Muffins anyone??

Wow.. I just realised my last post was in August 2013.... Nway suddenly the urge to bake came..
So I look through the book my sis bought for me... Breads and Muffins by Food Lovers.
Made two types of muffins. Gingerbread Muffin and Potato and Cheese Muffins.
The Potato and Cheese Muffins was served with tomato salsa.

Here is the snapshot...

I never knew tomato salsa was so simple:
2 tomatoes
1 green chilli
1 onion
few corriander leaves
a pinch of salt
lime juice
1 tsp of cumin

1) Cut tomatoes, green chilli and onion into small cubes. 
2) Mix all the ingredients and chill in fridge before serving. 

Baking Class with Santhi Francis

I attended my first cooking class with my neighbour aunty, Santhi Francis. She is a super talented cook and I'm excited to learn more. Today's recipe:
Chicken briyani, dalca, mutton kurma, chicken ros, raita, brinjal pacheri and barbosa(desert). Since I am vege for today, she made vegetarian briyani for me....

Enjoy looking at the photos.... 

Vegetable Cutlet...

Hola peoples.... Been long long time since blogging...

I missed bloggin as much as I missed cooking. This weekend I tried out vegetable cutlet.
Its purely vegetarian. No egg involved. I adapted this recipe from a few different websites and add some of my own ingredients.

A fren suggested that I take step by step picture. Perhaps will do it for my next recipe.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients needed

Potato - 3 big size, wash
Beans + Carrot - cup
Onion -1 chopped finely
Green chilli -1 chopped
Turmeric powder - a pinch
Chilli powder - 1 tsp
Garam masala powder -1/2 tsp
Dry Mango powder - 1 tsp
Salt, pepper needed
oil 1tbsp
mustard seed

Cornflour + wheat flour - 1/2 cup
White Bread crumbs
Oil for shallow frying

 Method:

1) Steam or boil the potatoes and mixed vege. I place my veges in Noxxa pressure cooker and cooked under high pressure for 8 minutes.Potatoes should be 3/4 cook.
2) Peel the potatoes and mash them. Add salt and pepper and keep aside.
3) Meanwhile, heat a wok and add oil and mustard seed. Add onion and green chili.
4) Saute a while until the onion is translucent. Then add in the steamed beans and carrot.
5) Add in tumeric powder, chilli powder, garam masala, and dry mango powder, salt and pepper.
6) Add the vegetable to the mashed potato and mix well.
7) Divide into equal size balls and flatten them.
8) Mix cornflour with wheat flour with some water into a thick paste. (This is important)

9) Dip the flatten ball into the paste and then into the bread crumbs.
10) Fly in shallow hot oil.
11) Serve with tamarind chutney or just mayonaise.

Baby Potatoes Dum Aloo

I totally love holidays... I can indulge in the thing i love to do.. Cook n bake...

Anyhow today I tried making Dum Aloo....

Here is the recipe...

Baby Potatoes cooked in spicy Yogurt Gravy (taken from honestcooking.com)

Ingredients

• Baby Potatoes – 20-25
• To grind for Masala
• Almonds – 10, blanched
• Tomatoes – 1 cup (about 2 medium)
• Ginger – 1 inch
• Garlic – 3 cloves, peeled
• Dry Red Chilies – 4
• For the Gravy
• Onions – 1.5 cups (1 large onion)
• Oil – 6 teaspoons (4 tsp for frying potatoes & 2 tsp for gravy)
• Cumin Seeds / Jeera – 1 teaspoon
• Cloves – 2
• Cinnamon – 1 inch
• Cardamom – 2
• Turmeric / Haldi powder – 1/2 teaspoon
• Garam Masala – 1 teaspoon
• Kasuri Methi / Dry fenugreek leaves – 2 teaspoons (I cannot find so i omitted)
• SALT – 3-4 teaspoons (or as per taste)
• Yogurt / Curd – 1/2 cup (100 ml) (not the thick kind) (I use 1 tablespoon only)
• Water – 1/2 cup (80-100ml) (if required)
• Coriander / Cilantro leaves – for garnish

Instructions

I. Preparing the baby potatoes -

1. Boil & peel the potatoes.
2. Heat a pan & add 4 teaspoons oil to it.
3. Add the potatoes
4. Fry till the potatoes turn golden brown and form a nice crisp layer. (keep an eye on the pan as the potatoes may burn if not tossed regularly)
5. Keep aside

II. For the masala

1. In a blender, take tomatoes, blanched & peeled almonds, ginger, garlic & red chilis. (ingredients mentioned under ‘To grind for masala’.
2. Blend to a smooth paste & set aside

III. For the gravy

1. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil to a pan
2. Add cumin seeds, clove, cinnamon & cardamom. Sauté for 1-2 minutes
3. Add chopped onions
4. Sauté till they get a golden brown color.
5. Add the ground paste (from above ?)
6. Mix & sauté for 4-5 minutes
7. Add the Salt, Turmeric, Garam Masala & Kasuri Methi
8. Mix well. Let it cook for a minute

IV. Final Step: Getting it all together

1. Add the fried baby potatoes to this mixture and mix once.
2. Add the yogurt/curd
3. Mix well and simmer for around 10 minutes
4. In case the curry is too dry, add a little water.
5. Garnish with coriander / cilantro leaves & serve!

Maida Halwa and Milk Burfi

I keep losing my recipes. Recipes that I find from various websites, printed and kept in my folders is always missing.. So I'm gonna upload my recipes here. Hopefully they stay safe...

Today is two of my successful attempt... Milk Burfi and Maida Halwa... These recipes were given to me by my aunty who found these recipes online. Thanks to all the frequent bloggers who shared their tested recipes with us...

Here goes the recipe.

MILK BURFI (adapted from  http://theyumblog.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/paal-cake-milk-burfi-srijayanthi-krishnashtami/)
Ingredients

• Milk – 3 cups
• Sugar – 2 and 1/2 cups
• Rava – 2 tablespoons
• Ghee – 3 table spoons
• Cardamom – 3 nos

Method

1. In a heavy bottomed pan heat 1 table spoon ghee on a medium flame and fry the rava till it turns whitish.
2. Add the milk and allow to boil for 15 minutes on a low flame.
3. Add the sugar and cardamom powder and keep cooking on a medium to low flame, stirring continously.
4. When it reaches a thick consistency say in about 15 minutes add the remaining ghee and keep stirring.
5. In another 5 minutes it will be ready for pouring on to a greased tray. The right time would be to check the sides of the pan for white powder.
6. Pour on to a greased tray and mark the shape after 5 minutes, with a sharp knife.

MAIDA HALWA

All purpose flour(maida)	3 cups
Sugar	2 cups
Red food color	a pinch
Ghee	1/2 cup
Cardamom	4
Roasted cashew	3/4 cup
water	4 cups

• Take a bowl add maida flour and water, mix with hand gently and evenly.
• Add minimum water and knead the flour to make it soft.
• Keep it aside for 1 hr.
• After 1 hours, add 3 cups water and mix well, now the dough will give milk, separate the milk and keep aside.
• Leave the extracted milk for sometime, thick milk will settled down.
• Remove the liquid milk.
• Heat the pan and add thick milk, sugar and food color, mix well.
• Keep stirring until liquid gets thick, now add ghee slowly.
• Keep stirring until the ghee separates from halwa, add powdered cardamom, roasted cashews.

Recipe by Agalya

 

Since these are Traditional Indian Sweets, I dare not modify these recipes... Tried the original recipe and was successful. Anyhow, traditional recipes needs experience. Practice makes perfect.... 

CARROT CAKE with CREAM CHEESE FILLING

After a long time hunting and searching for a good carrot cake recipe, I watched Chuckmas in AFC channel yesterday and saw Chuck baking Carrot cake...

Ahaaaa... Tats it.. Today went to Sunshine and hunt for all the ingredients...
After months of working.. baking is indeed the best therapy..

This is basically recipe from Chuck Hughes (the great chef from Chuck's Day Off show). However, I did make some modifications to the recipe according to family preferences. Since we are still in vegetarian mode, I transformed this cake into eggless carrot cake.

The result: Not bad for a first timer. Needs some improvement but it is worth baking.The photo is not so nice. Still learning to snap good photos for blogging.
Here goes the recipe. The modifications are in yellow.

CARROT CAKE

Ingredients

• Cake:
• 2 cups/500 ml all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon/15 ml baking powder
• 2 teaspoons/10 ml baking soda
• 1 teaspoon/5 ml ground cinnamon (Increased to 2 tsp)
• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5 ml allspice (omitted because I could not find it)
• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5 ml ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5 ml ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon/ 2.5 ml salt
• 1 1/2 cups/375 ml sugar
• 1 cup/250 ml canola oil
• 4 eggs (Substitute each egg with 1 tbsp flour, 1/2 tbsp butter, 1/2 tsp baking power and 3 tbsp water)
• 3 cups/750 ml peeled and grated carrots
• 1 cup/250 ml chopped pineapple (omitted)

• 1 cup/250 ml walnuts, coarsely chopped (100gms)
• 1/2 cup/125 ml dried cherries (100gms)
• 1/2 cup/125 ml dried golden raisins (100gms)
• Frosting:
• 2 packages cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup/125 ml butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups/625 ml icing sugar
• Zest and juice of 1 orange
• Maple Walnuts:
• 1/2 cup/125 ml maple syrup (I used 100ml Golden Syrup)
• 1 cup/250 ml toasted walnuts

Directions

For the cake: With the rack in the middle position, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Line two 8-inch (20-cm) springform pans with parchment paper.

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, combine the sugar, oil and eggs with a whisk. Gently stir in the dry ingredients. With a spatula, gently fold in the carrots, pineapple, walnuts, cherries and raisins.

Divide the batter between the pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour ( I baked for 40 minutes only- 170 degrees C) . Cool in the pans on a rack. Run the blade of a knife around the cakes and unmold.

For the frosting: In a bowl, cream the cream cheese with the butter and icing sugar with an electric mixer. Add the zest and juice and continue beating until the frosting is smooth and creamy.

Spread the frosting over the top of the cakes and stack them on a platter.

For the maple walnuts: In a skillet, bring the syrup to a boil. Add the walnuts and stir continuously until the syrup has crystallized around the walnuts. Pour onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and let cool. Garnish the cake.

Kums is back to blogging...
This post is to inform that most probably I will manage this blog myself as my fellow blogger is temporarily "not available" at the moment. Nothing to worry..She is busy with her new role as a wife..