Variety + Availability + Weather = Pleasureable Experience...

Variety + Availability + Weather = Pleasurable Experience... Don't know if I'm right on this, but I guess so. UK has been the country where I really got to know what cake baking is - a lot more than just party cakes and home made cakes. It combines of baking a lot of stuff like muffins, puddings, pies, teacakes, scones, the English crumpets, the hot cross buns, crumbles, biscuits, cheese cakes, special Christmas cakes, other cakes for different days and festivals and a lot more than just birthdays and weddings. Remembering muffins, England was the place I fell in love with muffins and other simple cakes. All the more, the weather made it impossible to stay away from such hot, fresh and filling lovely baked stuff.

I could never resist the temptation of getting myself a hot banana and chocolate chip muffin if I ever went to the railway station...be it waiting at the station for a friend who was going to arrive, be it in the Virgin Train from Birmingham to London or at the enormously huge and grand Victoria or Euston stations where I was so confused about where to go the first time I traveled from Birmingham to London alone. Although I must say, the British railway system is awesome with it's instructions and helping staff so I ended up getting into the right train on time. I used to never give up on a hot muffin even when I had to rush for a train. And what was more tempting than having a fresh muffin with a hot chocolate at Starbucks or even at any other place, on a typical English cold and rainy day ? So that was my bit on muffins (even a little bit about trains) in the UK. There are a number of things I could write about in terms of cakes, but I won't be covering everything here as I'm not writing recipes but just giving a glimpse of my experiences.
Millies Cookies, I think, is a must try for cookies, muffins and a lot of food as I think any body would end up liking it and becoming a devout customer!

When it comes to the regular cakes, my favorite one in the UK is a carrot and walnut or a orange and walnut cake or a orange and carrot cake with the white cream topping, that comes packed in boxes at any local M & S or Tesco stores. They seem so simply irresistible as they have the real carrot and orange taste and smell. Personally I feel they have an absolutely lovely taste and are certainly baked very intelligently. I think they are good enough at any time - be it for breakfast, after lunch, as an evening tea time snack, as a dessert after dinner... moreover, I loved to have a slice or two even at late nights or very early mornings when I worked on my dissertation or studied for exams in the university halls. Oh, and they are surely good enough to buy as a birthday cake if you are an international student living on a tight or I think the right way to say is - "well-planned budget", where you don't want to blow away your money in Pounds!

Some of the finest cakes I bought from the supermarkets in the UK also include the £1 - £3 cheesecakes and sponge cakes at Sainsbury's. It was indeed the first time in life that I had delicious baked food items like the traditional crumpets, hot cross buns, short breads and tea cakes. Though I did not enjoy having all these regularly, having them a few times was definitely worth the treat. All these are also a very good snack during traveling or before leaving home for work or even when you are out for shopping on the high street and really hungry but don't want to go to a restaurant. This is a perfect time to grab something from Gregg's. They have a lot of stuff and I'm sure you would want to get into it even if you are just passing by as you can't help but get in because of the hot baking aroma of their fresh Cornish pasties, wraps and sandwiches. which you can sense from far away. You get the smell and you know you are going to come across a Gregg's soon. This is also a great place to just stop over for lunch and pick up something sweet like cakes, pastries, doughnuts or scones to take home.

I should say that the UK has an amazing variety and availability when it comes to baked food. There are a wonderful bunch of options to choose from which can make it a severely daunting task if you adore experimenting with food and trying the variety everywhere ! And therefore, I kept the title of this post as it is. The variety and availability coupled with the English weather makes you go for the pleasurable experience. The only and the most important point we must not forget here is to make sure we try and choose wholesome and healthy options wherever it's possible and to exercise adequately, if not, walk a lot, as I seriously think UK is one of the best places to do so.

You would never really get tired... neither of trying the baked food nor of walking all the way for any distance!

Thinking about birthdays & especially Cakes!

All my birthdays have always been unique and cakes are a very interesting part of birthdays for me, I hope for you all too. If I write the kinds of birthdays that I have had, you would be surprised. Each one of them was so different. I wanted to write this post a day ago, just after my birthday, but I wanted ample of time to analyze and write as I wanted to give you all something about my cake experiences in different countries that I have lived in. If not the whole world, I can write about the 3 countries I lived in - India, Brazil and the UK. And I'm sure it's going to be a lot to read. I wanted to write something analytical than just being descriptive. I wanted to give you all something that would show you how cakes link to our lives and how we can really analyze a country and its people with cakes. Seems weird right? But I'm going to write it...and hoping you all would enjoy it. Why I'm saying analytical and not descriptive has a very big reason. My professors at the university (Birmingham) used to always say that everything that we do - assignments, research papers and dissertation should be very analytical and not just descriptive. Otherwise there is really no use of whatever you are writing ! And so that became my strategy - Don't just describe, analyze it ! Something that was not quite well taught to me in the Indian education system, but have made it a core line for my life today.

I would also like to mention here that, before starting to write this....I had almost completed writing the whole post :( but since this is just my second post, I did something by mistake and the whole thing got cut or deleted, pufff....vanished in thin air, rather, in thin interface :) So, I'm trying to get the flow back again, and I have decided not to include the whole thing in one big post!

So starting with the cake experience in India, a country that is normally associated with chapatis, parathas and naans than cakes! I'm sure, like a lot of other things, cakes were brought to India first by the British and the other European rulers. Even the Parsee and the Irani communities are said to have a very distinguished baking tradition here. They still own the old bakeries. Some of them have now given makeovers to their shops and made them look quite modern. They traditionally baked in furnaces, called "bhattis" and a lot of them still do. The moment you walk into these shops, you get a fresh and smoky baking smell. A lot of them bake delicious breads, cakes, pastries and buscuits. The difference between these and the other very western like baked foods is that, these taste quite like the home made ones. The cakes are not too soft and are very filling if you have them for breakfast or at tea time. The ones that have cream are also different. The cream is sweeter and thicker than the typical western party cake cream which is much finer and very soft. A lot of these bakeries have now began baking and selling party and decorated cakes of different flavours, though they are not as popular with the new generation aware of the branded cake shop chains in big cities. Besides, these bakeries don't sell egg less cakes, which a lot of Indians prefer, being strict vegetarians. Its quite worth eating from these traditional bakeries once a while as it gives you a true homely taste, if cake baking doesn't happen at home, as for a lot of Indian homes.


This a picture of traditional Indian baking.
There are branded cake shop chains in big cities all over India which sell the softer party cakes just like the ones in Europe and America. They are a bit wet and very professionally baked by expert bakers. You can get a wide variety from cars, dolls, Disney cartoons, ships, wedding and party cakes, black forest, pineapple etc. These shops also have an egg less option for most of their cakes. Besides cakes, they also keep pastries, pies, tarts, tramisu, sandwiches, biscuits, puffs, other snacks and deserts. I have had interesting cake experiences in Goa. But Goa, as a lot of you would know, was a Portuguese colony and they ruled the state for more years and left even later than the British. So, they still have one of the best traditional baking industry in India according to me. There are a lot of hotels and other shops that are even more expert at making the party cakes. The baking I like in India...in general, is the home one again, mom being an expert baker :) I love the freshly baked chocolate cake and plain cake that she bakes and a lot of other things she used bake when I was a kid. She had baked 2 party cakes for one of my childhood birthdays, I still remember how happy I was! Thereafter, my dad always bought different cakes for each of my birthday, once a ship, once a mickey mouse and a lot of other kinds.

Now going to the Brazilian cake experience...which was one of the best and touching ones of my life. Brazil has a mixture of European races. This obviously makes it a very developed baking market. I had all types of cakes in Brazil, home baked ones and outside ones. All of them were absolutely awesome. Brazilian chocolates, according to me are the best in the world. I have had all European and American chocolates. But personally, none have beaten the Brazilian taste. They have a extremely powerful, lovely aroma and an everlasting taste. This leads to a very fine black forest taste indeed. Having a black forest in Brazil is quite different than having it elsewhere, though I haven't tasted the German one, which is perhaps the best.

The Brazilian black forest has big and dense chocolate flakes on it. The forest is thus denser and deforestation has not yet begun there which is very, very good indeed ;) I used to adore the yummy home baked cakes baked by the maid of my host family - Maria. She was a gem of a woman, as all of them in my family, of whom I would surely write in my posts to come. Every time I came back from one of the Rotary exchange student trips to city I was living in, I was welcomed with a big home baked cake on the kitchen table, no one used to eat it till I came... as soon as I entered the home, my host dad used to scream out loud, "Amruta, a Maria ja fez um bolo para voce, vai la ver!" (Amruta, Maria has just baked a cake for you, go and have a look). It was the warmest welcome that I had ever experienced, a big hug from my host parents and Maria's mouth watering cakes. She generally baked a chocolate cake or a milk cake or a carrot cake.

(This is a typical home baked Brazilian Carrot Cake with a chocolate sauce topping, very common in a everyday morning breakfast.)

I have had a lot of funny and loving experiences with Maria and I still remember her though I'm not in touch with her like the other people I know in Brazil. A lot of times my host mom would walk into the kitchen around 4 pm to have a piece of cake and when she used to open the lid of the container, she found only a quarter of the cake that was just baked 2 hours ago. The thieves - my youngest host brother and myself :) I also learnt to make orange cake, though with a Brazilian cake mix, from my second host family's maid - Aparecida, another sweet woman, quite younger than the motherly Maria. I have had cakes at innumerable amount of occasions in Brazil and I can say they all were absolutely delicious and had an emotion to them. There are a lot of things I think we can learn from the people in Brazil, about truly loving family, friends and the other people in your life whom you consider to be important, and then loving your country. About my cake experience in Brazil, I can just say one thing - you would never want to stop with having a few pieces of cake, or must I say, homely love?

A start to Blogging...finally

I always thought, writing blogs isn't quite a good idea. But there is so much I feel like writing and reading all the time. If I get a whole day with the internet or if I'm left alone at a place full of books, I never know how time flies ! I never get bored of the internet and books, luckily enough, internet has not yet replaced real paper books in my life and I would never let it. But I love the internet and its technologies.
There are a lot of things I would like to keep sharing with everybody in my network, whether they really read it or not is their choice.
Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm starting to blog today. My posts here will always be related to a wide variety of topics, news, new and up coming stuff in a lot of areas. So be prepared to read a lot. None the less, I would also be penning down, rather, keying down ideas, thoughts, feelings whenever I wish to do so.
I hope if not all, at least some people would like to read my posts, as even I'm writing here for myself, I'm finally writing for people to read.
Please note that all that I write here will always be strictly my view about things.