How They Do in Madurai

Well, I was finally able to get this video off my camera after over a year of trying! All it took was looking up instructions for accessing the camera through the applications folder and, um, using the Image Capture thingy to um, get the video... into my movies folder. Or something. Hooray!

I took this while checking out bakeries in Madurai, the city I lived in when I studied abroad in 2007-2008 in South India. In it you will see a young man, the bakery's top cake-decorator, totally destroy this cake. This is a guy who has seen and iced many a sponge, and judging by the speed and accuracy with which he works, I speculate that each cake is nearly identical to the last.

It was too big to fit on this blog so check it out on youtube!

Neat! Well... interesting anyways. The Western-style pastry making its way into South India is by and large very cookie-cutter type stuff, like something you might find at a North American chain grocery store. It doesn't taste too great either; note how the icing he spreads on the cake has been sitting out. There was no refrigeration for icing in this particular bakery, which leads me to believe that the frosting to be vegetable-shortening based. That's what it tasted like, too! Waxy.

Good thing there's lots of amazing North Indian sweets that are also commercially available!

Omg! So delicious!

And if you play your cards right, you could find yourself in the kitchen of a Tamil woman who might prepare some traditional southern sweets for you like payasam, pongal or my favorite, kozhkattai. Awesome little coconutty dumplings, a favorite of Pillaiyar (AKA Ganesha)... Mmmm.

A neighbor of my dance teacher's in Madurai preparing payasam.


Payasam is like a sweet soup, oftentimes prepared with vermicelli noodles and almonds.

Alright, next up: an update on the Christmas cake. I'm going to make some white chocolate plastique for playin with.