Month: December 2010

Coconut Burfi/ Nariyal Burfee

Coconut Burfi/ Nariyal Burfee

Wish you all a Happy New Year. Hope the Year brings you joy, health and of course good food. (But not the extra weight!)  Hope you are all having a great time with family and friends, celebrating in style. We have a simple family tradition 

Lauki ki Sabji

Lauki ki Sabji

  Lauki does not get cooked often in our house. This vegetable along with zucchini has been deemed as having sweet taste when cooked by DH and so they get ignored. Hence they do not find a good place in our kitchen. However recently one 

Eggless Vanilla Cupcakes

Eggless Vanilla Cupcakes

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Wishing you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays ya’ll. Hope you are having a fabulous and fun filled long weekend with your friends and loved ones. Here in the United States, the phrase “Happy Holidays” is often used as a generic collective greeting for all of the winter holidays which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. 

December is an exciting month of the year. Even though the days are shorter and colder than usual, the spirit of the holidays, the festivities that comes along with it lingers on; it is hard to ignore the excitement going around. The malls crowded, people in jolly mood, red, green white colors everywhere, Christmas trees decked up, the houses all lighted up and most important of aroma of different varieties of desserts and holiday food waffling around.

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The weather now here has become cold and chilly as well far outcry from the spring like weather we had few days ago. Our favorite part past time at this time of the year is to sit close to a warm place in the coffee shop, sipping on hot coffee with a piece of dessert listening to some old carols while watching the surrounding decked up in lights and other ornaments.

Neighbors, friends, colleagues are all on a baking spree and it hard not to be a part of it. I have been most influenced by few of my colleagues who have baking and sharing the goodies with us. I decided to start off with a simple and easy vanilla cupcake, which I adapted from Eggless Cake and Eggless Strawberry Cupcakes. The good part is that even though it is simple, one can jazz this up by beautiful and pretty looking frosting apt for this season.

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If you are looking for a plain eggless vanilla cake then this one is a keeper. I had seen this base recipe of using aerated water/soda along with condensed milk for making eggless cake on many blogs and bookmarked it since a long time.  I had an opportunity last week and I am so glad that this turned out well. The other recipe that worked for me is the Orange flavored Egglesss cake that I have posted here.

Eggless Vanilla Cupcakes 

Recipe Source: Adapted from Eggless Cake and Eggless Strawberry Cupcakes

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Ingredients:- 

  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/2 tin sweetened condensed milk (200 gms)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 cup butter softened (unsalted)
  • 1 tsp vanilla essence
  • 1/4 cup aerated water or soda water
  • 1 Tbsp sugar (optional) 

Yields: 9 medium cupcakes or 17 mini cupcakes

Procedure:-

  • Preheat the oven to 350 F/ 180 C. Meanwhile make the muffin moulds ready by greasing them..
  • On a big sheet of paper sieve the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar (optional) and baking soda.
  • In a bowl beat the condensed milk, butter, vanilla essence together until incorporated.
  • Add the soda water and beat again. This becomes frothy and light.
  • Add the flour mixture to this spoon by spoon and mix again. The batter is slightly thick.
  • Fill the batter in each of the muffin cups until ¾ full. Bake the muffins for 15 to 18 minutes until it turn golden brown or a tooth pick inserted in one of the muffin comes out clean. (Mine were done in 16 minutes).
  • Remove from oven and let them cool on wire racks. After they are cooled do the frosting as required.

Icing: I used store brought frosting.

Lemon Cookies

Lemon Cookies

Winter/snow is in full swing in most part of the United States, but here in Texas we have been blessed with an unusually spring like weather and have been enjoying every moment of it. Let us see, how long it lasts though!  Anyway, I had 

Red Chori Plantain Curry

Red Chori Plantain Curry

This recipe had been lying in my drafts for a long time now, but did not get to post it for one reason or the other. Now that we are getting close to the end of the year, I wanted to clear the posts in 

Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Baking or cooking with kids has been fun experience so far for me. It is a good way to connect with them and they learn things about different ingredients, measurements, concept of wet and dry etc. So time permitting I use the opportunity to bake with our 5 year old. 

Of course, there are some funny, wild, exasperated moments but you learn to take them as they come along. For example even a task as simple as stirring the dry ingredients in a bowl somehow brings up the picture of bad guys, chasing them, fighting with them and in the process dropping half of the dry ingredients onto the floor. While measuring the chocolate chips most of it goes inside the tummy rather than in the batter. When glared at he replies “but he (chip) wanted me to eat it”. 

Here are some more of his funnies. His morning ritual while brushing his teeth is to stand on the scale and weigh himself. It is a feeling of triumph when he sees the scale rise giving him the feeling of growing big and tall. Most of the days, it stays steady sometimes it goes up by 0.5 lbs but then one day he found that he had lost a pound. He stood in a corner and cried tears streaming down his cheeks. With all hopes, I stood on the scale and cried too, for the completely opposite reason (of course). Such is life!

And then last week we had been to a sandwich place that was Wi-Fi enabled, DH tried to explain what Wi-Fi was and asked “Do you know what wi-fi is?” Pat came the reply, “Yes that is Amma, and she is your wi-fi”. We burst out when we realized that he was confused between wife and wi-fi.

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Coming back to the recipe we had some overripe bananas that I wanted to use and the kiddo loves chocolate chips in everything and so I was on a lookout for a muffin recipe. I found this is simple recipe of Banana Chocolate Chip muffins in the Joy of Vegan Baking Book.

 The good thing is that these muffins are low fat, soft (not moist though) and one that you do not feel guilty about eating. You can eat it either for breakfast or as a snack. Feel free to substitute blueberries, cranberries, peanut butter chips instead of the chocolate chips and it has a different taste altogether.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 small ripe bananas
  • ½ cup chocolate chips 

Yields:

  • 6 muffins

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Method:

  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
  • In a bowl, mash the bananas with fork and to this add sugar, oil and vanilla. Mix well.
  • In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
  • Stir the flour mixture into the banana mixture until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
  • Lightly grease and dust 6 muffin cups (or line with paper bake cups), and pour the batter into each one of them until they are 2/3 covered.
  • Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes clean.
Instant Raagi Dosa/ Fingermillet dosa

Instant Raagi Dosa/ Fingermillet dosa

Here in the neck of our woods, it is the season of Autumn/Fall here where nature works its magic and turns the leaves into shades of colors. Vibrant reds, brilliant yellows, striking orange and muted browns adorn the branches making the tree all decked up.