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 :)  

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.

Shrikand cookies

Cookies are always an essential bites at home.  They lift up every occasion and cheers us all.  Following Zebra cookies, here comes Shrikand cookies, made by hung curd.  This fusion cookie starts with rich flavour and ends on an sour note. 

Their speciality is their cake-like crumbly texture, appealing to crowd of all age.   I had them garnished with cardamon, almonds and saffron to coincide with traditional shrikand.  Here, everybody enjoyed the bite and are  having an good time :)  Hope you guys try and let us know.  

Zebra cookies

   I was completely fascinated, when I found these cookies from the book, "100 BEST DELECIOUS CHOCOLATE".  The entire concept was fun, and reminded me of an long gap from my last baked cookie.  These striped cookies were very easy and required an total whisk with each and every ingredient.  You need chocolate buttons though, I did pipe few, a day before and that came in handy with the presentation and saved an lot of time.

I made these with milk chocolate, dark chocolate is also preferable.   This zebra cookies are very kid friendly and can be tagged as an party food too.  Dough can be kneaded in advance, because more the refrigeration, more the flavours enhance within these.  Fresh out of the oven, they had an crisp edges with an chewy middle.  With an ongoing monsoon, these cookies did an good pair with hot tea. Do try and let us know.   

Chunky chocolate cookies

    Chocolate cookies - who doesn't go gaga over them?  We end up buying some brand or the other once in an week, because we all devour them :)  So, such one week, both mother and daughter took up this project and made them with available ingredients.  Though they were mildly sweet, the aroma was excellant and filled up our home.

 Adding brown sugar instead of regular sugar charmed up the flavour and final touch of milk chocolate chunks/ finely chopped milk chocolate ended  up in rich, delecious cookie that became favourite of all :D

Watermelon-look alike cake/ fondant sponge cake

     I love to bake.... baking, not only ends up with an beautiful, gorgeous end-product, but also relaxes my mind and eases the day. (Now, let us forget about the sink getting loaded with lots of dirty vessels.... and the overall messy work, LOL) Though, I would love to bake all the time, my regret is not on the cost I had spent, but on the consumption part.  Since, we are an family of three (I would say, two and an half :D ) I can't proceed to my next bake, untill and unless my previous one got completely out of stock.

So, when my sambhar cake disappeared, I was wondering what to proceed.  So, when I explored my refrigerator, my eyes shined gloriously over the cling wrapped fondant.  Yes, this fondant is very special to me, since I experimented myself, with stocked on condensed milk.  Isn't that exciting?  I, dragged this fondant and along with icing colours played an little to create this magical watermelon look-alike cake.  Basically, there is no watermelon(Beleive me, not even an drop of essence or juice),  but an sponge cake topped with fondant to create an fake look.  Though I am not uploading details of fondant here, I promise to get back soon with an detailed post :)

Dates and raisin muffins

   For this CCC Challenge, I took my help from Morphy Richards Recipe Guide, that dates back to twenty years :)  Thanks to my dear mom, who saved it for me :)  From this book, I choosed Dates and Raisin muffins.  There has been an usual dilemma between cupcakes and muffins, isn't it?  So, let me resolve this before getting back to my post :)

         

BHAJJI KI MINI PIE

  Well, what can I say about this cheesy n soft (vegetable) bhaji stuffed pies??  They are a divine fusion of Indian chaat with England-based dessert.  Since bhaji goes excellent with pav, their combo with buttery pie crust was good too :)  I made them when I desperately needed a savory snack. I am always a savory lover...  so when this 'fusion' idea struck me, I no longer resisted myself to bake :)   Yes, I don't know why baking is very mesmerizing and these days I am getting bakeaholic :D  :D

When it came for filling, I needed them a bit cheesy with  a different seasoning.  So, I went for oregano with mozzarella combination.  You can use any dry herbs seasoning (or replace them with a couple of fresh herbs and chili flakes you have).  If you want a classic 'cheesy' look, you can replace quarter cup of cheese to almost 1 cup.  (Trust this one, you will get a 'classic temptation')  These pies are better had straight from the oven, piping hot.  :D  :D So, with freezing climate here, they were a 'pleasure to intake' :D  :D

I got a lot of credits when I shared this pie with my neighbor :D :D  She especially appreciated the filling.  This has given me a lot of confidence, yes I am going to try this filling with more of savory types.  On the other hand, I had to admit that making these pies were a bit time-consuming.  It is best to prepare the dough before a  day and refrigerate them if you are in short of time. 

Chocolate scones

   Scones are regarded as quick tea-bread that are made with baking powder as its leavening agent, unlike using yeast.  Slightly sweet, they are occasionally glazed.  This 'CHOCOLATE SCONES' is adapted from the book '100 Best Delecious Chocolate'  I must say that these scones were easy and quickly made.

Chocolate scones were crisp and nicely browned over the top, these were soft and layered inside.   I enjoyed them with tea.  Slightly sweet with bits of chocolate chunks in each bite, these scones were an treat indeed!