Maple Pecan & Pistachio Cardamom Cookies

Maple Pecan Pistachio Cardamom Cookies

Bringing classic combinations from North America and India for these delightfully addictive, maple pecan & pistachio cardamom cookies.  Its officially thanksgiving season in Canada! And it is Diwali season in India. Yayyyyyy… I love festive months. What’s better than chilly days, accompanied by tons of cozy food and no taboo on sweets and desserts? Oh, I know! Leaves turning orange, red, yellow, Halloween and Stranger Things Season 2. Clearly, there is a lot to be excited about. And if you haven’t watched Stranger Things yet, you still have 22 days to catch up! I scrapped my initial blog calendar for this month and decided to do only desserts. Cookies and cakes – rich, indulgent, special, everything with cream and frosting! I remember, in India, if you visited someone during Diwali, you could without fail expect to be served a plate (or plates) of store-bought sweets and homemade deep-fried treats. I am not sure if it is still the same, if people still celebrate with the same fervor. If sweets are shared with neighbors and if the ladies (mostly) toil away in the kitchen to create a variety of homemade treats. I would like to think they do.         […]

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Brown Butter Pecan Cookies

Brown Butter Pecan Cookies

Chewy, nutty, crunchy, these Brown Butter Pecan cookies deserve to be stocked, so you can sneak out a couple every time you need an indulgent snack! Was it brown butter day sometime last week or the week before? If it was I totally missed it as I do with all the food days. Can never for the life of me keep track. But I did catch up on all the posts that the amazing bloggers I follow posted. I felt rather proud of myself when there were no unread emails in my inbox and my Pinterest boards were slightly fuller. There were all these mouth-watering brown butter recipes like the Brown Butter, Miso, Dark Chocolate Blondies over at The Brick Kitchen, the Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Cookies at Petit Bakes,  and Brown Butter Blueberry Crumb Muffins on Itsy Bitsy Kitchen. How awesome is that. And how is a girl not to be inspired to go brown some butter and get baking!! Now, the thing we all know is that when it comes to beurre noisette (sounds so much fancier in French) it is not a quick fix thing. Unless you want to brown the butter and drink it. You gotta […]

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A Very Grapefruit-y Trifle

Grapefruit curd

Grapefruit is in season and many of us may have a bitter-sour relationship with it, but in dessert form it transforms into a sweet, tart, bright fruit that is far from the diet-food version of itself. Full disclosure – I struggled with this one. In my very first FBC newsletter I came across the call for recipe round-ups for January. It is citrus month and by the time I saw the mail, the deadlines for lemon and orange had already passed. Ofcourse I wanted orange. Who doesn’t want orange! Grapefruit and lime were still open opportunities so after giving it a thorough thought, I decided to go with grapefruit. Primarily because I have this hate-hate relationship with the fruit that began in Dubai when I went through a crash diet phase where I force-fed myself half a grapefruit every morning, before coffee! Yikes. I had held on to that for way too long. It was time to let go. Challenge myself and all! I had this amazing idea of making grapefruit kulfi. I did make grapefruit kulfi after grilling and pureeing the fruit and cooking the milk down to half and freezing the weird concoction that seemed wrong even before […]

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Thyme Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies

Christmas Cookies - Thyme and Poppy seed Shortbread

Butter is infused with thyme.  A little sweet, a little savory, these thyme poppy seed shortbread cookies are great for gifting or simply to make your home smell festive. While growing up, we did not really have the tradition of receiving gifts from ‘Santa’. We got a new dress, lots of good food and Santa would visit along with church carolers to do a merry dance and give us candy. My mom and aunt would make lots of homemade sweets and we distributed that amongst friends and neighbours. Keeping that tradition, while I was in Dubai, I started giving my friends homemade chocolate truffles. There is something so special about homemade / DIY style gifts. Whether it is fancy craftsy stuff from talented DIYers or just cookies or truffles or cake. Simple, sweet, made with love and care. And you avoid all the frenzied holiday shopping! This year I decided to give truffles a rest and make cookies instead for gifting. Steve’s aunt makes a really good gingerbread, his mom makes delicious eastern European crescent cookies. So, I combined flavors I like and made these thyme poppy seed shortbread cookies I was inspired by Teresa Floyd’s recipe for pink peppercorn […]

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