Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year 2016.

The year 2015 came and went away at an amazing speed and like all the years, this too gave me a roller coaster ride. I will be sharing my most lovely experiences in my blog the whole year in this post. The year stared with a very delicious cake. This is one of my most famous blog posts for this year and I am also very proud of it as I developed the recipe for the eggless caramel cake. Click on image for recipe.

And then came a sweet surprise from hubby. He presented a lovely Microwave Oven for the new year and at once tried some recipes with that. Though I don’t usually cook using Microwave, it is very useful in melting chocolates, making instant mawa and two minute mug cakes. Though I haven’t posted them in the blog, my daughter gets a mug cake every week.

Then came one of my articles in Dinamalar – a famous news paper in Tamil Nadu. I developed some recipes with sugar cane juice especially for the article. Click on image to read the post.

The best part of being a blogger is the circle of friends we get through blogging. For me, I am so fortunate to be one of the BMers. Blogging Marathon was started by Srivalli during 2010 and I was one of the bloggers who participated at the beginning. Never did we dream that the group is going to become one big happy family and we will all be meeting each other. Though the members of the group are scattered around the world, Valli arranged for two meets, one for the 25th edition and the other for 50th edition. I couldn’t go for the first meet but obviously, I went for the second meet which took place in February 2015 in Chennai. We had such a wonderful time laving behind kid and hubby. I felt rechared ith energy and came back home with loads and loads of goodies bags and a bright face. Click on image to read all about my experiences at the met.

March 2015 saw a huge rise in the page views of my blog. That is the month I realised my goal in blogging world. Though my blog has all types of recipes, I found that the readers circle were happy with my eggless bakes and baking basics posts. I posted many Baking Basics posts during that month and saw the graph with a hug peak. This was one of the techniques I did under baking basics which got huge amount of appreciation from readers. Click on image to read the post.

April is our Mega Marathon month every year. Usually for Blogging Marathon we do three posts a week but during the months April and September, we do it whole month except for Sundays. Special themes are selected and we make dishes according to the theme. The theme for the April Marathon was Baking and I thoroughly enjoyed it as I am passionate about baking. Click on link to see all my posts.

One recipe I am so proud of is the Eggless Red Velvet Cake. I took me so many trials to finalise the recipe and it is the top most recipe in my blog for the year. So many of my readers  have made it and have gives positive feed back. And it is also the recipe which comes first in google search. Presenting you my Eggless Red Velvet Cake – click on image for recipe

I have rarely won any online competitions.At the beginning of blogging, I used to send my entries bu after a while, when I found that I was not that lucky, I stopped sending. When Vaishali announced an online competition based on street foods, I sent my entry but never even thought of winning it. Judged by a professional photographer, I won the prize and got a lovely gift box consisting of a lot of baking paraphernalia.So one more reason to be proud. Click on image for recipe.

June is the month where I discovered an amazing ingredient which is becoming a famous egg substitute. Aquafaba or Chickpea Brine which acts so much like egg whites, that it can be used in meringue, macarons and meringue based butter creams. Mostly it is got by draining canned chickpeas but it can easily be made at home. That is also one of the top most recipes of this year. Click on image for recipe.

Though I have made cheese at home, I haven’t tried making cheese with rennet due to the fear that it is derived from animals. But during June, I came across vegetable rennet and it was also available online. So I tried some cheeses like Haloumi, Feta and as successful at those experiments. Here is the link to the page where all my cheese recipes are featured.

One of my favourite recipes during the year is the Pea-nuttella. Making a twist on the famous nutella with peanuts, this was much appreciated by readers. And of course it was my daughter’s favourite too. Click on image for recipe.

And while trying Peanutella, I also tried my hand at Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread and was very very happy with the results. Without the addition of flour, it came out so perfect. Click on image for recipe.

One of the cakes I made which was quite innovative was the savoury urad dhal cake/ The Dahi Vada Cake. I made this for my Wedding Anniversary and go a lot of appreciation from family and friends. Click on image for recipe.

September was another busy month with Mega Marathon but I was so depressed by that time and wanted to skip it. That is when I understood how close we are as family in the BM group. Vaishali, senior of our group called me and talked me out of the depression and I was ready for the month long marathon. I could never forget her words in time of my need and even now I remember those when I find myself low. I must say hat it was one of the interesting marathons in my whole blogging career. I searched for authentic recipes, read a lot about them, researched a lot and then made them at home. But unfortunately I didn’t do a round up of that marathon. So I will give you a link to on of my post which I made part of the BM. This is the Ethiopian meal and I learnt a lot during the research. Click on image for recipe.

I love cake decorating and I was part of a cake decorating group for nearly a year. We used to make cakes according to themes every month and during September, it was fashion inspired cake. I mad a gravity defying structural Mannequin cake which taught me so much about cake decorating. But it was sad that it was my last project in the group as there were some problems during September. I will talk about it shortly. Here is the cake and a tutorial to make it. Click on image for the tutorial.

The post which gave me a break in blogging, baking and cake decorating is also one of my treasured finds of the year. Homemade Egg Replacing Powder is the recipe which became a huge turning point for me this year. Usually bloggers don’t always create recipes. Whenever we try out a rcipe online, we try to give proper credits to the original source. Those who don’t give are always treated as plagiarists. As I know about this from the beginning, I never ever publish a post without giving credit to he original source.  The same happened with this recipe too. But when posting in social media, we tend to give only he recipe link of our blog and only when someone clicks on the link and reads the recipe, they will know about he details. This has been going for ages and as usual, I posted my link in Facebook and that is when all hell broke loose.One lady accused me as a plagiarist and for a whole day accused me of with all sorts of names. I never ever faced this type of mud slinging in these five years. But I am still feeling elated as to the number of supporters I had that day. Even some well known bloggers supported me saying that it was not at all my fault. And that lady even de;led all her comments. But I couldn’t digest that and there was a lot of tears. My hubby was furious and wanted me to stop baking and blogging for a while. So for the next month I didn’t even try a single dish and there was no post for the whole month. Here is the one and only controversial post in my blog but I am still happy that I tried it.

Though I stopped blogging for a whole month, I couldn’t stay away from blogging for long. This break also gave me some insight on healthy life style. I stopped buying butter, flour and sugar. I tried many regional foods and my video channel was revived after the break. I started posting more videos and I am still learning editing and playback. I hope to perfect my video editing skills his year. Click on image for my Channel.

One of my achievement for the year 2015 is the publishing of my first eBook – Delicious Eggless Cakes. I wouldn’t say that it is a perfect book but I am so proud that it is my first book and is available at amazon and iBooks. I am now working on my second book and hope to release it this year. Click on image to know more about the book.

And coming to December, there is one more recipe which as appreciated by many readers. This is also one of the most simple recipes. Beetroot powder which can be used as a food colouring in bakes and cooking. Click on image for recipe.

When I started writing this post, I didn’t think I have done anything great during the year, but after going through the posts for the whole year, I am quite satisfied that I have done something useful both for me and my readers. I hope this New Year brings many great news for all.

Sending this to Srivalli’s Best of the Year 2015 event.