This blog is a year old! A small Raspberry ganache pie (no bake, gluten-free) and a big confession…

Yes, I cannot believe that this blog has officially completed one year, and what a journey it has been! I wanted to combine it with the Fiesta Friday #38  party this week to celebrate! Thank you Angie, Hilda and Julianna for hosting!

I will finish the confession part first, I know you want to hear it…

I am not a born foodie. In fact, I did not know that word existed till I started blogging!

In my childhood I had very little interest in what I ate, I had no aversion to any kind of food, I just never thought about it much. I would happily eat what my mom made and help her out with prepping in the kitchen, but never bothered to try anything on my own.

In my twenties, I was too busy trying to get a good career as a research chemist. When I lived by myself getting through graduate school, with very little time to think about food, I literally ate to live. Then I met my husband, who is a health nut and a foodie. I started to notice conversations about food between him and his friends- about drinking organic milk, not using Styrofoam and plastic for storing and heating food in the microwave, etc. It was only after we got married that I actually paid attention to what I cooked, in making new dishes and found that it was even well appreciated by him and (our) friends. After some setbacks in my health, I took a break from work and spent all my time in other hobbies. But I still missed working in the laboratory and the closest I could get to that type of work was in the kitchen. They say that a good experimental chemist will also naturally be a good cook. And here I will modestly say that I’m an O.K. chemist. 😉

I learned to bake, found new challenges to solve in baking healthy and egg-free goodies. And then, after reading some good books and watching movies on nutrition, there was this desire to consume only (or mostly) whole grains. I started this blog to record my trials of cooking brown rice for everyday meals, which is a staple in the south Indian diet. It still is my most viewed post to date! Actually, till yesterday I should say. My most recent post baked butter murukku surpassed that.

It took me about 4 months (after starting to blog) to find out that there is a HUGE community of food bloggers within WordPress that one could connect to, and it makes blogging so much more interesting and rewarding. I have also started following some other food blogs on social media. These days I look forward to reading posts of all fellow-bloggers, in learning new techniques… now it seems like I’m mostly thinking about food.

Am I a foodie? I guess I BECAME one, thanks to this blogging journey!  (At least, by the definition on Wikipediea which states: A foodie is a gourmet, or a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food)

My mother is totally surprised by this change in me. “I never imagined that you’d start a cooking blog of all things in life!”, she still says.

My heart-felt thanks to all my blogger friends and readers out there who have encouraged me in the past year. I would like to thank each blogger who has commented on or liked my posts, but as Elaine said last week, I’m paranoid about leaving someone out when I attempt to mention all your names.

Whenever someone tries out a recipe from this blog and gives feedback, it really makes my day and makes all the effort worthwhile. I welcome suggestions to improve any recipe, too!

Here’s my little pie, as I promised…

It was inspired by the recipe on the cover of Baker’s chocolate. I avoided heavy cream and used coconut milk instead. And used my own nutty, gluten-free version of a crust.

mini Raspberry ganache pie

• Time: 40 minutes + refrigeration time
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients:

One 5″ aluminum pie dish.

For crust:

cashews- 25

almond meal/ flour- 5 tbsp.

butter- 3 tbsp.

For filling:

Baker’s chocolate- 4 oz.

full-fat coconut milk- 1/2 cup (the thick part only)

Berry preserves- 2 tbsp. (I used Trader Joe’s strawberry preserves)

For raspberry sauce:

Fresh raspberries- 6 oz. (reserve 6-8 raspberries for garnish)

sugar- 1 tsp.

water- 1 tsp.

Method:

* Make a powder of cashews in a good blender. Add almond flour, butter and blend well. Pat the mixture into the pie dish to make a crust. Make the edges rounded.

* Heat chocolate and coconut milk gently till the chocolate mixes and combines with the milk. Stir in the jam. Pour into prepared crust. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

* Prepare raspberry sauce by gently heating raspberries with 1 tsp. sugar and 1 tsp. water.

* Once the sauce forms, refrigerate it along with the pie.

* Using a knife, carefully push between the crust and pie dish to remove the pie. Decorate with reserved raspberries and serve with sauce.