Easy (and yummy) carrot cake!

I promise you that not only will you find this cake easy to make but also absolutely delicious! Yummy, yummy and yummy! My husband is not too fond of sweet stuff but even he loved this one! I’ve made this twice now and it turned out equally delicious both the times. What does it say about the recipe – foolproof! Look at the texture – so soft and just the right balance of walnuts. Oh and the frosting – is the icing on the cake (pun intended ).

There are two persons that come to my mind when I make carrot cake. One is my aunt. When I came to the US, she came to visit us and she brought loads of (home made) carrot cake because she knew I loved her carrot cake. The cake was perfectly wrapped and packaged into smaller segments so that we could eat in installments and freeze the rest. Other is my brother. Because he too loved (don’t know if he still does) my aunt’s carrot cake. So I’m glad I can make a decent carrot cake now

The recipe is from King Arthur flour. As most of my baking recipes are.

Ingredients:

cake

• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (I did not have this at home)
• 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour or King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 cups finely grated carrots
• 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

frosting

• 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
• one 8-ounce package cream cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla OR 1/2 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia
• 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups glazing sugar or confectioners' sugar

Instructions

1. To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9" x 13" pan with parchment paper and grease the sides.
2. Beat together the oil, sugar, salt, eggs, and spices. Mix the flour with the baking soda, and stir in. Add the carrots and nuts, and mix until just blended. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake the cake(s) for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. It took the cake around 55 minutes in my oven to be done.
4. Allow the cake(s) to cool completely before frosting.
5. To make the frosting: Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the salt and vanilla. Beat in the sugar. Add a teaspoon of milk or cream if the frosting is too stiff to spread; add additional sugar if it's too thin.
6. Frost the sheet cake right in the pan.
7. If you’ve frosting leftover then jus freeze it. Next time you make this cake, take out the frosting from the freezer and keep it in the fridge a minimum of 24 hours in advance.

Checklist Manifesto

Author: Atul Gawande

 

After reading “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande, I was quite impressed with this author. So of course when I heard that the checklist manifesto is also written by him I was keen on reading this too. Add to that the fact that I’ve heard/read so many recommendations for this book.

As you would probably guess from the title of the book, it’s about checklists. The author argues how using checklists in various fields has significantly improved their success rates. He cites examples from the airplane industry to medicine. The reason checklists are so successful is because humans can forget things due to distractions, poor memory, complex systems, etc. By having a checklist you’re making sure that all the mandatory steps for a procedure (trivial or not) are covered. And it turns out that majority of the mistakes or mishaps happen because of some known step(s) of a protocol were missed. Knowingly or unknowingly. These can be averted by having a checklist. Complex, unique or one-of situations will not be covered by these – they will still need to be solved in a ad-hoc fashion. Going through a checklist also facilitates communication between the members of a team. This way everybody knows what is the problem they’re working on, the risks involved, the mitigations they should be ready for and so on. The author also suggests how to create such checklists. In fact at the end he has a checklist for creating a checklist.

Being a believer of checklists, I couldn’t agree more with him. Although I will admit I didn’t realize what a significant impact they could have. I’d only used them in the context of my household. Who knew that doctors and nurses in hospitals had saved lives by using checklists! At some point I did feel that the author was belaboring the issue. I mean how long can you read an argument on checklists or examples to prove the same. The good thing is that the book is no that thick. Overall liked the book though I do think it could be thinner.

Mango ice cream

I’ve been holding on to this photo since the summer. I actually made this last summer but never had the time to post it.

Mangoes are very popular in northern India and invariably would be the favorite fruit of one and all in the summers! It’s known as the king of fruits. Needless to say mango ice cream is also very popular! Last summer we got really good mangoes at Costco and it was those mangoes that motivated me to try mango ice cream at home! I’m happy to report that the experiment turned out to be very successful – in fact it had repeated success. The ice cream was a big hit!

You do need a ice cream maker for this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1-11/2 cups mangoes, pureed. The slender mangoes – typically labeled champagne mangoes in costco – worked better. The variety of mangoes which is fat has more fiber and results into a lot of fiber in the ice cream. Roughly 2 mangoes yielded this quantity of puree.
• 1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)
• 3/8 cup sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients together.
2. Chill the mixture in the fridge for a few hours. If your cream and milk were cold to begin with and the mixture is cold enough then you can skip this.
3. Freeze according to the directions of your ice cream maker.

Midnight Furies

Author: Nisid Hajari

Lately I’ve been keen on reading and understanding about partition. About why there’s such an enmity between India and Pakistan. About why Kashmir is a disputed land. Why are we in this situation? Could the leaders have done anything differently to avoid it?

In my search for books on this topic, I came across “Midnight Furies” and it seemed to be well recommended. It’s a real account of the partition of India and the author is very factual with references from all over. Looks like he’s done his job well. The books is also very well written – kept me very engrossed. Since partition basically revolves around Jinnah and Nehru, it starts around the time when Jinnah and Nehru entered the political field and how they traversed it.

History is not just one book. However unbiased we may think we are, there’s always some inherent bias in us. So I’m not saying that what is written in this book is the the absolute truth – it probably is – but I don’t know. I wouldn’t know till I read at least a few more books on this subject.

What saddened me was that like every propaganda in a country, an event as big as Partition was pure political motivation. It was not a democratic decision. All riots leading to it, and after it were only because of the selfish interests of the political figures of those times. But I guess history of any country is only about the political figures of that time. Not about the people. Nobody cares about the common man.

Some things I gathered from the book:

1. Yes our freedom struggle was good and we had great freedom fighters. But looks like that was not why British left India. It appears that Britishers had their own problems – they no longer had money to keep control over India, after the world war. They had already stolen our resources so India was no longer the “golden bird” that would benefit them. So they were looking for an exit.
2. Almost always the riots were triggered by Muslim league leaders. Although after that an equal (if not more) damage was done by the Hindus.
3. Nehru was sentimental for Kashmir because it was his homeland and it was hard for him to give it up.
4. Regarding the negotiation on Kashmir, when the Indian leaders were compromising the Pakistanis weren’t and vice versa. Hence it was always a stalemate. Although more often than not it was Jinnah’s obstinacy to not let go of Kashmir. Even when a proposal was made to split Kashmir and give the part of Kashmir with majority of muslims to Pakistan and the one with Hindus to India, Jinnah did not accept it. Maybe things are not that simple – but that was one moment when I felt that things could have been set right and the two nations could’ve lived in harmony.
5. Indian leaders were always of the opinion that it is to their benefit that their neighbor Pakistan flourish, but that opinion was not shared by Pakistan,. Pakistan fueled Militia with money pumped from US and Britain, to cause disruptions in Kashmir. Apparently their intent was to only keep the Indian army at bay but soon things got out of control. The militia was getting trained by ISI and no longer slave to the decisions of the Pakistani government.
6. Nehru (and Gandhi) always wanted an undivided India – where all people irrespective of their religion lived peacefully.
7. Pakistani leaders wanted to ignite the people of Pakistan against India and the only thing they thought that they could latch on to was religion. And that bred the hindu-muslim enmity in that region. Before partition, they told all muslims that once India is formed they would be in majority and hence nobody would look after their interests (although there was no such evidence). After partition, since they knew that people in Pakistan had the same religion, they could use that to get them together and pitch them against India.

Of course there were lot of sad moments in the book, but Gandhiji’s assassination was at the top. Reading about it really saddened me.

I loved reading the book and would highly recommend it to anybody interested in India’s partition.

Life in perspective

I thought life was hard. Our international flight was delayed 7 hours. We got put on another flight. That meant we reach our destination a day later. We'd to spend a couple of hours sitting in an air-conditioned airport talking to a customer representative. That wasn't easy. 

Almost 200 people died and hundreds (if not thousands) lost everything that they owned - in the flooding in chennai. 

Life. Is hard. For them. 

Happy diwali!

Yes please!

Author: Amy Poehler

This is a life story of Amy Poehler in her own words. If you have seen Saturday Night Live then you might be familiar with her. I hadn’t and so didn’t know much about her. Her writing style is so funny!! I just loved reading the book!! For that alone I would recommend the book.

There’s not much you can say about somebody’s life can you? It is what it is. Though it was interesting to read how much she’d to struggle (although she doesn’t refer it to as struggle) to get to where she’s today. Most of the times when people look at celebrities they only think of the luxuries that they have, how much money they get paid for each show/movie/etc. Little do we know how long did it take them to get there and the road to that destination wasn’t easy. I had some why-do-I-need-to-know-this moments; probably somebody who knows her from her shows and is a fan of her would be more interested. She has life lessons too in there and I liked some of the bits of advices she threw in there. One particularly that stuck with me was – she says don’t go after your career, depend on your creativity (or talent or skill). I quite agree with her there. This does not mean you should not have a plan for your career, you certainly must.