Presentation does matter

Usually on weekdays there are no sweets in the house,but when the weekends come even my sweet tooth starts to tingle...so be it a cheesecake from the cheesecake factory,tiramisu from olive garden,ice cream's from cold stone creamery,ben jerry's,dairy queen or a molten chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream etc etc ...i know the list is never ending ...but i just love all of them.



But this weekend i took some tips from my friends aruna's blog about serving ice cream here is the link to the post in her blog

http://arunathetemptations.blogspot.com/2009/03/tips-to-host-healthy-ice-cream-party.html

I came up with this ice cream....its simple easy to assemble ....n tasty....

What u need:

Some store brought brownies or homemade ones(i had some brownies that i made useing the brownie mix available in any grocery store in baking goods aisle)

Store bought vanilla ice cream

Hershey chocolate syrup(one of the regular guests in my fridge as it come in handy to make chocolate milk,cup of hot chocolate etc)

Some fresh cherries/strawberries (usually available during this season)

Assembling

Place the brownie in a bowl and microwave it for 30 sec's.

Put 1 or 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream

Then in a zig zag motion pour the chocolate syrup on top of it.

Garnish with a fresh cherry or strawberry n serve......

Simple isnt it...appearence of the food does make it look very appetizing.Its nice n simple to have such cute little thing's at home once in a while isnt it...Hope all of u enjoy.

Summer Cooler(fresh mango with vanilla cutsard)

The other day i went to the farmers market n got fresh mangoes,n the next day was a very hot sunday...As usual sunday means a heavy meal in the afternoon in my house..I knew that the food n weather would make everyone feel like eating something cool

So in summer whats better than the king of all fruits MANGOE,So i made this vanilla custard mixed it with some fresh mangoe pc's n refrigerated....the very mention of mangoes brings back fond memories from my home back in india.

I grew up in a family with an agriculture background...we had large acres of land filled with mangoe trees of various variety..So when summer came the half ripe mangoes were covered with straw..once ripe they were removed from it n dropped in huge barrels filled with water(back when we didnt have fridges)

Be it breakfast,lunch or dinner or during evening after nice slumber there was always a mangoe in someones hand...not the regular cut variety but the juice ones..with the juice from the mangoe drooling from the fingers to the elbow...

Apart from all these there was my grandmother just squeezing out the juice from the mangoes mix it with some sugar n in the hot afternoon sun go out...n apply layers n layers of the juice on the starw mats...to form a mangoe jelly(mamidi thandra),which is something similar to the fruit bars that we get over here.




Ingredients:

1 ripe mangoe(peeled n cut into medium size pc's)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup suagr
4 tbsp custard pwd mixed in 1/4 cup cold milk (mix thouroghly unitl it gets dissolved in the milk without any clumps)
few saffron strands(optional)
1 tbsp almond/pistachios chopped finely

Method

Bring milk to a boil,when it starts to bubble add the sugar n mix,check the sweeteness,if u need it bit more sweet add more sugar.

Next add the custard pwd milk mixture n keep mixing n swtich off the stove

Let it cool ,put it in the fridge.

Remove once cool,place the mangoe pc's in a bowl pour custard over it and garnish with saffron strands n chopped alomnds/pistachios.