Baking has always intrigued me and ovens were always mysterious electrical appliances never to be played with. The only oven I was ever familiar with while growing up was an old fashioned contraption my mom used to bake an occasional cake. Once that broke down, that was the end of her baking experiments. Unfortunately, my father in spite of being a food lover,  had no interest whatsoever in freshly baked goods simply because baking was not really part of our food culture. This meant that the poor oven was never repaired or replaced and we never had a home baked cake ever after that.

Years later, here I am in Ireland and in the process of adapting to Western ways of life, I’ve slowly and surely grown confident of using the oven on a regular basis. To keep this confidence up, I felt the need to bake something, a loaf of bread, a cake, something that would give me a smug sense of satisfaction. That’s how I decided to try a recipe from Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra’s gorgeous book, ‘Warm Bread and Honey Cake’. It’s a wonderful collection of baking related recipes from different parts of the world and brings exotic flavours and their stories from around the globe straight into your kitchen.

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