Eggless Red velvet cupcakes

   Hi, friends!  With the shifting ahead, I completely lost track of my blogging.  And yes, we are  based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  My new home just got set and for the upcoming festive mode, I dedicate you my eggless version of Red velvet cupcakes with Cream cheese frosting.

Red velvet cupcakes are slightly cocoa flavoured and the mix of baking soda and vinegar are added to help the cake rise and retain the moist texture.  Since I didn't have vinegar at home, I replaced them with lime juice and it worked fine.  Super-moist cupcakes with a creamy, tangy frosting  were a total yum!   My family loved it.  Do try this and let us know your feedback.  

Kandhe Khas Khas

We  all have  that one  traditional dish, passed on generations after generations.  No matter however trendy the food gets, you always yearn for that delicious dish. Khande Khas Khas is one of them.  'Khande' meaning onions and 'Khas Khas' meaning poppy seeds, this dish is made of chana dal cooked with cubed onions and poppy seeds paste.  This recipe may differ from one family to another. My mother follows this, while my Mother-in-law avoids poppy seeds paste and cooks chana dal with onions.  But, I guarantee you will love this dish and make them quite often.  Combine them with roti or dosa, though they taste best with roti.

Please note that it is a spicy dish.  I have prepared them lightly spiced because my kid doesn't like too much of spice.  If you are preparing for your family, I suggest you add more chilly powder, accordingly.  

Shepherd's pie

   Shepherd's pie has a meat filling and is  lined with the crust made of mashed potatoes.  This savoury pie was traditionally devoured whenever there was  left-over of grilled meat.  I can also say that it's a comfort food.   With so much humidity around, all you need is a piping hot shepherd's pie and a good book to mark a great day.

I got this recipe from my mom's Morphy Richards oven guidebook.  They have beautifully twisted it according to our Indian palette.  This dish is a layered dish.  The layers start with  thinly sliced potatoes, followed by vegetable mince, lamb mince and topped with mashed potatoes.  This, in turn, is brushed with melted butter and some crumbled cheese.  When these layers are baked, all you get is aromatic and a crispy potato crust top, followed by soft layers of vegetables and meat mince and ends with potato slices. I flavoured meat mince with dill and totally  this pie had such complementing flavours that I ended up devouring them as such.  Alternatively,  you can dig them with roti as well.  

  The round  casserole, I used here is 15 cm in diameter and 5 cm depth.  The filling measurements are made accordingly.  You may have to twist the measurements according to your casserole's size. 

So, let's get started. 

Tiramisu cupcakes

  After making Mascarpone cheese, I didn't want to make this winner dessert right away.  I took some time to go through what I wanted.   With guests at home and my kid waiting to get pampered, I could not have settled less for the cupcake.  Yes, super soft and moist coffee cupcakes paired with Mascarpone cheese icing, with a hint of coffee on top.  I got this super-soft sponge recipe from Natasha's Kitchen. With coffee flavour infused, they were great even when had straight away from the refrigerator.

So, what's this Tiramisu?  What makes them so special and so romantic?  Tiramisu meaning 'pick me up' or 'lift me up', is a popular Coffee-based Italian dessert.  It is assembled with ladyfinger -(a sponge cake in a shape of a finger) dipped in coffee syrup and arranged with a layer of mascarpone cheese and whipped eggs, topped with cocoa.  It's this beautiful combination of coffee, cocoa, and cream that can light up the romance in the air.  <3  <3

So, let me hope that you agree with  the same and bake them for ur better half's ;)  ;)

Cream cheese - from scratch

Cream cheese is a soft cheese made from full-fat milk.  The following recipe yields 130 grams of cream cheese with a balanced taste, ending on the tangy note.  They are used in making Cheesecakes, dip or spread, and cookies.  Cream cheese frosting goes very popular with Red Velvet Cake.  Though they can be easily spotted in Market, it is still better to make them at home, as it brings out the fresh flavour and is quite cheap as well.

Ingredients required

• 1/2 litre Full fat milk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 11/2 tsp lime juice
• 11/2 tsp curd

Don't use normal milk,  Cream cheese is best made using full-fat milk.  

Method

Combine the milk with salt  and let it boil in a milk pan. 

As soon as it bubbles up and rises above, simmer the flame and add lime juice.  

Mix them well with a spoon, the milk will slowly start to curdle.  

Pour them over muslin cloth lined bowl and tie them up on the counter.  

Let it drain for 15 minutes.  

After 15 minutes, you will end up getting a soft cheese.

Add in the curd and fold them into the cheese using a spoon.

Let this mixture drain again for 10 minutes.  Store them in an air-tight container and use within a week's time.  

You can blend them if you want, and TA-DA , within an hour we have our super-cool Cream cheese ready!

Happy Baking :)  :)

Mascarpone Cheese - from scratch

   Mascarpone cheese is a soft, creamy cheese.   Originating from Italy, this cheese is the main ingredient in Tiramisu.  They are also used in other recipes like Cheesecake and pasta.  Provided they are very costly and are very rare to find, it is best to prepare them at home.  So, given below recipe is my interpretation, as derived from Wikipedia.

Ingredients required

• 200 ml Amul fresh cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice

This batch yielded me about 125 grams of mascarpone cheese, 

Method

Heat Amul cream in a milk pan, till they bubble up on the sides and is hot to touch.

Add in lemon juice and stir them well using the spatula.

Simmer the flame, You will notice that within few seconds, the cream will get thick and start bubbling.  This will coat  the back of the spatula.  

Pour them on muslin cloth lined bowl.  

Tie the muslin cloth and hang them over the counter.  

Let it drain for 2 hours.  You can use the whey for cooking purpose.

Store them in  an air-tight container and use within a week.  

Happy Baking  :)  

Whole Wheat tutti fruity muffins

Hi friends, I am back with yet another whole wheat delicacy.  With everyday chores and three-course meals- one more confusion gets its way when we need to pack some snacks for kids.  I always pack my kid with fruits, but she insists on getting some sweet other than fruits.  That's how these muffins happened.  I got the original recipe from file section of HBG, twisted it to my own taste and result was amazing.  Unlike other eggless bakes, which often end up fudgy, these muffins were soft, cakey textured with an awesome taste.

I made these with tutti frutti.  You can replace these with almonds, cashews or chocolate chips, whatever you got a stock of, but, believe me, kids really dig the tutti frutti.   Now, my kid takes almost two to three of them, in order to share with her friends.  It's a win-win situation for both because I know that I have packed her something healthy and she ends up having her sweet tooth cravings as well.  

Choco cashew cookies

Hi friends, this is yet another cookie, found in any corner shop Bakery.  I instantly liked the combo of flavour this cookie had to offer. The bitter taste of Cocoa powder combines well with  the sweet crunch of cashews.  We had a big pack of cashews lying on the refrigerator from our Goa visit.  So, fully recharged I tried this yummy cookie, they came out perfectly well.

Yet another special feature is that these cookies are made from whole wheat flour. I have used Aashirvaad aata.  So, this can be guilt-free cookies for both kids and adults.  Do try and let us know.

Triple Chocolate Cookies

 These Triple Chocolate cookies are an awesome treat to kids and adults.  Make them for a special occasion and be sure to earn yourself praiseworthy remarks.  They are not made with creaming method, though, whole eggs are blended with sugar till they turn pale and fluffy.  To this, our melted chocolate is folded with goodness of chopped milk chocolate and dark compound chips.

These cookies are thin crispy delight and melts away easily with an bitter after taste of Dark chocolate.  And yes since these have dark chocolate, make sure to keep an eye on them during baking, because they get burnt very easily.  My entire batch got muched away within days ;)  Serve these with an cup of milk and they are great to go.   Do try and let us know.  

Spinach Roulade

Spinach Roulade
Roulade refers to an roll of sponge cake with an filling.  In this post, we have an spinach flavoured sponge cake with an creamy and nutty ricotta filling. They are best served at room temperature.

When sliced, they were super moist.  We enjoyed it with our tea-time.  Apart from enjoying its creamines, we can  trick  kids into eating spinach :D

Recipe adapted from Good Food Magazine.  Let us proceed to Ingredients required.

Pistachio Butter Cookies

Hi, we are back with yummy tea-time Butter cookies.  I made an batch of these during vacation for my folks at Chennai.  They loved the cookies, especially the strong butter aroma it had.

These cookies are very soft and they melt easily with every bite.  So, these can be suggested to elders as well.  With the basic recipe of the cookies given below, you can play around with your own flavours like cinnamon, lemon etc, if you want to omit pistachios.  The following batch yielded about 45 cookies, do try and let us know.  

Ingredients required

• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 62 grams castor sugar
• 1 tbspn vanilla extract
• 125 grams All purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sliced salted pistachios, that are double-roasted
• Green gel colour

Method

In an bowl, add butter, sugar and extract and whisk well.  Add in gel colour and whisk again.  

Finally fold in flour and pistachios and keep folding till an soft dough is formed.  

Cover this soft dough in an cling wrap and roll them into log, I made mine an rectangular rod and refrigerated for an minimum of two hours.  

Pre-heat the oven to 165 degree celsius.  Take out your log and slice them.  Place them in parchment paper lined baking tray.  Refrigerate this set-up for few minutes.  

Bake these for about 10 to 15 minutes, till the edges brown.  Time depends on the thickness of each slice, I recommend to uniformly slice the log, per batch,  otherwise the cookies might get overbaked.  Cool them completely over wire rack.  Store in air-tight container.  

Enjoy these with your tea-time.  Happy Baking :)  

Mango and Mint Meringue Mess

   Mango and Mint Meringue Mess is an summer-time refreshing dessert.  They are layered with freshly cut fruits with whipped cream and crumbled meringue.  The meringue offers an beautiful crunch needed for this dessert.

This dessert, is originally adapted from Eton Mess, an English dessert which has berries topped with cream and meringue.  Since this summer has started with Mango outburst,  I have used an liberal chops of those instead of Berries.

I have never guessed that Mango and Mint will blend each other beautifully.  This dessert is best had, as soon as they are assembled.  As they have meringue bits, and they tend to get soggy, the more they soak with mango and cream.  So, just have these soon after they get assembled.   I will suggest to prepare the meringue one day before hand, because it gets easier to assemble them.  

Minion Macaron with Mango cream

  French Macaron is any Baker's desire.  They are one such bakes, which needs highest precision.  You need to tame these each and every step, yes almost like handling your toddlers :D  For those, who are new to this term, French Macaron is an meringue-based confection which has an usual filling of ganache, buttercream or any fruit jam.  They differ from Macaroons, since they include almond flour and icing sugar for their crispy shell with an feet.

With Mango season around, I made Mango buttercream as an filling, and played around gel colours and edible marker pens with Macarons to get this Minion theme done.  The base recipe is from Pooja Dhingra's The Big Book of Treats.  Please make sure that you age egg whites for 4-5 days for this recipe.  And yes, all ingredients should be brought to room temperature before use.  

Wow, look at these Minion cuties - if you have any Minion fans back at home, you should definitely give this an try.  And yes, considering complexity of this recipe, make sure you follow each and every step.  

The following recipe yields 18 pairs of Macaron.

One Bite Doughnuts

   Hi friends, so, how's summer going in your place?  Telangana is burning like an pre-heated oven.  That said, local newspapers are giving us various tips to stay hydrated.  Obviously, my refrigerator is filled with water bottles and juices.  Still, we can't get hold of that sweet tooth, can we?  :)  That's where these One Bite Doughnuts / Mini Doughnuts comes to the rescue.

    All the craziness started when I first baked these for my daughter's birthday, everyone loved it for its cutey look,  yummy taste and since it is an baked version, it gave an healthy uplift as well.

I made these along with my daughter as an summer project.  She enjoyed colouring the glaze and played with sprinkles.  I would recommend these, as they are not only non-greasy food, but can also tackle sweet carvings on an small portions.  Please do try and let us know.

Chocolate chip cupcakes

    Hi friends, yes missed blogging for so long time.  All this time, has been spent well with improvising my cooking skills, and specially BAKING <3  My hubby has promised me another bigger model of OTG, next month, so YAY excited.  You can definitely stay tuned for more cakey recipes then.  So, chalo let's move to our post. There are two types of Baking, we can see in any forum - one will be completely catchy and fancy with fondant and icing, and keeps the promise to inspire any layman into baking, other type is nothing fancy, but simple baked treats which is an whole hearted meal by itself and serves as an comfort food.  Yes, our post falls on later, Heavenly Chocolate chip cupcakes, which is an perfect accompaniment to our Tea-time.

These simple treats are yum, and best served warm.  And the best part of this recipe is that, these are made of maida and an part of wheat flour, giving them an additional healthy quotient as an uplift.  They  make an great option for your kids snack break as well.  You can refrigerate and consume them within five days, but please do microwave/reheat for an warm super yum treat.