Brownies - Eggless

I made this recipe for one of our Deepavali get together. I had to make dessert for almost 60 people, and these brownies seemed like a good idea. I made fondant toppers and stamped them with alphabet stamps.

These brownies where a crowd pleaser! The best part of it was the colorful fondant toppers. This recipe has been adapted from Food for 7 Stages of Life.

Milk + Vinegar resting for 10 minutes

Beating together - Oil, Mil + vinegar mixture, vanilla, coffee 

Chocolate chips tossed with
coco powder or plain flour

Batter in the pan, ready to go into the oven

Baked brownie,  out of the oven and cut into 25 squares.

Brownies – Eggless

Yields: One 8x8 square pan, 25 small pieces.

Ingredients:

For the brownies:

Plain Flour – 1 cup

Cocoa Powder – 6 tablespoons (I used Valrhona Cocoa Powder)

Icing Sugar – 1 Cup

Baking Soda – 1 teaspoon

Salt – a pinch

Oil – 1/3 Cup (I used sunflower oil)

Milk – 1 1/2Cup

Vinegar – 1 teaspoon

Instant coffee powder – ½ teaspoon

Vanilla essence – ½ teaspoon

Chocolate Chips – ½ cup

Walnuts – ¼ cup, chopped and roasted (Optional)

For the fondant toppers:

Chocolate Icing – …. (I used Betty Crocker’s icing)

Readymade Fondant – 1 pack, white color

Food coloring- in different shades

Method:

To make the brownies:

• Line a 8x8 square baking pan with baking sheet. Pre-heat oven to 180C.
• Mix the vinegar with room-temperature milk and set aside for 10 minutes.
• Sift together the flour, icing sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt.
• In a bowl, beat together the oil and vinegar + milk mixture. To this add the vanilla essence and instant coffee powder and mix well.
• Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in 3 additions, gently fold in the mixture. Do not over beat.
• In a separate bowl toss the chocochips and walnuts with some cocoa powder, this is to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the tray while baking.
• Fold the chocochips and walnuts into the batter.
• Now pour the batter into the baking pan, and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the brownie comes out with crumbs.
• Remove from pan and let it cool. Cut into small squares.

 To make the icing and fondant toppers: (Optional)

• Chill the chocolate icing for about 20 minutes. Then fill a piping bag with the icing and frost the brownies.
• Take a small ball of the white fondant, and knead in the required food colouring.
• Use icing sugar for dusting and then roll out the fondant to desired thickness.
• Use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes.
• Place the fondant shapes onto the frosted brownies.

 Notes:

• You can add chocolate chips, caramel chips, chocolate chunks, other nuts to change up the flavor of the brownies.
• You can replace the chocolate icing with chocolate ganache. Click here for the chocolate ganache recipe.
• The fondant toppers can be made a day in advance, store in a cool dry place.
• Do not refrigerate the fondant. 

The cut out fondant toppers, layed out on baking paper to dry overnight.

     

                         

Petit Fours with Fondant roses

I make a lot of cupcakes, so much so that friends call me The Cupcake Queen. So I have been trying out new techniques to get me out of a rut. And this was my first try with petit fours. 

I was to meet a few of my friends for brunch last week. We were doing a potluck, and I had volunteered to bring dessert. So I baked a plain eggless vanilla cake the day before, and also made some fondant decorations.

The next morning I quickly whipped up some chocolate butter-cream and put the petit fours together. I had to travel almost 1.5 hours to get to my friend's place, and my friends where very glad that my tiny little cakes survived the trip in hot sun! 

Chocolate Ganache Cake

This was the cake I baked for my hubby's birthday last week. He is a huge chocolate fan. So a cake smeared with chocolate ganache sounded like a good idea! 

I baked 3 plain vanilla cakes with a 6" pan. And layered it using chocolate ganache as filling and frosting. Making the chocolate ganache is as easy as eating it :) and it also holds well in the humidity.

Chocolate Ganache Recipe:

Directions :

Thickened Cream - 1 Cup

Baking chocolate/semisweet chocolate chips - 2 Cups

Unsalted Butter - 1 Tablespoon(Optional)

Vanilla Extract - 1/2 Tablespoon

Method:

• Place the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. If using chocolate bar, chop into small pieces.
• Heat the cream on stove until boiling.
• Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and mix well. 
• Make sure all the chocolate has melted without any lumps.
• Add the softened butter and vanilla to the chocolate and  mix well. (If any lumps prevail, heat it for a few more seconds in the microwave, and mix well.)
• Cool the ganache in the fridge for a couple of hours.
• Whisk the thickened gaanche with a electric beater before use. 

Note:

• The ratio of the cream can be increased to make a thinner ganache that can be poured over your cake to form a glossy finish.
• I used Wilton 2M icing nozzle for the rosettes on the top of the cake, and used the back of a palette knife to make the stripes along the sides of the cake.

Houses & Hearts-Sugar Cookies

Happy Weekend everyone! I was thinking of making forsted cookies for Diwali this year. But then, I just got these cute little house shaped cookie cutter, and I desperately wanted to try them out! 

I am a part of this lovely cooking club, where we do monthly meet ups. So I decided to bake them some cute cookies for this month's meet up. I was very nervous about the cookies retaining their shape while baking...so after a little trial and error I finally got them to retain their shape. This was also my first time piping on cookies.I know that I still need a lot of practice. But they tasted good, and the colors looked so pleasant :)

So look out for more sugar cookies coming your way dear friends! 

Diwali Cupcakes - Eggless Vanilla with Fondant toppers

Here are my cupcakes for Diwali. Sorry for a very late Diwali post my friends. 

I have been taking cupcake orders on request for a while now. So these are some eggless vanilla cupcakes with fondant toppers that I made for Diwali. Please contact me for price and details at chitra_visalakshi@yahoo.co.in. Do follow us on facebook for future updates. 

I had so much fun making these fondant toppers. I was so glad to hear great feedback from happy customers. I also made a batch for my friends, along with some homemade murukku!