Flashback to the 80s. It’s June. It is a rainy morning, typical of Indian monsoons. With her raincoat and rainboots on, a little girl waits by the window with a pit in her stomach for her ride to school – her rickshaw-wallah to show up. First day of school jitters. The first day of school after a long, fun summer vacation spent monkeying around with cousins. “Why can’t we just live with our cousins?”, she asks her mom. Her mother sensing her anxiety, simply pulls out her umbrella, walks over to a little bakery across the road and buys her a cream roll and puts it in her lunchbox. Suddenly, school doesn’t seem like such a chore anymore, the pain of being away from her cousins is numbed, if only for a little while and the little girl looks forward to school, especially lunch time.
I’m sure you’ve gathered that the little girl was me. I still remember the bakery opposite my house. It didn’t have a name, or did it? I cannot seem to recollect. I only remember we called it by the owner, Mr.Kulkarni’s name. I remember the smell of fresh bread baking there every morning. Cream rolls and those log cakes with jam and coconut flakes were my particular favorites. Sadly, that dear little bakery fell out of business when large chains like Monginis sprung up everywhere. But Kulkarni Uncle’s bakery and those cream rolls will always have a special place in my heart.
When I saw Sneh Roy’s Cream Horns Recipe, all those sweet memories of Kulkarni Uncle’s bakery came gushing forth. I had to make this. Incidentally, my husband also has fond memories of cream rolls and jam cakes from his childhood. So this Valentine’s Day, I plan to take him on a trip down memory lane with these cream rolls and also give my toddler, M, a taste of my childhood.
Sneh’s recipe makes 24 cream rolls. I had just one sheet of puff pastry lying around. So I halved her ingredients for the cream filling. 1 sheet of pastry made 8 cream rolls. I was still left with some extra cream, which I froze to make ice-cream!
Valentine’s Day is in a couple of days but the cream rolls have been promptly polished off. And it got rave reviews from my worst critic and my biggest fan, my toddler, M.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you spend some quality time with your loved ones!