Jacob's Birthday Weekend

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Ever since I started my cake decorating classes I have been making cupcakes left and right It is my mission to drown my near and dear ones in sweet treats. My classes are mostly to blame as each week I'm required to bake a cake for the class. But a standard cake mix makes either two 8" cakes or 24 cupcakes. And since I need only one 8" cake, the rest of the batter is turned into cupcakes :).

Eight such left over cupcakes got turned into little forest animals for my nephew, Jacob, for his 4th birthday. He loves animals  and I figured this would be great for him. Almost every gift I have got Jacob has had something to do with animals, that's how much he loves them. I made these cupcakes once before for my other nephew Isaac. Back then, I had arranged the cupcakes on a plate on which i drew trees and grass.

A Panda, a Tiger, a Monkey & a Lion, just hanging out.

From Isaac's second B'day last July

 

 We were also planning to visit one of my childhood friends who had moved to Seattle and had recently given birth to a little baby girl. Diya and I decided to take some home made cupcakes for them. But earlier in the day, we had been browsing through Sur la Table and found the cutest little disposable mini cake molds, that you can bake in and give away. They were so cute that we decided to make mini cakes instead of cupcakes. We made two flavors, a marbled Nutella cake and a strawberry cake with real cooked strawberries and preserves. They were both yummy, but we both loved the Nutella cake the most! Here are a few pics.

Nutella Cake with Chocolate Frosting

Strawberry Cake with Pink Vanilla Rosettes

Cramalized Plantains - A Pazham Puri Fix

I'm from the southern most state in India, called Kerala and the one fruit it is famous for, is plantains! I always disliked bananas growing up, but plantains i liked. I think it was mainly because of my grandfather, who would slice a plantain after every meal and share it with his grandkids - all 18 of them. And there was always a fight at the end, but not for the plantain slices, but the skin! He sliced the plantain with the skin, but not all the way through. Once the plantain slices were taken out, the skin looked like a giant caterpillar!

One of the other pleasures I remember from vacations in Kerala, is Pazham Puri or Batter Fried Plantains! It is crispy on the outside and dark orange and mushy inside. really tasty. I had been craving these for a while, but haven't made them for 2 reasons, it is not easy to find ripe plantains in the US and i hate frying. But I found a way around both these problems!

All you need are ripe plantains and some brown sugar. For the ripe plantains, i bought the raw ones from the store, left it in a transparent plastic bag on the window sill. In about a week to ten days it had ripened. And instead of frying, I decided to crunch it up using caramel instead.

Caramalized Plantains

Ingredients:
2 - Ripe Plantains
1/2 cup - Brown sugar
Cooking Spray (Butter Flavored)

Method:
Line a baking sheet with aluminium foil, shiny side up. Spray it with some butter flavored cooking spray. If you don't have butter flavored, regular will do. Peel and slice the plantains diagonally into half centimeter thick slices. Place them uniformly in the greased baking sheet. Spread 1/8 tsp of brown sugar on each slice ad broil on high for 5-7 mins. Once it crosses 4 minutes, you should see the sugar melt and caramelize, so watch the plantains carefully. they can go from golden delicious to charred in just a minute. Once done, take it out and let cool for 5 minutes and enjoy!

It is best eaten within an hour of making. If you refrigerate it, the caramel will dissolve, but they'll still taste heavenly. I even creamed them with some evaporated milk and whipped cream and made an ice cream out of it. But I prefer it in its caramelized form.

The caramelized plantains are fat free (except for the little bit of cooking spray), but they do pack a lot of carbs, especially from the plantain itself, so enjoy them in moderation.

The Birthday Surprise

My Birthday started off like any other day, I woke up rather grumpy after only 5 hours of sleep ( I was up late writing the previous blog :). Paul wished me Happy Birthday, we got ready for work and reached work - late - like most days. The rest of the day was spent working and answering phone calls from friends and family calling to wish me on my Birthday. At lunch time, Paul picked me up and took me to a sushi restaurant we used to frequent and where they make you a special little Birthday Sushi Plate. Like always, we ate too much and headed back to work. As Paul dropped me off, he said he was going to run a few 'errands'. I knew that meant he was going to clean up the house some more and buy me something, most likely some flowers and/or a cake. I also had a strong hunch that someone would be coming home since he spent some time on Thursday tidying up the house.

So B-Day afternoon was spent in doing some work and at the same time doing a little research for my first food blog project - a cake for Mom & Dad's (Paul's Parents) Anniversary. Dad likes coconut desserts and so I decide to make it a Coconut White Chocolate Cake. As I was looking around for icing ideas, I came across this Cake Decorating class at Michaels. I instantly decided to join. I pinged (Nerd slang for chatted over Instant Messaging) my friend Ankita and reeled her in as well. By the time Paul picked me up in the evening (40 minutes too late - so I guessed he had stopped by Costco to buy me a gold bracelet that I had been eyeing last week), I was all excited about the cake decorating class. So he took me to Michaels (after giving me a beautiful bouquet of flowers) to register for the class and buy the class supplies. I bought the biggest Wilton Cake Decorating kit I could find. If you are wondering, why don't I start small, then I shall quote someone I know, "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing". We then headed home to get ready for the second half of the B-Day celebration - Dinner for 2 at Cheese Cake Factory.

As we were walking to the restaurant from the parking lot, I hugged Paul and told him how happy I was that it was just the 2 of us, I was really looking forward to the quite weekend of baking! On the way to the restaurant entrance, Paul paused a couple of times, was very listless and as we neared the restaurant he insisted he wanted to go to the AT&T store. The AT&T store part irritated me because we were 30 minutes late for our dinner reservation! As we turned into the restaurant entrance, Paul held back and I walked ahead. And sitting there, were Anand and Ankita! I was a little surprised and was telling them it was such a nice surprise to see them, when I noticed Anand looking at the person next to him. I couldn't understand why he was constantly looking there so I turned - only to find Diya, my sister sitting there! I was surprised all right! When I spoke to her a few weeks back, she said she couldn't come to Portland on my birthday weekend because my niece Rachel had Sunday school. And I completely fell for that. Apparently Paul had called her a couple days before I did and she agreed go along with the surprise. It was a great surprise!

Any surprise that brings family to Portland (Especially when the family ahs 2 cute little kids), is a great surprise.

We had a great Birthday dinner with way too much good food. Rest of the weekend was a chaos of late night talks, big celebration dinners and a Super Bowl party. But amidst all this I was inclined on making some baking happen, so we decided to bake the cake for  Mom & Dad after all. So Anand and Ankita  came over on Saturday afternoon. After a lot of research I picked a hybrid buttercream recipe that I read in the Art of Dessert blog because the blog mentioned how the icing was soft and yet was very smooth like meringue. The icing was really tasty, not too sweet and really creamy. Though it was a good icing for covering the cake, it wasn't very good for piping flowers. But it was too late to make another icing, so we decided to go ahead with it anyway.

I came across a guest post on Ria's Collection that described how to make chocolate lattices. I liked the idea of a chocolate lattice very much. Initially I planned on piping an intricate design. But the chocolate was very hard to work with and it started hardening rather quickly and a fourth of the way into making scroll like designs, the tip had completely hardened. So we melted some more white chocolate chips and decided to go with a quick checkered design. This came out well. But we waited a few seconds too long before we wrapped the chocolate around the cake, so there was a little cracking. But it was still a good first attempt. Diya used the excess molten chocolate to write out 'Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad'. She also drew a few hearts and leaves. We colored the leaves with some powdered green color and gold dust. We also dusted the lettering with some gold dust to give it a little shimmer. Piping the drop flowers was easy, but because the icing was a little denser than we had expected, it broke off leaving crooked edges. Another problem I faced while making the roses was that the icing had a very tough time sticking to itself. But the end result surpassed our expectations. I had started out wanting to make coconut cake for my in-laws, but we ended up with a mini wedding themed cake.

The cute part was when it was time to cut the cake, Isaac, my 2-1/2 year old nephew started crying - 'don't break the fence'! He was really upset that Mom & Dad broke the chocolate lattice to get to  the cake.

Note to self: No chocolate lattices on Isaac's birthday cake.

The Story Behind the Name - 'Food from the Cloud'

I thought it was necessary to explain my choice of the blog title. The choice of the word 'Food' is kind of obvious - I love to cook and eat (maybe eat more than cook :) and I intend this to be a blog about food I like to eat as well recipes that I have tried out in my little kitchen. Now, what is the significance of the word 'Cloud' you might ask. Well, I chose it for 2 reasons.

Reason 1: Cloud Computing. Yes, I am a Nerd!

For those of you who don't  know me, I'm bit of a Nerd. I work in the field of Storage Networking or more commonly known as the 'Cloud'. In fact my entire work experience has been in this field and I feel a very strong sense of attachment to it. So when I thought of a way to link this to my passion - Food - I couldn't let it pass.

For those of you who don't know what the cloud means, it is basically the internet. When you upload photos to a website, it means, you are being 'loaned' some space on the site's Web Server, this is basically a service provided by the 'Cloud'. Same is the case when you write Blogs, share recipes, generate social content, etc.

Reason 2: I Live in Portland! Duh!

I live in Portland, Oregon (USA), and the city is almost perennially prey to overcast skies. So literally, I'll be food blogging from under cloudy skies.

Inspiration:

I have loved to cook for a long, long time and I have blogged in the past, so what inspired me now? Over the last 2 years I have been going over a few food and cooking blogs that I have fallen in love with. Some are simple recipes, some are artistic creations, some educate you on techniques, but they all have one thing in common, a deep appreciation for cooking and other cooks, be it amateurs or experts. So a Big Thanks to all you internet cooks out there! Here are a few food blogs I like:

Spicyana

The Art of Desserts

Ria's Collection

Another practical reason is that I wanted a single online repository for all my recipes. My sister, Diya has always been pestering me for recipes and I always forget to type it up and send it to her. So hopefully I'll be good about updating my recipes here and she'll be only a few clicks away from my recipes.

Coincidentally, today is my Birthday, so it is a pretty good day to start blogging again :). Happy Birthday to Me!