Life of a Short Indian Girl

Whilst my white chocolate and orange cake has become a classic in our house, I'm always looking for inspiration to diversify my baking. So when my mum asked me to make dessert for a dinner party a while back, I went on search for some inspiration. After lots of googling, I was torn between baking churros and a cinammon cake- so I decided to combine them! I managed to find a churros cake recipe, and with a few adaptations it worked amazingly. I adapted the 3-layer recipe from baking mad into two layer as it was a relatively small dinner party, hence why the values are weirdly specific. I was unsure how it would turn out as the churros are baked not fried, and I've never made them before. I decided to make waaayy more than I needed in case I messed up the shape of some of them (which I inevitably did, as well as burning the first batch). But the second batch tasted amazing and you could easily eat the leftover churros on their own...

As much as I love a Nandos, I'm all about experimenting with different flavours and cuisines. This weekend, I decided to branch out to an experimental Kebab place in Islington called Bababoom. It was a cosy restaurant about 5 minutes away from Highbury and Islington station. The music playing was so vibrant, and I actually found their Spotify playlist on their website which most restaurants don't do!  The menu itself was quite limited, but despite this I was still stuck between all of the choices. I ended up going for the s affron and orange chicken shish and  the Baba's fries (with house dukkah- I don't know what this actually was but it tasted amazing). The portion sizes were good and both the kebab and fries were really well spiced. I also tried the broadbean falafel with sweet potato hummus, which was so good! This was the first falafel variation I've tried and it definitely did not disappoint. The hummus was ...

Half Cup, a 5 minute walk from Kings Cross, has been on my brunch bucket list for a while. I've attempted to eat there before, however with a 40-minute wait at the time I didn't think it was worth it. This time the wait was only around 20 minutes (I did go a lot earlier, around 10:30) which wasn't too bad at all.  I guess the wait is due to the cafe itself being quite small inside. There was such a nice, cosy vibe and I loved the artwork and wooden benches.  I'm definitely more of a savoury than sweet person, however the sweet brunch options were too good to pass up! I ended up going for the Sweet Brioche French Toast- which had chocolate 'soil', caramel, rhubarb puree and was topped with a nutella mascarpone.  And needless to say, it looked and tasted amazing! And the flowers were so cute.  I also tried the Toasted Banana Bread, which had tahini yoghur...

Living a 10 minute walk from Kings Cross last year, I walked past The German Gynasium allll the time. After a year of wanting to check it out, my friend surprised me and took me there for afternoon tea- but not just any afternoon tea, German afternoon tea! I wasn't entirely sure what to expect- I've been all over Germany but it was ages ago and I just remember a lot of meat, so I was intrigued as to what the afternoon tea would be like. The decor was gorgeous- our table was next to this display, so was perfect for taking photos.  The waiters and waitresses were so lovely and welcoming, which made the whole experience that bit better. There was a huge selection of hot drinks, and I ended up going for Earl Grey tea, and my friend got peppermint tea. Then they brought out the food and prosecco (an extra on top of the afternoon tea). I don't usually like prosecco, but this was by-far the best I have had. I wish I knew where ...

Would you believe after years of going to the gym, I still haven't perfected the art of being a cool, suave gym gal? Honestly, after year 11 and  year 12   of embarrassing gym incidences, nothing really surprises me anymore (and I guess I haven't really changed that much ha ha). But anyway, here goes this years new and improved ways to embarrass myself.... Insanity is one of my favourite classes. If you haven't heard of it, it's a max interval training workout. Normally it's bodyweight only, so when the instructor told us to get a bar and put a minimum of 5kg on each end, I was a bit confused. But I did it anyway, and even added extra weight thinking 'I've done this class loads of times, I've got this'. Whilst I was putting the weights on, this woman came up to me and said 'Well you're brave aren't you!'. I laughed it off, thinking it'd be fine. I was wrong. The warm-up had already tired me out, and when we subsequently had t...

Remember in secondary school when teachers made you say a 'fun fact' about yourself as an ice-breaker? Well, mine was always that I could quote any F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode. So when I managed to get Friends Fest tickets this year you can imagine how hyped I was!  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I've been waiting for this day for years. We went to the Friends Fest in Kenington Park, London but there are locations all over the UK. The doors opened at 12 and we had a set tour at  pretty much as soon as we arrived. The set tour was probably my favourite part of the whole thing! It was 30 minutes long, with 10 minutes in each of Joey and Chandler's, Ross' and Rachel and Monica's apartments which felt surreal. I was amazed at how much detail they had put into the sets - they even filled up Joey's fridge with take away boxes. I loved seeing all the original props (including Phoebe's guitar and my personal favourite Pat the Dog). T...

Anyone seen those iconic igloos along Tower Bridge on instagram? They are just idyllic, but super hard to get a hold of. I tried multiple times during the year to get one- thank fully, I was third time lucky! The igloos are placed along the river during the autumn/winter and paradise pods are there during the summer. I was SO hyped for this, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The igloos are for a maximum for 8 people- if you book for less than 6 people you share one. There were 6 of us so we got a whole one to ourselves. We won with the timing as well- 7-9pm, so we saw the views in daylight, sunset and at night. The view was amazing throughout, but at sunset was something else! The food and drink wasn't as expensive as I thought, considering the location and the fact that the igloo was free. The food was grill/pizza/pasta- I had a sourdough pizza which was good (not quite franco manca but still) and I got a White Sangria cocktail ( Sauvignon bla...

Every time we go to India we say we'll visit another country as the flights are cheap. And every time we run out of time to do this! But this time we specifically left out time to visit Sri Lanka, as it is so close to India and is really easy to get to- just a 3 hour flight from Kolkata to Colombo! When we landed in Colombo we were met by our driver Sunny, who is potentially one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After a couple of hours being in Sri Lanka we saw that Sri Lankan people in general are SO lovely and hospitable. We also saw that the country is full of natural beauty and is really clean (in contrast to India where we’d just come from). The only bad impression we had was the traffic, which was awful and it took us around 3.5 hours to drive to Kandy. By the time we arrived it was night so we went straight to sleep. The next day was spent exploring Kandy- but not for me. Food poisoning struck and so I was stuck in the hotel eating plain toast (cri...

Indian street food- delicious, quick and incredibly cheap. Need any more convincing? One of the things I most look forward to when we visit Kolkata (after seeing family of course) is the street food. There's nothing like it. Different parts of India have specialties, and here is your guide to street food in Kolkata, in the East of India. You've probably heard about food poisoning from street food (and true, I did get food poisoning this time), but in general if you follow take these precautions you should be safe. Don't ever drink water unless you've seen it's been filtered or is sealed bottled water. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire you'll see that sometimes they put tap water into bottles and pass it off as mineral water! This applies to food as well- if there is ANY water in your street food, do not eat it If the food is on a plate that has just been washed, make sure to wipe any excess water off it so it doesn't contaminate the food Only...

I’m definitely making the most of all this free time I’ve got at the moment and trying to get some travelling done! A few weekends ago  I went on a short trip to Madrid. This was pretty last minute, but it’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a while as the only place I've been to in Spain is Barcelona. We got to our hotel at around 2pm, and headed straight out as we only had a couple of days.  We stopped for a quick lunch at a small cafe called Valentina where we got sandwiches. We wanted something small, but turns out these sandwiches were more like baguettes. I had a spanish potato omelette one which was sooo good (I love potato with all my heart).  We then spent the afternoon in Parque El Retiro which was beautiful- full of botanical gardens, palaces and statues. My personal favourite was the palace made of glass, and the only bad bit was the weather. But even then the rain was on and off, a few drizzles with some sun in between. There were also peacocks EVE...