Strawberry shortcake

I visited a cousin last christmas and was quite awed by a very nice strawberry shortcake one of my sister's friend made. Upon taking some notes from her on the recipe, I came back and tried it out, only messing it up completely! My darling friend who was visiting with me, added some more notes to the recipe, which atleast sounded like not ending up into a tragedy. Finally with a lot of contemplation on the recipe, I have come up with this one. Fortunately it turned out to be quite good this time!


Ingredients:
1 angel food cake / pound cake
1 packet strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
whipped cream



Procedure:
1. cut the strawberries (leaving 4-5 for decoration) into small pieces and add the sugar to it and keep aside for 2-3 hours. The strawberries are quite nicely dipped in sugar syrup by then.

2. Arrange one layer of angel foodcake in a tray. Layer the strawberries on the cake.

3. Add another layer of the foodcake on top of it and pour the sugar syrup on it. In case you think the strawberry flavour is not enough, you can use some jello syrup too. Just make sure you don't wet the cake too much (that was my mistake first time along)

4. Let the cake set for 2-3 hrs so that the syrup mixes well with the cake. Set it in the fridge.

5. While serving, cover the cake with a layer of whipped cream and decorate it with fresh strawberries. Serve cold.


Some notes:
1. As some friends pointed out, you can also add alcohol to the cake, instead of using more jello syrup. Just wet the cake with alcohol!

2. Add the whipped cream before serving, this keeps the cream fluffy and nice.

3. Using pound cake is also fine, but that makes the shortcake too heavy. Angel foodcake is light and nice!

4. Beware of the sugar content you use. Account for the fact that angel foodcake itself is sweet.


Here is a picture of a smaller version of the true cake I made. Hope you like it!

stuffed bell peppers

After a long time I returned back to experimenting with cooking. Due to the presence of my mother (who is an expert cook and thinks I suck at cooking), I haven't really been cooking much. So here is a new experiment I tried today, trying to imitate some stuffed bell pepper I had at a mid-eastern place.

Ingredients:
1 small potato
2 bell peppers
1/2 cup cooked rice (brown rice tastes better)
2-3 tomatoes chopped
1 tbsp garlic paste
1 tbsp oil
salt to taste
1 cup tomato-garlic-onion pasta sauce

preparation:
1. boil the potato and peel and keep.
2. In a pan, heat the oil and add jeera (cumin seeds), garlic paste, tomato (blanch them), red/green chili paste/powder, mashed potato, the cooked rice and salt to taste.
3. Cut the bell peppers from the top, removing the centre on the pepper, keeping the remaining intact.
4. Fill the above made filling into the bell peppers.
5. Coat the bell peppers with oil and cook (in microwave or pressure cooker or oven) until the pepper gets cooked, but doesn't get soggy.
6. Heat some pasta sauce in a pan and pour the sauce over the cooked bell peppers.

The stuffed bell peppers are ready!