Sizzling Success!

 After months and months of TRYING, and TRYING and failing, I have finally found ways where cooking/baking needn't be the horrible failure-ridden nightmare that it once was.
Over the course of 6 months or so I have made things - things that include some amount of sugar, refined flour and heat. 
Of course now I weigh a healthy 65-67 kilos, and look like a potato what with my pockmarked, acne ridden skin and lumpy fat filled shape. I sometimes feel like a potato too - stuffed to the brim while shoving a bar of whatever chocolatey treat down my pie-hole. 
But that's a discussion for another day.
Let's save the things I did do for posterity:

The Cake

The Cake was a joint effort by me and my mother, for my aunt's birthday. We made it on the stove, and it was unbelievably moist. Of course the exact measurements were made by my mother. The Glaze however was all me. Eyeballed the chocolate powder and the dark chocolate to create this baby.
 
 

The Mug Brownie

    This was a YouTube find. It looked like all the cooking channels I ever followed , were showcasing some form of the mug brownie all at the same time. It came out much better than I expected, did not require eggs, tasted great with raisins and best of all - took only a minute to make. No washing up, no prep time!
 
 
 

The Brownie

Another YouTube find! Possibly even better than the mug brownie. Tasted great hot, cold, warm, with milk, with ice-cream! You name it! It was soft, the raisins were perfect and it was chocolatey. Just loved this one. The extra cooking time was worth it! 

The Onion Rings

This savoury treat was also a shared win - where I made the batter, and sliced the onions (the normal Indian ones) and my mother fried those. One might question the validity of claiming these as MY Onion rings, but I am not going anywhere near hot oil, thank you. 
 

The Bread

This was a hobby project of my father's. He loved the idea of baking one's own bread. Sadly this meant that we all had to lend a hand in it's creation. And let me tell you - bread making is NO JOKE. We had to buy weighing scales to measure out the yeast, and measure out the flour and the water and the milk. Then we had to prep, prep and prep for about 4 hours. The baking itself took close to 2.5 hours. We also had the incident where we switched the refined wheat flour with rice flour by accident. Many a weekend's blood sweat and tears were spent toiling over the grand loaf. Was it worth it? The bread WAS tastier , I'll give you that. Was it worth spending the two precious days you got elbow deep in flour and tears? I don't think so. 

 

The Apple Pie

This. Now this was a reluctant thing that I did, from scratch, after a lot of whining by my dad. You see we somehow ended up with more apples than we knew what to do with. After a whole week of us trying to eat an apple a day, we decided we couldn't let them rot. And so began the crazy journey of making a pie - a pie that required a whole day of prep. First the apples were cut and the filling made with spices I wouldn't dare use - things like cinnamon and nutmeg. Then came the crust, which had two sticks of butter, carefully measured flour, sugar, and prayers to help the crust bake well. All kneaded frantically  as the crust did not co-operate. I dont think anyone of us actually expected an intact pie, but we were glad with the results.

 

And finally the highlight: Dalgona Decision Revised!

Sure this isn't the Traditional Tiramisu either (Marscapone cheese is not something that is found easily), but we did manage to find whipping cream that did what was told. It whipped, and formed peaks. Vanilla essence was added, cake was soaked in coffee to give it that kick, dollops and dollops of chocolate whipped cream was added to layers of cake, nuts and raisins. This was a good series of weekends. Prep was hardly 15-20 minutes, and my parents had the brilliant idea of shoving the rest into the freezer. We ate home-made ice-cream for a whole week!
 

All in all, I would say, buy whipping cream. It really is worth it. 

Now to figure out a way of loosing all this weight I have put on and clearing my scarred skin.

Until next time!

DragonRider