Kanda(Onion) Pohe,Cherry And Cashew Cup Cakes

Kanda(Onion) Pohe

Lot of friends had been asking for easy breakfast recipies.. I mean some simple yet tasty day today breakfast recipies. So here I am posting recipe for simple yet delicious maharashtrian breakfast/snacks.. This item is so common that whenever people get unexpected guest or there is "Ladaki Dikhana" program at ones place this is must :)

Ingredients

2 Cup Pohe

1/2 Cup Muttor

1 Onion

A pinch of Turmeric Powder

1/4 Spoon Mustard

1/4 Spoon Jeera

4 Green Chillies

4 Spoon Grated fresh Coconut

4 Spoon Corriander leaves

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Wash the pohes and drain out excess water. Keep aside.
• Heat oil and let mustard and jeera splutter in it
• Add chopped green chillies and fry for a minute
• Add onions and cook them till they are translucent
• Add turmeric powder and cook for a minute
• Add washed poha and muttor in it adn mix well.
• Cover it and cook for couple of minute
• Open the lid, mix well, add salt to taste and again cover and cook covered for 3-4 minutes on low flame.
• Garnish with grated coconut and finely chopped corriander leaves and serve

Notes
Washing pohes and keep aside at first is important. It gives enough time for pohas to soak in the washed water to become soft. If you find your pohas are not enough soft just sprinkly little water before covering and cooking. But I never needed this if I washed them at first place. Dont forget to remove excess water. Washed water is just enough for them to be perfect soft.
Instead of muttor you can add groundnuts in the oil before adding pohas and fry them well. These are also tastier and ajoy's favourite. But authentic pohas are with muttor :) and I love them that way.
You can also add 1/2 cup potato cubes in oil and cook them before adding Pohas to it to get Kanda(Onion) Batata(Potato) Pohe :)

Cherry And Cashew Cup Cakes

I had been thinking of preparing cup cakes since I prepared muffins. But its only today I actually materialised the thoughts into the action :) :) So here is cherry - cashew cup cake recipy for you all.


Ingredients
2 Cup Canned Cherries
1 Cup Canned Cherry Syroup
1 Cup Castor Sugar
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup Butter
2 Cup Maida
2.25 Spoon Baking Powder
1/2 Cup Milk
1/2 Cup Cashews

Method

• Blend butter, castor sugar and eggs well.
• Sieve Maida and Baking Powder together
• Add it to the sugar-egg-butter mixture and blend it till it just folds in
• Remove the seeds from the cherries
• Add deseeded cherries, cherry syroup and milk to the mixture and blend till mixture folds in well and cherries are half crushed
• Add Cashew pieces
• Prehead Oven at 200C
• Grease the Cup Cake Pans
• Fill in the cups with batter about 2/3rd
• Bake it at 200C for about 20 minutes

Notes
Cherry Syroup and Blended Cherry gives it amazing Taste of fresh cherries :) You can add Almonds or Walnuts as well apart from cashews. I wanted to add them but didnt have them available that time hence added just cashews
Also I used Salted butter hence didnt mix salt with the maida, if you are using unsalted butter, add salt to taste to the maida while sieving

Khima Egg Masala And Green Salad

Khima Egg Masala

When we were about to leave from temporary housing, we had so many stuff remaining and we didnt want to carry too many items from there to permanant one. So thats what is the inspiration behind this experiment. Quite tasty and unique :)

Ingredients

450g Khima

4 Tomatoes

2 Onions

3 Eggs

1 Spoon Garam Masala

1.5 Spoon Red chilli Powder

1 Spoon Turmeric Powder

1/4 Spoon Black Pepper

2-3 Cinnamon

1/4 Spoon Garlic Paste

1/4 Spoon Ginger Paste

1/2 Spoon Corriander Powder

A pinch of Jeera Powder

Corriander Leaves for Garnishing

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Hard boil eggs and keep them aside.
• In a pan heat oil and add washed and drained Khima to it.
• Cook till it turns brown in color and oil separates out. Keep aside.
• In same oil add black pepper, cinnamon and let it turn light brown in color.
• Add finely chopped onion, garlic paste, ginger paste to this
• When onion is completely cooked, add 1/2 spoon turmeric, 1 spoon red chilli powder, garam masala, corriander powder and jeera powder
• Mix well and cook for couple of minutes
• Let it cool down and grind the mixture in mixie.
• In same pan in a spoonful of oil add this grinded mixture and grated tomatoes and cook till tomato is half done.
• Mix 1/4 cup of water in it, Salt to taste and the fried keema to it. Cook till completely done and almost dry. Keep aside
• Grate the eggs, add turmeric powder, chilli powder and salt to taste to it and keep aside.
• While serving, add small portion of keema masala into the bowl, top it with grated egg mixture and garnish with corriander leaves.

Notes

One can actually add, cheese or paneer as well instead of egg but I thought egg would be the best one to go along this recipe flavour.

Green Salad

When I came to US there were so many new ingredients that were easily available that I decided to try something different than I have always tried :) So here was my experiment with the first salad. I would name it Green Salad for I used Green Leaf Lettuce :)

Ingredients

10 leaves of Green Leaf Lettuce

1/2 Cup Grape Tomatoes

1/2 Pineapple

1/4 Cup Corn

10 Cucumber Pickels

5 Jalapenos

1/2 Spoon Oregano

2.5 Spoon Ranch Dressing

Salt to taste

Method

• Cook the corn in boiling water or microwave in a cup of water for 5 min. Drain the water and keep aside.
• Cut the green leaf lettuce into medium sized pieces
• Halve the grape tomatoes and add them to leaf lettuce.
• Add Pineapple after chopping it to small pieces
• Halve cucumber pickle and add to it
• Add chooped jalapenos and corn that was set aside.
• Add Ranch Dressing, Oregano and Salt. Mix well and serve.

Notes

This was something quick, healthy and yet tasty. The ranch dressing and oregano went well together :) Need to try some other fruits, vegetables and dressings. :)

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

Set Dosa And Khatkhate

Set Dosa

My love for set dosa started the very first day i ate it in bangalore. I just love this fluffy thick dosa served in set of three medium sized ones. Finally I did some research for recipe. Most of them were using soda which i didnt want to use. Also found out that they use poha in it. So adapted those ingredients to the my dosa recipe. Outcome was awesome :) Infact I made it like 2 weeks back and before I could click photos, they were over :) And already been asked for repeat. So this week I prepared it again and first thing I did was click the snap :)

Ingredients

2 Cup Rice

1 Cup Idly Rawa

3/4 Cup Udid Daal

1 Cup Poha

1 Spoon Methi Seeds

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Soak Rice, Idly rawa, udid daal and methi seeds seperately in the morning.
• In the evening soak poha for an hour
• Grind the rice to fine paste.
• Mix udid daal and Methi seeds and grind it to fine paste.
• Grind the idly rawa to form fine paste
• Grind Poha as well to the paste.
• Mix all these pastes really well and keep in warm place overnight
• Next day morning, add salt and water enough to make free flowing consistency. Mix well.
• Heat tawa on low-medium flame.
• Sprinkle few drops of oil and pour a cup of batter.
• When the one side is one, sprinkle couple of drops on top of the dosa and flip it to cook the other side.
• When the other side too turns light brown, take it out and serve.

Notes
This dosa is normally served with mixed vegetable, but i dont like it at all so instead i served it with peanut-curd chutney without using optional items. It went well.

Khatkhate
I loved this dish a lot since my childhood. Probably then I didn't realise it was the healthiest dish that I loved :D Just like the name says it uses almost everything that's in your fridge :)


Ingredients
1 Cup Beans
1/2 Cup Mutter
2 Drum Sticks
2 Corn Cobs
1 Potato
1 Sweet Potato
1 Raw Banana
1.5 Spoon Tamarind
1/4 Cup Jaggery
1/2 Cup Coconut
1/4 Spoon Corriander Seeds
1 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
A pinch of Asafoetida
2 Spoon Ghee
Salt to taste

Method

• In a half cup of water add the tamarind and keep aside.
• In a pan, add beans and 4 cups of water and cook over high flame for 5 minutes
• Cut each corn cob into 3 pieces and add the corn cob pieces and another 2 cups of water, Cook for another 5 minutes
• Add drum sticks - cut into pieces, potato cubes, raw banana pieces, pieces of sweet potato and another 2 cups of water. Cook till they are almost done
• Mean time grate coconut, tamarind (with its water that was it soaked in) and corriander seeds adding half cup of water.
• Add it and mutters to the almost done vegetables.
• Add turmeric powder, jaggery, red chilli powder and salt and simmer it.
• In another small pan, add ghee and let the mustard splutter in it.
• Add asafoetida and mix the tadaka with the vegetable.

Notes
You can optionally add 1 cup of pumpkin pieces too, but I couldn't as it wasn't available in the store here.

Ginger Corn Flower And Plums Cake

Ginger Corn Flower

Ajoy loves cauliflower so we end up eating it every week at least once. So I keep trying variety of preparations instead of sticking to the usual one. So today I decided to make a gingery flower. To reduce the spiciness and pungent taste of the ginger I decided to use sweet corn. The recipe came out pretty well and here it is.

Ingredients

1 Cauliflower

2 Cup Corn

1 Spoon Grated Ginger

2 Tomatoes

1 Onion

3/4 Spoon Red Chili Powder

1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder

1/4 Spoon Coriander Powder

Salt

Oil

Method

• Heat oil to high and fry the medium sized flower florets in it till light brown. Keep aside
• In a pan heat spoon full of oil and add onion. Fry till translucent.
• Add grated ginger and fry for another minute
• Add red chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder and fry for a minute or two.
• Add mashed tomato in it. Cook for couple of minutes.
• Add sweet corn, salt to taste and cook for 5-6 minutes till mixture dries up a little.
• Add fried flower florets and mix up gently so that masala coats the flower
• Cook for 2-3 minutes and serve.

Notes
Dont wait for the florets to be dark in color, after taking out from the oil they darken up a little.

Ajoy loves cauliflower so we end up eating it every week at least once. So I keep trying variety of preparations instead of sticking to the usual one. So today I decided to make a gingery flower. To reduce the spiciness and pungent taste of the ginger I decided to use sweet corn. The recipe came out pretty well and here it is.

Ingredients

1 Cauliflower

2 Cup Corn

1 Spoon Grated Ginger

2 Tomatoes

1 Onion

3/4 Spoon Red Chili Powder

1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder

1/4 Spoon Coriander Powder

Salt

Oil

Method

• Heat oil to high and fry the medium sized flower florets in it till light brown. Keep aside
• In a pan heat spoon full of oil and add onion. Fry till translucent.
• Add grated ginger and fry for another minute
• Add red chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder and fry for a minute or two.
• Add mashed tomato in it. Cook for couple of minutes.
• Add sweet corn, salt to taste and cook for 5-6 minutes till mixture dries up a little.
• Add fried flower florets and mix up gently so that masala coats the flower
• Cook for 2-3 minutes and serve.

Notes
Dont wait for the florets to be dark in color, after taking out from the oil they darken up a little.

Plums Cake
We had got lot of plums from Costco but they weren't ripe ones. So I had been thinking of making a cake using them for quite a few days. Finally today I got some time to experiment with it thought the plums were ripe now. I made it in heart shape in honor of today's Valentines day.


Ingredients
1 Cup Butter
1.5 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Maida
1 Cup Hazelnuts
1 Cup Walnuts
1 Cup Groundnuts
3 Eggs
1/2 Spoon Baking Powder
6 Plums
2 Spoon Lemon Juice
4 Spoon Powdered Sugar
2 Spoon Almonds

Method

• Grind hazelnuts to powder
• In a bowl, beat in sugar and butter till light and fluffy.
• Add a egg to the butter and beat well
• Then add in 1/3rd of hazelnut powder and beat well.
• Continue adding remaining eggs one at a time alternating with hazelnut powder and beat well
• Add in walnuts and peanuts and mix well.
• Sieve maida and baking powder together and add in to the above mixture. Mix well.
• Grease a pan and add in the batter
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Bake the cake at 350F/180C for 45 minutes
• Take out the cake out of oven and arrange in halved plums(without seeds) over the top
• Bake again at 350F/180C for 10 minutes. Take out and let it cool down
• In a small pan mix lemon juice with powdered sugar and let it simmer till thickened
• Pour it over the cake, garnish with finely chopped almonds.

Notes
Alternately you can use marmalade jam if you have. I wanted to use that for the glazing but since I didn't have it I made lemon, sugar mixture.

Quick Mango Icecream

Since my childhood, we had been making ice-creams at home. It was one of my favorite activity back then. Sometimes to make it all by myself reading the recipe that mom had written or sometimes helping her. But we had huge share of homemade ice-creams back then. In fact we didn't even have ice-cream maker that time. We use to freeze, grind it in mixer, freeze, beat, freeze and so on. The recipe needed quite some work to make it soft. So when I came here, I really wanted to buy an ice-cream maker so that I can get rid of at least that process. Sunday when the day turned out cloudy and rainy, i decided to go for shopping and that's when I found this great deal on ice-cream maker. Instantly, I grabbed it, mailed mom for the same recipe. But to my disappointment, it turned out that not all ingredients were available here. I didn't have patience for getting information about the alternatives. So instead I did some research and came up with this alternative - quick recipe. The recipe is so simple and quick that I think I am going to serve this to lot of people in next few days :) Happy to eat delicious homemade Alphonso mango ice-cream

Ingredients

1 Liter Half and Half

5 Cup Sweetened Mango Pulp

2 Cup Whipping Cream

1/2 Cup Corn Syrup

1 Cup Sugar

Method

• In a bowl mix in mango pulp and sugar. Let sugar dissolve completely.
• Add Corn Syrup and half and half in it and stir well.
• Add in whipping cream and stir lightly till the mixture is well blended together.
• Add this mixture to the ice-cream maker bowl and start the machine.
• In 25-30 minutes the ice-cream would be ready. Scoop out and serve.

Notes

I chilled all the items except corn syrup and sugar ;-) before the processing itself, but if you like you can make the mixture ready and then chill it for and hour at least. The mixture can also be stored in glass container for future use later.(that's what I have done)

I used half and half so that i dont have to boil the milk to half and then chill it. So in case you don't have half and half you can boil the milk until halve and let it cool.

You need to freeze the ice-cream maker bowl a day in advance as per the instructions of the machine.

Pineapple Fried Rice

These days Thai is one of my preferred cuisines when eating out. Fried rice is must and if it has pineapple then its like sone pe suhaaga :) But its been while i cooked thai at home, so today I decided to make this rice instead of normal pulav.

Ingredients

3 Cup Rice

3 Cup Broccoli

2 Cup Pineapple

1 Cup Carrot

1 Cup Celery

1 Red Bell Pepper

1 Onion

2 Green Chillies

1/4 Cup Soya Sauce

Salt to taste

Oil

Method

• Soak rice in water for half an hour
• Bring water to boil and add rice to it. Cook till its almost done. Strain and keep aside
• Heat a pan and add onions, green chillies, carrots, celery, broccoli, bell pepper. Stir well and cook till the raw smell of vegetables go away and they seem to be half cooked.
• Add in pineapple, soya sauce and salt to taste. Stir for a minute.
• Add the cooked rice and stir well. Fry for 2-3 minutes and rice is ready

Notes

Soya Sauce does give the salty taste to the rice, so while adding salt be careful to consider that.

Hariyali Mango Paneer

Today we were to meet Kapil and Shrinkhla for dinner but by the time we reached home everybody was almost full. So we decided to eat something at home instead. Thats when my mind started working on what I should make. I had a mango (raw) from mayuri that i had got last week. I cut it and saw that it was too sour so thought of making salad from it and started making hariyali paneer side by side. But as time progressed on the spot i changed my mind and made hariyali mango paneer instead. Turned out very nice.


Ingredients
3 Cup Coriander Leaves
1/2 Cup Pudina Leaves
1 Raw Mango
1 Onion
2 Cup Paneer Pieces
1 Green Chili
1 Spoon Garlic Cloves
1/2 Spoon Garam Masala
1 Spoon Red Chili Powder
1 Spoon Coriander Powder
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
1/2 Spoon Jeera Powder
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Add a cup of water to coriander leaves, pudina leaves and green chili and grind in mixie.
• In hot oil, fry paneer pieces to light brown edges and keep aside
• In same oil, add chopped onion pieces, garlic and fry till light brown
• Add in mango pieces and ground coriander-pudina-green chillies mixture and cook till the water evaporates and gravy thickens.
• Add in turmeric powder, garam masala, red chili powder, jeera powder and coriander powder and stir.
• Add in fried paneer pieces and salt to taste and cook for couple of more minutes.

Notes
The mango that I used wasn't too raw not too ripe. So it worked perfectly giving the light sourness. If using raw sour mango make sure to reduce the quantity of mango pieces accordingly.

Strawberry Sorbet

When I got Ice-cream maker recently, i was confused whether to make sorbets first or fresh mango ice-cream.. Both being my equally favorite icy treats.. Well mango won the battle since i had the ingredients easily available. But today when I went to Costco, i made sure to buy lots of strawberries to make this one. I am glad I did.. Its tasting yummy and definitely helping in beating this heat..


Ingredients
600g Strawberries
2 Cups Sugar
1/2 Cup Lemon Juice
1/2 Cup Corn Syrup

Method

• Dice the strawberries into four pieces or more if bigger in size and add in the bowl.
• Add in sugar and lemon juice and mix well.
• Keep in refrigerator overnight
• Next morning, add in corn syrup and pulse the mixture in the mixie.
• Add the mixture to the ice-cream maker and start the machine
• After around 30 minutes, take out and store in container for 2-3 hours. Serve as it is or with mint leaves.

Notes
I didnt grind the mixture but instead pulse it so that when eating the sorbet i could have smaller pieces once in a while in the mouth. It did wonders.
You could chill the mixture for an hour or two as well instead of overnight.

Watermelon Splash

Today after dinner I wanted to try out something new with watermelon and here is the chatpata juice i came up with.

Ingredients

1/2 Watermelon

2 Big Lemons

4 Spoon Sugar

6-7 Pudina Leaves

1/4 Spoon Chaat Masala

1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder

Pinch of Black Pepper Powder

Salt to taste

Method

• Dice the watermelon and add it to the mixer bowl.
• Add in lemon juice, sugar, pudina leaves, salt, chaat masala, jeera powder.
• Using the crushing blade let the mixture blend together in a mixie
• Pour it in glasses and sprinkle black pepper powder on top. Chill
• Garnish with small pudina leaves and small scoops of watermelon.

Notes

Since I was so waiting to drink this, to chill it faster, i kept it in fridger for 10 minutes :) Alternatively you can also use already chilled watermelon so that you dont need to wait even 10 minutes :)

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

Lychee Icecream

Here almost all stores sell the canned lychees but never the fresh ones. Last month I decided to give it a try especially for ice-cream. It turns out that if you use the syrup you get pretty good flavor from one can

Ingredients

1 Can of Seedless Lychee

1/2 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Milk

3.5 Cup Cream

1 Lemon

Method

• Take out lychees from the syrup and put the syrup in the mixie.
• Add in sugar and milk and blend it till the sugar is disolved.
• Mix in cream and lemon juice and whisk a bit.
• Add it in ice-cream maker and let it set.
• Fine chop the lychees and mix that in the ice-cream around 3-4 minutes before the setting is complete.

Notes

If using fresh lychees just use around 30 lychees. Puree around 15 of them with 2 cups of water and use that instead of lychee syrup and finely chop remaining lychees. You might need to use probably 2/3 cup of sugar.

The lemon helps in bringing out the taste from the lychee.

Strawberry Icecream

Last week I had got strawberries to make jam :) But the week was hectic and i couldn't get myself slogging for an hour or two in kitchen so instead yesterday i decided to make icecream instead. I was little skeptical for this was first time i was trying it out and serving without knowing how it is going to turn out added to the nervousness. Glad everyone enjoyed it and that surely calls for this post.

Ingredients

5 Cup Milk

3.5 Cup Cream

1.5 Kg Strawberries

4 Cup Sugar

1/2 Lemon

Method

• In a mixer, blend 1Kg of strawberries and sugar together till smooth. Transfer it to bowl.
• Add in milk and whisk till smooth.
• Add in cream and lemon juice and again whisk till consistent.
• In ice-cream maker pour this mixture in batches according to your ice-cream maker's capacity.
• Chop remaining strawberries, and when ice-cream is almost set ad them to the ice-cream and let the ice-cream maker set the ice-cream.
• Freez for another hour or two to get the best results.

Notes

I saved few strawberry pieces so I could add them on top while serving ice-cream.

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.

Very Berry Cake

Right now we get so many variety of berries out here that I thought it would be a good idea to try out this cake.


Ingredients
3 Cups Maida
4 Spoon Baking Powder
2 Eggs
1 Cup Butter
1 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Milk
2 Cup Rasberry
2 Cup Blue Berry
3/4 Cup Black Berry
6-8 Strawberries
Salt to taste

Method

• Mix the butter and sugar with the handheld mixer.
• Add Egg and mix again till thick and smooth paste
• Sieve the maida, baking powder and salt together.
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Add the maida-baking powder mixture in to the egg-butter-sugar mixture with constant mixing using handheld mixer
• When the complete maida and baking powder mixture is mixed it would be quite thick. Add milk and mix well
• Add all the berries (used whole berries except for stawberries which i chopped in to four pieces as they were big ones) and mix with a spatula
• Grease the baking pan and pour in the mixture.
• Bake for 35 minutes at 350F/180C

Notes
I used powdered sugar so that it can dissolve in quickly.
Also I used the fresh fruits directly from fridge so that they dont over cook.
You can also use frozen berries available in the market. I might try freezing the fresh berries and using them unthawed next time.
Also I used salted butter and added salt to so it tasted little extra salt. So if you are using salted butter dont use salt or vice-a-versa.

Pineapple Muramba

Almost a month back I got the big pineapple from costco. I just remembered mom's pineapple muramba and thought of giving it a shot. Called up mom and asked for recipe.. And it turned out that it was quite easy to make it and hence prepared that night immediately :)


Ingredients
5 Cups Fresh cut Pineapple
3 Cup Water
1.5 Cup Sugar

Method

• Mix pineapple pieces with water such that it barely submerges pineapple
• Cook the mixture over medium flame keeping a lid till pineapple are cooked.
• Strain the mixture and separate out pineapple and water
• In same water mix the sugar and bring to boil
• With constant stirring keep heating water over medium flame till it becomes 1 string consistency syrup
• Now add pineapple pieces and boil once again
• Let it cool down and refrigerate in the fridge

Notes
The muramba needs to be stored in fridge and it would stay for few months.
Good side dish to eat with chappati/paratha
I dont like too much of sugar syrup and hence the above recipe gives very less sugar syrup mixed pineapple muramba.. If you like you can add another cup of water + 1/2 cup of sugar to get traditional version which has more liquid