Microwave Biscuit Cake

By    11:52 PM // 12 comments
Today's recipe I opted to prepare at the time when there was no baking oven at my place. I came across this microwave recipe on a social networking site [obviously it has to be FB,,,a piece of cake if  you guessed it rightly ;)] by a member Ekta Chopra. Her recipe was followed by many other members who did some changes to the original recipe. A yummy and an easy to make cake. We can bake this cake in microwave, oven and even in pressure cooker.
All the ingredients are easily available, an eggless recipe and the microwave option. I had to try this recipe.

Ingredients

 Glucose biscuits [Parle G or Tiger] 1 packet  [100 gms]* [ you can use any biscuits like marie/ good day/ oreo biscuits
Hide n Seek /Bourbon biscuit 1 packet [100 gms]
Sugar 2 tsp [adjust as per the taste]
Milk 1/2 cup
Eno salt 3/4 tsp non-flavoured
Icing sugar/ choco chips and chocolate sauce for decoration [optional]
Butter to grease the microwave vessel

 Method:

 Take a packet of any glucose biscuit, either Parle G or Tiger or any other brand. Take the packet of chocolate biscuits [Bourbon or Hide n Seek]

 Empty the packets in mixer and dry grind them to fine powder. Add 2 tsp of sugar, half a cup of milk and stir again in mixer to form a smooth batter. Add 3/4 tsp of ENO [fruit salt] and stir everything in mixer. Grease the microwave vessel with butter and pour the mixture from mixer into this vessel.
Microwave just for 5 minutes. Since the original recipe didn't mention any specific setting in the microwave, I assumed it to be normal mode at full power and as per my MW settings it took me 6 and half minutes. [Toothpick or knife inserted in the centre should come out clean]

 Once the cake is done allow it to cool. Now transfer the cake to a plate and decorate by sprinkling some icing sugar, choco chips and chocolate sauce. Slice and serve. 
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Gharge

By    10:00 PM // No comments
Gharge [also known as gharya] are sweet pumpkin puris. It is a traditional recipe of Maharashtra prepared from red pumpkin, rawa, rice flour. Here, I have tweaked the recipe and used sweet potato in place of red pumpkin and wheat flour in place of rice flour.
Recipe source: adapted from Bhatukli

 Ingredients

Sweet potato grated -1 cup [You may use red pumpkin itself]
Jaggery  1 cup [you can increase/ decrease the quantity as per your needs].
Wheat flour 3/4 cup
Fine rawa 1/4 cup
Salt for taste
Ghee
Oil for frying

Method:
Wash sweet potato, remove the skin and grate it. Measure the amount of grated sweet potato. Heat ghee in a pan and add grated sweet potato saute it on low heat for few minutes. Add powdered jaggery and give a mix. Cook until the moisture evaporates. Switch off the flame. When mixture cools down a little bit, add wheat flour, rawa and salt and make a dough of it. Knead well to make a firm dough. Cover the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes.
Make small balls from this dough and roll them out into small puris. Deep fry these in hot oil until golden brown. If lucky enough they might fluff up. [Mine didn't puff up but the taste was yummmmm]. Drain them on kitchen towel. You can eat them immediately or store them in a container for a week.

Happy cooking !
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Iddiyappams/ Rice String hoppers/ Shevayin

By    7:00 PM // 3 comments
Shevayin is konkani word for rice noodles, a breakfast dish in many amchi homes and the combination of shevayi with rosu is hit one with amchis.

The traditional preparation requires a special instrument known as "shevayi dante". I obviously never attempted this traditional way, firstly because I thought the process to be time-consuming, tiresome, and secondly the absence of this instrument at my home in pardes. I was always on lookout for a simple process to prepare these rice noodles. 

 One day, a family friend of mine brought a tiffin filled with mini shevayi's [she had prepared them on idli stand and so they were small in size] and I was super excited to see them as well as eat them with chutney. This is when I got to know from her about the noodles been prepared from rice flour. And since that day, I am preparing these noodles [ called as Iddiyappams in Malayali] from rice flour and my family enjoying them with chutney or godda rossu [made from jaggery] or sometimes just a dash of coconut oil on top.

 Thank you Chitra mayi for this yummy recipe




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Eggless Tutti Frutti cake

By    7:30 PM // 6 comments
After the initial attempts of mine to bake a cake, yes now I am confident enough to say "I can bake". To boost my confidence more, I decided to try one more cake recipe. This time it was from Tickling Palates by Radhika and I was pleased to get the perfect result once again :).
The below recipe is an updated one [07/07/2018] as I have started baking this cake with oil in place of butter for a long time now.

Ingredients

1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour/ Maida 
3/4 tsp baking powder 
1/4 tsp +1/8 tsp baking soda 
3/4 cup sugar 
3/4 cup curd [at room temperature]
3/4 cup oil
Little less than 1/2 cup milk  [room temperature]
1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla essence 
Tutti frutti, little more than 1/2 cup. Toss them well with about 1 tbsp all purpose flour before adding them to the batter [This doesn't allow them to sink and gets evenly distributed during the process of baking]


Method:

Pre heat the oven @180 degrees C. Grease with 1 tsp butter  to the base and sides of the baking tray and dust it with flour . Gently tap it upside down so that the extra flour goes off.[You may also use baking paper to line the pan]

Sieve together flour, baking soda, baking powder and keep aside. Mix together curd and sugar, whisk it until the sugar dissolves in the mixture. Next add oil and whisk it. Add 1/4 cup of milk and vanilla essence. Mix it well until the wet mixture turns smooth, I used a hand mixer to mix the above liquid ingredients. Now, add the sieved flour gradually to the wet mixture. Switch to a spatula and fold it gently taking care not to over do it. You may add the remaining milk according to the need to adjust the consistency of the cake batter.

Now add tuttifrutii mixture and give it a final mix. Pour the batter in prepared pan/tray and bake for 40-45 mins @180 degrees C or till a toothpick/knife inserted comes out clean. [Oven timings may vary,keep a watchful eye on your cake and check for doneness. It takes about 50-55 mins for me to get it perfectly done]

Allow the cake to cool on the wire rack for 5- 10 min. Slice it up and enjoy biting into the each slice of this cake.



 Note:

  • Sometimes I add saffron strands to 2 tbsp warm milk and add to the wet mixture.
  • You can use an icecream scoop to divide the cake batter and fill in the cupcake liners to prepare tasty colourful cupcakes.


 Happy Baking !!!
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Chotta Bheem laddoos

By    2:15 PM // No comments
Surprised to read that name as the post title :P. I am sure you are and would have guessed by now which laddoos I am talking about and going to post here. 

 Yes, they are the Boondi laddoos, favourite of Chotta Bheem. I have 2 great fans of Chotta Bheem at my place and thus laddoos invariably has to be their favourite too. 

 The recipe has been  inspired and adapted from here

Ingredients

 Besan/ chickpea flour 2 cups
Food color [optional] few drops
Sugar 1 1/2 cup
Water 1 1/2 cup
Kesar few strands
Cardamom powder
Oil for deep frying
Raisins/ nuts [optional]

 Method:

 Sieve besan and add water slowly to make a smooth batter without any lumps. The batter should be of dropping/flowing consistency. You can add few drops of food color [optional]

 Now to make one thread consistency sugar syrup [Kindly read about different strength of sugar syrup by doing an internet search]
Mix sugar with equal amount of water. Let it boil and reach the stage of one thread consistency. Add kesar. This whole process will take about 15-20 minutes. Switch of the flame. Add cardamom powder to this syrup.

 For deep frying the boondis
Take oil for frying in a kadai and heat it. Take the besan batter and pour it over a laddle with round holes. Tap the laddle gently with a spoon so that small balls of besan fall into the oil. Keep the laddle close to the frying kadai so that you get nice round shaped boondis.
Fry them for a minute taking care to remove them from oil before they turn crisp. Drain the excess oil and drop them in sugar syrup. Mix them well.
Keep repeating this process till all the besan batter is used up. 

 Allow the boondi sugar syrup mixture to rest for sometime. The mixture has to be warm and not cool down completely. Take a tablespoon of mixture in your palm and start pressing them to give a round laddoo shape. Once you are done making all the laddoos from the mixture, take one laddoo at a time and reshape them to a perfect ball. You can place a raisin/broken cashew pieces/ chopped pistas [optional] on each laddoo. Apply little ghee on the palm before going on to the last step to give a glossy look to those laddoos.

Happy cooking!
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Til gul shengdana Vadi / Burfi

By    1:42 PM // No comments
An easy recipe today.

 Ingredients

 Sesame seeds [white] roasted 1/2 cup
Jaggery grated 1/2 cup
Peanut powder coarse 1/2 cup
Dessicated Coconut 1/2 cup
Condensed milk 1/4 cup
Cardamom powder
Few pieces of almonds for garnishing

Method:

Dry roast the dessicated coconut for a minute and keep it aside. Roast sesame seeds till it gets golden brown colour. Roast the peanuts, de-skin them. After everything cools down grind half of the quantity of sesame seeds and all the peanuts to coarse powder in a mixie jar.

 Heat the jaggery in a thick bottomed vessel till it melts completely. Add condensed milk, sesame and peanut powders, dessicated coconut and cardamom powder. Mix it properly stirring continuously till the mixture turns out to be of thicker consistency. Now add the remaining sesame seeds and give a stir so that they get mixed well with the mixture. Switch off the flame. 
Now spread this mixture evenly on a greased plate [take a bowl with flat surface greased with little ghee and spread the mixture evenly]. Before it cools down completely cut them into desired shapes. Garnish each piece with almond pieces. [optional]. Let it cool completely before you take them out to store in the container. 

Note: I refrigerated them for 20 mins [in order to fasten the process of cooling] before I packed them to be sent with my son for distributing these burfis as prasad to his friends in the shloka class

[U can do all these steps in the microwave also stirring the mixture in between at an interval of 1 min for 4 mins till the mixture turns out to be of thicker consistency]

Happy cooking !

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Eggless Vanilla Cupcake Using Curd

By    10:24 PM // No comments
2013, another fresh new year and my first post of this year is here...
"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us "
- Hal Borland

Year 2012 helped me grow professionally, and also find some of my hidden interests like photography and cooking [I am still trying to figure out how a girl like me who used to run away from the kitchen, now loves to be in there experimenting, trying and testing n number of recipes :P]. This year I hopped and took a step up to initiate my blog, that keeps a record of these experiments from my kitchen. 

A big hug to my hubby, kisses to my kiddos who have been constantly there by my side, supporting me, and letting me pursue my newly found interests :). 
Thanks to all my friends, near and dear ones who have been so loving, motivating and supporting me throughout. 

Looking forward to new challenges and opportunities in 2013 that will help me become a wiser and better person.
New Year is the occasion to
Open new Ways & Make new dreams,
to find again the power & faith within you,
to rejoice in simple pleasures &
Go for some new challenges.
- Author unknown

Wish you all A happy, healthy, safe and prosperous 2013 !!! 

Thought of starting the new year with a sweet beginning and birthday celebrations [my younger one celebrates his birthday on 1st Jan :)] and hence the cupcakes post here as part of celebrations at my place. (photos have been updated Feb 2017)



Eggless Vanilla cupcakes [using yoghurt] with fresh whipped cream

A Nita Mehta recipe which I came across here Cook Curry Nook

Ingredients

1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour/Maida
1 cup yoghurt 
1 cup castor sugar 
1 and 1/4 tsp baking powder 
1/2 tsp baking soda 
1/2 cup cooking oil (any flavourless oil)
1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla essence 

 Note: All the measurements mentioned above are leveled & not heaped.

 Method:

 Seive maida and keep it aside. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C for 15 mins. Prepare cupcake tins by placing cupcake liners. 
In a large bowl, mix the yogurt & sugar until the sugar dissolves completely. Now add baking powder and baking soda to the above and mix well. Leave it aside for 5 minutes.You will see bubbles appearing and the mixture slightly raising in volume . Now add oil, vanilla essence and mix well. Add the flour spoon by spoon and gently fold the mixture. Mix well until creamy. Avoid stirring it vigorously.

 Fill each cupliner 3/4th full and bake in a preheated oven for 30-40 minutes or until cupcakes are done. To check if they are done insert a toothpick in center of the cake and it should come out clean. Remove them from oven and can place them on wire rack, allow them to cool completely. [ I kept them for about hour or so].

You can bake the same batter in 6 inch cake tin as seen in the below pic.



For Icing/ Frosting
I used leftover whipped cream frosting and some edible food colors. You can check the ingredients as well as quantity to whip the cream here. I experimented with different nozzles to get different designs.



Happy Baking!
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