Pat-a-Cake

Semolina or Rawa Cake

Ingredients:

Semolina/Rawa - 1 cup

Yoghurt/Curd - 1 cup

Castor Sugar/Powdered sugar - 1 or 3/4 cup (to taste)

Clarified butter/Ghee or Oil - 4 tbsp

Saffron - 1 gram or two pinches (optional)

Cardamom/Elaichi powder - 2 pinches (optional)

Nutmeg/Jaiphal powder - 2 pinches (optional)

Vanilla extract (NOT essence) - 1 tsp

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Cooking soda - 1/2 tsp

Method: 

1. Grease a six inch bundt tin with clarified butter and keep it aside.

2. Mix the semolina, yoghurt, clarified butter, sugar, saffron and nutmeg and cardamom powder. Ensure that there are no lumps. Keep it covered for half an hour to forty five minutes.

3. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. 

4. After forty five minutes add the vanilla extract, and the baking and cooking soda and mix well. 

5. Bake immediately for thirty minutes or till done. The edges should brown slightly.

6. Cool on a wire rack and unmould in fifteen minutes.

The cake tastes great both warm and cold. You may add chopped dry fruits if you so wish.

Happy New Year !!!

Yes, yes. Belated happy new year. I'm late. Very late.

***

That seems to be the constant refrain these days. Late to bed. Late in the morning. Late getting home. But it is  a good sort of 'late-ness'. I have some purpose. Some work. I have felt the urge to quit. But the memory of the have-nothing-to-do stage of my life makes me think nothing could be worse. 

And I do enjoy my job. It's not just some politically correct rhetoric. I have no wish to turn academia into a noble profession. It isn't. It's just fun. 

Dirty and full of duds (yes, yes, I am an intellectual snob); but gloriously fulfilling. Especially, being a student. You can't be a teacher unless you are a student...perpetually. I do want to keep learning. Is there another purpose to life? 

***

In other news, Indian politics seems to resemble the theater of the absurd. Yawn. Cringe. Outrage. Cringe. Yawn. 

*** 

And it rained today. The sky was as glum as my mood. Global warming? Ironically, there was a "nukkad natak" in school on the theme. Good motives. Very good. But is it going to change the weather? 

Poignantly, a line in the play pointed out that Global warming has become a business. The play exhorted us to love our environment too. The slow-hand-spread typical to Shahrukh Khan romance movies meant to represent love for nature was droll. Does the environment want love? The environment seems to be Edvard Munch like screaming - LEAVE ME ALONE. Love is smothering. 

***

Why am I blogging random stream of consciousness style? A student's turn it in report is yet to generate. Please turn it in Gods, hear my plea. I have a deadline to meet. Umm...why does one meet a deadline? Meet is too positive for a 'dead'line. 

Ok then, I have a deadline to beat !!!! 

Are you there God? It's me, an IB teacher !!!

***

The End

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Yawn, yawn, yawn....