Moving to wordpress

I have decided to move to wordpress.

I absolutely love blogger but some things have compelled me to move over to wordpress:

1. Widgets: You can't beat wordpress in term of how easy they make it to widgetize your blog.

2. Monitoring stats: who needs feedburner when you can monitor your stats right off the dashboard?

3. More formatting tools: there are so many formatting tools on wordpress like the strike through, underline, copying from word with formatting etc etc.

4. Easier to attach multimedia: Its super easy to attach images and multimedia with user friendly buttons.

5. Permalink: the page permalink gets displayed as soon as I create a new post. That makes it so easy to link up if needed.

6. Pages: OMG I LOVE this feature. You can add separate pages like about, FAQ and you don't need to get into the complications of editing you web page html to get people to get the right blog post on clicking the buttons! LOVE IT.

7. Easier post HTML editing: I always have a problem on blogger when I try to add my own HTML. I tend to forget to close the tags and that's a pain... scanning through the entire document to get there. But no such prob with wp.. you can use the "close tags" option.

8. Polls: I know that even blogger allows you to add polls but the wordpress polls option is waaayy easier and better to operate.

9. Recent activity: The dashboard displays all your recent activity which is so cool.

10. Easy publishing settings: This is another really cool feature. you can easily set you publishing settings like invisible, draft, scheduled. Its much easier when its in a drop down.

11. Easy switching from one blog to another: If you have multiple blogs, you can easily switchover with a drop down menu.

12. Move around tools: You can easily move around any tools around your dashboard just the way you want it. You can even remove any tools that you don't care about. you can enlarge, and shrink the size of your tool boxes.

13. Brief page: you can set up a brief home page where readers can read the first few lines of each post and in case they want to read more they can do so by clicking on it. Though I wouldn't want to do this myself, its nice to know that such a feature exists.

14. Smileys: OK so I use a lot of them. when I exported my blog onto wordpress I found them all emoted! woo hoo :D (see, wont happen here!!)

14. Selecting categories: It's easier to select categories on wordpress by just placing a check mark on the ones you want for the current post. Easy right?

15. Hyperlinking: When hyperlinking on wordpress you can even decide if you want the URL to open in a new page, or the same page etc. It's nice to know that I am allowed decide that.

16. My messed up blog name!: My blogger url is

http://gourmandindemand.blogspot.com but my blog name is one of a grind. WHY the confusion? so I decided to register my new blog as

http://oneofagrind.wordpress.com

So as you can see, I'm moving this blog over to wordpress because it gives me more control over my blogging which is great. I still love blogger but sometimes you've just got to move to something in which you perceive superior value and that's exactly what I see in wordpress. I am a die hard fan of Google and all google services- google search, gmail, chrome, earth, docs and everything else. But wordpress is just the better blogging platform. (gosh look at me getting all senti!!)

I decided that this is a good time to do it becasue this blog is kind of new.

Thanks for following my blog! Please subscribe to my NEW blog @ wordpress http://oneofagrind.wordpress.com ! thanks cya on wp!

oh and btw you can still email me at oneofagrind@gmail.com :D

Almond Green Tea Cupcakes from Baked

As I had mentioned in my last post, I bought two new books one of them being "Baked: New Frontiers in baking"

I was dying to try out something from that book and here I am! I made the almond and green tea cupcakes (page 76)

I always feel that baking cakes/cupcakes is something you should save for when you have a crowd. It's fun when you can watch other people enjoy what you have cooked. So I got the perfect chance. I catered :P for my mothers tea party. Well a party would be an exaggeration, it was more like a little gossip over tea.

Anyways I made the cupcakes and OMG they were fab!



I followed the recipe to the tee and its a good thing I did.

The frosting was a dream.. green tea powder made like a pastry cream first and then ends up as butter cream frosting.. the guests were guessing what went in it.. 'pistachios' is where the guessing stopped.




Lets zoom in to see the frosting... mmmm

I still have a bit of the frosting in my refrigerator and I have discovered the pleasures of licking bits of it off my fingers.

Two new cookbooks!

I love ordering books online. It always feels like my birthday again! happily opening gifts, even though I know what they are.

I ordered two books online:

Book No 1:

Ben and Jerry's homemade ice-cream and dessert book!! wow you can't go wrong when its written by Ben and Jerry themselves! Its kind of an old book since its first print came out in 1987, but who cares! its still gr8.




Book No 2:

OMG I LURVE this BOOK!!

It's called "Baked: New frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito"
Wow! these guys have a cafe in NYC and they serve these delectable delights! Oh how I would LOVE to visit their cafe!!



I cant wait to try something out from both the books! ahh I am so happy!probably happier than what was on my birthday.

Sugarcane and tofu pops

This is remotely like the cake pops I did last time but this was fabulous!!

This is originally a Vietnamese which uses chicken and a lot of Asian sauces but I used soy and vegetables and my own spice combination to flavor. Whats really cool about it is the use of sugarcane as sticks.. you are not supposed to eat them! it just adds flavor to the dish and also serves as a stick to hold I suppose you could call it a vegan variation of a chicken lollipop/wings/drumstick.

What you need:

¾ cup of tofu, mashed (store bought or homemade)
½ cup of mixed not too watery vegetables (peas, carrot, potato,corn etc; finely chopped)
1 onion finely chopped
1 green chili finely chopped
1 flake of garlic, chopped
1 tsp Coriander finely chopped
Salt as per taste
around 15 sticks of fresh sugarcane around 3 inches long each
2 tsp of corn flour
4 tbs of rice flour to coat
oil for deep frying

What to do:

1. Stir fry the vegetables for a minute and place in mixing bowl.
2. mash tofu and add to vegetables. Add cornflour and form into small balls.
3. Coat around each sugarcane stick dip in rice flour
4. Deep fry on medium till golden brown
5 Drain on paper towels, serve with ketchup




I know, I know.. its not the best picture.. but u get the idea.




Lets zoom in shall we?

Messing around with a chocolate cake

I got inspired by Bakerella's cake pops and tried my own variation.

Unfortunately I am not as artistic as she is and neither do I have the patience to cut shape and frost those tiny cupcakes I did something simpler.

I took some store bought chocolate cake and added the frosting to it. Mashed it about (eww, couldn't help but feel gross since there was just too much unavoidable cake touching and mashing)

I added some orange colored fondant in the center and sandwiched two equal sized cake portions and sealed the sides to form a ball.

When sliced it looked nice. But tasted kind of like a semi cooked cake even though I knew it was a cooked cake and the mushiness was on account of the frosting and mashing. Anyways I had fun.




Did not expect too much luck on Friday the 13th anyways

I love aniseed

I love aniseed.

Dry or fresh its just so wonderful. A mouth freshener, a recipe invigorating agent! and the lovely color. Green happens to be my favorite color and aniseed is without a doubt my favorite seed.

Aniseed is excellent to use in a marinate, I like using it with a little roasted cumin. You get a nice blend of a sharp mildly pungent flavor and a fresh zesty flavor.

When it comes to aniseed as a sweet, I love those little aniseed balls you get at candy stores but sugar coated aniseed happens to top my list, because unlike an aniseed ball you get to crunch and munch many aniseed not just one that is located inside the aniseed ball.



So I dedicate this blog post to the lovely green seed that brings freshness in my day and more importantly my breath. :P

Daring Bakers Challenge: Chocolate Valentino, flourless chocolate cake

This is my second challenge although it should have been my fourth :( I could not do the previous two cause I had NO time.. but i made sure I had time for this one! it was soooo simple! and really good!

I made just the cake.. it was too sweet and was perfect by itself.

The February Challenge comes from Wendy at wmpesblog (Arizona) and Dharm at Dad - Baker and Chef (Malaysia).


It called for just three ingredients:

-chocolate
-eggs
-butter

Surprisingly it did look like a cake..more like a really rich brownie.
I made them in muffin tins and that too didn't fill up the tin too much.




Gooey and dense just like a brownie





Yet soft and spongy like a cake!

I really enjoyed making these :D Thanks again DBers!