My friend’s beautiful daughter turned 6 years old over the weekend. I asked my friend if I could bake a small cake for her. Initially I thought of baking just a simple cake. Then last week, I thought I would decorate it into a Princess. I had seen that she enjoys Frozen movie. Then I found some Princess cakes onlines, with blue dress which looked so beautiful. So I decided to go with blue dress....

Cabbage vada is a very popular Konkani dish, usually served as a side dish. This can be prepared with drumstick ( maskasangi ) flowers instead of cabbage. In North Canara, almost everybody has drumstick trees in their backyard. The leaves and flowers are used in many different dishes. Ingredients: 1 cup shredded cabbage or drumstick flowers 1 cup onions cut into small pieces 4-5 red chillies 2 tspns jaggery 1 tspn coriander seeds 1 tspn urad dal 1/2 cup fresh/frozen coconut 2 tbl spns toor dal 2 tea spns rice Oil Rava(sooji) Salt...

In May,I had joined Fondant and Gum Paste class. I didn’t know what a gum paste or fondant is before joining this course. After I finished my course-1 and course-2, I directly joined this course and skipped course-3. This course turned out to be a bit disappointing for me initially because I always love to do things from scratch and this course does not teach how to make these two kind of icings at home....

Wish you all a very happy Makar Sankranti. I wanted to post something sweet today. When I searched through my pictures, I saw these pictures. I had tried this a while ago. Aruna sent me this recipe few months ago. When I tried it, we both enjoyed it a lot. Being a Gajar Halwa and puran poli fan, this was a very delicious change. Do give it a try....

Last year in September when I visited India, my pachi (aayi’s sister) came to visit us. I asked her for some of her favorite recipes. She promised to send them in few days. Within few days, my cousin typed many of her recipes and sent it to me. Aren’t they very sweet? I have tried some of these and each have turned out great. This is one of those. A very simple chicken gravy – perfect for a weekday....

I was waiting to post this recipe here for last couple of days. Today while typing it, I wasn’t sure if I had to translate the name of the dish to English. Many times when I translate it, I feel I am beating the name to death, it just takes away the unique mouth watering feeling that we get when hearing the name of dish that we grew up eating....

The name coconut idli might be little misleading, but I did not know how to name this dish. Just because this is steamed like a idli , I came up with this name. Those who are regular at Aayi’sRecipes know that I blog mostly about dishes with coconut. It is one of the most important ingredients for Konkanis. Most of the people at my native cook a lot of coconut dishes....

I know this place has been very quiet for last few days. First the camera had some issues, then technical issues with the site and when they got resolved, I was down with pretty severe cold. All I wanted to do was sleep!. But I have been very active with my other blog art Campus . Finally I am making some time for the crafts – which I love so much but never had time to explore more!...

Wish you all a very happy Sankranti. Hope this festival brings you lots of happiness. Like every year, I am going to celebrate this festival by distributing tilgul(kante halvo) and tila laddoo to family and neighbors here. I am also going to make a small amount of sweet pongal (muga dali khichdi) . How do you celebrate this festival? Recently I came across these delicious laddoos. I tried this at my sister’s place in Belgaum....

Every South Indian cuisine has its own recipe for Vadas . Here is Andhra Version of it. As Preeti says here , this is a must in any wedding meal ( Vardike/lagna javan ) for Konkanis. ‘ Biscuit ambado ‘ is prepared as an evening snack at my home. Aayi makes these vadas with ginger chutney . Her vadas are very soft and crispy and one of the best vadas I have ever had....

My grand mother(amma as we called her, aayi’s mother) used to prepare this bhaji. She was very innocent and a lovely lady. She was a great cook. Most of my summer holidays were spent at her home at Sirsi. Every time we visited her, she would get all excited and start preparing all her signature dishes for her. Many of her dishes have become very regular in our home now....

I keep thinking about posting more often here, but time just flies by. Last few weeks had been very hectic. We just returned from a week long vacation to South Dakota. The trip planning/shopping took more time than I imagined. But I am glad it went well. Ishaan just started going to preschool today – I am trying to calm down my nerves even after I saw he was ok when I left him at school this morning!...

Ishaan is turning 5 soon. After the spiderman craze, he moved on to Ninja Turtles sometime last year. He heard about them from his friends at school. He would come home and ask more about them and I had no clue. Then I got him a book about these mutant turtles. No looking back ever since then. He wanted ninja turtle shoes, hat, cloths etc. He knew the names of all the ninja turtles and even made up stories about them....

We grow many things in our backyard – decorative plants, flower plants, vegetables, medicinal plants etc. This year when Shilpa visited us, she took pictures of as many different plants as possible. She asked me to write a little about each one. I thought of starting the series with nutmeg. We have a big nutmeg tree in our front yard. Nutmeg has male and female trees. It was told in earlier days that one should grow both male and female trees to get the fruits....

I guess this is the most popular chaat in India. Everybody has his/her own recipe for pani puri. We used to go to a pani puri cart near Madhavan park, Jayanagar, Bangalore. I never liked to eat at roadside carts before that, but once I tried it there, I became a regular customer. But where did I got the real taste of pani puri and how I grew up as a biggest fan of it, follows....

School reopened for my preschooler in August. With that, all the invitations for birthday parties also started. So the child was pretty upset that his birthday is not coming soon enough. April is way too far and he had some meltdowns when I said he has to wait for 6 more months. When he started repeating the same question again and again, I told him I will make him something special for his 4 and 1/2 birthday....

We love parathas. I wanted to try something different this time. I buy zucchinis during every shopping spree. I try to include it in different dishes. It looked perfect for paratha stuffing. A small potato helps in binding the stuffing. I also added some roasted peanuts for a nice crunch. The parathas came out so great. The parathas had a very different taste. Ingredients: 2 cups wheat flour Oil/ghee 1/2 cup peanuts roasted 1 cup grated zucchini A small boiled and peeled potato (optional) 1 tea spn kasuri methi A pinch turmeric 1 tea spn red chilli powder...

Few days back Pai asked me about the famous ‘Kashaya pitto’. Since I was not having the recipe, it took me some time to find it out. As always, I got it from Aayi. ‘Kashaya’ is a beverage which replaces ‘tea’ or ‘coffee’ in many of North kanara homes. People prefer it because this is supposed to have cooling effect on body (do not drink it if you have cold)....

AvrekaLu being the most popular beans found in Bangalore, it is used to cook almost all kinds of dishes from upma to dosa to gravies. As I mentioned in avrekaLu huLi post, since my husband loves these beans, I have started cooking this more and more. My biggest headache these days is to come up with a delicious and fast cooking lunch which can be cooked literally in 10-15mins. Since I cook both breakfast and lunch in the morning, I start for office by 7....

There are many ways of making the popular batata vada ( batata -potato, vada -a kind of deep fried snack). I had posted a recipe for it few days ago. I promised to post my Aayi’s version, but somehow never got to post it. I tried it again last week, so here it is now. In this recipe, apart from potato, all other ingredients are used raw. So it has completely different taste....