Baking Essentials: Chocolate Sponge Cake

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Making a Chocolate Sponge Cake is a necessary step to making some wonderful other complex desserts. It is a versatile recipe that results is an airy and light cake. It can also be a wonderful base for any other flavorful liquid. It will absorb juices and liqueurs and the flavor will get better with time. Naturally when I decide to give Chocolate Sponge Cake a try, I found many recipes and all of them seemed easy and delicious but this recipe caught my eyes because the fat is vegetable oil instead of butter. I always welcome a non animal unsaturated fat and it did not disappoint.

Baking Essentials: Preparing Cake Pans

I love baking cakes, they can be be a simple affair such a yellow cake or you can pull out all the stops by layering, filling and frosting the cake. Sometimes you can use shortcuts, sometimes you have to do multiple steps to achieve the oomph factor. However, one thing you have to do is to properly prepare the cake pan. The preparation of the cake is very important to make sure that the cake does not stick to the pan and is released easily without any damages.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup: An Easy Vegan Lunch!

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

If you read my blog, you would know that my story with soup in general had a rocky start. I did not believe in soup! Gasp! But just as in any romantic story with happy ending, I learned to love all soups and especially when it comes to lunch. I talk about it here, in my post about Low Fat Chicken Soup. Curried butternut squash soup is a delicious low fat flavorful vegan lunch that could be a great option this Lent season. Being a stay home mom leaves little time for me to plan my meals, let alone any time to cook lunch, hence this soup is the best option. Just heat it and lunch is ready. To keep my metabolism going, I try to eat something every 2-3 hours. So I start with this soup at noon after I pick up my daughter from preschool and in 2-3 hours I make a light sandwich then a Ayran drink, a low fat minty refreshing low fat protein packed drink. Click here, for recipe. 

Cooking Essentials: Preparing Butternut Squash

Are you trying to eat healthy this year? Did you vow to avoid anything canned? Do you find yourself at the grocery store staring at butternut squash and wondering what to do with it? How to prepare it? Well, you came to the right blog! In this post, I will tell you all about preparing butternut squash. I bought this beautiful winter vegetable from my local farmers' market; you should try it too. At your farmers' market, you will find seasonal organic and freshly picked vegetables and fruits, among other things. Butternut squash is a starchy squash, unlike zucchini and summer squash that have very little starch in them.

Josephine Mardelli Bahdi's Chicken and Rice Dome

The " Sunday Lunch at Grandma" is a universal event. Every culture has its own version and the Middle Eastern version is surely one of the most exciting affairs. This grandma is not mine but I surely wish that I get to be invited to one of her epic Sunday lunches. Her name is Josephine Mardelli Bahdi. Here is her story by her grandson Camille Otrakji. "She is originally from southern Turkey. They moved to Aleppo with their father where she lived until the early 90's. Moved to Montreal since. She was always known among relatives and friends in Aleppo for being a skilled cook. They would look forward to being invited to lunch (Aleppo people love food more than anything in life as you know). I remember when I was young some guests kept eating until they could not eat anymore and then asking her to leave everything on the table until they went for a walk to digest what they could, and come back eat a second round!"