Mocha Choco-chip cookies

Tonight was crave-for-chocolate evening, what with me craving for chocolate and hence eating the baking chocolate chips since evening. I decided to go ahead and bake myself some cookies, something I haven't done in a long long time, because of the enormous amount of butter involved in it.

I modified this recipe by Chef in You to suit my mood and taste, and baked Mocha-Choco chip cookies, with a slight coffee flavour and a lot of chocolate oozing in it. I kept the flour, soda and liquid ratio same as the one in this recipe, but I altered the ingredients to make this eggless, and to use date syrup, something which I’ve been wanting to try instead of sugar for a while now.

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.

My first love…

In the kitchen, is this. My mortar and pestle.

After the initial excitement of having acquired this awesome pitcher is gone, mortar and pestle is back as my favourite item in the kitchen.
I crush garlic in this, and I staunchly believe that the only way to get the flavour out of the garlic and relish it is by freshly crushing it in a mortar and adding it directly to the dish.
I also use this to make ginger-garlic paste, crush peppers , cloves and cardamom. Basically, it is THAT one item that is most frequently used in my kitchen.
What’s yours?