops,so that we “lesser mortals” can gain from it.I simply loved the cake snap on your header and this post is making me drool.Thanks for giving step by step instructions..loved it!!!

  • Proud Italian Cook

    2009/03/25 at 2:24 am Reply

    Deeba, I justed stared at your gorgeous cake! So, so, beautiful!
    I totally want your yogurt panna cotta too, can’t wait for the recipe,and btw that photo is stunning!

  • noble pig

    2009/03/25 at 2:29 am Reply

    Oh my word you all went crazy decorating! Everythng is beautiful, what a fun time you had.

  • Kerstin

    2009/03/25 at 3:54 am Reply

    I LOVE classic vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting – yours look fantastic! And, your cake is gorgeous – yum!

  • Manggy

    2009/03/25 at 5:05 am Reply

    I don’t like the frosting job… I love it 🙂 Sounds like a fun day, if pesky because of that darn electricity!
    You gotta have pretty prehensile tongues to navigate the inside of that goblet! But for something that looks that good, mine just might!

  • coffeegrounded

    2009/03/25 at 5:07 am Reply

    Deeba, I love how you opened your home and your heart to this dear. I can only imagine the laughter and chatter the two of you shared. Such a beautiful story.
    🙂

  • Miette

    2009/03/25 at 1:47 pm Reply

    Everything looks so delicious. Those sound like having fun and enjoy baking ! Very great lessons ! I’d like to share with you recipes and tips too !

    Cheers,

    Miette

  • Camille

    2009/03/25 at 7:06 pm Reply

    Wow! That was one crazy day of baking and the results look so incredible. The cake is stunning, but honestly all the rest looks so scrumptious. I’m stuffed just looking at it all.

  • Hillary

    2009/03/25 at 7:56 pm Reply

    Looks like you two had a lot of fun. I can’t believe you decorated that cake in 5 minutes!

  • Dwiana P

    2009/03/25 at 9:48 pm Reply

    WOW…. those look Yummy!! I would love to come to your house. You are such a good host:)

  • Arwen from Hoglet K

    2009/03/25 at 11:02 pm Reply

    Sounds like you had a great day. You’ve done a beautiful job on the zebra cake. It looks really professional!

  • aquadaze

    2009/03/26 at 3:55 am Reply

    the next time I make a choc cake, i am gonna decorate it like this! totally in love with its look 🙂

  • Ria Mathew

    2009/03/26 at 9:01 am Reply

    How i envy you Nachiketa!!! I really wish i lived in Delhi!!

    Deeba! U r amazing!!! love you blog! It’s sooo inspiring!! Wish i was half as talented as you! 🙂

    Will keep coming back for more!!!

  • Palidor

    2009/03/26 at 10:54 am Reply

    I’m so impressed. You ganache rings are perfect circles! You must have a very, very steady hand.

  • Lorraine @NotQuiteNigella

    2009/03/26 at 11:24 am Reply

    Gorgeous feathering work on your chocolate cake! I wish I could get mine as picture perfect! 🙂

  • Gloria

    2009/03/26 at 4:54 pm Reply

    I really envy your friend dear Deeba I want go to your home and stay days and days baking!!! nice!!
    all look beautiful, dear Deeba! xxxxxGloria

  • Anonymous

    2009/03/27 at 2:27 pm Reply

    That’s one good looking and neat cake. Hey Deeba, you’ve got to look at holding cake making and decorating classes! Seriously!! 🙂 Angela

  • Vandana Rajesh

    2009/03/30 at 9:45 am Reply

    Lovely post Deeba. A chocoholic’s dream come true. Decorating a cake is one that have been running away for. A mental block. Tried your ganache the other day, came out well although I think I need a bit more of practice. This looks so professional and your block has been a great inspiration to take up baking and trying to decorate cakes. Tried your zebra cake too the other day, was wonderful. Is the base for this cake the zebra cake recipe?

  • kellypea

    2009/04/01 at 12:07 am Reply

    So fun to meet up with other bloggers. Sounds like you had a good time together in spite of having no electricity. Gorgeous desserts — where do you find the time? Wishing I had a sampling right now…

  • Raaga

    2009/04/01 at 9:12 am Reply

    Nice nice… when can I come over for a lesson… and of course, more importantly… to meet you?

  • Ingrid

    2009/04/03 at 3:05 am Reply

    AW, how much fun was that! Loved all the photos. I wanna bake with a fellow blogger! Fantastic job on the zebra cake…very impressive!
    ~ingrid

  • Purnima

    2009/04/03 at 2:11 pm Reply

    With two live wires, this had to b the result! Simply marvelous, Nachi, wish I was in your place..which reader wouldn’t want to be watching Deeba’s skills!! Everything on this post looks mouthwatering!

  • Anonymous

    2010/08/25 at 9:06 am Reply

    Pretty insightful post. Never thought that it was this simple after all. I had spent a good deal of my time looking for someone to explain this subject clearly and you’re the only one that ever did that. Kudos to you! Keep it up

  • Anonymous

    2010/09/12 at 2:32 pm Reply

    I usually don't post in blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful !
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