Indie waffles!!

Grilled cinnamon sandwiches soaked in sugar syrup and topped with vanilla ice-cream!

Kashmir

Facebook Cover!

True, Kashmir is nothing less than paradise!
All the above pictures were clicked by me (except for the left most ofcourse) with a Canon 18-55 mm.

Lehenga designed by me for my cousin's wedding :)

Not been upto much creativity this year :p been over 6 months since i checked blogger :|

what i HAVE been upto, though is a lot of photography.. :)
 i also travelled a lot.. all over europe.. so have a billion pictures that i want to share but lets start with the other pictures first :))

have fun :)

Nainital

FB Timeline :)

been off blogging for long... just did a facebook cover pic using this doodle :-

 

added a few cartoons that i googled... and here's what i have :--

 

So thats the latest photoshopping iv been upto... hope to post more soon :)

Happy Diwali!

Not very creative this time.. Dint really get time to make a nice rangoli or to click a better pic! Damn the cards season!!

Chocolate Doli

So finally I managed to make a "3D" chocolate! I know this hardly qualifies as a chocolate statue but I guess its a start! It was extremely challenging and I'd love to do something similar again. The best part is that I got paid for it AND a local news channel covered it in an electronic interview. They shot the process of making the "DOLI" (which was nearly 3 hours- not counting the 3 hours I had put in it before that!) and my friend managed to get a few pictures too! Really happy with the results! Please leave your comments! :) :)
 

Support for ANNA!

With the entire nation supporting Anna Hazare, there are loads of humourous messages and jokes doing the rounds on the internet...

I totally support Anna and his movement, but just thought of having a little bit of photoshop fun!

Chocolate Eggs II

The two chocolate eggs in a chocolate basket!

I decorated the boring egg finally, and also made another one filled with some soft butterscotch flavoured chocolate. In addition I made the nest also with chocolate this time and filled it with loads of sliced almonds! The nest was definitely the best looking part!

The one filled with creamy butterscotch chocolate

The one with the MnM

The chocolate basket or nest is very easy to make and can be used for presenting any sort of chocolate dipped fruits, candies, dry fruits, etc. The main idea is to have different colors so that the "weave" shows.
Its simply made by covering a bowl with foil and making patterns on it!

Edible Nest!

White Chocolate Egg on a Caramel Nest

This is one of my favourite creations till date! The caramel nest is fairly easy to make- its plain sugar, and the chocolate is made to set in an egg mold (im thinking of making a vid tutorial for this soon). This entire edible nest would look incredible on any cake, especially a chocolate log! I think Im going to try it tomorrow coz I still havent eaten it. The egg is mainly hollow with a single bright orange (i wanted yellow) MnM inside :)

These eggs would look great in a basket- too realistic probably! Which is why the next time I make them im surely gonna add some colour to them.

Choco lava or Molten Lava cake

Choco Lava :)

Probably one of the easiest recipes which turns out so super amazing! I had been wanting to try this out ever since Domino's/KFC introduced it.
I googled a lot to find the perfect recipe and almost all recipes were the same with a few changes here n there.
What I gathered though was :-
1. When making choco lava the simplest way is to bake the cake at a high temperature for a shorter duration so that the insides remain molten. Its really that simple!
2. A small amount of flour is used as the cake is cooked for a short duration.
3. Cooking chocolate is melted and used- probably helps the texture of the "lava" to be more smooth.

Thats pretty much the basic guideline for the lava cakes. All the recipes I found and the one I used had egg in them but Im pretty sure I could substitute the egg with some milk.. will try that next time!

 The recipe I used-

100 gm chocolate (not cocoa powder)
100 gm butter
1 egg
sugar (sorry i dint measure this but im guessing abt 2 spoons)
30 gm flour (maida)

Method:-
1. melt the chocolate n butter together in the microwave.
2. beat the egg with the sugar until sugar dissolves.
3. add the egg to the melted chocolate once its at room temperature. add flour.
thats it!!
 
Pour the batter into muffin tins/ramekins or anything small. Bake at a high for about 10-15 mins till the outsides are cooked. 

I havent mentioned the exact temperate for baking because Iv made this twice and the first batch was smaller in size so I feel they were a bit overcooked- they were'nt molten enough!!  The same temperature was fine for the second time due to the bigger size, so its mainly hit n trail for me :p

The first batch- which wasnt molten enough!

Choco L'art

The last few days have been all about chocolate paintings! I'v been getting lots of orders! Last month Hindustan Times covered an article on my chocolates and I'v come up with a brand name- Choco L'art (chocolate- the art or the art of chocolate).
Here are some recent pictures of the chocolates that I'v been making and a picture of the article.
Im also on twitter -Choco L'art

Amitabh Bachchan Chocolate

My Article

Chocolate Painting-III

The last few days have been incredible! I had a radio interview regarding the chocolate paintings and today was a photoshoot of my chocolates for Hindustan Times! Guess I outdid myself today- made a total of 6 chocolates in a day. It drove me nuts but the paintings in the end were worth it! The first two paintings got spoilt due to the chocolate I used. The next batch of 4 was much better. 

Bada Imambada at Lucknow

King khan- shahrukh!

The undisputed cricket god- Sachin Tendulkar

 

 

 

 

The quality of these pictures is really bad (Blackberry camera sucks!) but I will replace them soon with the high resolution version :)

After Long...! Chocolate Painting- II

So im finally posting after a long time. A lot happened during this time. I lost my dog who was my best companion through the nights when i used to be up making things- making art! I miss you Daizi.

This post is actually chocolate painting -II! This friend of mine got me introduced to a person who gave me an order to make a chocolate painting! My very first painting that earned me money!  Thanks, Basant Rai and Rajlaxmi! I made 3 paintings, one for Basant (the one I got paid for), one which had Rajlaxmi's face (as a thank you gift to her) and a spider man for my kid brother!

Spidey Face Chocolate

Rajlaxmi chocolate and the picture which I used

Happy Diwali!

Peacock Rangoli

Finally its Diwali- the festival of lights! This is the "Rangoli" I made today for Diwali using coloured powder.

Magic Card

Say Abracadabra---

......almost there!...

TA-DA!!

 

My recent obsession with paper crafts and card making actually made me replicate this card from the tutorial posted on Extreme Cards and Papercrafting who got their idea from Splitcoaststampers. Mine was a little different as I planned to make a simple black and white card and then with magic I wanted to colour to appear! I do not have a stamping kit so I just printed out the image, kept a transparency sheet on it and drew the outlines with a permanent marker. The rest of it is pretty much the same. Instead of attaching the thread on top I put a broad piece of paper which can be held and pulled out (its easier to put the card back in).

I made this card for my cousin who was down with Dengue recently and is recovering.. I loved how it drops the cliched idea of the "Get Well Soon" and says "You Cured Yet?"

Along with that, at the back I added the line "This card is going to work like magic-- Get well soon"

Pop-ups!

Rockstar pop-up card

My latest craze is pop-ups! Thats the reason I'v linked so many paper crafting websites recently. I even made a tiny little card with the extra paper I had left over from another craft which I will be posting soon!

Spongebob.. squarepants!

Spongebob Cake

This cake was not entirely made by me.. a lot of the credit goes to Tau. It may look normal sized but this thing turned out super tiny and it took us over an hour to decorate! Phew! Worth the effort though as it made my younger brother jump in excitment. Because I live in India its almost impossible to find fondant so I did the icing with white chocolate sauce + the required added food colours. The idea is to make a thick, thick sauce which does'nt run while icing! For the outlines i just used regular chocolate sauce!

MY RECIPE FOR THE CHOCOLATE ICING

• Chocolate Slab with a cocoa to butter ratio of 50% -50% -- not to be substituted with dark chocolate!
• Fresh Cream

Add the fresh cream to a thick bottomed sauce pan and put on low heat. Break the chocolate slab and add in pieces, stirring constantly. The proportions are pretty flexible-  if you want the sauce thicker reduce the cream and increase the chocolate. Simple!

Our cute little Thong Cookies!

Thong Cookies!

These cookies were such a huge hit! Had made them for a friend who was going out to study.  They were super easy to make and were great fun to eat!
The cookies were simple butter, sugar, flour, egg cookies... i made two batches out of which one got slightly burnt hence the different colours!! The thongs were made with Royal Icing which is basically just egg white and sugar with food colour!

Chocolate Painting

Chocolate Painting

Chocolate Painting that I made out of dark and white chocolate. Its not very neat yet, but I am trying to get better!