Rendez Vous With A Foodie-Divya Prakash of Divya's Culinary Journey

Most of my followers knows very well about my new event where am introducing upcoming new budding bloggers twice a month.As i told earlier, the main motto of this event is to showcase the new food bloggers,their passions and their respective blogs.Obviously every 7th and 20th of the month, a newbie blogger will post their guest post in my space and am very happy to introduce them eventhough some of them may be very much familiar to you. However am proud and happy to invite them to my space to post their guest post and i got immense responses from each and every newbies when i send a message through a social network.Thanks guys, am really honoured and blessed to get you all around me.

 As i promised am here again with a beautiful second guest post from a wonderful blogger. She is none other than Divya Prakash who blogs at Divya's Culinary Journey, i have so many sweet memories to share about Divya. She is one among the fabulous,humble, affectionate,caring,down to earth,jovial sisters i have met through this virtual world. With two lil darlings, she is a busy mom eventhough when i asked her a guest post for me she said immediately 'yes'.

Actually we are just fellow bloggers before few months, but the bond between us took an another direction and we are getting very closer now. Her blog is a wonderful space where she shares many Indian style foods, healthy bakes and many more healthy foods with wholegrains.Everytime,while bloghopping she never failed to surprise me, she always come up with eye catchy clicks. She have a magical hands and her clicks speaks a lot.

Shall we go to meet my second guest Divya Prakash of Divya's Culinary Journey..

When Priya Akka came up with the idea of Rendevous with a Foodie, I immediately wanted to be a part of it.  Little did I then know, that will lead to some wonderful friendships which I will cherish throughout my life time. We have bonded so much that our group chat, is full of laughter and fun, it is like the good old college times. Thanks to Priya Akka for all these. 

She is one of the most wonderful person I have come across and a versatile blogger whom I look up with much respect. She has been blogging for five years and have been posting almost every single day. She has approximately 2390 recipes in her space. So it was challenge for me to decide on what I want to make for her that is special and has not been already blogged by her. I wanted to make something sweet and something baked. Finally zeroed on this Raspberry pinwheels and it came out really wonderful. My kids just loved it.

1) Tell us about you and your blog?

My name is Divya. I am from Coimbatore and now in USA for the past 3.5 years. I am a stay at home Mom of two kids. My family loves to eat good food and I love to cook for them. My blog shows my passion for cooking and baking. It has tried and tested recipes from my kitchen.

2)Before and after blogging, tell us how blogging changed your life?

Before blogging I would not experiment much, even if I am trying something new, will stick strictly to the recipe and have not tried any other cuisine except Indian. After I started blogging , I have started  experimenting, trying various cuisines.

Being away from home, I used to feel lonely at times. After I started blogging I have got a lot of good friends who are always there when I need them. Priya Akka is one among them. 

Before, I was not very interested in Photography. But blogging has changed that. I have developed interest in Photography and I am constantly trying to improve my pictures.

3)When and what motivated you to blog about food?

Before I started blogging, I used to click pictures and share in Facebook. I started my blog on January 31, 2012. Though I created my blogger account much before that, that  day I just created a blog, clicked and posted my first recipe.  I thought with blog, I can share both pictures and recipe to my friends and family. I knew very little about blog then. 

My Mom and Dad were and are very supportive. My husband is my first critic. He gives his honest opinion all the time, also when he is free, he proof reads for me and helps me with the clicks. My brother is the one who designed the blog header for me. Though he is a Pilot, he is very good with Photoshop and he is very creative. And you all know about the kids and the help they do for the blog. 

4)There are tons of blogs/pages on food these days what according to you is the speciality of your blog and the food that you cook?

I like to cook very simple and easy recipes. I mostly stay away from complicated process. My blog contains simple and easy recipes for a novice cook/ baker. 

5)When its comes to cooking, who is your inspiration?

My Mom is my inspiration. My Mom is a working woman, still there are times she has cooked each one of us different dish the same time. She has never complained about it. There are some recipes which taste good only when Mom cooks. We call ‘Kaipakkuvam’ in Tamil. It has been 2 years since I had mom’s food.. Waiting to enjoy her love, pampering and cooking.

6) Every newbie blogger faces tons of challenges when it comes to blogging,tell me about one of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome it? please specify with facts and details.

Every day there will be new challenges. With every challenge I learn something new. In that, One is Social Media. Except Facebook I was not familiar with other social Medias like pinterest, twitter or stumble upon. But now I have account in all three, but except Stumble Upon, I am familiar with other two.  

Also other issues like HTML codes, other technical stuffs, when I have such issues, my Hubby will provide the support. These are the convenience of having a husband who is a software person.

7)What is your best recipe and your favourite recipes you have blogged till now?

I like my Oven roasted Broccoli and the other recipes which I  like are Strawberry Jello Pie, Corn Fritter, Chocolate Cake and Blueberry Icecream etc.

8) Few tips about food photography?

I am still a novice photographer..I am still learning every day. 

The few tips I want to share,

Lighting is very important. I prefer daylight for clicking pictures

Composition of the picture is important. 

Do a little styling to the food  before clicking. 

9)What is your budget for the props,do you have any or else do you manage with your household stuffs?

I don’t spend much for the props. I usually use what I use normally at home. But recently I started buying few props, but I still haven’t used them in any. Surprisingly they are not more than 2-3 $ each. 

10) How do you plan your blog post? Do you post rarely,regularly or once a week?

I usually post 3 posts a week. But with change in schedule or if something comes  up, there may be a change in this schedule.

11) Do you have any other passion apart from food blogging or blog you own?

Apart from blogging, I like to paint and also I like to sew. But with an energetic toddler at home, I hardly get time for this.

Recipe Source: Jo Cooks

Ingredients:

Butter (Room temperature), 1/3 cup

Cream cheese(Room temperature), 1/3 cup

Sugar, 2/3 cup

Eggs, 1 no.

Vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon

All purpose flour, 2 cups

Baking Powder, 1 teaspoon

Seedless jam, 1/3 cup (approximately)

Chopped pistachios, ¼ cup (approximately)

How to make:

Mix cream cheese and butter together until they are well blended. 

Add Sugar, mix well.

Then beat the eggs and add to the mixture, mix well and add vanilla extract and  mix well.

To this add flour little by little and mix well.

Divide the dough into two, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Then roll the dough into the required thickness and using knife, cut the dough in squares of required size.

Then take each square and shape it in to a pinwheel.

Then drop a required amount of jam in the centre of the pinwheel and top it with chopped nuts. 

In a cookie tray, line it with parchment paper. Arrange the prepared cookies in the tray.

Pre heat the oven to 350F and bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes.

Let the cookies cool in cooling rack, then transfer to airtight containers and Enjoy.

It yielded around 48 cookies for me. 

Notes:

The number of cookies depends on the size of cookies you make. I made 2 inches square.

You can use any seedless jam of your preference. If you use strawberry jam, call them strawberry pinwheels.

You can use any nuts of your choice. 

The timings of the cookies in the oven vary with each oven. Mine got done in 8 minutes. So keep an eye in the oven.

Hope you all enjoyed this guest post by Divya Prakash, dont forget to check who is my next guest on 7th of April  with an another bubbly blogger buddy.