Prawns Puff and Melon Lassi

Prawns Puff

When I was india I had done lot of R&d to prepare the Puff. I tried it couple of times but it didnt become fluffy. It was very messy too. So for a while I thought lets try to use the readily available Puff Pastry Sheets out here in the market. The outcome was amazing. But I would be happy the day I get this outcome when i can make those sheets too :)

Ingredients

2 Puff Pastry sheets

1 Cup Prawns

1 Tomato

2 Onions

4 Garlic Cloves

1 Spoon Corriander Powder

1 Spoon Red Chilli Powder

1/4 Spoon Garam Masala

1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder

1/2 Spoon Black Pepper Powder

A pinch of turmeric powder

1 Egg

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Take out the pastry sheets from the fridge and keep them aside to thaw.
• In the mean time, heat the oil and add finely chopped onion to it. Cook till onion is translucent
• Add finely chopped tomato in it and cook till tomato is almost done.
• Add prawns and garlic to it and cook for couple of minutes.
• Add turmeric powder, red chilli powder, garam masala, jeera powder, black pepper powder and salt to taste. Cook till oil seprates out.
• Add corriander powder to it and again cook for a minute or two. Keep aside
• Pre-heat the oven to 400F
• Grease the baking tray.
• Cut each baking sheet into 3 vertical and 2 horizonal pieces to give you 6*2 = 12 pieces. On each piece of the sheet add in the prawns mixure and fold it and keep it on the baking tray.
• Beat the egg, dip a tissue in it and spread the egg over the puffs
• Bake in oven at 400F/200C for 15 minutes and your puffs should be ready to serve.

Notes

I used medium sized prawns so that I dont need to cut them and neither are they too small to recognise and loose their taste in the masala.

Also I used the egg to get the golden brown effect of the puff as mentioned on the puff pastry sheet box.

 Melon Lassi

Couple of weeks back I tried this unique experiment. I had one old melon sitting in the fridge so was curd, so thats what lead to this recipe.

Ingredients

1 Melon

6 Cup Curd

5 Spoon Sugar

A pinch of Vanilla Essence

Salt to taste

Method

• Chop the complete melon into small piece
• Keep aside few pieces for garnishing and grind rest of them in the mixie to make the juice.
• Strain the juice and add it to curd.
• Add sugar, salt, vanilla essence and again mix in the mixie
• Garnish with the melon pieces and serve chilled.

Notes

I used sweet thick curd, and didnt need to add any water because the melon juice was enough to lighten the curd to Lassi

25 Random Things About Me And Kalakand

25 Random Things About Me

I was tagged by Amruth and Naveen for writing the 25 random things about me. Well I gave it a thought and slept over it :) *remembers a dialog from last episode of Grey's Anatomy* And here is my list:

1.     I am in absolute love with Abhi-Niki from Dill Mill Gayye so much so that I make video mixes, write fictional scenes on these characters. I am loving this creative side of mine :)

2.     I like doing something creative after office may it be cooking something new, painting a glass or pot or knitting. Though I end up picking first option most of the time because it is like one arrow 2 birds :)

3.     I am a Lost fan and cant wait for the finale season and the topping to it is I would be watching it live in HD :)

4.     I love hiking and when it comes to hiking I can never find it enough :) Dil always maange more.

5.     Discovered love for cycling after coming to Redmond. Absolutely love coming back from work by cycle (Again 1 arrow 2 birds:)) or cycling on weekends on Sammamish River Trail

6.     I prefer having lunch by desk while browsing some cooking recipes, reading blogs, long mails and fiction updates. I finish lunch quickly and yet feel rejuvenated for post lunch work :)

7.     When it comes to following rules I would want to do it with absolute precision esp driving rules. I hate when people speed, drive rash and make mistakes. Well once in a while I too make a mistake and I cant forget that mistake easily :)

8.     I miss Hussain Sagar Drive very badly especially after late night movie.

9.     I am a music freak but then I can tolerate only certain type of songs which includes old hindi and few new ones which have some meaningful lyrics and soft music.

10. When I am listening to music, I start of singing along without even realizing. So its absolute torture for people around me when I am listening to songs

11. I love playing antakshari and the best ones have to be with Milind during our Niagara-NY and Florida drives in 2002.

12. I hate playing dumbsheras and I am bad at it. :)

13. I am afraid of dogs (well is that an understatement)

14. I believe Indian railways should award me for being their loyal customer for years. I have record of traveling Hyderabad -> Pune -> Hyderabad over every weekend for almost 3-4 months continuously.

15. I never tried English music as a teen and now I adore my music collection so much so that I don't feel like giving it a chance.

16. I can eat chaat items or anything chat pat items at any time of the day. :) Everyday stuff including rice-chapati-bhaji kind of takes low priority over the chatpat items

17. The best paani puri I have had till now is from a person who use to sit next to then newly opened MK Ahmad on CMH Road, Bangalore.

18. I am scared of dentists and nurses who give injections. Probably thats one reason I am totally for homeopathy.

19. I dont know since when but as long as I can remember I hate hot Tea and cant drink even a sip. But was introduced to Ice Tea by Kushal and you can say as much as I hate hot tea I love the Ice Tea.

20. Ever since I started watching english dramas I cant watch hindi ones without fast forwarding through them :) The current favourites are Castle, Grey's Anatomy and Flashforward. Also planning to give a chance to V which premiers tonight.

21. I am FRIENDS fan. Each character was unique and they maintained the traits, behaviors and habits for them throughout 10 seasons. The fun with friends was never been so close to real. Have already watched it twice in order. The random episodes if are airing I can watch any number of times. Wish they could create same magic again.

22. I have started playing Farmville on Facebook or you can say I started using Facebook for playing Farmville :) I liked that game so much so that I play on Ajoy's behalf too :)

23. I love rains and the drizzling rain is the topmost favorite. I like hiking, cycling or just taking a walk in drizzling rain :) Foggy weather is another favorite one and it gives heavenly feel to this otherwise earthy world.

24. I love playing fussball.. I havent played it much but I really enjoy it a lot. Our own fuss ball table is on its way and cant wait to play late night cames on fridays

25. I am more of listening person than talking one :) I can listen to absolutely anyone anytime than talk and when it comes to stage talk or group talking I am the worst case of shy attitude. Though I can be little better with close friends and family. So don't be surprised if I prefer write/mails/blogs over phone calls or social meetings :)

The rules for the above tagging buisness is:

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. If I tagged you, its because I want to know more about you.

So even though I do not have so many people to tag but I would tag:

Kalakand

Today morning when I was just thinking about making some sweet, suddenly thought of Kalakand I had when Mehul had taken us to temple for his new car's puja. I searched a little bit for the recipe and found that its very easy one. Oh but when I actually made it, I knew though the recipe is simple, it does take a long time to get to the final product. Especially boiling the milk to half and then drying it completely.

Ingredients

2 Liter Milk

1 Cup Sugar

3 Spoon Vinegar

1 Spoon Pistachio

A drop of Kewada Essence

A Silver Leaf

Method

• Boil half of the milk.
• Mix Vinegar with 3 spoon water and add it to the boiling milk.
• When the whey separates completely remove it from the stove and strain it
• Wash it through running cold water
• Put it in the muslin cloth and drain the water. Keep it aside under the heavy pan
• Boil remaining milk till half in quantity
• Add in the curdled milk stored aside in it and cook over medium flame till the mixture thickens
• Add in sugar and kewada essence. Cook till the mixture thickens completely.
• Spread the mixture on the plate, apply the silver leaf and garnish with chopped pistachios
• Let the mixture cool. Cut it into cubes and serve

Notes

I tried using non stick pan to boil the milk to half but it didn't work well. So I transferred it to the aluminum pan. It works best for making the sweet.

While boiling down the milk, you need to stir it constantly and vigourously so that it doesnt stick to bottom or sides of the pan.

05Nov: I tried using 2 galons of milk instead of 2 litre today which is approximately 8 liter and I had terrible time boiling down the milk to half and even after adding paneer. I totally missed the fact that since its boiling of the milk the time taken would be increasing and wont be a marginal increase. So be aware if you are making it in bulk. Its too much of work. And it made approximately 16 pieces of sweets with 2 liter and we finished it so fast that I had to make it again :) and thats how I thought of making it in bulk so that we can give it to few others too :)

Mung Daal Wada And Zebra Cake

Mung Daal

After a long time, I thought of trying out something from my so called 'bible' - a cookery book gifted to me during wedding :) This recipe though not exactly similar but is inspired from there. It is easy to digest yet spicy enough to enjoy, making it a good breakfast.

Ingredients

1 Cup Mung Daal

2 Spoon Besan

6 Garlic Cloves

1 Inch Ginger

2 Green Chillies

1 Spoon Jeera

1/2 Spoon Red Chilli Powder

1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder

A Pinch of Eating Soda

Salt

Oil

Method

• Soak Mung Daal in water for 5-6 hours
• After the mung daal is soaked, add garlic cloves, ginger, green chilies and jeera to the mixer with couple spoon of water and grind to rough paste
• Add mung daal without water in it and grind the paste
• To this paste add in besan, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt and eating soda and mix well
• Heat oil in pan and fry small quantites of the paste we preapred earlier to get crispy wadas

Notes
Recipe had some more items like coconut, onions, curry leaves etc to be added but I think I liked this way better. It went really well with the coconut chutney

Zebra Cake

I remember around a year back I had received a mail from a colleague here about tasting the check box cake. She had described a lot about its procedure so when I was looking for something similar yet something where I wont need those card boards etc to make those check box texture. Then I came across the very famous concept of zebra cake. So today I gave it a shot and result was very impressive :)


Ingredients
3 Cup Maida
2 Cup Sugar
4 Eggs
2 Cup Milk
2 cup Oil
1 Spoon Vanilla Essence
8 Spoon Coca Powder
4 Spoon Baking Powder

Method

• In a bowl add eggs and sugar and blend them together till the mixture is fluffy.
• Add in Milk and Oil keeping two spoons of each aside. Blend well
• Sieve in maida gradually in the mixture. Blend well for a smooth batter
• Blend in vanilla essence and baking powder.
• Separate 4.5 cup of batter into other bowl and add in sieved coca powder in the separated batter. Blend well
• In the coca batter, add the remaining milk and oil (2 spoons each) into the batter and blend again
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Grease the baking pan
• Add 1/4 cup of white batter in the center alternating with half cup of coca batter. Keep adding till the pan fills in half in quantity. Repeat same for other pan. The batter would spread on its own in layers
• Bake the cakes in oven at 350F/180C for 40 minutes

Notes
If you are going to make the cake in single big baking pan, then instead of adding 1/4 cup of mixture, add in 1/2 cup to make the correct sized strips. I noticed that if the layers are too thin then after baking they wouldn't be too clear to mark out the layering clearly.

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.

Craisin Pan Cake

I had been making these type of pancakes quite often lately.. Each time with different fruit. But today when I made it with dried cranberries (craisins) it was like this batter is meant for it. So here i am posting it.

Ingredients

2 Cup Maida

1 Spoon Sugar

1.5 Spoon Baking Powder

1/2 Cup Melted Butter

2.5 Cup Milk

1 Egg

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Cup Craisins

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Beat the egg with sugar till foamy
• Add in milk, melted butter and blend in well.
• Add in vanilla essence, sifted maida, baking powder and salt to taste and blend it well
• Heat the pan on low heat.
• Sprinkle some oil and then drop half up of batter at a time on the pan.
• Thrown in some craisins evenly around and cook till the bottom side is light brown.
• Sprinkle couple of drops of oil on top of the pan cakes and then flip them. Cook till the bottom turns light brown.
• Stack them and serve with the maple syrup

Notes

I have tried using apricots, blueberries, raisins and many more other fruits instead of craisins but as I said we liked craisins the best in these pan cakes.

Strawberry Crepes

I had made them almost a month back but had forgotten about them. It was yesterday I realized that I have forgotten to post this recipe. Then I looked around and realized that since I didn't have laptop that time because of battery issue I had forgotten images on Ajoy's laptop and that was the root cause I missed posting this recipe on time. But here it is, one of the quickest and delicious breakfast.

Ingredients

3 Cup Strawberries

1/2 Cup Maida

1.5 cup Milk

1/2 Spoon Melted Butter

2 Eggs

1/4 Spoon Vanilla Essence

2 Spoon Sugar

Salt to taste

Method

• In a bowl, mix in finely diced strawberries and 1 spoon sugar and keep aside.
• In another bowl mix in maida, milk, remaining 1 spoon sugar, butter, vanilla essence, eggs and salt to taste. Blend together using hand mixer to form a uniform batter.
• Heat the tawa and spread a cup of batter on the tawa each time, tilt tawa each time to get thin crepes.
• Cook both sides on medium heat till light brown and take out on the plate.
• Spread couple of spoon of strawberry sugar mixture on top of the crepe and fold to make a roll. Sprinkle some powdered sugar if you like and serve.

Notes

I used nonstick tawa so that I didn't need to grease the pan, the butter in the batter was good enough

Cashew Pistachio Cookies dipped in Chocolate

I made this for taking with us to trip tomorrow for memorial day weekend. Perfect snacks for travel. Its inspired by the short bread Ajoy got from Costco couple of times.

Ingredients

3 Cup Maida

2 Cup Butter

1.25 Cup Sugar

1 Egg Yolk

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1/2 Cup Cashews

1/2 Cup Pistachios

1 Cup Semi-sweet Choco Chips

1/4 Cup White Choco Chips

5 Spoon Shortening

Method

• In a bowl cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
• Add in egg yolk and vanilla essence and cream again
• Grind the cashews to fine powder and add it to the above mixture
• Sift in maida and mix together till nice stiff dough is formed.
• Form the lemon sized balls and store them in fridge for around 1 hour
• Preheat oven to 375F/190C
• Chop the pistachios
• Press each dough ball using palms to thick discs. Sprinkle the pistachios on half portion of each cookie disc and press lightly to secure the pistachios in the cookie
• Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and grease it. Transfer the discs on to the baking pan keeping an inch of distance between each of them
• Bake at 375F/190C for 12 minutes
• Let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes.
• In a bowl mix in semi sweet chocochips and 4 spoon of shortening and microwave for 1 minutes stirring once after 30 minutes. Mix till nice glossy.
• Line the baking sheet with fresh parchment paper. Dip each cookie's part which isn't covered by pistachios in the chocolate and set it on parchment paper.
• Mix white choco chips and remaining 1 spoon of shortening for 30 seconds and stir in till smooth and glossy. Fill it in a piping bag and make zig zag lines over the semi sweet chocolate on the cookie. Let the chocolate set for an hour.

Notes

If you dont have microwave you can heat chocolate and shortening in a bowl set over the boiling water. Stir till the mixture is smooth and dont let the chocolate burn. Microwave is really easy method and one doesnt need to worry much except to check it every 30 seconds so I prefer to temper the chocolate in microwave.

Vanilla Icecream

This is Ajoy's favorite flavor in ice-cream which i finally made last Saturday. This is so easy and tasty flavor that i wonder why i didn't make it earlier. The texture of the ice-cream came out so well, so much better than the store bought ice-cream.

Ingredients

1 liter Milk

3.5 Cup Cream

2 Cup Sugar

1/4 Cup Vanilla Extract

Method

• In a mixie blend sugar and 1/2 liter of milk together till sugar completely till it dissolves.
• In a bowl mix the milk-sugar mixture, cream and vanilla extract and whisk with fork till everything is combined.
• Set the mixture in ice-cream bowl according to the ice-cream maker's instructions.

Notes

I used heavy whipping cream instead of light whipping cream so if using light whipping cream, you may need to use 4.5 cups of cream instead for the smooth flavor.

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.

Chocolate Buttercream

Chocolate Buttercream

Almost 3 years ago I took classes from Wilton about cake decoration where they taught us lots of basic plus advance decorations along with their standard recipe for icing. I modified it a bit to get this chocolate butter cream.

Ingredients

2 Cup Vegetable Shortening

1.5 Cup Coco Powder

1 Spoon Vanilla Essence

10 Spoon Milk

450g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

Method

• Mix shortening, essence and milk together till smooth
• Sieve together icing sugar, coco powder together.
• Add it to the shortening and mix well with the hand mixer till ingredients mix in properly.
• Add salt and blend for about two minutes till creamy.

Notes

Cream lasts almost half an year if stored in airtight container in the fridge.

Pear Bars

Pear Bars

I was looking to bake something new and yet something that would be ready in couple of hours. This turned out amazing twist to the lemon bars I had made last month. Since with lemon bars I felt the presence of egg was too strong for my liking, I was interested in something that would use less egg and that's when I decided to create these using fusion of cheese cake and bar. I cant believe that this was my so far the most bold *experiment*given that I was to serve the friends who were coming over for dinner right away without any margin to recover but thankfully this turned out really great.

Ingredients

1 Cup Butter

2.25 Cup Sugar

1.5 Egg

1.5 cup Maida

2.5 Spoon Vanilla Essence

2.75 Cup Pecans

12Oz Cream Cheese

2 Pears

1/2 Spoon Cinnamon Powder

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C.
• Using handheld mixer cream the butter till very fluffy and light.
• Add in 2/3 cup of sugar and cream further.
• Add in 1 spoon of vanilla essence, sieved Maida and cream further.
• Mix in the coarsely chopped nuts.
• Grease two baking pans of 6inch in size and spread half of mixture evenly in each pan.
• Bake in oven at 350F/175C for 22 minutes.
• Let the base layer cool down in the pan itself for about 30 minutes
• After 30 minutes, with the handheld electric mixer cream the cream cheese till soft and even.
• Add in 1.5 cup sugar, egg and remaining 1.5 spoon of vanilla essence in the cream cheese and cream till soft and even.
• Cut the pears such that their center is removed and then slice them. Add in 1 Spoon of sugar and mix well. Keep aside.
• Preheat oven to 375F/190C.
• Spread the cream cheese mixture evenly in both the baking pans half in each.
• Spread the pear slices on top of this mixture.
• Sprinkle cinnamon and remaining (around 1 spoon of) sugar evenly on top of pears.
• Bake in the oven over 370F/190C for about 35 minutes.
• Take out of the oven. Let it cool for 30 minutes and then transfer it to fridge for at least another hour and then serve by making square pieces.

Notes

I know 1.5 egg is hard to measure :) but I tried using the mixture with 1 egg and 1 cheese packet but it wasn't enough to cover both pans. For the next egg, I beat the egg and took half the quantity. But in case you are baking this in single pan you could use 8-9 inch pan and use 1 egg with 1 packet of cream cheese. Note you would need to use 1 cup of sugar in that case.

I used pecan nuts because I had them available at home, but you can theoretically use any nuts, they give nice crunch and crisp taste.

I used little overripe pears so they turned out nice tender and I didn't have trouble while making pieces of the dessert.

When you take out the final bar out of the oven, there might be liquid on top, don't worry about it, it sets after the bars cool down.

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.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes

This was one of my impromptu attempt to bake something that turned out quite great. It had been long time since I had the frosting in the fridge so thought about baking something to use that one and these cupcakes worked perfectly well with the frosting.

Ingredients

2 Cup Sugar

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Egg

1/2 Cup Oil

1 Cup Milk

1.75 Cup Maida

1 Cup Coco Powder

1 Spoon Baking Powder

1 Spoon Baking Soda

1/2 Spoon Salt

2 Spoon Instant Coffee

Method

• Preheat oven at 325F/160C
• Mix together egg, sugar and vanilla essence.
• Add in oil and milk and whisk the mixture over medium speed.
• Sieve maida, coco powder, baking powder and baking soda couple of times to form homogeneous mixture.
• Add the sieved contents and salt in the egg-oil-milk mixture and whisk on low speed till well combined about 2 minutes
• Warm 1 cup of water with coffee in microwave for about a minute.
• Add the coffee to the cake mixture and whisk on low speed for another 2 minutes.
• Line around the cupcake pan with around 14 cup cake liners and fill them with the cake mixture about 3/4th level in each.
• Bake in the oven for 18 minutes.
• Allow the cakes to cool off for at least an hour and then serve with frosting and optionally filling

Notes

I didn't use the filling but chocolate ganache would be great option.

I used chocolate butter cream that I have made previously to frost another cake as the frosting and it went well.

Pumpkin Almond Cup Cakes

Few days back I made 'Khatakhata' - a special mixed vegetable dish from konkani cuisine. It needs pumpkin and I looked for it through all grocery stores, super markets, indian stores but every one said its out of season. But Wholes food had canned pumpkin and I thought of giving it a try. But when I opened the can I found that it was mashed one and not cubed ones. So I couldnt use that in the khatkhata. (Yes recipe will come for it when I cook it next time as this time I forgot to take pics). Then I was looking for all pumpkin recipes that can use puree of Pumpkin and found that cupcakes use them. So finally after reading lot I came up with this my version. Once it started baking it spread so much of aroma that I just couldnt wait for them to get ready. What a nice way to eat Pumpkin :)


Ingredients
2 cup Pumpkin Puree
3 Cup Maida
1 Cup Butter
1.5 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup Castor Sugar
2 Spoon Baking Powder
1/2 Spoon Baking Soda
1/2 Cup Milk
1/2 Spoon Cinnamon Powder
1/2 Spoon Cloves Powder
1/2 Spoon Nutmeg Powder
1/4 Cup Almond Sliced
1/2 Spoon Pistachio Essence
2 Eggs

Method

• Sieve through Maida, baking powder, baking soda few times.
• Mix Nutmeg powder, cinnamon powder and cloves powder. Keep aside
• In a bowl, beat butter, brown sugar and castor sugar together untill mixture is fluffy and sugar is completely mixed
• Add in each egg at a time and beat them into the mixture.
• Now add the sieved maida-bakingpowder mixture little at a time till completely accomodated. Stir with a spatula and dont use blender here.
• Add milk and mix well. Mixture will thin down a little
• Add pumkin puree and pistacheo essence and mix gently using the spatula
• Mix in the almonds except few to decorate in the batter.
• Preheat the oven to 350F/180C
• Grease the cup cake trays and fill in the mixture upto 3/4th level in each cup
• Garnish with remaining almonds
• Bake in the oven on 350F/180C for 20 minutes. Knife inserted should come out clean.

Notes
If you are using fresh pumkin, just steam the pumkin and then mash it in mixie. I guess that should work too.
Made around 16 medium sized cup cakes