Kolkata Carrot Cupcakes with Crunchy-Creamy Cashew Frosting!

I'm a sucker for alliteration. And carrot cake. And Indian food. Thus, I admit, these cupcakes were willed into existence by my own selfish desires to invent my favorite dessert.

Melding and morphing two beloved Indian pudding-style desserts into carrot cupcakes was really quite simple. Gajar halwa—roughly translated as "carrot pudding" from Hindi—is a sweet treat that can be prepared in a matter of minutes using a few readily available ingredients. Sprinkled with cardamom, and browned with sugar on the stovetop, the tender carrots are steeped in ghee (clarified butter), and garnished with crunchy cashews. Shrikhand, another equally popular and delicious pudding, comprises vanilla-infused yogurt, colored with delicate threads of golden saffron.

With such a bounty of flavors and textures, I wanted to be sure that these cupcakes would rightfully showcase each one. Balancing the spicy, full-bodied flavor of the cakes is a tangy yet sweet frosting that offers the crunchy satisfaction of chopped cashews.

Baklawa Blondies

What's in a name? Apparently more than Bill Shakespeare had presumed. The deceivingly simple substitution of a w for a v in the name of this delicious confection can bring your tastebuds from Greece to Lebanon in the course of one dessert order. Names matter, especially when it comes to distinctions amongst the varieties of the flaky, buttery, and deliciously syrupy dessert at hand.

As the name of this blondie suggests, I have opted for a more Middle Eastern approach to dessert. Using crushed pistachios, orange blossom water, and spices more reminiscent of Amman than Athens, these squares elicit some of my fondest associations with Middle Eastern foodways. Rich with honey, and tart with yogurt, there is no mistaking this blondie for its Greek counterpart!

Struth! 'e was a ripper!

'ey, mate! Can you guess what's on the menu for tonight? It's traditional New York black and white cookies...Aussie-style! We're all familiar with the popular City treat: a cakey cookie, adorned with vanilla and chocolate fondant; but few are savvy Australian foodies. It turns out, according to a few of my Australian mates, that a sweet treat called the lamington is one of the most popular desserts in the land Down Under. A lamington, by definition, is a small cube of day-old butter cake, decorated with chocolate icing and dipped in coconut flakes. YUM! The tantalizing flavor of this dessert has has even earned a spot on the Australian calendar: "National Lamington Day" is celebrated on July 21 each year!

The work to reinvent the lamington was cut out for me: to embrace the simple flavors that make this dessert such a hit, I turned to one of the most classic confections in America. The black and white cookie stood out as the perfect base to deliver the Down Under taste I was seeking. The differences between the lamington and the black and white cookie are subtle, but very natural to work with. Butter cake=sponge cake cookie; chocolate icing=chocolate ganache; coconut flakes=vanilla ganache. The final product? Well, you'll see below that these Black and White Lollies really are rippers!

Testing, testing—1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

Christening the blog—or so I hope! So much to do, so much to look forward to doing! Couldn't sleep, though I'm all the happier for it! More time to be spent developing and perfecting a recipe for carrot cupcakes, inspired by the flavors found in gajar halwa, a popular and scrumptious carrot pudding enjoyed in India.