Story of the puree… ;-)

I know I haven't been blogging, but then, I've been busy. Busy holidaying, falling sick and having family over. And when family is around, I make sure that I do not even enter the kitchen. Only that way will delicious food enter our stomachs.
Last week, Mom and my Maami (Aunt) were visiting, and I wanted to showcase some of my baking to them both. Also, after the stuff I've been binging on from the start of the month, I wanted to make something healthy for us all, something that even I can eat without making a face or feeling guilty.

Spinach & Cheese Muffins

I know, this blog has seen better days. But good times are here to come, I hope! :)
And to kick start that, here's a nice breakfast muffin recipe. Healthy, packed with nutrients and eggless!

My kitchen help is back, after a long holiday of 4 months during which I had to cook all meals of the day - breakfast, lunch and dinner. I slacked off often and felt guilty about providing the husband with a decent meal. Its tough to have a full time job, and still cook all three meals of the day, especially if you want all three of them to be healthy and fresh. I know, a lot of women do that, but am certainly not in that lot! Sad, but true! And I realized it pretty early in life! :-)

Eggless Blueberry muffins

I hadn’t baked muffins in a long time. Actually, after a few baking disasters ( I screwed up two birthday cakes that I had promised two friends :-( ), I haven’t touched the baking tin … Its been too long, and this morning I felt like baking. It was like re-entering the baking arena, so I wanted to start with something small - muffins it was…

These muffins were fluffy, yet slightly heavy because of the whole wheat flour. The blueberries added to the texture, and the muffins would serve the purpose, a healthy snack at tea-time.

Simplest ever Banana Muffins

Banana muffins are my favourite. May be it is because they are extremely simple to make, and there are a variety of recipes out there to make them, suiting the ingredients you have at hand. Or may be because no matter what  you do, you cannot screw up banana muffins.
































This one is an eggless recipe, yielding just 6 big muffins, just enough to serve as a snack for those mid-meal hunger attacks, or as breakfast for just a day, inspired by the Muffin Magic book I bought this weekend from the Crossword sale.
This truly is the simplest ever banana muffins I tried, and the fluffiest ever. Addition of the berries is totally optional, but they gave a nice tarty taste to the muffins, and blended well with the chocolate chips. The minute I pulled them out of the oven, I could actually see the chips melting, and the berries soft enough… it was really yummy.

Carrot Muffins

 

Carrot muffins were on my head for a long time now, and when I bumped into this recipe, and saw the ingredients, all of which I had at hand, I had to try this. I just didn’t do the maple cream cheese frosting, and followed the recipe to the T except for the egg and apple sauce. I used coconut milk instead of apple sauce since I wanted to see if the slight coconut flavour would work with the carrots or not. Trust me, the coconut flavour worked as a perfect replacement for the apple sauce and yogurt always worked for me when I had to use eggs.

Recipe Courtesy – Cilantrophist’s Recipe

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
2 cups sugar
1 cup Coconut milk(I used the Dabur brand)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
8 tbsp thick yogurt
3 cups peeled, grated carrots
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 185C and line the muffin tray with the muffin cups.
Whisk together the yogurt, coconut milk, sugar and the vegetable oil. Sieve together the flour, baking soda, salt and the spices.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix just enough. Fold in the grate carrot.
Pour one scoop each into the muffin cups and decorate with the walnuts. Bake for 20 mins.

This yielded 16 muffins. Soft, surprisingly light and moist, these muffins were super for a after-dinner snack, which is what I did with half of them. Took them to work to accompany me and the team when we would be attending the late night call.
After filling out 12 muffins , I mixed some rum-soaked raisins, another half a cup of grated carrots (since I didn’t want to leave just that much in the refrigerator) and baked the rest of the 4 muffins. The muffins were dense , moist , delicious and smelled of rum, which was awesome, again!

Healthy Chocolate chip muffins

 

The banana muffins I baked for this friend’s toddler last time did not reach the kid at all. Blame it on our schedules or whatever, but eventually, when we did meet, the muffins shouldn’t have been given to a toddler. So I had to make up for it , by making a new batch of muffins, this time Chocolate Chip ones. And since the main audience was a toddler, I decided to make these as healthy as possible.

Recipe inspired from Madhuram-Eggless Cooking's recipe here.

Ingredients

1 cup oat flakes, coarsely grounded in a blender
1/2 cup milk
2 bananas , mashed, to yield 1 cup banana puree
1/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
3/4 Cup brown sugar
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/3 heaped Cup Mini Chocolate Chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 185 C. Line the muffin paper cups in the muffin tray.
Measure the banana puree and milk so that they both together are 1.5 cups. To this liquid, add oil, sugar and vanilla extract and keep aside.
Sieve the grounded oat flakes, wheat flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together.
Now pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix just enough. Gently fold in the choco chips Do not over mix.
Scoop spoonfuls of the batter and pour in the muffin cups.
Bake for 18-20 mins or till the tester comes clean.

My Notes
1. These probably are the healthiest muffins I will ever bake. Wheat flour and oat flakes add to the fibre content, bananas make up for the fruit and wet ingredient thus eliminating the need to add any more fat into this.
2. Next time , I will add rum soaked raisins to this , just to up the taste content. Bananas, Chocolate and Rum seem like a great combination in my head
3. My muffins were baked in 18 mins at 185C, but to be extra sure I baked them for 8 more mins at 170C. You can check what works for you depending on your oven.
4. The muffins were slightly dense because of all the heavy banana puree, and very moist the day I baked them. But since both oat flakes and wheat flour tend to get dry if not mixed with adequate amount of liquid, there was a slight dryness to the interiors of the muffin. So the next time, I will add a 1/4 cup more liquid and see how the muffin feels the day after baking.

Banana muffins… finally!

If you’ve been to this blog before, am sure you would’ve noticed my love for any dish which involves Bananas.
As a kid, I wasn’t a great fan of the fruit. And any mention of the word Banana would ensure that I run 500 ft away from the spot. As a grown up, I would eat it only for its high potassium content , but with a grimace on my face. But as a baker, am in love with this wonderful fruit.

How can you not? Mashed bananas are such an awesome way to introduce some fruit into the dish. Coupled with walnuts, they are awesome in a cake. Add chocolate chips to this, and there, you have a perfect dessert. Cake, bread, muffins… everything that has bananas in it tastes awesome.

So when this friend insisted that I bake something for her little boy, something healthy and with fruit in it, I decided to go for it. Banana muffins. I had baked banana bread a zillion times. Banana marble cake another zillion times, and banana cake was a regular till I decided to not make it for fear of not liking it after over-exposure.  But muffins, I hadn’t. I guess the banana muffin idea sprang up after the decision to not make any more banana based stuff. But for this little boy, I decided to go back on the no-banana-decision. And boy, am I glad I did that! With this, banana has made an official return to my kitchen :)

Simplest of the recipes, takes only 30 mins to put together and another 30 minutes to bake and cool, this is just the perfect way to start a day. Or end it, if you love having a little sweet snack after dinner, like me. :)

Recipe

Ingredients

All purpose Flour – 3/4 Cup [I mixed AP flour with multi-grain flour]
Vegetable oil – 1/4 Cup
Bananas – 2 , mashed with a fork till they are liquidy
Sugar – 1/3 Cup
Baking powder – 1/2 tsp
Baking soda – 1/2 tsp
Vanilla extract – 1/4 tsp
Choco chips – 1/3 cup
Chopped walnuts – 1/6 cup

Instructions

Mix the sugar and oil to the mashed bananas and mix well. Add the vanilla extract to this and keep aside.

Sieve the flour with the baking powder and soda

Mix the dry with the wet ingredients gently, ensuring you don’t over mix this. Add the choco-chips to this mixture and fold in.

With a spoon, pour this batter into the muffin cups lined in the muffin tray. Ensure that the cups are 3/4 full.

Bake in a preheated oven at 185 C for 25-30 mins, or till the skewer comes clean

It was just perfect. The medley of almost-melted-chocolate-chips with walnuts, and the frequent banana pieces play on your tongue, as the entire muffin melts down. Yes, indeed that good ! Try it. and tell me if you don’t love it! :)

Cherry Vanilla Muffins

 

Its a weekday, and I am generally in a happy mood. I had some stuff that I have acquired over a period of time through the US travels. I wanted to bake something because its been too long. And did I mention, I am generally in a happy mood?

Well… I didn’t have the patience to do anything heavy duty, but wanted something nice, hot and baked. Nothing chocolatey (though I have quite some choco chips waiting to be used) , nothing with coffee and no fruits either. And what better than a nice batch of muffins. I could just think and experiment with muffin batter like the sky’s my limit… :)

So last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I made a mental list of all the ingredients I had at home, and I was itching to use. The ones that stood out were the box of extracts that a friend sent from the US, and the dried cherries, blueberries and cranberries I had in the pantry. Some late-night-on-the-phone-Binging on all these ingredients gave me some good ideas.

And hence the thought of a Cherry Vanilla Muffin. I had not baked anything with cherries in it so far, and my bottle of vanilla extract tempted me to try this. Some more Binging and I bumped into this recipe to which I promptly made some customizations.

So back from work, with a hungry rumbling stomach with the sandwich and Baileys only increasing my appetite, I got on to the job of making these.  One look at my pantry revealed some very tasty and aromatic fruit infusions, and they were used too. The muffins baked in precisely 18 mins, and it took me a total of 40 mins to put them all together.

Here is the recipe -

Ingredients
1-2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp Fruit infusion – I used strong Strawberry tea. You can use anything by Twinings.
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup dried cherries, chopped, soaked in Strawberry tea for about 15 mins

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 200 C and line the muffin pan with the paper muffin cups.

Sieve the AP Flour, baking soda, baking powder, Sugar and Cinnamon powder together in a big bowl.

In another bowl, mix together the yogurt, fruit infusion, vanilla extract and oil, and beat them till they almost blend. At this point, the yogurt might curdle a bit, but I noticed that they made the muffins softer.

Mix together the wet and dry ingredients very gently, without beating the air off the batter. Pour spoonfuls of this batter, decorate the top with some left over cherries if you like, and bake these for 15-18 mins.

This recipe makes about 20 medium sized muffins.

There was a very gentle fruit flavour , the  yogurt had made the muffins very smooth, and the sugar was still a bit crystalized, adding the crunch to the muffins.

In short, they truly served their purpose – ensuring that I stay alive till I cook dinner, and get that wide grin on the husband’s face :-)

Olive-Jalapeno muffins

I’ve seen some savoury muffin recipes on couple of blogs, but never got around to baking them. Somehow, the shape and perception of a muffin in my head means it had to be sweet. And so I could never imagine how a savoury muffin should be or could be. Its been on the Do-List for a while now, and yday was the day.

Last evening, the husband guy suddenly said he wanted to eat something dry, spicy and with garlic in it.He obviously forgot to add the word fried in it and I grabbed the chance. I was also intending to bake some for some friends, so I thought I’d do these.

A quick tweet to my trusted advisors(read:Fellow bakers) and N called and dictated me the recipe from the Muffin Bible.

Jalapenos, garlic and herbs weren’t part of the original recipe, but I added them to add to appeal to the husband’s palate.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp yogurt
1 1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 water
2 cups flour(I mixed 1 3/4 cups of wheat with 1/4 AP flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 slices cheddar,cut into very small pieces
1/2 cup olives, de-seeded and chopped
1/2 cup Jalapenos, chopped to small pieces
1 tsp chilli flakes
some herbs like Oregano and Thyme (I added 1/2 tbsp of each)

Procedure:
1. Sieve the flour with both baking soda and baking powder and keep aside. Add herbs to this mixture.
2. Beat the yogurt till its soft and add water to it.
3. Mix yogurt with the flour mix and mix well enough.
4. Add the olives, cheddar and jalapenos to this, and mix just enough
5. Pour spoonful of this mixture into each muffin paper cup or a greased muffin mould.
6. Bake in a pre-heated oven(200C) for 12 mins at 200C.
7. Check the tester and if you feel that you still need to bake it, do so at 185C for another 4 mins.

This muffin tasted awesome when served warm from the oven, but it was better when it was eaten cold. I put this in the fridge and re-heated it this morning, for breakfast and it tasted good then too.
The cheese pieces along with the tanginess of the olives and hot taste of the jalapenos just tastes brilliant, and appeals to a different section of the tongue, altogether! :)

Shared some of these with friends at work, and they seemed to like these.

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.

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.