Of Plum Cakes and Kerala!

Did you know why Plum cake and Kerala are synonymous? How did something so British become a Kerala staple? In 1880, a young man named Mr. Mambally Bapu returned from Burma where he’d learned to bake biscuits and set up the Mambally Royal Biscuit Factory in Thalaserry. In 1883, a few days before Christmas, Murdoch …

Will the real Red Velvet Cake take a bow?

It was a long , long time back. Dinosaurs had just about stopped roaming the earth….probably because there was no Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat….  There was however a man called Adams. He had a wife — nah, not Eve. Her name was a more prosaic Betty. Remember them, they will re-enter our story at …

Non-Dairy “Cream”

Non-dairy toppings, What are they? Non-dairy toppings primarily consist of chemicals, including partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, high fructose corn syrup, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, polysorbate 60, salt, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, soy lecithin, disodium phosphates, sodium citrates, sodium stearoyl lactylate, xantham gum, artificial flavours, etc. Phew! The only words I understood here were soy and …

Sugar and Candy

The very word conjures up images of M&Ms and Hershey’s kisses, gumdrops and candy canes, jujubes and gummy bears, peppermint patties, puffy marshmallows, colourful lollipops and all things tooth achingly sweet. But did you know that the word candy comes from Khand or Khandsari — another name for raw sugar? Or that the word Sugar …

Cream de la crème

There are so many different kinds of cream! What cream do I use in my desserts? Shelves in a super markets are stocked with a huge variety of creams. There’s Heavy Cream, Thickened Cream, Double Cream, Single Cream, Pure Cream, Light Cream, Cooking Cream, Whipping Cream and many more. As there’s no standardisation, cream is …

The Ice Cream Story

Did you know? Walls! The name is synonymous with Ice cream today. Walls is found everywhere, in the largest of malls and the smallest of towns. However, long before Walls became the symbol of global cooling, it was but a modest shop selling (and you are never going to guess this!) pork. in 1786, Richard …