Sep 25, 2010

Simple Fruit cake (whole wheat)

 

If there has been one thing that I have always loved in a bakery, it was the fruit cake. I would go to every bakery that I’ve ever seen, pointed to the fruit cake and asked the salesguy if it was egg-less. And they would shake their heads, thus shaking my dream of digging into the cake. THe dream of eating an egg-less fruit cake had just been unrealized. So when I figured out my cakes were turning out pretty neat, I knew I was going to bake this.

Some blog-hopping last night, in search of the recipe to the Christmas cake, I bumped into Raaga’s blog, and saw the recipe. Now, this one says 3 cups flour, which I knew was way too much for our family. So I reduced the quantities accordingly. Also, I had soaked raisins in rum 4-5 weeks ago, in the hope of getting to make the Christmas cake someday. But since this one is simple and very close to my dream cake, I thought I might as well use up few from that tin as well. And then, there is no way I would be baking a cake with Maida, when I know its me and my family eating it.(:) the logic is that we dont eat Maida at all at home, and if I am gifting the cake to others, I might as well make it tasty which is with Maida :)), so I substituted maida with whole wheat flour.

So here is the scaled down recipe -

Ingredients:

1 cup wheat flour
1 1/2 cup fruit mixture (raisins, sultanas, figs, tutty fruity)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp yogurt
2 tbsp fresh cream
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon and cardamom powders each
2-3 drops of vanilla essence

Procedure:

Pre-heat the oven till 200C.

Beat the cream and yogurt together with the oil and sugar. Mix them well with the spice powders and vanilla essence.

Mix together the flour, baking soda and mixture.

Fold in the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix. Add the fruit mixture to this, and mix well, so that the fruits are evenly distributed.

Pour into aluminium tins, and bake at 185C for 30 mins, or till the tester is clean.
This mixture fit into 5 tins of 4x3 inches, and I baked all of them at the same time.

Let it cool for a while.

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As usual, this is a bad pic, but no, this does not relate to the way this cake tasted. The husband even thought it resembled Dil Pasand, that sweet we used to eat in road-side bakeries as we were growing up :)
I gave a tin each to two of my good friends, and they seemed to love it too. So I guess this recipe will stay with me! :)

Sep 23, 2010

Coffee cinnamon cake with walnuts

 

Its been a very very busy day, with me not having time to even have my lunch. Well, lets just say that I didn’t realize it was 1:30PM till a friend called me for a coffee. And all day long, all I could think was that I would come  home and bake a cake and of course, listen to CokeStudio, Zeb and Haniya in particular.

Now, there is more than one occasion. P, a colleague at work didn’t get to eat the nutmeg cake that I baked, and she wanted me to bake a chocolate cake for her. I convinced her to agree to the walnut coffee cake, and somehow she agreed. Also, FIL was returning from his travel and he loves anything sweet. So, I thought I will use this chance and bake something, for him and for P too.

A search of recipes led me to this one on ChefInYou, but I was not very sure I wanted to bake the cake this way. So instead, I drew inspiration from the ingredients, and made my own recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup AP flour(since both FIL and P like taste more than health, I decided to give the wheat flour a skip this time)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp dark choco chips
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
A pinch of salt

2 tbsps yogurt (you can substitute this with one egg, but I honestly dont know whats the difference)
2 tbsps strong black coffee
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup sugar(I used regular sugar, but you can powder it too)
1/4 cup milk(if required)
1 tsp ground cinnamon powder

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 200C and meanwhile, gather the ingredients.
1. Whisk butter and sugar in a bowl, and add yogurt and coffee to it. Whisk them all together. Mix in the Cinnamon powder too
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together along with the chopped walnuts and the choco chips
3. Mix the wet and dry ingredients in a bowl, but do not overmix them
4. Pour in a aluminium foil box or greased cake tin
5. Bake for 30 mins at 185C
6. Decorate with powdered sugar if you want
7. Let the cake cool and dig in

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The cake tasted pretty neat, but I figured out quickly that even coffee cake does not appeal to my palate. FIL liked the cake, and so did the husband though he said this certainly loses as compared to the nutmeg cake. :)

Update: Folks at work also liked it! Awesome!

Sep 22, 2010

Cake experiment - 1

 

Ever since I laid eyes on Arundati’s whole wheat nutmeg honey cake, I could not rest at all. No, I am not kidding. The desire to bake it and taste it has been so intense that I had to eventually give in to it, and make it.
May be it was the brilliant recipe or the need to prove to myself that I can bake a decent cake, or to have a nice cake recipe at hand when I call N and her family over for dinner, I baked it last night, on an experimental basis. The idea was that if this turns out good, I am going to bake it this weekend, for N! :)

I had all the necessary ingredients at hand, and since the recipe is so simple and easy, I came back from work, I got around to mixing the ingredients. After seeing how N had baked her cake(which btw was the best cake I ever ate, still waiting for her recipe so I can try it too) in small aluminium foil boxes, I decided to do the same too.

So, this is the recipe. I didn’t want to fiddle around with the ingredients and replace any, since I wanted to be honest with it.

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I did some variations, though.

1. Instead of dry ginger powder, I grated fresh ginger and mixed it with the wet ingredients.

2. I felt I didnt need 1/2 cup of milk, and so I added milk at the end, directly to the batter when I felt it got a little tight, like the muffin batter. Thankfully it mixed well. I must’ve used up 1/4 cup of milk

3. I ran short of honey too. It was little less than 1/3 cup of honey and so I compensated it with sugar

4. Now to the part that I am not proud of. I got lazy and didnt powder the sugar. I mixed it as it is into the dry ingredients and then cursed myself for having done that. Thankfully, it mixed well and I could not feel the crystals when the cake was done

The cake needed exactly 35 mins of baking at 185C, and it came out of the tin pretty easily, though I didnt dust it. The picture does not do any justice to how the cake tasted, honest to God! And the fact that it doesnt have any maida(I dont use maida at all! AT ALL!) made me feel really good about it.

There it is, my first ever proper cake. I did bake a carrot nutmeg cake for the husband on his birthday, but I knew I could’ve done much better than that. The husband who is a total non-sweet-lover also loved this cake, and asked for a second serving, which is a lot! :)

Sep 20, 2010

Basic Whole Wheat Crackers

 

Now, I’ve been looking at cracker recipes and drooling at the photos for a while.

Also, after the recent Chocolate-Apple-Cake debacle, I needed to do something to get confidence on my baking. That was when Nandita suggested me to take a break from baking cakes and do something different. Finally yesterday, I decided to start off and bake my own crackers, something basic just to get the hang of it.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Whole wheat flour (I used Ashirwad multi grain flour mixed with bajra and ragi flour – basically my roti flour)
A pinch of salt
Some chat masala
A tsp each of Thyme and Rosemary
5-6 Tbsps of Olive oil
Half a cup of water(or as needed)

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven for 15 mins at 200 C

2. Meanwhile, mix all the ingredients into something which would resemble the roti ka ata

3. On a rolling stone, with the help of a rolling pin, roll the dough into a perfect circle

4. Using a pizza cutter, cut the circle into diamond shapes. Alternatively, you can cut them into circles using a sharp-rimmed glass

5. Put holes all over the shape using a fork and bake these in batches in the oven

6. With the above ingredients, I had to bake the crackers in 3 batches, and each of them took me around 20 mins at 185 C. This time and temperature is highly dependent on the make and model of the oven.

7. Bake till you can break one cracker and feel the crispiness in it. Or till the color turns a good golden brown.
8. Eat at tea-time or during the day, like how I did! Smile

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What I loved the most about these crackers is that they are absolutely healthy with nothing except Wheat flour in them, and the fragrance of the herbs used also added to the pleasure!

Variations:

I was thinking that the next time I bake these, I’d add some butter to make them a little softer and add other herbs like some oregano or sage . I was also thinking about adding some pesto next time to get some basil flavour, or see if I can add some hummus to this to up the protein content. Since this is a basic recipe for crackers, I guess one can experiment as much as they want with this!

Sep 15, 2010

Chocolate Apple cake

 

Mother-in-law was visiting and I wanted to bake something nice and special for her. Okay, that’s just a pretence. I had been dying to bake a cake for a while, after all those successful attempts at muffins and the wows I got for them. I was thinking cakes wouldn’t be much different from muffins, and I would do great at them too. Also, at the Landmark book sale, I picked up this nice little book on Home Baking which had some great recipes for muffins and savoury bakes.

I opened the book and the baked the first recipe I bumped into. Well, not exactly the first, coz the first one turned out to be yet another muffin, albeit a very interesting one. But remember, I wanted to bake a cake, no more muffins, since I had graduated the Muffin class :)

I closed the book and when I reopened it, I saw a very beautiful pic of Individual Chocolate apple cakes. Now, this recipe is for individual cakes, but I didnt have the patience to lay the muffin tray, and so baked the whole dough into one cake.

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Given above is the original pic given in the recipe book, and the recipe is as below -

Ingredients:

150gm butter

1/4 cup sugar (I used dermerra sugar)

3 eggs (I used 6 tbsps of thick yogurt)

2 cups plain flour(Again, I substituted this for whole wheat flour)

1/4 cup cocoa

3 tsps baking powder

560 gm canned apple pieces (I used one full apple finely chopped)

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven till 180C

2. Melt butter in a saucepan on low flame, and beat in yogurt(or eggs) and sugar into it.

3. Sift the dry ingredients together and mix in the wet ingredients into this. Do not beat it, but mix it gently

4. Pour one layer into the greased muffin tray , top it with apple pieces and pour more batter into it. Since I decided to make the cake, I poured one layer of dough, one layer of apple pieces and another layer of dough, all in one baking dish

5. Bake for 15-20 mins at 180C or till the tester comes out clean. I had to bake this for 30 mins, may be because of the thickness of the dough and the wattage of my oven

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We ate it with vanilla ice-cream, but I bet it would be awesome eaten with Baileys. In spite of everyone liking the taste of this cake, I did not quite enjoy it, may be because of my wearing fascination on chocolate cakes. I had recently baked a bunch of chocolate muffins without checking any recipe book, which turned out awesome too, but I guess I grew out of chocolate based bakes. I secretly took a vow to not try any more chocolate based ones, and move on to other flavored cakes.

Sep 11, 2010

Vanilla Chocolate muffins

 

U and her husband, great friends of ours invited us over for breakfast to their house. We love going over and feasting on on the awesome dishes she cooks for us, but this time I decided to not be shameless and bake something for them. Particularly after S, U’s husband loved the apple muffins I made for them last weekend, I didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to get some more wows :)

Nandita had suggested that I bake some awesome fruit buns for them but because we worked late on Friday, I could not pick up Tutty Fruity without which there would’ve been no point in making them. I quickly browsed for some good muffin recipes given the limited range of ingredients I had at hand, and landed at Arundati’s awesome cupcakes and this . Since I was well aware of the limited time I had at hand, and my ability to decorate something, I decided to go with the simpler version of these recipes.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

2/3 cup dermerra sugar

6 tbsp thick yogurt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (maida)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup milk

I Bournville bar(chopped into small pieces for garnishing)

Procedure:

Mix all the dry ingredients and set the oven to preheat till 200C

Whisk all the wet ingredients till they form into a smooth thick liquid and add this to the dry ingredients. Mix well, but do not beat the batter.

Pour this batter into a well greased muffin tray or into the muffin paper cups.

Sprinkle or place the Bournville pieces in the muffin batter.

Bake for 20 mins at 185C or till a tester comes out clean.

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Dig in the minute it comes out of the oven. :)

Well, I used Bournville as a substitute for the choco chips. The next day, I got some choco chips from QMart, and since we had a friend visiting, I baked these muffins again with choco chips. But I did not enjoy them as much as I did the earlier ones, ie., the ones which had Bournville. THe chocolate had nicely melted and had spread the flavor to the batter, and when it cooked, it was still soft. This, I feel gave the whole muffin a very nice distinct taste which lacked when I used choco chips.

Sep 6, 2010

The whole pasta story

 

After all the eating we did yday, I had no patience to enter the kitchen anymore. The cook had come early in the morning and made methi parathas for lunch for both of us, and also some breakfast. All we did the whole day was to laze around, read books and watch a bit of TV and of course, fight over who gets to sit in the bay window. Only in the evening did I realize that I had not planned anything for dinner and that S, the husband guy, would soon start complaining of how loud his stomach is rumbling. I had to quickly think of what to do, and thats when it struck to me that I had a big bowl of veggies lying in the freezer, the ones that I could not bake into the au gratin. And the next thing I thought of was Pasta! Yaay! :)

Yes, pasta is my favourite dish to eat or to cook. My love affair with pasta started when we started dining at Little Italy, and I would always order for a pasta and S would ask for his favourite Siciliano Pizza. Then I gave the whole dish a thought and figured out I could probably cook it at home too. Thats how my journey with pasta started. I used to make pasta using the Barilla readymade pasta sauces. Then the health-food trip in life started and I could smell the artificial ingredients through the sauce. The pasta would be all wheat based or organic and the sauce would be artificial. Uuuugghhhh!

Some more serious thought and I decided to just make my own sauces. White sauce was always out of the question, coz we both never really liked it, the color and its texture. Red sauce it had to be then.

I am still not sure how different or same my pasta recipe is from the others, but for a long time, I would only cook one type of pasta, almost every weekend. Pasta with whole lot of veggies sauted in olive oil, boiled in mashed tomatoes and some Italian herbs for garnishing. It tastes great, is very healthy and that was what mattered to me.

Father-in-law and the husband vouched for its taste but guess somewhere down the line, I got tired of making the same pasta and my palate started asking for more. That was when i discovered this very awesome tasting and healthy pasta recipe on SaffronTrail. So that was it for some more days, till one day when S told me that now he is tired of the same recipe.

So with the box full of sauted veggies in my freezer and a bottle full of homemade basil pesto sauce in my fridge, I decided to cook something which would replicate the taste of basil pesto pasta I ate at Sweet Nirvana the other day. That was how my other pasta recipe was born.

I just sauted the veggies more, put in two dollops of basil pesto sauce in it, and sauted it for 2 mins. Added the cooked fusilli to the mixture, and voila, our dinner was ready.

It didnt exactly taste like the one I ate in Sweet Nirvana, but S loved it so much that he called this my best ever pasta. Now, thats enough for me! :)

Good friends, great weather and some good conti food

 

We had invited S, her husband and her beautiful daughters over for lunch over the weekend. S was working and came in a bit late, but her husband and the girls came over a little early. The weather was just perfect. It wasnt raining thankfully(after the endless rains over the past few months, this was a welcome break!) and it wasnt sunny either. It was this perfect mix of clouds, no humidity and cool breeze. The guys had settled down in the balcony, and I was shuttling between the kitchen, the balcony and the bedroom where the girls were playing. Kitchen because I was making bruschettas as appetizers, balcony was to catch a bite or two of them as they were fast disappearing and bedroom coz I loved playing with the girls. Thankfully I had prepared lunch and apple muffins (for the girls) much earlier and the dish had finished baking also, so when S came back from work we just talked and talked and talked. It was 4 by the time we had our lunch, but we kept our stomachs and legs busy with the bruschettas, and running behind the girls, in that order. :)

While browsing for one-dish bakes, I came across this wonderful recipe of au gratin. Since au gratin was something I had never heard of, I wanted to try this one out. And since this one was full of veggies, I thought this would be a healthy dish for the girls too. Semolina was something I got interested in, but I wasnt comfortable with the eggs in the dish. Moreover, I wasnt sure how to make the white sauce. So I browsed some more and bumped into this recipe

So there it was. I made my first ever au gratin, and followed the recipe pretty much to the T. We ate it with some fresh focaccia bread from Sweet Nirvana and burped! :)

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We wrapped up the day with some more chocolate muffins that I baked freshly in the evening. I and the husband somehow managed to keep some place in the tummy aside to dine at MasterChef Nandita’s place. She had made great Pav Bhaji, and we had a good time chatting late into the night.

All in all, it was an awesome weekend spent with great friends and good food. What else does one need! :)

Sep 3, 2010

Bruschettas… Yaay!

 

Yes! I made Bruschettas. First time ever! And I can’t stop grinning. They have been a favourite with both of us since forever and these actually made the husband so excited that he even asked for some bread based dish for dinner also!

Of course, as usual the inspiration came from Nandita, but the achievement here is that I did not look up for the recipe. I just went through the taste in my mind and made up the list of ingredients. I still haven’t looked up for the correct recipe, coz I loved mine so much.

Ingredients:

For the topping:

3 ripe big tomatoes, de-seeded and chopped into small pieces

1 big onion, chopped into small pieces

2-3 tbsps olive oil

1 dollop basil pesto sauce

Salt & Pepper for taste

Oregano, if required for taste

For the bread:

Baguette. But I used regular whole wheat bread. Cut it into pieces and baked it at 200C for 5 mins. Rub in peeled garlic clove into it. Its amazing to see how the garlic clove melts and sticks to the bread.

Procedure:

Mix all the ingredients for topping. Place small quantities of this on the baked bread pieces.

Serve and gorge!

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Now, I made these as a tester to see if they’d be good if I make them when S and her family came over tomm. They tasted so great that we had these for dinner that day. Yes, one full loaf of bread between the two of us! :)

Sep 2, 2010

Risotto. First time ever!


The first ever time I ate Risotto was at N’s place, when she called me over for dinner. I loved the texture and the taste of the dish so much. And my love for all things Italian(;-)) told me that I should try this one for sure.
For days, I searched the markets for Arborio rice and finally I found it in QMart. I also bought some Zucchini to try and make some salad. So I thought, Would there be a recipe for Zucchini Risotto? I browsed for a while, and got a couple of links. All of them with some meat ingredient. So I adapted this recipe from various links I got, and of course from my conversation with N the night I ate there.
Ingredients:
1 cup Arborio rice (Some recipes say you can use Indian brown rice also, but I am yet to try that)
3 tbsps Olive Oil
2-3 crushed garlic cloves
1 cup white wine
1 zucchini, cut into longish pieces
3 cups of vegetable stock (I made my own stock by boiling some veggies in water, and saving the water)
Some herbs like Oregano, Thyme and Rosemary
Salt & pepper to taste
Procedure:
Heat the olive oil in a pan, and saute the garlic cloves and herbs in it.
Add the zucchini pieces and saute for some more time. Now add the rice, and saute till the rice is covered in olive oil.
Pour the wine into the rice. Stir continuously till the wine is absorbed. After the wine is totally absorbed, pour one cup stock and stir more.
After the stock is absorbed again, pour one more cup and stir. Repeat the exercise till all the stock is used up, and the rice assumes a very creamy soft texture. If the stock is not enough for the rice, use some more stock. The idea is to cook the rice al dente.
Check the taste and sprinkle some salt and pepper to taste.
If you have some more wine left, pour it into glasses, and drink it along with the meal.

Now, I liked the taste of this dish, but the creamy texture is something I am yet to get used to . As of now, I am looking out for other recipes using the Arborio rice, so I can experiment them all. Next version of Risotto would have to wait for a while.