20th anniversary

On 1 February 2004, Nadia and I got married at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Twenty years later we went back there to take a couple of selfies :)

Selfie of a man and a woman in their forties standing in a nook in a hotel lobby.

Selfie of a man and a woman in their forties standing outside a large hotel.

Later that day we celebrated with food and, importantly, with cake.

Photo of a man and woman in their forties standing in a dining room along one corner of a large, rectangular dining table. In front of them is a caramel cake with “Happy Anniversary Nadia & Ameel” written on it. The woman is holding up the large knife with which she is going to cut the cake.

That cake, while delicious, wasn’t quite as fancy as the one we cut at our actual reception.

Photo of a man and a woman in South Asian wedding attire surrounded by their families on their wedding day. The couple are in the process of cutting a large, fancy cake that’s been placed on a table in front of them.

Nor did we make a meme out of the cake-cutting, like we did for our tenth anniversary :)

Photo of a man and a woman in South Asian wedding attire surrounded by their families on their wedding day. The couple are in the process of cutting a large, fancy cake that’s been placed on a table in front of them. The couple and several of their family members are laughing at a joke that’s just been told by someone off-camera. Written in Comic Sans font across the photo in a seemingly haphazard fashion are several phrases in broken English that represent a kind of inner monologue. This type of internet meme, known as Doge, was popular in 2013 and 2014. These phrases are “so marriage”, “much decade”, “giggle”. “wow”, “many love”, “very bliss”, “caaaaake”, “10/10 would marry”, and (bizarrely) “once even flow alive why go black jeremy oceans porch garden deep release” (which is the song list from Pearl Jam’s debut album, ‘Ten’, in case you’re wondering).

June desserts

June is chock full of family birthdays and this year Eid-ul-Azha also fell in that month. So I took out my apron and got to work :)

Collage of four photos. In the top left is a chocolate cheesecake with a chocolate cookie base and a chocolate ganache top. In the top right is a tall, plain looking cake with yellowish/white frosting. In the bottom left is a bowl full to the brim with seviyan (vermicelli) kheer. In the bottom right is an apple pie with a lattice pastry design on top.

The no-bake choc ripple cheesecake (top left) was for Nadia’s birthday, and it is based on Gemma Stafford’s no-bake Oreo cheesecake recipe. This was both gluten and lactose free.

The funfetti (aka sprinkles) birthday cake with lemon buttercream frosting (top right) was for my niece’s birthday. This is based on two of Gemma’s recipes: one for the cake and one for the frosting. I didn’t decorate the cake because the kids wanted to decorate it themselves.

The seviyan (vermicelli) kheer (bottom left) was for Eid-ul-Azha, and I made it using my mother’s recipe (which is a pretty standard recipe, tbh). This was lactose free.

The apple pie (bottom right) was for my older sister’s birthday. The pie is based on an SBS apple pie recipe and the crust is based on Sarah Howell’s gluten free shortcrust pastry recipe.