mayurisjikoni

Spread the Fragrance     Did you that flowers have been used world wide as a part of cooking? Usage of edible flowers can be traced all the way back to the Roman times, its a major part in the Middle Eastern, Indian Sub Continent and Chinese culture. Use of edible flowers became a vogue during the Victorian period usually used to decorate cakes and desserts.         Flower culinary is fast coming back into 'fashion' with high end flowers and fine dining restaurants are now using fresh flowers right from making starters, in soups and salads to main dishes and desserts. And not forgetting infused teas and drinks. The options are endless.         Growing up I'd seen my mum and aunts use rose petals to decorate shrikhand, kheer and gulab jamun. We would pluck the flowers of the fennel plant and eat them as they tasted like fennel seeds.  Rose jam(gulkand), rose essence and fresh petals are used in a lot of Indian sweets, biryanis a...

Easy to make     This is my second scone recipe. I don't know why I don't make them often enough. Maybe just the mental block that they are difficult to make. Trust me they are not. There are two reasons I came up with recipe. Firstly, my partner for Shhh Cooking Secretly, Jolly who has a wonderful blog Homemade Recipes  gave me the ingredients condensed milk and plain flour(maida, all purpose flour) for our July theme#MonsoonTreats. Monsoon means hot treats like bhajias, soups, curries. I really couldn't think what Monsoon treat to make using those ingredients.I narrowed it down to baking something but what was the question. Coming to my second reason.. my brother, bhabhi and niece are here in Mombasa. They've come to attend a wedding. They were going to stop by for breakfast before going to the beach resort where the wedding is. I was suppose to bake a bread to serve for breakfast but didn't manage that. Before going to bed was thinking what I should make when the...

first time ever!       When Priya challenged the Home Bakers Challenge group to bake scones, I got excited. Excited because I love scones, because I have so many scone recipes in my recipe book but never tried any and because now I had to bake them! My cousin Jayshree is an expert at baking scones. She baked some during my last visit to London and invited my sister in laws and me to her house for early breakfast.... tea or coffee with scones. She served them with some jam, butter and clotted cream. Took one in my plate, finished it with some hot tea, then had another one. She kept on insisting we have more, but the mind was saying no and the taste buds were saying yes yes. So my sister in law and I shared one. By the time we left her house, we were just too full. We had some work to tackle but couldn't. Had to plop in front of the telly and let those scones with dollops of clotted cream, digest.       I kept on putting off the task hoping that the rain...