I had gone shopping for holiday cards but unfortunately didn’t like any of them and the ones I did like were so overpriced! So, I decided to make a trip to the dollar store and get some craft supplies to make my very own holiday greeting. As I was making them, Sona came over and she said that we should make the back cover of the cards fun as well so she took charge of doing all the work on the back covers. We had so much fun making these cards and the recipients have been pleased as well, what more could one ask for . Plus this little creative project was just what we needed to get the creative juices flowing and now it’s from one project to another…stay tuned!

It’s a bird…It’s a plane…no it’s the GyanGurus! We’re back and we’re here to stay…until we get uninspired and depressed again, which we’re still currently, but we did something that was completely the opposite. It was utterly inspired and uplifting. What could it be?

Well you’re talking about the GyanGurus here…so it has to be one of the fs of life. In this instance it’s food. For Jasmine’s mom’s birthday we baked a birthday cake. It wasn’t just any birthday cake, it was the mother of all cakes. We’ve been into food forever…eating it, cooking it, and writing about it. We got into baking quite a while back, but recently we’ve gotten really good at it…all that free time and all that practice.

We saw the recipe on gourmet.com and we both wanted to make it, but it just seemed so daunting. But, we decided to do it last week for Jasmine’s mom’s birthday and thought it would be less daunting, if we did it together and so we did.

We baked the Twelve-Layer Mocha Cake.

First, it was the cake layers.

Second, the soufflé layers.

Third, the meringue layers.
There are toasted hazelnuts in this layer, we just didn’t get a picture.

The buttercreams – Mocha and Coffee.

The syrup.

Assembled cake.

We made the decorations ourselves too!

That piece, the last picture, turned out to be ambitious, the cake was heavy so you couldn’t eat a lot, but it was delicious and every bite was completely and utterly satisfying. And it didn’t hurt that we made it ourselves. Of course making it wasn’t like eating it. It wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be, but it was very time-consuming…even if we hadn’t messed up and had to make the meringue layers twice.

The first time we toasted the hazelnuts and when it was time to take off the loose skins, we used a towel that turned out be dirtier than it looked…ooops! So we had to throw it away, but we should’ve tried to take the wax paper off of that layer because the second layer turned out to be a pain in our necks, literally!

If you’re going to make it, please don’t butter the sheet when you bake the meringue layers…the wax paper will stick to it and you will spend the night trying to take the paper off with your hands, while breaking the layers into pieces because it’s too damn delicate. So don’t butter the sheet, for the love of god don’t butter it! It didn’t say in the directions to butter it, but we just assumed since the other two layers had to be…and when could butter be bad in baking…well it can be. Follow the directions exactly as they are and you’ll be fine.

In the end, it was a really satisfying experience, we think we should open a restaurant.

You must have heard the news, it is everywhere and it slowed down Google last night. Micheal Jackson has died. We weren’t fans of his music because we used to live in India and we used to be so young. But than why are we writing this post? Because even living in Punjab, India at 8 or 9 years old, when we didn’t much care about what music we liked…we knew of Micheal Jackson. We knew the moonwalk. He was an icon, not just in American but all over the world.

We just feel like, it cannot go unmentioned, something this big. The death of Micheal Jackson.

But, he is not the only icon we lost this week. There’s Farrah Fawcett, who died the same day as MJ just a few hours earlier, eternally etched in our memories of that famous poster and that hair.

And Ed McMahon. Heeeeee’re Johnny would not have been the same without him.

What an impact these people have made to so many people’s lives, but in time their memories will fade. But once in a while, when listening, watching something we’ll remember them and what they left behind. I guess that’s life…and that’s death.

I just thought I’d share something that I’d done on photoshop few weeks ago. I was bored and thought why not just brush-up my photoshop skills, so this is what I did…

-Jasmine

Before

After

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Picture courtesy – Baljinder Sahdra

You all know our love of Pinkberry. Before Pinkberry, we weren’t big fans of frozen yogurt, considering it tasted like ice cream…and why have the “wannabe” when you could just have the original thing!

Once we’re obsessed…well you remember cupcakes. While the last place we went to couldn’t beat Pinkberry, we thought we should give “Red Mango” a try, since we heard good things about it. We went to the one in Valley Fair after we finished prom dress shopping for Arjoo (Sona’s cousin).

Arjoo: Orignal with chocolate chips

The atmosphere at Red Mango wasn’t appealing. While they kept it very simple, like Pinkberry…it sort of reminded us of a club because the lights were dim…not something you desire when eating frozen yogurt, which is such a summery treat…think bright, sunny…Pinkberry.

Sona: Original/Pomegranate with strawberries

Now to the more important aspect, the taste. It was very close to Pinkberry, but not completely there. But, this is just us. We love the tarty-yogurt taste, but Red Mango was a little too sweet for us. It still had the tartness…so many of you out there might actually prefer “Red Mango” if you think Pinkberry is too tart. It was a lot more creamy than Pinkberry…a negative for us because it reminds us of ice-cream.

They also keep the fruit too cold. So we had to suffer through frozen strawberries and blackberries.

Jasmine: Original/Pomegranate with blackberries

A plus-side to Red Mango…you have the option of mixing two-flavors…as you can see in the pictures! Overall we would give it 3.5 out of 5.

This is long overdue, but it’s been hard to post when there isn’t much going on in our lives right now…it’s horrible looking for a job in this market. These are pictures of pizza I made with my mom…it looks better than it tasted! Something happened to the crust, possibly because we left the dough too long…but needless to say it was a lot of fun!

Mixed Veggie

Spinach and Mushroom

Sona

Reading Arjoo’s fiction or non-fiction story, TJ (Sona’s other cousin) was inspired to write a “story” of his own. This is the e-mail we received:

“I have a fiction or non-fiction.

I was walking with my friend to his soccer practice, when suddenly, a gay guy grabbed my butt. Instantly, I punched him in the face and started beating the crap out of him.

This reaction stopped, only when I noticed, the man I was beating the crap out of was none other than Shah Rukh Khan. I helped him up and after I apologized, we danced to the song Om Shanti Om with Aishwariya Rai and Juhi Chawla.

Fiction or Non-Fiction?”

- TJ

Me and my friend Diana were hungry for lunch one day after school, so we decided to go to Carls Jr. because it’s the closest place near our school. So we went inside and I saw that they were selling cookies, I was so excited!

I love cookies so I got a cookie and then we went outside. I was going to eat my cookie…than all of the sudden some random man took my cookie. I had no idea where he came from and who he was. My friend Diana was pissed that he took my cookie because he just grabbed it out of my hand.

She started yelling at him, at what he was doing. He just walked away from us.

We realized soon after, that he was a homeless man.

As we were walking away, realizing what happened and how random it was, we looked back because we saw something falling in front of us. There were cookies! The homeless man, with a couple of his friends, were yelling “chips ahoy” as they were throwing cookies at us!

Now what do you say to that? Fiction or non-fiction?

-Arjoo*
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*The author is Sona’s cousin.

We recently did an interview. It was with a Filmistan, a.k.a Bollywood, celebrity! We’re still psyched about it!

How did two nobodies in Silicon Valley with no connection to Filmistan score an interview with a celebrity? We got it using our once-sworn enemy: Facebook. We thought we’d never be found on these social networking sites, what was the point?

After a lot of convincing by our friends, we submitted to the times and finally joined. Now, we can’t get away from it. We’ve made our presence felt on one of the biggest social networking sites of today. Facebook is the perfect way to spend an entire day trying to add famous people on your friends list!

So far it has proved to be a good tool and as we mentioned above, it got us our first celebrity interview for our other blog, which is strictly about Hindi movies. OH did we not let our shishiyas know about our other blog…we’re sorry, here’s the link.

Since, I don’t have school anymore I find it difficult to keep myself busy doing things that are meaningful and productive. Drawing is something I really enjoy and it always makes me happy…it’s a de-stressor for me and I probably never appreciated it as much as I did a few days ago! It was relieving to forget about everything that was happening around me and just concentrating on every pen stroke I made.
Here’s what I did -

Jasmine