Whole wheat crackers

Hi friends, we often munch on cheese crackers - what if we can replicate them home-styled and healthier as well?  Yes, we can!  When I came across the texanerin site, I could hardly resist these without a try.  If you kids like cheese, they may end up liking these crackers as well.  They are whole-wheat based and can be an ideal snack box option.  

After baking, they were crunchy and had a peppery taste.  You can play with spices and bring out your own flavours as well.  So, yes do try and let us know your feedback.  

Ingredients required

• 170 gram grated Cheddar Cheese
• 50 grams unsalted Butter, melted
• 100 grams of Wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper

Method

Add flour, salt, pepper and cheddar cheese in a dry bowl.  

Add in melted butter and mix them well. 

Now knead this using hands into a tight dough.  Let it rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 180 degree celsius.  

Roll them to  a sheet of 1/8 inch thickness.

Cut them into thin strips vertically.  

Repeat the same horizontally.  

Using a wooden dowel, prick a hole in centre of each square, this helps in non-rising of crackers during baking.

Bake them for about 10 minutes till they turn brown around the edges.  For ultra thin crackers, make sure you roll the dough with equal thickness.

Cool them on wire rack.  Store them in air-tight container

Happy Baking  :)

Whipped cream from Dairy whipping cream.

       Hi friends, today's post is about Dairy whipping cream and how to whip them correctly to get those beautiful STIFF peaks.  Though lots of people prefer non-dairy version over dairy, because of the stability the former offers, nothing can beat the delicious taste of Dairy whipped cream.  I already have posted whipped cream from Amul tetrapack.  Likewise, for Instant cream from powder and non-dairy cream.  Please feel free to check those links.  I have included step-by-step pics for the cream, and yes look at those beautiful swirls below, aren't they gorgeous?  <3  <3

When it comes to Baking, it is a constant practice that leads us to a mouth-watering treat.  And yes, when I first made a batch, I flopped.  Following which, I made my second batch to get those beautiful swirls.  I have included my flopped attempt in my content as well so that you guys can be cautious and need not repeat the same.  

Dairy whipping cream - attempt#1

Ingredients used are
1/2 cup of Dairy cream (I used Saudia brand)
2 tbsp caster sugar

Before whipping cream, I refrigerated my bowl and blades for an hour.  In the chilled bowl, I added the cream.

And yes started to whip, whip and whip.

After a minute or two, gradually I added sugar while beating.  

After the sugar got over, my whipping continued for few minutes, but there was no sign of stiff peaks.  

The blades when taken out, went flat indicating no peaks.  I had no other way than to discard this batch and start fresh.

Dairy whipping cream-  attempt#2

This attempt, I ran out of time, so instead of refrigerating bowl, I froze them for 15 minutes.  But, please be patient enough to refrigerate the bowl for a minimum of 4-5 hours.

Ingredients I used are
3/4 cup of Dairy whipping cream (I used Almarai brand)
1/4 cup of icing sugar
1 tsp of vanilla essence

I added all three ingredients in a bowl and along with blades, I froze them for 15 minutes/

Wrapped the bowl with foil and this goes into the  freezer.

After 15 minutes, remove the foil and start to beat.

Within 3 minutes, I got beautiful stiff peaks, see the blades when removed gives us stiff peaks.

And yes, one more test is that if you tilt the bowl upside down, the cream should not fall down.

Yayy.... I nailed it.  

DON'T USE THE CREAM RIGHT AWAY TO PIPE.  Refrigerate them for an hour at least before piping.  And yes, look at that beautiful swirl.

So, what went wrong in my first batch.  I could come up with following reasons

1. My bowl and blades were not chilled properly, it's best to refrigerate them overnight.  Temperature plays a crucial role.
2. Icing sugar helps in stability way better than regular granulated sugar does. 
3. During my first attempt, I used a regular dairy cream.  During my Second attempt, I bought a Dairy whipping cream, so the specification of the cream also should matter.

Once you make them, you will fall in love with the milky taste of this cream.  Please feel free to drop your comments and I hope you do try them at home.  

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.  

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 :)  

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.

Vanocka - Christmas special Bread

  Vanocka is a sweetened braided bread, with full of flavors from Czech Republic and Slovakia.  Apart from sugar, this bread also has loads of almonds and raisin to give a  sweet hint and has aroma  from nutmeg and lemon zest. 

This bread involves braiding in three batches, and stacking them all up.  They have to be pinned through toothpicks or grill sticks so that the layer don't collapse.  The real trick is to equally divide the dough into nine counterparts for braiding, which can be efficiently done through weighing machine. 

After baking this yeast-raised bread, there was an strong hint of aroma around my home, resembling the plum cake. Each slice was a bit dense yet sweetened with a lemony flavor.   We ended up devouring this beautiful braided bread.  Merry Christmas to all, and thanks to Swathi Iyer for suggesting such a exotic bake. 

Mushroom Quiche

Quiche is an open faced savoury pie.  The filling of quiche is savoury custard and cheese along with meat, seafood and vegetables filling.  The flavour is derived from the filling and the type of cheese used.   They can be had both cold or warm, though I found them best when warmed. 

  Pie pan is first lined with pastry crust, that is blind-baked,  and then  followed by cheese, filling, custard and finally topped by cheese.  The custard filling is heavy cream whisked with eggs.  Ratio of cream and eggs is 2:1 (ie for every ½ cup of cream, you should add ¼ cup of whisked egg).  After baking, quiche gives out an aromatic smell throughout the place and  was very light and fluffy when tasted. 

My second filling, was vegetarian choice.   I used mushroom along with spring onions.  You can use mushroom with palak or spinach with corn.  Any vegetarian filling is fine, as long as it gets cooked well before stuffing into quiche. 

 I tried yellow(mature)  cheddar cheese in this quiche.  This yellow cheddar had an dominating aroma, and quiche was like an cheesy explosion J  You can also try other varieties like gouda, mozzarella etc.  All thanks to Swathi Iyer from Baking partners group, for initiating this wonderful challenge.  

For making 8-inch Pastry crust and Blind baking, please refer  here

For the  Mushroom and Spring onion filling:

You will be needing

For the filling

•         1 tbspn butter
•          ¼ cup of sliced shallots
•          ¼ cup of sliced spring onion bulbs
•          1 tsp finely chopped ginger
•          1 tsp finely chopped garlic
•          Salt, to taste
•          Pinch of haldi/turmeric powder
•          ½ tsp chilly powder
•          1 tsp dhanya powder
•          175 gm of finely sliced mushrooms
•          1 cup finely chopped spring onions (green part alone)

For the custard

•          ½ cup Amul fresh cream
•          1 large egg
•          ½ tsp of chilly powder
•          ½ tsp of pepper
•          Salt, to taste

Others

•          75 grams of cheddar cheese

Add butter to the pre-heated tawa, this is followed by adding shallots and spring onion bulbs.  Saute them for an minute, add finely chopped ginger and garlic.  Add all the spices.  

Add our sliced mushrooms and sauté till they coat the spices.  Add the spring onion greens , simmer the flame and cover the pan, cooking for 20 more minutes till the mushrooms are perfectly cooked and the filling becomes dry.  

Cool the filling, keep aside. 

Grate the cheddar cheese, keep aside.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celsius. 

For the custard, open the amul fresh cream pack.  Do not shake.  Separate the liquid contents from the pack and use the cream part.  This is done because we need an heavy cream for quiche and amul has an low fat content, so separating its cream would enhance the fat content and hence is done.  The liquid part can be used in cooking purpose, like you can add them in curry, kheer etc.  

In an large bowl,  add ½ cup of cream part (from amul cream), one large egg, chilly powder and salt.  Whisk them, till they are completely dissolved.  

Final Assembly:

Take the blind-baked pie crust and sprinkle them with cheddar cheese at the bottom.  

This is followed by our prepared filling.  

Pour in the custard and top with  the remaining cheese.

Bake them for 35 minutes or till the filling is firm.  

Mushroom quiche was dominated by cheddar cheese aroma, and tasted delecious.

Linking this to Baking partners, run by Swathi Iyer