Rava Dosa And Dates and Chocochips Pan Cakes

Rava Dosa

Rava dosa made into my favorite list the day I ate it opposite my college back in pune. The crispiness of the dosa along with the cashews spread on it made it so much more enjoyable. So when I saw my mom preparing it when I was in India in December and learnt that its so quick and simple, I had been meaning to make it like a long time. Today on Sunday I thought it would be a perfect way to make a tasty brunch that requires minimal efforts.

Ingredients

1 Cup Rava

1 Cup Rice Powder

1/4 Cup Maida

1/2 Spoon Jeera

1/4 Spoon Asafoetida

Finely chopped Roasted Cashews

2 Green Chillies

Salt to taste

Ghee

Method

• Mix rava, rice powder, maida, finely chopped green chillies, jeera, asafoetida with salt.
• Add in lots of water to make a thin batter.
• Keep aside for 20 minutes
• Add in more water so that it is thin consistency
• Heat tawa on medium flame
• Grease tawa with Ghee and pour the 1/2 cup batter at a time spreading it over the tawa.
• Let it cook till the dosa gets light brown color.
• Sprinkle couple of drops of ghee and flip the dosa and let the other side be cooked
• Sprinkle some cashews and fold on either side and serve.

Notes

When I tried making it I didnt let the batter sit for those 20 minutes, because of which the batter kept on thickening - blaming it to the Rava. It made first two dosas thick and soggy. So I strongly suggest letting the batter sit for 20-30 minutes.

To spread the batter on the tawa I dropped the batter on tawa from a bit of distance and slowly over areas that didnt have batter, letting it form the mesh and yet avoiding forming layers, hence keeping it thin.

Chocochips Pan Cakes

I had been making pan cakes for quite some time. One of the easiest and tasty breakfast. I had made it with cranberries, mangoes, blue berries earlier. Today I didn't have any of the fruits that would go in it. So I decided to make it with what I had plenty - Dates and Chocochips. The pan cakes came out really nice and we had hearty breakfast on such a lovely bright day.

Ingredients

1/2 Cup Dates

1/4 Cup Choco Chips

1/2 Cup Wheat Flour

1/2 Cup Maida

3/4 Cup Curd

1 Egg

3/4 Spoon Sugar

1/2 Spoon Vanilla Essense

1/4 Spoon Baking Powder

1/4 Spoon Baking Soda

2.5 Spoon Melted Butter

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Deseed the Dates and chop them into small pieces. Keep aside.
• Sieve together wheat flour and maida
• Add Sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda and mix well
• Add egg, curd, melted butter and vanilla essence. Mix well.
• Add 1/2 cup warm water and mix well to flowing consistency.
• Heat a nonstick pan over medium flame.
• Pour the pan cake batter 1/2 cup at a time on the non stick pan and top it with some choco-chips and dates
• Over medium-low heat, cook the pan cakes till golden brown in color and bubbles up the top side. Flip and golden the other side too. Serve with honey and or maple syrup

Notes

The batter is so non sticky that I didnt have to grease the pan at all.

Ajoy felt that the sweetness from Dates was little too much, I guess using Dark choco chips might be good idea to balance the sweetness. I didnt have dark choco chips sot used semi sweet chips.

Malpua And Almonds Topped Chocochip Muffins

These days its been raining so much that I had to drive to and from work. Most of the days I end up getting stuck in traffic and by the time I reach home I dont feel like adventuring into anything other than meals.. Yesterday I decided to beat the traffic by leaving early instead and glad it did almost work (got stuck in traffic for just 5 minutes that's an achievement :)). When I reached home I realized that my laptop had succumbed to death just last night and I had to revive it before I can continue my work from home. So while my laptop was getting its life I decided to bake these ones especially with almonds because these days I have become little forgetful. They say almonds help improve memory :D now is the time to see if they can :) Thankfully my laptop has become as good as new and working even better than what it was like when it was new. I give credit to win7 and also to the fact that I kept it light unlike those whole bunch of installs that came from Dell. Now I am looking forward to see if my memory can come back after this almond's dose :) So here I am sharing this extremely simple recipe of these delicious cakes I made.

Ingredients

1 Cup Butter

2 Cup Sugar

4 Cup Maida

2 Cup Choco-chips

3/4 Cup Almonds

1 Cup Milk

4 Spoon Brown Sugar

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Spoon Baking Soda

1/2 Spoon Baking Powder

2 Eggs

Salt to taste

Method

• In a bowl beat sugar and butter till its fluffy.
• Add in eggs and beat again.
• Add in vanilla essence, milk and beat till creamy, fluffy mixture is formed.
• Add in maida, baking soda, baking powder and salt to taste and mix in with light hands till everything is nicely accommodated in the egg-butter-sugar mixture.
• Add in 1.5 cups of choco-chips and mix lightly. Keep aside
• Chop almonds to coarse pieces and mix them with brown sugar and remaining 1/2 cup choco-chips. Keep aside
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
• Grease muffin pans and fill them in with the batter to 2/3rd level each.
• Sprinkle the almond-chocochip-sugar mixture on all these muffins equally.
• Bake the muffins at 350F/180C for 25 minutes.

Notes

I used raw almonds and sprinkled them on top instead of mixing it in the batter. The almonds were roasted amazingly while the cake baked. 

I also mixed in brown sugar and chocochips with the almonds because I thought it would give nice sweetness to the cake while taking a bite. And guess what it really worked :)

Every weekend Ajoy asks me if I can put oil in his hair (he does it for me). So my reply is always same : I can cook whatever you ask but doing the oil massage every weekend just for those short hair and that too for one hour - doesn't work :) :) probably once in couple of months is ok :) :) So when last weekend I replied with the same answer, he mentioned that he wants to eat malpuas. I searched on net for quick recipes, every recipe was quite different so I had to make up my own after lot of research and here I am sharing this.

Ingredients

1 Cup Maida

1/2 Cup Rawa

2.5 cup Milk

1 Spoon Saunf

1.5 Cup Sugar

A pinch of Saffron

Almonds, Pistachios for garnishing

Method

• Mix in maida, rawa, saunf and milk and keep aside for 4 hours
• Boil Sugar with 1.5 cup of water to form 1 threaded sugar syrup.
• Add in safron and keep aside.
• Heat oil in a pan and add 1/4 cup batter each time to form the malpuas
• Fry to golden brown on both sides and then dip them in the sugar syrup for couple of minutes.
• Take out of the syrup, garnish with almonds and pistachios and serve.

Notes

Actually lot many videos had asked for frying the malpuas, but i am going to try shallow frying instead next time.

Also I had used 1 cup sugar, water each for the syrup and last few malpuas didnt have enough syrup to soak in.

I have never eaten malpuas earlier except once when badi ma had gotten it to hyderabad. So next time I am also going to ask my mom-in-law for her recipe and see how different it turns out.

Lemon Date Cupcakes

Recently i started watching food network and some programs are really good.. One of them is Cup cake wars.. I was amazed at how people come up with their own recipe and create those beautiful cupcakes. So here i my share of mix and match inspired cup cake.

Ingredients

4 Cup Maida

3 Cup Dates

2 Cup Milk

1 Cup Butter

2 Cup Cream

1 Cup Icing Sugar

1.5 Cup Sugar

2 Eggs

2 Lemons

1 Spoon Baking Powder

1/4 Spoon Baking Soda

Salt to taste

Method

• Grind a cup of dates in with the milk to form smooth paste. Keep aside.
• Whip sugar and butter using hand mixer till mixture is smooth and fluffy
• Add eggs and blend well to get smooth mixture.
• Sieve Maida, Baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
• Add it to the butter, sugar - egg mixture in portions alternating with milk-date mixture, beating well with each addition.
• Add in remaining 2 cups of dates - chopped and a lemon's peel grated and as well as its juice. Mix lightly till combined.
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Line the cupcake pan with the cupcake paper cups and fill each of them to 2/3rd with the cake batter
• Bake the cakes at 350F/180C for 25 minutes. Keep aside to cool down completely.
• Add cream in a bowl and mix it with the icing sugar.
• Whip it using hand mixer on low speed till the cream becomes fluffy and stiff
• Scoop it on each cup cake or decorate using piping bag. Garnish with grated lemon peels.

Notes

I created a cone that i made from the parchment paper and piped the icing on top of few cakes and scooped the icing on others. So making cone is alternate to using piping bag :)

While whipping the cream its better to use hand mixer as its easy, fast and reliable. :)

Red Velvet Cup Cakes

I had made these when mom dad were around but they weren't perfect especially they were little on drier side. So this time I made little bit change in quantities and they come out perfect. I frosted them with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting.

Ingredients

2.5 Cup Maida

1/4 Spoon Coca Powder

1/4 Spoon Baking Soda

1/4 Spoon Salt

1.5 Cup Sugar

1 Egg

1.5 Cup Oil

2 Spoon Curd

1 Spoon Liquid Red Food Color

1/4 Spoon Vinegar

1/4 Spoon Vanilla Essence

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C
• Sieve Maida and Coca Powder in a bowl
• Mix in baking soda, salt and sugar in it
• In separate bowl add in egg, oil, red food color, vanilla essence and vinegar.
• In a cup add in the curd and fill it with water. Mix well with the fork and add it to the wet mixture (oil-egg mixture)
• Beat the mixture on low speed till smooth
• Add in sieved dry mixture of maida-coca powder a cup at a time and beat slowly till it accommodates in the mixture.
• Line the cupcake pan with the paper cups. Divide the mixture in 12 cups.
• Bake the cake on 350F/175C for 22 minutes

Notes

I normally turn around the cupcakes after 70% of baking time in this case around 15 minutes. It helps in even baking of the cakes.

Eggless Chocolate Cake

Atul's mom had asked me for egg-less cake recipe almost 6 months back but every time something or the other came up and I didn't get chance to try out anything. Today that we are going to his place for snacks I thought that it would be perfect time to try out and see how she likes it. The cake looks, tastes awesome. It is perfectly moist and fluffy, i think i like it better than this chocolate cake with the eggs or this birthday chocolate cake again with the eggs.

Ingredients

4.5 Cup Maida

1 Cup Coco Powder

3 Cup Sugar

1 Cup Oil

1 Spoon Baking Soda

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Spoon Salt

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C
• Sieve together maida and coco powder in a bowl.
• Add in baking soda and salt and mix well.
• In another bigger bowl, add in oil, 3 cups of water, Vanilla Essence and beat it together until frothy.
• Add in sugar and blend again.
• Sieve in the maida-coco mixture into it and beat till mixed well.
• Grease the baking pan and pour the mixture in it.
• Bake the cake for 50 minutes on 350F/180C, turning it after 35minutes.

Notes

I drizzled it with Chocolate Ganache and decorated it with the saved white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

If you are going to decorate on top of Ganache then let it set down for 3-4 hours because i didn't and the decoration kept sliding off the place i intended it to stay.

Methi Corn Aappe

This recipe is inspired by the Corn Aappe Recipe I had posted long time back.. I thought little taste change in same recipe would bring variation and thats how this one came to life :)

Ingredients

4 Cup Sweet Corn

2 Cup Rawa

4 Green Chillies

1 Cup Methi Leaves

1 Cup Coriander Leaves

1/2 Spoon Garlic Paste

1/4 Spoon Ino

Salt to taste

Method

• In a mixie, crush together green chilies and corn till smooth paste.
• Add in salt, rawa, garlic paste and mix.
• Add in finely chopped methi leaves and coriander leaves and mix.
• Add in ino and if required little water and make batter by mixing well.
• Heat the aappe pan and sprinkle drop of oil in the pan and pour in spoon of batter in each appe cup.
• Cook the appe till they become brown, flip and let it cook till the other side browns too, serve hot

Notes

If using frozen sweet corn microwave them for couple of minutes so that making paste is easier.

Cake of Lemon Chiffon

Lemon Chiffon Cake

I don't even remember now how I came up with this, may be it was when I was trying to come up with lighter cake, but it was instant success. I have made this so many times and recently almonds with white chocolate with lemon cream I got from Costco reminded me of this taste. Cant wait to make this one again. One of the lightest and fluffiest cake I have made.


Ingredients
1.5 Cup - 1.5 tbsp. maida
1.5 tbsp Corn Flour
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1.5 Cup + 1 tbsp Sugar
2 Lemons
3 Eggs
1/2 Cup Oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1/4 tsp Cream of tartar

Method

• Preheat oven to 325F/165C
• Sieve through maida, corn flour, baking soda, salt and 1.5 cup of sugar together
• Separate egg whites from yolk.
• Beat egg whites till they are foamy
• Add in cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks are formed
• Add in remaining 1 tbsp. of sugar and beat till hard peaks are formed. Keep aside
• In a bowl beat egg yolk, zest of both the lemons, 1 tbsp. lemon juice, oil, vanilla essence and 2/3 cup of water together.
• Add in the sieved flour mixture and beat till smooth
• Fold in egg whites 1/3 at a time very gently till all the mixture is incorporated.
• Grease 8.5inch loaf pan and pour the cake batter in it.
• Bake in oven at 325F/165C for 45 minutes. Take out of oven and let it cool.

Notes
To measure maida and corn starch, first measure 1.5 tbps of corn flour and add it to the bottom of the cup and then add in more maida till it is 1.5 cup. You can instead use cake flour 1.5 cup instead of these two ingredients but maida and corn starch mixture is replacement for the same.