Chocolate Choco chip cookie

 

Oh well, I’ve heard the whole buzz about chocolate chip cookies and a warm/cold cup of milk to go with it, and I’ve never really got it. Okay, so its a cookie and that’s a glass of milk. What’s the big deal, right? Well, no. As I found out through experience just a while ago, chocolate chip cookies DO really go well with a cold cup of milk, and the best thing to have on a weekend morning! :)

So there was this whole what’s-the-deal-with-choco-chip-cookies and also this tea party that a friend is hosting this evening. Two good reasons to dunk in a whole lot of butter, and I thought why-not!

I took a basic recipe of chocolate chip cookie, and modified it slightly to make it eggless, and more chocolatey.

Ingredients
125 gms dark baking chocolate bar
2 cups AP flour
2/3 cup Cadbury’s cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
200 gms butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup while sugar
4 tbsp thick cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions
Melt the dark chocolate in a microwave for 50 secs and temper it well enough, set it aside to cool.
Pre-heat the oven to 185C.
Sieve the flour with cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.
In another bowl, cream the butter with the sugars. Add cream and melted chocolate to this mixture, and mix well. Now add the vanilla essence and mix well.
To this butter mixture, add the flours and mix well enough. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Pour dollops of this batter on a parchment paper and a cookie sheet , and bake for 14mins.
Let the cookies cool on a wire rack.

And yes, whatever is left off the batter in the  bowl, please lick it off. :-D

These measurements yielded ~30 mid-sized cookies.

Oatmeal Cranberry cookies

 

What do you get when you put a woman in a house full of dried fruit and similar baking stuff (Thank you, US trip! :)). Add a hint of not-bad-but-good-loneliness , some boredom , a happy mood and a huge appetite for eating good food to the situation. Yes, you get Oatmeal cranberry cookies, with dark chocolate chips in it!

I got a lot of dried fruit stuff from US this month, a friend got me SilPat, and I was itching to make something. Bake some cookies may be, and make them healthy so I can eat them as a mid-meal-snack without feeling guilty. 

Today looked perfect. As I returned home from work, I saw that the weather was good, and after the almost-hurricane-like-wind, it was cool gentle breeze flowing into the house, I was reading a book sitting on the couch and thought, why not today!

A quick search for a Oatmeal cranberry cookie recipe led me to one of my favourite food-blogs – Madhuram (the name means sweet in Telugu). I checked that I had all the ingredients at hand. Since the intention was to get an eggless one and not a vegan recipe (I still am miles away from turning into one!) , I made some minor changes to the original recipe.

Ingredients

75 gms butter (I used 3/4 off the 100gm Amul butter bar)
1/3 cup Granulated Sugar
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 cup milk
1 cup whole wheat Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
3 cups Quick Cooking Oats
1 cup Dried Cranberries
1 cup dark chocolate chips (Optional, but then who doesn't like chocolate!)

Yeah yeah, I know that’s a lot of butter for someone who is on a perennial lose-weight-diet, but then I didn’t say I wanted a fat-free recipe. I wanted a healthy one. :-P

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven at 185C and meanwhile mix up the ingredients.

Cream the butter, and add the sugars to it. Once its well blended, add the vanilla extract and milk and mix well.
Sieve the flour well with baking soda and cinnamon powder, and mix this into the butter mixture.
Now add the oats, cranberries and chocolate chips to this and mix.

Make 1-rupee-sized balls of this cookie dough and press them slightly on the greased cookie sheet with a fork. I generally use parchment paper on my cookie sheet, and I had the Silpat also today.

Bake for at least 12mins at 185 C , if you want them slightly crunchy let it stay for 14mins.

Take them off the oven, and wait till they cool. And if you are like me who cannot wait, please let your teeth dig into the cookies! :-)

Now that I think of it, I have started to feel guilty about all that butter. But what the heck. Remember, I told I am a happy soul these days, and I deserve some butter! :-D

Bell Pepper Wheat Rotti

Akki rotti(rotti here doesn’t mean roti,its more like a mix between Dosa and roti) is a very popular Mangalorean dish, mostly eaten along with chai (tea) for snacks. This is generally made with rice flour, and is applied on a non-stick casserole and toasted till brown and chewy. It is then eaten with either a pickle or coconut chutney.
This recipe is a slight variation of the Akki Rotti mentioned above, and incorporates the healthier aspects of my Mom and cousin’s Ragi(rye) rotti. Loads of vegetables, clarified butter for the good fat and wheat and rye flour for the fibre content, and voila, you have a very healthy snack!
Ingredients:
Whole Wheat flour - 1 cup
Rye flour - 1/2 cup (optional)
Desiccated coconut powder - 1/2 cup
Salt - a pinch
Indian yogurt - Mixed into a pouring consistency, just enough to mix the ingredients into a batter - approximately 1 cup
Green chillies, finely chopped - 2
Onion, medium, finely chopped - 1
Green bell pepper, finely chopped - 1
Cilantro, finely chopped - a handful

Method:
1. Mix all the ingredients into a batter, preferably pancake batter consistency
2. Heat the non-stick pan and slightly apply the butter/ghee on it
3. Pour one ladle-ful of batter on the pan, and spread using a butter knife or spoon. Please note that you will not be able to make it very thin or with a ladle. This will be slightly thick
4. Cover the non-stick pan with a lid, and let it simmer for 5 mins
5. Check if the side on the pan is browned, and reverse it, so that the other side is slightly toasted too
6. Cut into pieces and serve with coconut chutney
Notes:
1. You can increase the quantity of rye flour to increase the fibre content of this recipe
2. Mix and match yellow and red bell peppers too into this
3. You can also have this rotti with hummus, more protein that way
4. Instead of the coconut + yogurt mixture, you can also use coconut milk. Gives the flavour and still keeps the rotti soft.