Frozen Goodies

I kept scratching my head to figure out what do for Valentine's Day this year. Finally decided to make some frozen goodies.

Low Fat Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

 Ingredients:-
2 cups low fat curd
10 odd strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
 Pinch of salt

Procedure:-
Blend the strawberries and curd in a mixer along with the sugar and a pinch of salt. Pour it out to a freezer safe container. Every 30 mins for the first 3 hours, take out the frozen yogurt and whisk very well to break any ice crystals. Freeze for total of about 5-6 hours.

Creamy Dark Chocolate Ice cream

 Ingredients:-
250 ml low fat milk
1 cup of cream
1/2 + 1/3 cup of milk powder dissolved in 1/2 cup of hot water
2/3 cup of sugar
2 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoon cornstarch
1/3 cup of dark cocoa powder
150gm of dark chocolate
1 tspn of vanilla extract
1 tspn of rum
pinch of salt

Procedure:-
Boil milk, cream,dissolved milk powder, sugar and honey in a heavy bottomed pot. Make a slurry of cornstarch with a little milk and keep aside. Add the cocoa powder into boiling milk and whisk well. Add the slurry of cornstarch and whisk while the mixture thickens. Take the pot off the heat and add chopped chocolate, vanilla extract, salt and rum. Combine well. Let it cool.
Freeze this custard. Every 1 hour for the first 3 hours take it out and whisk well to break any ice crystals. Freeze for a total of 5-6 hours.

And the winner is -

 Enjoy!

Sleep Sack

I have been a light sleeper but there is such a thing as "mother's sleep". Since the past one year I have been sleeping as if I were in a railway bogie. There was a time when Adrika was a few weeks old when I used to get up randomly in the middle of the night to check if she's breathing! Developing a mother's anxiety is innate and ingrained into our DNA.
Well I no longer get up to check if she's breathing. And yes, I do not think I require psychiatric evaluation! The irony is my babe has been sleeping through the night since she was 8 weeks old. But I still do get up once in a while to check if she's kicked off her blanket. Hehehe, I am crazy I know.
There is a untold law of humankind - The colder the night , the more often your baby will kick off her blanket.
So I sewed up this sleep sack to ensure that she sleeps snug. 

She likes it. She even likes to touch her toes in it!

The cloth is flannel. It has a 16 inch side zipper and velcro straps up front.

Things I learnt during this project -

• How to make a pattern from existing clothes. I couldn't find any pattern online for a sleep sack with side zipper. I didn't like the ones with the zipper down the front. So I decided to make my own pattern. Turned out great.
• How to sew a centered zipper. It was fun to use my zipper foot and get this done. 
• How to do french seams. They give a real neat finish. The inside of my sleep sack looks as pretty as the outside. No raw edges anywhere. 
• How to properly make bias binding. I have made binding for the quilting project earlier, but I learnt it properly this time, including a nifty little tool I made to iron out the binding. Will share details in a later post on binding. 
• How to sew a binding around curves.

Here is wishing me a good night sleep!