Did you know? Of the strange case of macaroons of Thoothukudi? All of us have eaten macaroons before. The shaggy, chewy, coconut filled cookies that seem to be the country bumpkin cousins of the lah-di-dah French Macarons. But have you ever eaten a Tuticorin macaroon? I tasted them for the first time when I joined …
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 …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Vanilla is the best loved flavour in the world today. Vanilla infuses cakes, ice creams, cookies, confections, yoghurts, fragrances, bath and body products, candles, rum, vodka, medicines, Coke, Pepsi…..the list is endless. When you reach for ingredients to bake a cake, inevitably there is vanilla in the list. Never mind the flavour of the cake …
Vanilla is the most popular flavour in the world. It is the second most expensive spice. Have you ever wondered about its origins?
You may well ask, what does George Clooney have to do with Vietnamese rainbow rice-paper rolls? Does he make them? Or eat them, regularly? Or endorse them? I have no clue….as we haven’t communicated of late :)……but then I haven’t communicated with anyone in almost a month. I’ve been busy, busy, busy. Busy making cakes, …