Panfusine

 Its sad that 99% of New Years resolutions go bust on Jan 2nd. Thankfully this group resolution went on until the year end. Cannot say how thankful I am to Aparna Balasubramanian and her motivation & enthusiasm in guiding the lot of us through a dozen delicious yeasted confections. I admit, I missed out on one assignment - The crunchy salty pretzels (which no one in my family cares for)  while on vacation in India, but got a personal face to face exemption from Aparna herself! And so here is yeasted confection # 12: The Bee sting Cake, known as Bienenstich Kuchen in German. Couple of anecdotes behind this unusual name  -  The baker who came up with this recipe was shooing a bee away from the sticky almond topping when it retaliated and stung him.  another story - The inhabitants of a village drove away hostile invaders by flinging beehives at them and celebrated with this victory cake, which they christened Bienenstich Kuchen. But whatever the reason,...

Ganesha, the Lord of auspicious beginnings is indubitably the most cheerful god in the Hindu Pantheon.Short, rotund and pot-bellied with an elephants head, he is regarded as the governing deity of intellect and wisdom. Hindus the world over celebrate his 'birthday' . I'm incapable of explaining the details of the significance of this delightful god, so I'm just going to direct you to this link from Dr. Devdutt Pattanaiks website . Ganesha is depicted as holding a bowl of 'modaks' in his left hand. These sweet confections resemble little bags of money. These modaks are basically a sweet filling with either a fried wrapping made out of wheat flour or a steamed variety with a covering made of rice flour dough. The word modak is thought to be a corruption of the Sanskrit Madhu golaka (Madhu- sweet/ honey; golaka: sphere / ball). Getting ready to make the steamed version always induced a low level anxiety in my mother every year. She used...