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..

Coffee Biscuit with Drizzled Cooking Chocolate (eggless)

This biscuit is created after 2 failure attempts and searching many many recipes.I was searching for eggless coffee biscuit.

I really wanted coffee biscuit this year so after much modification, I finally finalized the best coffee biscuit recipe. Hehehe

Here we go,

Ingredients

400 gm wheat flour(Tepung Gandum Cap Sauh)

60 gm corn flour

120 gm castor sugar

1 ¾ tablespoon Nescafe Sunrise

1 ¾ tablespoon hot water

½ tsp baking powder

225 gm butter

Method

1)      Cream butter and sugar together.

2)      Add hot water to the coffee. Mix the coffee to the creamed butter.

3)      Sieve wheat flour, corn flour and baking powder and mix to the creamed ingredients.

4)      Knead all the ingredients til well blended.

5)      Use a cookie cutter and cut out according to your desired shape

6)      Bake in 150^oC for 15 minutes.

7)      When the cookies are cooled, drizzled some cooking chocolate on the cookies.

8)      Enjoy eating.

Eggless Chocolate Cake(Steamed)

EGGLESS CHOCOLATE  CAKE (STEAMED)

Ingredients

Wet items:

6 oz butter

4oz castor sugar

3/5 tin condensed milk

1 cup water

Dry items:

8 oz self raising flour

2 oz cocoa

2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoon vanilla essence

½ teaspoon bicarbonate soda

Method:

1)    Mix the wet items in a pan and let it to boil.

2)      While waiting for the boiled items to cool down, sieve the dry items.

3)      Mix both wet and dry items. Pour in a 8inch tray. 

4)      Steam for 45-50 minutes.

It is very important that the stove fire must be in high and you must not open steamer until 50 minutes. Or else the cake may not rise.

It is also very important to line the tray with a baking paper so that the cake won’t stick at the bottom of the tray.

Braided Bread with Potato and Sausage Curry Fillings.

Kums in the house....
It’s good to be back blogging after a long time..
Today I made Braided Bread with Potato and Sausage Curry Fillings.

Never in a million years would I have thought that sausage can be made into curry with potatoes. I was searching for chicken in the fridge tapi tak dapat. So I saw some sausages. Since I wanted to bake so much (terlebih semangat) I decided to use the sausage as the substitute for chicken. And the result was great.. tasted good. If coriander leaves was added the taste would have been better but I used whatever resources I have at home. The braid was not so pretty. First time ma…

It turned out well. Still hot and sitting on the table. Hopefully it will still exist for breakfast tomorrow. Hahaha.. lets take a look at the recipe.

Braided Bread with Potato and Sausage Curry Fillings

Ingredients:

Bread Dough (adapted from MamaFami recipe with a little modification):

400gm bread flour

2tsp salt

1 ½ tsp bread improver

2 tsp bread softener

80gm castor sugar

11gm yeast

1 egg

190gm water

40gm butter

Filling:

2 potatoes (diced)

2 sausages (diced)

1 inch cinnamon stick

2 tblspoon chicken curry powder

2 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp chilli powder

2 tsp garam masala

Salt to taste

Some curry leaves

2 onion sliced finely

Method :

To prepare the bread dough refer to here

To prepare for the filling:

1)      Sauté the onion til caramelized and keep aside. ( This is to preserve the sweetness of the sautéed onion)

2)      Heat up oil and add the cinnamon stick.

3)      Then add curry leaves, sausages and potatoes and cook in the oil for some time.

4)      Add the other ingredients except garam masala and stir fry.

5)      Add some water and wait til the potatoes are soft. Add garam masala.

6)      Leave the filling to cool.

To make the bread:

1)      Take the dough out of the oven and punch to release the air.

2)      Divide into two portions and follow the method from here

3)      Rest the dough for 30 minutes and bake for 30 minutes (180 C)

4)      Serve with hot coffee and enjoy.

We're Back in Business...... yay

Hola bloggers......

This is to inform that Umi and Kums are back to the blogging world...
It has been a long long period of silence 4 both of us.. biasala we write thesis n do research til v 4get the world..
hahahah.. but that doesn't mean that we stopped cooking... we were just too busy to post...

But now that we are back, hopefully this blog will be alive again!!!!