Birthday Cakes

It started 2 years back, making cakes at home for Pranhav, Magathi & Hari's Birthdays .Not sure whether they really liked it, but I surely feel very happy about it that I can bake for them .Pranhav & Magathi enjoy the process of baking the cake & provide ideas for decorations now .They keep sitting in front of the Oven and watch the cake with so much tension .They also like licking and swallowing the remaining cream & melted chocolates during the process :)

After an experience of baking around 5-6 cakes in last 2 years, my cakes have improved to a noticeable level.This is the chocolate banana 2 layer cake I had baked for Pranhav's 8th B'day this year .

  With much demand, got my first order from my neighbour & baked a vanilla mango cake for their son's second bday as well (for free only :) ).

  Magathi has placed an order for princess cake for her 5th B'day ... Let's see :) .

Murukku

In every house murukku is made for festivals , but every version will be different .

It is something like fingerprint, In no two houses, murukku's taste, texture , shape will be the same :)

After my marriage, I was also trying different versions (reason being no flour mill to grind the flour for murukku), but was not satisfied until I tried my mom's recipe below. Though I finally had to find one flour mill in Singapore, this version turns out really well and gets the appreciation of everybody who tastes it. I once got a comment saying that it is even better than sri krishna version ... (I swearrrrrrrrrrrr :)  ) .

This recipe works out well only for mullu Thenkuzhal (a type where the star plate is used for making murukku).

Ingredients :

Raw rice - 4 cups

Moong Dhal - 1 cup

salt - As required

aesafoetida - 1/2 tea spoon

Butter - 4 tbsp

Oil - For frying

Recipe :

Fry the moong dhal slightly . Mix it with the 4 cups raw rice & prepare the flour (grinding in the mill yields expected results :) ) .I normally go to the mill once a year only & store the grinded flour in freezer. Will use it whenever required.

Mix the flour, salt, aesafoetida & warm melted butter . Make it into a dough by adding water . Put the dough in the murukku maker with star plate in it & prepare the murukkus . Heat the oil & fry them .

Normally the murukkus are removed when the bubbles and sound reduce/stop .

Enjoy the taste & Appreciation :))

My First parenting Article

After Magathi was born , When I was exploring the ways to manage both kids and their sibling rivalry , I got lot of info from the super nanny serial . I wanted to share it with all parents like me and then wrote and sent this article below to the Tamil Magazine MangayarMalar .My first article got published too :) .Wanted to post the same as my first parenting blog also now.

For those who cannot read Tamil, this article gives some techniques which could be applied to improve the kid's behaviour & studies . I have used few techniques like giving them a star tree and making them colour till the tree top for each good behaviour or achievement, stickers for good behaviour, printed certificates or printed dollar notes etc . This has helped a lot and have always yielded good results .One of our friend Sasi also has written a blog about this which explains similar techniques .
http://motleypot.blogspot.com/2011/01/rewarding-system-for-kids.html

One key thing to remember is that the children get bored with any technique after some time . So atleast once in 2 months change the technique and try to reward them with things they like which will make it more fruitful .