Mango Mania from other blogs

During the last mango season, I had bookmarked few mango recipes. As with most of the bookmarked list, this also did not make its way into my kitchen. This year, I did not want to give it a miss and had decided to try them, as soon as the season began.

1. Lata's Mango cake


I followed her recipe with some changes. I used half and half of All purpose flour and wheat
flour. No nuts in the cake since I did not have any. And I used fresh mango pulp. I was making the cake for my guests. So I decided to bake in the muffin try for easier serving. The cake batter was less for two batches, so I reduced the muffin size and saved the batter for a small cake in a tube pan.
Ingredients
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Whole wheat flour - 1 cup (Aashirvad Atta)
Baking powder - 1 tspn
Baking soda - 1 tspn
Fresh mango pulp - 1 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Milk powder - 1/2 cup
Yogurt - 1/2 cup
Vegetable oil - 1/2 cup
Hot water - 1/4 cup

Preheat oven to 180 C. Sift together the All purpose flour,wheat flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl.Blend together mango pulp, water, sugar, milk powder, yogurt, and oil in a blender, until smooth. Mix in the blended puree into flour mixture and mix well. Transfer the mixture to a baking pan and bake for 35 minutes or until done. The cake was very moist, with a slight flavor of mango. The mango flavor is not very intense. I might try the same recipe with some other fruit puree.

2. Ice cream from Bharathy's kitchen laboratory

You need:

Mango pulp - 1 cup

Thick creamy milk - 1 cup

Arrowroot flour/maida - 1 tbspn

Sugar - 3/4 cup

Fresh cream - 1 tblpsn

Keep 4 tablespoons of milk aside to dissolve the arrowroot powder. Boil half litre of milk and simmer for few minutes so that it reduces in volume and gets thick. Stir in sugar and boil till
it is fully dissolved. Add the arrowroot mix with constant stirring to avoid lumps. The milk will get thicker now. Cool and min in the mango pulp. Blend the mix until smooth in a blender. Transfer the mix to a plastic tub and freeze. when it starts to freeze, whip again in a blender with the fresh cream added. Freeze the mixture again till it hardens.

Scoop into cups and enjoy homemade ice cream.

I am sending these to Srivalli's Mango Mela

Extravagant LED Lighting

I have seen these new Mini iLume™ Flush Mount LED fixtures in a couple of applications and been intrigued at their possibilities.

Apparently I'm not the only kitchen and bath designer to be interested. Here's an image of a kitchen backsplash from their web site:
















I recently attended a seminar by a wonderful lighting designer who presented new thinking (for me) about how we approach interior lighting.

She showed, in a series of slides, how we designers can make lighting more interesting and engaging in a space.

She used prisms to catch sunlight and throw rainbows onto walls and furnishings, creating a new kind of decorative lighting that used to be only accidental.

She used different colored light sources to create "warm" or "cool" areas in a room.

I was fascinated.

LED lighting presents us with opportunities for such lighting because it can be so small and unobtrusive.

What an exciting time to be a designer with such tools.

Peggy

Addendum:

I was just browsing my friend Kit Golson's blog, Chic Provence, and ran across this post on artist Rudolf Stingel's work.

I have stolen this image to illustrate. Thanks Kit!





















Would you believe the walls in this room are white?

This is the incredible power of light and color used to create art. But it also illustrates how light bouncing off colored surfaces can change the colors in a room, subtly or dramatically, depending on the light intensity and colors being reflected.

Question? Do you know what color the walls would appear to be if they were painted navy blue with the same orange carpeting and lighting?

29 Norwood Kitchen Renovation

Overview of the kitchen area using clean, traditional cabinetry and fixtures to create a spacious, aesthetically pleasing space

Floor to ceiling details

Adding ease of use to the kitchen, a bar sink is a wonderful addition

A beautiful, classic farmhouse sink by Whitehaus.


Granite countertops

Beadboard backsplash continues into the breakfast nook storage area

Photography provided by Alexis Stein Photography