Summer Baking + Cooking Workshop

More than 8 months after conducting my first demonstrative baking workshop , I finally conducted my second workshop on 26th March’16 with Amrita of lifekirecipe.com at Molecule, Gurgaon. We centred our recipes around summers and decided to do a summer special baking and cooking workshop. While Amrita demonstrated three savoury recipes, I demonstrated three desserts. We had Malika Budhiraj on board to design our recipe booklets and Ritika Shah of Prithvi Pictures to do the photography.

Here is our menu for the workshop-

DESSERTS-

• classic lemon-blueberry cake with the best cream cheese frosting
• mini orange-honey-chia seed cakes with whipped cream and fresh fruit
• No churn smores ice-creamwith marshmallows, crackers and chocolate served in brioche buns to make smores ice-cream burgers

SAVOURIES-

• Five spiced pan grilled chicken/paneer with water melon radish salad with glass noodles
• Mango arugula quinoa salad with goat cheese and roasted walnuts and spicy mango vinaigrette
• Super greens loaded Vietnamese style cold spring rolls with basil garlic dipping sauce.

We started the workshop with an introduction session where the 20 lovely participants introduced themselves. So grateful to have had the best crowd of the most encouraging people. It was such an interesting set of people- we had a ninth grader, a couple of law graduates, college students, a dentist, some home-bakers, food bloggers, housewives and also someone who was giving her class 12th boards.

The first recipe I demonstrated was the mini orange-honey and chia seed cakes. It was an eggless recipe that everyone loved. We discussed the difference between baking soda and baking powder, talked about ingredients like sour cream and chia seeds and learnt how to make cakes fluffy even without using eggs. I topped the cake with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. Everyone said that they loved the texture and flavour of the cakes.

After the tasting, Amrita took over and demonstrated her mango salad- so fresh and light. What I love about Amrita is her positivity. I’m yet to meet someone as positive as her. I loved the energy she lent to the workshop! Her other two recipes absolutely amazing as well. My favourite was the Vietnamese spring rolls. After Amrita demonstrated it, the participants also got to roll their spring rolls. It was so much fun! I love it when the workshop becomes so interactive. Everyone was actively participating, asking questions and initiating interesting discussions.

The next recipe I did was the lemon blueberry cake with the cream cheese frosting. It is one of my favourite combinations and I’m so glad that the others loved it as much as I do. But almost everyone’s favourite was the Smore’s ice-cream. The funny part is that no one has even a single picture of the ice-cream because it got over within minutes! Someone said she hasn’t had anything like that ever! Amrita said it was better than the ice-cream burger she had in Bali.

We also had a number of exciting give aways by our sponsors UrbanDazzle and KitchenAid India. Urban Dazzle gave away a set of 6 pie plates to the first three registrations and two cookie plates to a couple of winners we selected by picking chits. KitchenAid decided to give away their 7 speed electric mixer to one lucky winner who posts the best picture taken at the workshop.

After we demonstrated our recipes, the chef at Molecule demonstrated a couple of super interesting molecular recipes.

This day really couldn’t have been better. The smiles on everyone’s faces just made every bit of effort we had put in totally worth it.