Eggless Chocolate Cake for Mr MN's birthday

So I landed upon the ultimate birthday cake recipe just in time to bake Mr MN a gorgeous chocolate cake for his birthday....

it was a small delicious eggless cake and we enjoyed every slice of it...  since my piping skills are far from perfect.... instead of the customary "Happy Birthday" icing on the cake... i scribbled a birthday note on a paper towel and perched it atop the cake. i thought the note looked more cute than lazy.  and i kind of loved the signature it lent to the cake specially with those 2 disorderly strokes that our boy drew for his dad......

anyway... so my cake of the week is the cake that i baked for Mr MN's birthday and this how the recipe went...

Sweet Strawberry Sop, an unsuccessful attempt (A Cake A Week : # 7 )

This week I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to bake. I knew I wanted to use strawberries. wanted to bake an eggless cake. and had at disposition 'n' number of recipes to choose from. but none of them pressed that note... you know what i am talking about ? None of the recipes were exciting enough. so i sat deliberating over my choices over the whole weekend, until i chanced upon Blueberry Boy Bait(BBB). Of course thats what I wanted to bake. but with strawberries instead of blueberries. and since BBB seemed like the catch-word, I coined my own name for the Strawberry bait.... decided to call it Sweet Strawberry Sop(SSS).  Now doesn't that sound like great ? well. i thought it did. and i was really excited about sharing this cake as part of my A Cake a Week Project. but then... damn.... the cake flopped. I had tried to squeeze too much batter into a little mold... thereby not giving the poor cake enough room to breathe and grow... so even after baking the cake for twice the mentioned time... my cake turned out to be a muddy mash.

at first the mash did make me a little sad. but then one bite into it and i was a happy "girl." not girl. well. happy mom. because even in its messy form the was delicious. not fluffy as it is supposed to be. more like a brownie in form. but delicious and addictive anyhow.

since my cake did not turn out to be the cake i had dreamt of, i'll skip the recipe this time. however I promise to share it with you by the end of the month... for today just some photos of my unsuccessful attempt and  two songs i am loving these days....

this one is from Before Sunset... love the movie. love the song and waiting eagerly for the sequel Before Midnight.

this one is our family favorite. my son loves it and Mr MN and I love dancing with the little to the tune of Skidamarinka dinka dinka skidamarinka doo... I love you....

Also I finally created a facebook page for Ma Niche. I intend to get more chatty there. If you please join me in FB. I'll love to know you a little more.

Take Care.   Have a great week !

Wordless Wednesday

 

and a (not so) Wordless Wednesday here.

shared with Wordless Wednesday Bloggers, Mama to 3 blessings, Fresh Mommy blog.com, peek a baby

few of my favorite moments from February...

just another morning like all others...

at the carousel, Beardsley Zoo, CT 

a lazy Sunday in Feb... 

after a lunch of Pizza and Mac & Cheese at Pie Pizzaria..

because once you are a mom... your favorite moments are all about your daughters and sons...

Happy Tourism day !!

Did you know that  since 1980, 27th September has been celebrated as World Tourism Day ? Well I didn't till my friend Neelmani from Wandering shoes mentioned it on FB and I googled to dig a little more into the facts... So wishing you all a very happy Tourism Day... and with those of you who are stuck at home like me and are making travel plans for the forth coming holidays.... I would like to share some photographs of our first travelling venture with Pradyot ... 

when Pradyot was 4 months old, Nishi got  invited to attend a meeting at University of Utah. Unwilling to stay by myself with our little boy, we piled along.... and I am so glad that we did. for the campus of University of Utah is breathtakingly gorgeous and with the Utah weather particularly kind on us, we had the first wonderful vacation as a family of three.. 

In all, we stayed in SLC for 4 days. we put up in the university guest house for the first three and a half days.  there, while Nishi was busy with the academic chores,  Pradyot and I followed almost the same routine each day. A early leisurely breakfast in the dining place overlooking the Salt Lake city valley...  followed by a morning stroll along the Fort Douglas Blvd, before the fresh air soothed Pradyot to his morning nap... then a light lunch... and some more strolling  and mother-son-mirror-photo-sessions... while we waited for Nishi to join us for our evening stroll and a snacky dinner.

On our last day in the city, half way through the day, we moved from the campus to Hyatt Place in Downtown Salt Lake City. Ours was a nice  cozy hotel room with a view of the snow capped Wasatch mountains.

it was there that daddy and son finally got to catch up with some vacation time before mamma roped them both in for some window shopping at the Gateway Mall.

The mall was within walking distance from our hotel and since it was my first big outing in a long time, that afternoon, i  spent an obscene amount of time wandering about the streets....  trying out previously unexplored cuisines and window shopping in all the exquisite stores that i hadn't been to before...

 also for keepsake, the basketball fan in Nishi insisted that we take pictures of us with the Utah Jazz as the backdrop :)

and it should obviously be noted here that that afternoon i was able to wander at my heart's content for our baby boy decided that he needed a long nap and let his mamma and bappa be.....

So ThanK YoU  baby boy for being such a darling all along.... and making our first  vacation together so lovely, enjoyable and special  !! 

Atlantis Marine World

Ever since we moved to NY, we have been spending all our weekends shopping... grocery, furniture, clothes, grocery and more grocery.... so last weekend we decided on a picnic to the Atlantis Marine World... Since K is extremely fond of this Baby Beluga song, we had assumed that the sight of the seals, sea lions, sharks and colourful fishes would excite him and broaden that gorgeous smile of his...

but instead he got a little wary and somewhat scared of all the frisk movements.  in fact the only creatures that he was able to look directly into the eyes were the piranas, starfishes and the jelly fishes.

 i guess he is much too little to realize that the creatures in the tanks were in fact the living forms of the cartoons he adores so much...

 

however Nishi and i had great time there and we decided to take Pradyot back to the aquarium once he is a little older... may be one or two years down the line.... when this wriggly baby of our grows into a little dare devil... and his mom summons enough courage to get a kiss from the sea lions :)

hope you had a fun weekend and a wonderful start to the week.. thanks for visiting..
take care ♥♥♥

Our first Camping party...

the other Saturday when we got invited to Madison/Pittsburgh S.E KOA campground to celebrate Archana's birthday...  we were a little hesitant wheather to say yes or no... rains were predicted and we weren't sure if it would be a good idea to drag Pradyot out into swampy grounds on such a day... but i have never camped in all my life and was really curious  about the whole thing... so we finally decided to go..... and i am so glad that we went.... we really had a good time there...

Archana with little Lenna..

even though Pradyot had skipped his afternoon nap that day ... enthused by the whole setup he was all happy and cheery. he made new friends, engaged with the elders in little peek-a-boo games... and even finished his dinner without much fuss. I think Little Lenna had a lot to do with P's cheerfulness. she kept planting little kisses on our baby and even offered him some potato chips which made our boy very happy...

Nishi and I also made a lot of new friends and were glad that we had not gone with our initial instincts.. 

There was a lot of food, chess and chatting ....

and a whole lot of amazing people around which made the evening so pleasant... inspite of all the heat and humidity... 

in all it was a fun evening which finally wrapped up with hula hooping by a pretty lady (who was camping on the adjacent grounds with her family) and a much awaited shower which prompted us to pack up quickly and drive home before it was too late...

KOA camping grounds, Pittsburgh, 7/15/2012