Halal Home Cooking Is Moving!

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

I've finally done it and got my own domain, not only that I got on the blog train to wordpress! masha'Allah 

Whilst i sift through and format each worthy recipe plus fix the countless broken links, please kindly update your feedreader and / or sign up for home (email) delivery on http://www.halalhomecooking.com/ 

It might be a while until i update the new site with recipes, as you read i've got a lot to do along with family commitments. In the meantime let's stay connected via social media.

P.S. I will leave this blog up for a few weeks before redirecting. 

Lamb Rogan Josh & Mango Lassi

2 post in 1 day then gone for almost a week, what can i say? I am a consistently inconsistent blogger.

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Liebster Award

Nadia from a pinch of Nadia passed me the liebster award - yay! so here are the answers to her thought provoking questions.

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New Blog, Same Goal.

As-Salaamu Alaykum

When I changed my first blog Bake It to At Home With Asmaa I had plans to post about any topic relating to home life but then what happened? Well I became pregnant and posted irregularly about you guessed it FOOD and after baby arrived posts got even more irregular but Alhamdulillah now nearly 1 year after his birth I am here again with a new name but the same original goal; to promote halal home cooking.

Please kindly subscribe / update your feed readers to my new blog http://halalhomecooking.blogspot.co.uk/

Bakers Anonymous - for those of us who are addicted to butter, sugar and flour

If you are passionate about baking and The Great British Bake Off  please do follow/join this great little blog I stumbled upon named Bakers anonymous 

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Google+ Comments

Asalamu Alaikum Sisters, Hello everyone

My apologies for all of you who have commented on my blog posts in recent months without receiving a response from me, you see old blogger was better as I would receive an email or at least a notification in my dashboard letting me know I had a new comment.

google+ is great for social networking BUT if your like me and don't check yours every day, you miss comments on your blog posts and I hate not feeling connected with my readers which is why ive decided to remove google+ comments and go old skool again.

Until next post fee amanillah <3

Take 2&3 - Vanilla Custard Slices (slow progress)

As-Salam Alaykum  / Greetings Readers,

Since Take 1, I have made the Vanilla Slices again and again, each time something didn't go quite right or I'm just aiming too high above home baking standards.

During Take 2 - I changed the crème patissiere / pastry cream as I wanted more of it so I simply doubled the recipe quantities i used in take 1 thinking I would get the same consistency but I was wrong, it became too rich through too many egg yolks and too thick due to too much plain and corn flour.

The photos above are from Take 3 - I chose to follow a different recipe altogether for the crème patissiere and I didn't any many adjustments! and I'm happy to say it was just right.

Making the puff pastry dough from a packet mix as worked well in both Take 2 and .

Notes to self before Take 4:-

• 
  
  Decide the dimensions of my final sheet(s) before baking which depends on how many and how big slices i want to achieve.
  


• 
  
  Don't over or undercook the pastry.
  


• 
  
  Don't flatten the baked pastry sheets straight away after baking, wait until they have cooled.
  


• 
  
  Work on the consistency of icing, not too runny or it will drip, drip, drip!
  


• 
  
  Find my missing or buy another small pastry bag with small circular tip for piping chocolate onto icing.
  


• 
  
  Stock up on Chocolate and/or Nutella use this pastry project as an excuse to your husband and children why you need to eat more chocolate and your not sharing. LOL
  

Recipes on how to make Vanilla Puff Pastry From McDougalls Puff Pastry Mix and Vanilla Pastry Cream to follow shortly.....

What's Cooking?

Asalam Alaykum Sisters & Hello readers,
Here are a few photos of food i've cooked/baked in my home this week Masha'Allah

Doubara - Algerian Chickpea Soup

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Rosy Lee (Tea)

Asalam Alaykum Sisters, Hello readers,

Yorkshire Tea for Hard Water is what i am currently drinking, it's a rich and satisfying blend of black tea and although i am not 100% sure we have hard water in our Town, i do taste the difference in this tea to others i've tasted before. Even with the addition of milk it's a much cleaner and stronger flavour.

Water described as “hard” is high in dissolved minerals, specifically calcium and magnesium. Hard water is not a health risk, but a nuisance because of mineral buildup on fixtures and poor soap and/or detergent performance (i have noticed i have to use more detergent in addition to a cleaning tablet to get a better performance from my washing machine).

In case you were wondering Rosy Lee is cockney rhyming slang (London's famous not so secret, secret language lol) for Tea.

In Victorian times tea merchants would blend tea to suit the water in their area. So it only makes sense to bring an old tradition like that back to suit us Tea loving Brits.

I found this info graphic a while ago via pinterest and thought i would share it with you all.

Source: http://www.londonofficespace.com/

Are you more of a Tea or Coffee drinker? or neither? Tell me your favourite drink in your comment.

Thank you for asking, i take my Tea with milk and 2tsp sugar please (smiles)

* I have not been paid or asked to advertise or write a review for Yorkshire Tea.

**Sources of information used to write this post

https://www.taylorsofharrogate.co.uk/teaitem.asp?itmid=1091

http://www.hardwater.org/

Photos of my first Lemon Chocolate Cupcakes



The Only Use I Find For The Telephone Directory lol 

Salam Alaykum,



For a short while now i have been developing my own cupcake recipes, likey likey my Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes and Espresso Cupcakes.



The Lemon Chocolate Cupcakes pictured above are a work in progress.... i have succeeded with the cupcake itself, but the buttercream icing i made although it looks delightful was too sour, I'd over estimated how much i liked the bitter taste of lemon and not taken into account the fact that cocoa powder itself is slightly bitter, tut tut.



I was inspired by Lizzy's Chocolate Lemon Cupcakes and i mean come on what girl doesn't like either chocolate or lemon so why not combine both win, win situation!



I don't work from box mixes so following Lizzy's recipe was out of the question and since I'd had success before inventing cupcake recipes i thought why not? anyway i may take a leaf out of her book next time and go for a lemon cream cheese frosting as there is something eye catching about the contrasting colours, brown cupcake and creamy coloured frosting.



I am cupcaked out to be honest but my son's only baking request these days is 'let's make cupcakes' masha'Allah he helps by turning on the mixer and whisking the cocoa powder/flour together oh and he is a dab hand (NOT but let the lad learn) at sprinkling the sprinkles lol



* Note: Here is the link to my Chocolate Lemon Cupcake Recipe

Keep Korma and Curry On...

Source: Noor AlQahtani

Salam Alaikum (peace be to you)

Sorry for my absence here lately, apart from morning sickness and my children having a week or 2 of illness nothing major has really happened for me to stop posting, i seem to go through the phase where i give my all to something or leave it completely instead i need to focus on balance and doing a little of something good each day is better than nothing good at all, right?

From the title you may have guessed my sweet tooth in this pregnancy so far as switched to being quite savoury mashaAllah (Has God willed) i still enjoy a nice slice of cake, scoop of ice cream, bite of a crunchie every now and then but my favourite food right now has to be baked beans with HP sauce on toast OR Keema biryani with coleslaw(eww you may think but not to me at this moment in time)

I hope to be back soon with a recipe post inshaAllah(God willing)

Until then, Salam Alaikum

I Changed My Mind Again!

Salam Alaikum / Hello,

Thank you all for being ever so patient with me and my changes which are now unchanged? what am i talking about? well i made my blog readers invite only BUT....... my posts were no longer showing in google reader and to cut it a long story short it's just easier and more convenient i keep the blog open.

My blog isn't personal as such i mean i don't divulge too much info! but my personality in my writing style comes across (i hope) and i don't feel great about the opposite sex having any piece of me.

When i found that a man (a muslim man at that) could read or would want to comment i felt quite put off the blogging experience because my blog is aimed at women only NOT that i discourage a man to get in the kitchen and cook for his wife and family no, that is something i champion at least every once in a while but you know i just don't feel comfortable with the men and woman interacting for no valid reason even in the virtual sense because it's not something permissible in the laws of my religion/Islam.

Anyway, i hope i made myself clear on the whole subject and please if you are a man and do follow my blog your free to take and use the recipes but i don't want to communicate i.e. comments with you in any shape or form unless of course you want to go through my husband? any comments from men that find will be deleted.

JazakAllah Khairan & Thank you for reading (assuming google reader is now publishing my posts again! lol)

*I DISOVERED AFTER WRITING MY POST THAT MY GOOGLE READER WAS SUBSRIBED TO MY OLD BLOG ADDRESS OOOOPS! TO SUBSCRIBE AGAIN CLICK THE ORANGE SUBSCRIBE BUTTON WHEN YOUR IN GOOGLE READER AND ADD MY WEB ADDRESS www.athomewithasmaa.blogspot.co.uk


 

1975: Burger & Chips Followed By Tulumba

As-Salaamu Alaikum, Greetings blogosphere,

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Cup to Spoon measurements

Credit goes to Noor for this useful spoon to cup conversion table 

Salam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)/ Hello my readers,

It's been a while since I posted, I have been searching for my blogging voice, mojo whatever you want to call it but that doesn't been I haven't been baking oh no! I have made a number of muffins, bread, cupcakes, etc they have either not turned out as pretty as I wanted or I have simply just been off mood for spending time snapping pics and now to top it off my oven broke, yes really!

For a while now the door handles have been falling off and then two days ago the fan stopped working and I smelled a terrible burning when I was about to bake my first attempt at a 8 strand braided loaf! I immediately switched the oven off whipped out my halogen oven gave it the once over (cleaned it) and transferred unsucessfully the braided loaf to a smaller tray and baked, let's just sayit was edible but not pretty lol I was thankful alhamduillah that the stove part of my cooker was still working but then that stopped working yesterday too! Well, I have always wanted a conventional electric oven anyway, ever since my baking has become a daily habit, (it seems i can't go a day without feeling the urge even if i dont give in) as i have heard there better than electric fan ovens for baking, so when we have enough £ saved or a bargain comes our way that is what I hope to buy, inshaAllah (God willing)

I have experimented with halogen oven baking but hardly any of my tins/pans fit and I have noticed with cakes and bread especially, the top bakes while the bottom remains soft/pasty. I read online somewhere to treat cooking/baking in a halogen oven like a fan oven i.e lower temperature for less time but then I've had personal advice suggesting to bake at a higher temperature for longer which seems the right advice according to my experience so far... If any of you have specific halogen oven baking recipes feel free to share, thank you and until my next post, peace / Salam 

Yummy Break!

Salam Alaikum / hello readers,

Have you noticed, i have been rather slow in coming forward with recipes this month? this is purely because i haven't baked that much, due to it being Ramadan and the only demands in my house are Qalb El Louz Qalb El Louz Qalb El Louz. Yes i have had quite enough, i finally baked my third and final in the correct size dish (33cm by 22cm) and it worked out well Alhamduillah.

Don't ask me for the recipe of those pretty cupcakes pictured above, ok i no longer have it however, look on the back of a packet of tesco's light brown sugar it should be there. I have to confess, the cupcakes were not 'all that' apart from the rose butter cream swirl that is.

I sooo can't wait for the new series of The Great British Bake Off to start next week, what about you? forget the Olympics! OOOps did i just say that out loud

My next bake it! doesn't actually involve baking but more of that another day....

Peace and Love

Upcoming Ramadan & Baking Experiments This Week

Can you believe we are inshaAllah(God willing) 8 days aways from Ramadan?! Yes, the count down has begun in this household.



While i am looking forward to making the traditional Algerian syrup laden sweet Qalb El Louz/Heart of Almond (i plan to feature this on blog so stay tuned!) i hope inshAllah to not focus much on over indulgent iftars(breaking fast meal) / suhoors(pre-fast meal) and concentrate on more beneficial acts such as reading the Quran etc



This week i have been trying my hardest to perfect the Madeleine. Madeleine's are classically french génoise shell shaped sponges usually flavoured with lemon zest or fragrant flower waters(Rose/Orange Blossom)

So far, nil poi > 0 points which is just typical for an English girl (anyone that has ever watch euro vision will understand) my little treats won't come out of their supposedly non-stick mold. Which by the way i butter and have even floured on occassion, maybe a different recipe is needed me thinks.

Many of you are aware my 1year old daughter has food allergies, so this week i am experimenting with various courgette and carrot cake recipes to make dairy, egg and gluten free cake/ mini cupcakes. Again, when i am happy with my baked creations i will share photos and recipes InshaAllah



In the words of my friend ''Keep Calm And Prepare For Ramadan''

Apron on

Asalamu Alaikom & Hello Blog world,
So here I am finally blogging about my favourite passion, baking (smiles)
I plan inshaAllah (God willing) for this blog to mainly be a display of my baking photos with recipes, yet I will still find a moment or two to share a little more of my personality with posts such as this.



I don't often wear an apron whilst baking, but if I had one like this it might help me clean up my act, as i'm rather clumsy and flour just wouldn't do on this pretty little thing.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/CreativeChics