Baking Fun!

Last weekend was definitely a first (and super fun!) experience!

Our favorite restaurant, The Corner Courtyard, was hosting a baking demonstration and then book launch signing by India's "first lady of the dessert world", Pooja Dhingra. We are good friends with the family that owns and runs the restaurant, so when the manager, Megha, told us about this event, I knew I wanted to go! I also knew that my friend Laura would LOVE it as well, since she was a food/bakery science major in college!

We arrived in the afternoon to a room full of (mostly) college-aged, eager Indian girls ready to learn some new baking skills. I got to meet Pooja briefly beforehand with Megha, and she was so nice and so sweet! She did an interactive demonstration of 3 of the recipes from her new cookbook, and gave a lot of overall tips about baking. It was so fun!

Although she didn't teach anything that Laura and I didn't already know how to do, she did have some GREAT advice about substitutions/where to get things to bake in India. She studied at Le Cordon Bleu in France, and then came back to India to launch her baking empire, so she understands our pain of not being able to find all the ingredients we have available to bake with back in America!

Of course everyone got to taste the goodies "we" made, and they were scrumptious!

 Laura and me with posing with Pooja!

Megha, me, Pooja and Laura

After the demonstration we bought copies of the cookbook and got them signed :) We were able to ask her a couple of follow up questions about how she converts recipes to India, which was so helpful! The cookbook actually has a lot of great recipes and super useful tips in the front - I'm so glad I have it!

It was SUCH a fun time. Yay for baking in India!

I also am maybe going to have the opportunity to do some "freelance baking" for the restaurant, which I'm really excited about. Here are pictures of the feast I made for Megha as my "audition." I baked alllll day long!

 Chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon crumb cake, cinnamon rolls...

 Cinnamon scones, orange cranberry/orange chocolate chip scones, and banana muffins.

Thankfully we had a staff meeting that night so everyone was able to eat leftovers (and then some!) Pretty sure we were all in a sugar coma that night. It was definitely fun though!!!