Shocks and Shoes

Weekly Goal Update – 6 January 2013

12:35:00 pm

Happy New Year! (Along with my 2013 Plan and 2012 Update)

6:25:00 pm

Here we are!!! In a shiny, brand new year, brimming over with hopes and possibilities!! A fresh start is always a great feeling, and the first day of every year has got to be the most optimistic day across the globe :-).

Last year (feels a little weird calling 2012 ‘last year’), I decided to bring some accountability into my resolution process by sharing my weekly updates with you, my dear blog readers. I did it for nearly the whole year, and faltered in the last two months. But I have to say, that is the longest I have ever stuck to my resolutions. Also, the two months I didn’t keep up with my blog updates were the two months I didn’t stick to my goals either.

First, my 2012 report card J.

(You can check out my 2012 resolutions in more detail here.)

1. Quality Time with Cub: One example to show how consciously making an effort to do something gives completely different results from expecting that it’ll automatically get done. Cub and I had really fun times with crafts, legos, reading and such. Though I need to make our together-time sacrosanct, and ensure it gets done no matter what.

2. Fitness: This is one goal that requires constant motivation. The best is the Nike caption “Just Do It”. My finding is that it’s best to do as soon as you wake up in the morning, before you have time to think of excuses. If you get your gear ready the night before, even higher chance of getting to work out. Once it’s out of the way first thing in the morning, you can feel proud of yourself the rest of the day J.

3. Regular Prayers: A good area for me this year. I am not 100% regular, but way better than last year and I feel quite good about it. For this, I began waking up at 5:30 every morning and now it’s become a habit.

4. Reading: I read a book almost every fortnight and I am so glad to have made this a resolution!! I don’t think I would have renewed my interest in reading if I hadn’t set a goal like this!

1. Regular Blog posting: Well, the year started off regular, and tapered off towards the end. I was however active with guest posts and Parentous, and made a whole lot of new blogger friends. I even got to meet two of them in person – Ria from Ria’s Collection and Neelu from Creating Memories!! I also managed to participate in a few events, some InFB ones and joined the Baking Partners Group.

2. Less Nagging: I am really making an effort on this one. It was almost a gone case, but I began rescuing it in the latter half of the year. I have two potential victims, so it’s double the effort J.

3. Healthy Eating: This is a mixed bag. I have been eating fruit regularly and drinking a lot of water, but that’s about it. My meal timings are off, my portions are not controlled and I have been OD-ing on desserts – all thanks to my new interest in baking! Through the last year, I have discovered this: if I eat less and don’t workout, I lose weight, but don’t have any energy. If I workout without cutting down on food, I don’t lose weight, although I don’t gain any either. Lowering food intake as well as working out is necessary if I am to lose weight without losing my mind/energy/glow/hair.

1. Cleaner Home: I don’t think my home has been messier than it has been last year. Especially the ironing. Oh my God, the ironing!! It bothered me the whole year, till I finally decided in December to outsource it. Whew!! Still, deep cleaning suffered, and I was irregular with the dishes and pretty much everything. Only the kitchen got organized a bit.

2. Updated with news: I have to say that I did turn out better than I was before 2012, especially since I liked ibnlive on Facebook. I was in touch with the headlines, though I couldn’t really engage in debate on most topics.

3. Adventurous style: Nope. Nothing. Na da. I was supposed to have two OOTDS in a month and I have failed miserably here. I shopped much less, which is a plus, but I didn’t utilize my wardrobe properly. I just checked and there are many clothes I haven’t worn even once (that’s right, even once) in the whole of 2012. Terrible.

A few other things I hadn’t planned on, but done anyway in 2012:

1. Baking – I’ve really enjoyed this new hobby of mine and I think I’ve become better at it too J

2. Less TV – I automatically cut down on my TV watching time. Not a conscious decision, all that crap on TV just didn’t seem too enticing.

3. Worrying – I don’t know how this came about – I’m generally not a worrier. But a few times last year, I found myself going crazy with worry and working up terrible scenarios in my mind and then going crazier. Not a good habit to take in to 2013.

4. Time management – Terrible. 24 hours are just not enough for me.

All in all, I’m not disappointed. I wish I could say that I gave it my best shot, but I know I haven’t, although I’m glad I tried. And like I said, this is the best resolution-sticking I’ve ever done so far!!

Now, coming to this year. I’m going to continue doing the stuff I’ve made a habit of since last year, like the book reading, less TV, baking, following news on Facebook and outsourcing boring chores, so I’m not repeating them here.

Goal Plan for 2013

1. Fitness – Half an hour exercise at least 5 days a week. Weigh every morning before breakfast and measure every month. Optional: Yoga once a week.

2. Healthy Eating – No second helpings. Fixed meal times. Dessert once a week.

3. Educational time with Cub – Like I mentioned earlier, make this time sacrosanct. Include more educational stuff (ABCs, counting etc.) within crafts and playtime and slightly more complex reading.

4. Being more caring – This applies to everyone – hubs & son, parents, siblings, neighbors. Go beyond just nice and do a little extra to brighten up someone’s day. Obviously includes the ‘no-nagging’ clause.

5. Communication with God – Keep up with prayers, be more mindful. Let go of worry and put trust in God.

6. Job – Try to get a work at home job that’ll not eat too much into my day.

7. Time management and Prioritizing – This itself is top priority. Plan for the week, set a routine for the day and stick to it.

8. Keep the flame alive – Not let Amanat/Nirbhaya’s death go in vain. The poor girl went through hell and still struggled to live. We started a movement and got everyone to sit up and take notice. We can’t let all that go to waste and we just CANNOT let things go back to the state they were in. Think of ourselves as fighters, we cannot afford to let even a tiny little thing just slide by. Every perpetrator, no matter how ‘small’ his crime, has to pay for his deeds. Read this excellent piece for more: ‘It is no longer not my problem’ by amreekandesi.

Many people said that 2012 signified the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a new one. This was probably for us, the women of

India

What have you guys planned for this year? If anyone has any goal similar to mine and would like to keep score together, let me know, I’d love to have a buddy!! I plan to continue my weekly updates on the blog and would love to know your plans too J.

Thank you, dear readers, for being with me and encouraging me throughout. We’ve had good and bad times last year, so let’s pray for a much better 2013, filled with peace, health and happiness. Happy New Year!!

Food

Recipe for the Week – Whole wheat Choco Chip Peanut Butter Cupcakes

6:00:00 pm

Hello again!! I suppose many of you are in the midst of decorating, baking and doing other Christmassy stuff J. The past few weeks have been depressing and hard on all of us, and I think it’s a good thing for everyone to be renewing their hope this time of the year. The past is past, and we can pray and act for a better future for all of us on this planet.

I know Christmas means more cookies and puddings than cupcakes, but I thought I’d put in a slightly healthier version for those whose pantries are overflowing with baked goodies J.

What you’ll need:

150 g whole wheat flour

¼ tsp baking powder

110 g unsalted butter

125 g powdered sugar

4 tbsp peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

80 ml milk

1½ tbsp + ½ tbsp mini chocolate chips

What you’re going to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180° C and line a 12 cup cupcake tin.

2. Sift flour and baking powder and keep aside.

3. Beat sugar and butter with an electric beater till thick and creamy.

4. Add the peanut butter and beat again till mixed well.

5. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

6. Add the vanilla and whisk well.

7. Add the flour, milk and chocolate chips in this order: 1/3 flour mix, ½ milk, ½ tbsp choc chips, 1/3 flour mix, remaining milk, ½ tbsp choco chips, remaining flour mix, ½ tbsp choco chips. Gently fold in each ingredient as you go.

8. Spoon batter about halfway of each cupcake liner.

9. Top the cupcakes with ½ tbsp choco chips and bake for about 20-25 minutes at 180° C. Check if a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean. The tops should be lightly browned, but not too much.

Note: Avoid using salted butter, since the peanut butter already contains salt.

These can be made with regular flour as well, not sure why you’d want to do that,though! And if you don’t like chocolate (do you even exist?), you can skip the whole choco chips part. I used crunchy peanut butter, but you can use either.

Along with being great to gift your neighbors or friends for Christmas, this is also a good idea for a child’s snack box. It stores well in an airtight container, contains whole grain (whole wheat), healthy fats (peanut butter) and looks yummy (chocolate chips)!! If you want to make it even more sinful, make a chocolate ganache and frost, or if you couldn’t bother with that, there’s always Nutella!!!!

Food

Recipe for the Week – Chocolate Almond Cake (Baking Partners Challenge #5)

11:52:00 am

Hello there!! Remember me?? NO???? Horror of horrors!!!

Well, I haven’t posted for nearly a month, so what did I expect?? But really, it was heartening to know that people were still reading and commenting on my blog and facebook page even though I was dormant. Thank you guys, you really are the best. It feels good to know that I was missed :-D.

I don’t have a solid explanation for my absence, just that I wasn’t feeling it, liked I’d lost my mojo or something. I also had some personal stuff to deal with, which though not completely resolved, is under control for now.

Though I wasn’t posting, I wasn’t completely off the internet; I was reading and commenting on other blogs, as some of you might know J.

Anyway, since I’m back now, why not restart with something sweet and yummy? From my last post, you know that I’ve joined the Baking Partners group, for home bakers. December’s challenge was Christmas cakes, with three recipes to choose from – Chocolate Brazil nut Cake, Neapolitan Christmas cake and Plum cake. We were given the freedom to choose the flours and nuts we liked as well as the option to make it eggless.

I decided to go with the Chocolate Brazil nut recipe, substituting almonds for brazil nuts, hence the name Chocolate Almond Cake.

Here are the other modifications I made to the original recipe:

I halved the recipe, since the whole thing would probably be too much for my little family
I toasted the nuts on the stove top instead of oven
I used vinegar instead of cream of tartar (which was unavailable)
I used regular low fat cream instead of whipping cream (again, unavailable) which changed my frosting process
I used silver dragẻes instead of nuts for the garnish

First up, the Cake.

What you’ll need:

¾ cup almonds

85 g semisweet chocolate, chopped

3 * 1/8 cups sugar

1/8 cup all purpose flour

¼ tsp baking powder

85 g unsalted butter, slightly softened

3 eggs separated, at room temperature

Less than ¼ tsp vinegar

What you’re going to do:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and prepare an 8 inch round pan by lining the base and greasing the base and sides.

2. Toast the nuts in a pan on a very low flame still they begin to brown slightly. Leave to cool.

3. Grind the cool nuts with 1 tbsp sugar to a fine powder. Sift this with the flour and baking powder till there are no lumps and everything is well mixed.

4. Melt chocolate either in a double boiler or in the microwave, and leave to cool.

5. Cream butter and 3 tbsp sugar till smooth and fluffy. Add the yolks, one at a time, and beat till well blended and pale.

6. Stir in the melted chocolate and mix well. Fold in the flour-nut mix to form a thick batter.

7. In another clean and dry bowl (glass or stainless steel), beat the egg whites till very foamy. At this point, add the vinegar and continue to beat till the batter forms soft peaks that droop a little when the beaters are lifted.

8. Now, add 1 tbsp of sugar gradually, and beat the egg whites till stiff peaks are formed, i.e. stiff and shiny peaks that hold their shape when the beaters are lifted. Stop beating now.

9. Slowly fold about 1/3 of the egg white into the chocolate flour mix, and repeat with the remaining egg white in batches.

10. Transfer batter into prepared pan and bake at 180°C for about 30 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean.

11. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Using a spatula go around the cake gently and invert onto a cake rack and allow it to cool completely.

Next, the frosting.

Okay, since I used regular cream, what I ended up with was more ganache than whipped cream frosting. I’m not sure it was the right thing to do, but I’ll be honest and share with you exactly what I did.

What you’ll need:

¼ cup low fat cream

85 g semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped

85 g unsalted butter, slightly softened but still cool

1.5 tbsp honey

What you’re going to do:

1. Bring cream to a full boil in a small saucepan, remove from heat and immediately add the chopped chocolate.

2. Stir quickly till the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Cool to room temperature.

3. Whip this at high speed till it thickens and becomes pale. (Didn’t really work for me because of my cream)

4. Cream butter in a medium bowl until it is soft and smooth, gradually add the chocolate mixture and honey and beat well. Leave the frosting to rest for about 15-20 minutes.

5. Using a long spatula, spread frosting evenly on the side and top of the cake. Make the edges as neat as you can and put in the freezer for about 3 minutes.

6. Take it out again and check if the frosting is firm. If yes, apply another coat of frosting on the sides and top.

7. Garnish with whatever catches your fancy. Since this was a Christmas theme, I used silver dragẻes and tied it with some ribbon. I couldn’t find red or green and had to make do with pink L.

Okay, this cake challenged me in many ways. The recipes I try usually use whole eggs, so separating the eggs was my first challenge. Then came the egg white beating part. What you see in the pictures here is actually my second attempt. My first attempt, I used a plastic bowl to beat the egg whites and they didn’t peak. I baked it any way and this is how it looked:

This is when the egg whites peaked:

Notice the slight difference in the height of the cake? If you’ve never beaten egg whites to peaks, be sure to do some research first.

Frosting was another challenge, I usually just bake and then it gets gobbled up immediately J. And you can see that I’ve messed up the pink ribbon, getting chocolate all over it J.

Here are the videos I referred to for help:

1. How to fold egg whites - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yie5V37E1w

2. How to beat egg whites - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuJfkxoATA

3. How to frost with ganache - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmLAr_tHSE4

So that was my first Baking Partners Challenge!! I enjoyed it and look forward to more!! Tell me, would you guys try this out?

This post is also a participant in the Cook.Eat.Delicious - DessertsEvent over at Spicy Food. The event was started at Cook.Eat.Delicious.com.

Source

Food

Baking Partners: A new Baking Group

3:54:00 pm

Personal

Weekly Goals Update – 11 November 2012

10:34:00 am

Is it the second week of November already?? I guess having festivals and celebrations all around you makes time fly :-). Everyone seems to be either shopping, or eating or both, and I wonder if anyone noticed that in the midst of it all, I skipped last week’s goal update :-D. Hah!!! Bet you didn’t notice till now!! So here’s an amalgamation of the updates of the last two weeks, henceforth referred to as Week 1 and Week 2.

1. Worked out for 3 days during Week 1, and this was in spite of some post-Eid tummy trouble.

2. Spent a lot of quality time with Cub, mainly building Lego models. Legos have really increased our family time together, it’s something that keeps everyone interested!

3. Did loads of baking. I usually bake about once a week, or once a fortnight. But the past two weeks had me baking four times!!

4. I didn’t pig out on the weekends as I usually do.

5. Had my quota of fruit.

6. Been okay with the whole house cleaning thing.

1. Week 2 saw only two days of workouts and one day of brisk walking.

2. Hardly read to Cub L

3. Didn’t read much myself. Magazine backlog growing by the week.

4. My portion control during Week 1 was terrible. Week 2, though better, wasn’t good enough.

5. Week 2’s ironing pile is lying there calling out my name. I’ll take care of it today. Promise.

6. Woke up quite late most mornings, which is partly to blame for my lack of workouts. It’s really nice to curl up with Cub under a soft blanket on cool mornings. (I say cool, since it never really gets ‘cold’ here in Kerala, at least non-hilly places. How I wish it got really cold so I could wear boots and coats and stuff. Delhi folks, I’m going green here!! Okay, sentence getting too long to fit in brackets. Stopping.)

In other news, BBC Good Food India magazine turns one and their anniversary issue is really something! They’ve covered 25 global classics such as tiramisu, paella and phad thai, as well as several more. They’ve also got some cool Augmented Reality shows, which you can download on your smart phone. And it came with a free CD of Ratatouille :-).