Baker's Corner: Caramel Pecan Cheesecake

Does it feel like the holidays already? To me, it sure does. A little over two weeks before I pack my bags and head home with my family to visit the rest of my family 😊

December is usually not the month for restrictive eating, what say folks? 😁 I've had sugar on my mind lately and when it comes to dessert, my mind never strays too far away from cake. And when we are talking about cake, the visual of my favourite cheesecake is the first that comes to mind. 

Over the years, I've blogged different kinds of cheesecake recipes. The classic New York Cheesecake, the exotic White Chocolate-Yuzu Cheesecake, the pillowy soft Japanese Cheesecake, the chocolate infused American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake and even a berry-infused cheesecake sitting on a brownie aka Blackberry Cheesecake Brownies.

I told you I had a thing for cheesecake, didn't I? 😉

I had no idea what variation to attempt next so I asked my husband. He thought for exactly 10 seconds and blurted out "Caramel Pecan Cheesecake". I love caramel, I love pecans and I love cheesecake so my immediate thought was - that's such a great idea. Alas! it hardly turned out to be original coz I found out that there are several recipes already out there. I took inspiration from a few of them but trust me when I say that this carefully curated recipe for the cheesecake is my own. 

You must know that I don't like my desserts cloyingly sweet. I've reiterated it countless times. While making this cheesecake, I wanted to control the amount of sweetness in the cheesecake filling because I was going to be topping the finished cheesecake with a homemade caramel sauce which, let's admit, is sugar in its most decadent form. I also didn't want to go the salted caramel route because the cheesecake naturally tends to be a tad salty thanks to the cream cheese. I added only a dash of sea salt to my caramel sauce to offset the sweetness without rendering a salty taste. 

With the toasty crunch from the pecans, the buttery sweet caramel sauce, the mildly sweet and salty luscious cheesecake filling and the flavourful graham cracker crust, this dessert came together perfectly. 

Christmas and New Year is coming up, so, what are you waiting for folks? 😃

A Letter to my Daughters on Their Fifth Birthday

*Exhales deeply*....okay....this birthday letter is going to be the hardest one yet. I have so many things to say (as usual) and yet so ill-prepared. I should have learnt my lesson from two years ago where I found myself in a similar predicament. But back then, I pulled through just in the nick of time (or so I think). It'll be interesting to see how this birthday letter is going to fare in comparison 😛

You know the Hindi movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? The one in which the dying mother left a bunch of letters for her newborn daughter and then years later, the daughter had those precious memories to remember her mother by? Now, don’t get any morbid ideas - I’m not going anywhere (I hope 😝) but that gesture moved me to my core even though I was just a teenager back then.

But on a serious note, we are all living on borrowed time aren’t we? Nobody knows how long their journey in this world will last. Nobody knows if they have enough time to make sure their loved ones know just how much they are cherished. In the end, it is only the experiences and lasting relationships we form with people during the course of our lives that matter.  

Birthday letters to my daughters have come to mean much more than a mere tradition. Each letter is a tangible expression of my love and pride; my reflections combined with my hopes and dreams I have for their future. It serves a reservoir of memories, and my emotional constitution locked in passages of time. The most heartfelt emotions can be conveyed more meaningfully in writing rather than everyday spoken words and stories have the ability to communicate actions and events in a way that is more valued than any singular compliment. We prudently think about taking out a life insurance policy to ensure our children’s financial future is taken care of but how about setting aside an "emotional insurance policy" that may cover their emotional needs? To convey those details one might forget about as time goes by or have trouble verbally expressing or the little things that might otherwise go unsaid while children grow up. And it doesn't just stop at annual letters. Over the years, I have written so many emails to them chronicling special milestones, life events, memorable holidays, snippets of advice and even simple everyday moments. 

I want my children to have these letters and emails so they can feel like they are close to my heart even when I’m not around and to be reminded of their importance in my life. And it is not just the highlights of their early childhood years but my own experiences on motherhood, being a twin mom and the challenges with choosing to be a working mom that I have painstakingly documented so that they can see my life as it has unfolded so far and view me as someone other than just mom 😀

On this sunny Sunday, my girls turned FIVE.

Five, is a milestone that in my opinion, merits a celebration. This is the first birthday that a child will probably remember.

This year, for the twins birthday, we planned to throw them a Shimmer & Shine themed birthday party with their friends at one of their favored indoor play areas in Singapore followed by a trip to Disneyland in Hong Kong. The latter plan unfortunately had to be cancelled (what with Hong Kong being recently rocked by a spate of mass anti-government protests) but the party went on as scheduled.
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On Friday, we put together goody bags for their classmates but unlike the previous two years, skipped the cake cutting ceremony at school.

The party at the indoor play area took place yesterday evening. I didn't trust myself to bake the birthday cake for the party so I outsourced the job. With some of their favorite people in attendance, the girls had a marvelous time and true to their nature, were still full of beans hours after the event ended.
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To keep the birthday cake baking tradition alive, I baked a no-frills vanilla cake with white chocolate buttercream and fresh fruits this morning and as a bonus, made the girls best-loved poori-chole for lunch. Today on their actual birthday, it is going to be just the four of us. Dinner will be a casual affair at a café that the girls love.
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As I'm editing this post, there are two little (sorry I meant big) girls with wide grins, full tummies and contented hearts, gleefully ripping into yesterday's birthday loot 😀

So, with that, here are my musings from the year gone by,

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Deepavali Special: Chocolate Burfi

Yes, I know this post is coming in a bit late. I would have liked to publish this post on Friday but considering I only came around to making this sweet dish yesterday, that would have been out of the question 😀

So, you may know that me and traditional Indian sweets aren't the best of friends. In my more than 10 years of blogging, there are about 4 Indian/sort of Indian sweet dishes that have found their way to the blog. I probably eat them only 2-3 times a year and that is only because of a festival or special occasion that necessitates the action and definitely not driven by any kind of craving 😛

Every year when Ganesh Chaturthi and Deepavali rolls around the corner, my social media feed gets flooded with beautiful images of homemade Indian sweets. Beautiful burfis, luscious laddoos, pleasing puddings and dainty desserts.....it is a treat for sore eyes. Visuals and aromas of ghee, saffron, cardamom, pistachios, rose water and coconut start flooding my senses. Even though I am not a big fan of these sugary treats myself, the fear of missing out does push me to at least make an effort.

This Deepavali, I chose an easy (of course it HAS to be easy otherwise I wouldn't do it) sweet to celebrate the occasion. Whenever I start making an Indian dessert, I never sure if it is going to turn out decent or not. I have had a considerable share of failures that have made me weary of the whole exercise. So I told myself that if it turned out good, I would put it out there. If not for anyone else but my future self.

This chocolate burfi is easy to make, has only a handful of ingredients, tastes nice and is great for gifting.

If I can pull this off then literally anyone can.

Happy Deepavali folks. Let there be light 💥

Book review: The Wayward Pines Trilogy by Blake Crouch

I had heard about Wayward Pines several years ago (from my bibliophile husband - no surprise there!) so it had been on my reading list for a while. 

Before I read the books, I made the mistake of watching a few episodes of FOX’s TV adaptation (which in hindsight, hasn't stayed completely true to the books) so I had a basic idea about the premise. If you are a mystery buff or a lover of science fiction, I feel like you will be able to enjoy this series much more if you have no idea what it is about. Trust me, for the uninitiated, the shock value will be pretty high. Now, if you have never heard of Wayward Pines, that statement may deter you from reading this review, but I promise not to ruin it (too much) for you.

This is the first book by American author Blake Crouch that I have read. Blake Crouch released the Wayward Pines trilogy over the course of three years.  Pines in 2012, Wayward in 2013, and The Last Town in 2014.

***Plot***

US Secret Service agent Ethan Burke wakes up with transient amnesia in a strange town after a near-fatal accident. He is injured, disoriented and has a sinister feeling about the bucolic town of Wayward Pines he finds himself in. It feels oddly familiar yet so disquieting. The idyllic town of Idaho has clear blue skies, pristine Victorian houses framed by white picket fences, quaint stores, picture-perfect mountains and verdant pine forests all of which scream paradise but it is impossible to ignore the gnawing feeling that in this quintessential small American town, something is very off. With no one to help him or answer his questions and his memory failing him, he is completely alone. Where is his ID and cell phone? Why hasn’t his wife and son come for him? Why do the residents of the town view him with such contempt? Why are there no cars on the road? Why does nobody ever leave? Why do the phones not work the way they are supposed to? Why does the main road that leads out of town loop back right into town? And most ominous of all, what is the purpose of the huge electrified fence circling the town? Is it to keep residents from leaving or to prevent someone or something from entering?

Once his memory comes back to him, the burning questions on Ethan’s mind - how has a mission that began with tracking down his missing colleagues ended up like this? And more importantly, how does he get out of this place? 

Ethan has to battle with the complexities of the human psyche, conflicting personal feelings, a hostile environment, the constant risk of death, a murderous psychopath and a controlling megalomaniac before he can arrive at some answers and uncover the frightening truth.

One that no one wants to hear.