Eggless Mango Semolina Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup - Mango Puree 
1 cup - Semolina (Suji) 
1/2 cup - Sugar 
1/4 cup - Oil (I used coconut oil) 
1 tbsp - Curd  
1 tsp - Baking Powder 
1/2 tsp - Baking Soda  
1 tbsp - Milk
Slivered almonds and pistachios (for garnishing - optional) 

Directions:

• In a bowl, add in all the ingredients except baking powder and soda. Mix well and let the batter rest for 20 min.
• Add the baking powder and soda to the resting batter and mix well. If the batter is too thick, then add 1 tbsp milk.
• Transfer the prepared batter to baking dish, lined with parchment paper.
• Sprinkle sliced almonds nuts on top.
• Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees for 30-35 mins.
• Once ready check with tooth prick stick. If it comes out clean, then cake is ready to serve. 

Recipe adapted from healthykadai.com.

Eggless Ragi Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• ½ cup - Ragi flour / finger millet
• ½ cup - Wheat flour
• ¾ cup - Mashed bananas 
• 1 and ½ tsp - Baking powder
  
• ¼ tsp - Baking soda
• ¼ tsp - Salt
• 1 tsp - Vanilla 
• 1 tsp - Nutmeg powder (optional)
• ¼ cup - Honey
• ½ cup - Yogurt
• ¼ cup - Olive oil

Directions:

• Sieve ragi and wheat flour. Add salt, baking soda, baking powder and nutmeg powder. Keep it aside.
• Blend together curd, honey, olive oil and mashed banana.
• Add this wet mixture to dry mixture and combine everything well. Grease loaf pan with little oil. Pour batter into the pan and tap it.
• In a preheated oven, Bake at 180 degree C for 30-40 mins. Once the upper crust turns light brown, insert a toothpick at the center and it should come out clean.

Recipe based on jopreetskitchen.com

Nutella Mousse

Yields – 8 small dessert cups

Cream whipped to a stiff peak.

Folding in the Nutella with the whipped cream.

Ingredients:

Nutella – ¾ cup

Heavy whipping cream – 1 Cup

Method:

• Take the whipping cream in a chilled bowl of a stand mixer. Whip until stiff peaks are formed. Do not over beat.
• Heat the Nutella in the microwave for 30 seconds. Keep stirring in 15 sec intervals.
• Gently fold in the melted Nutella with the whipped cream.
• Spoon the mousse into dessert cups. (I used a pipping bag to pipe the Nutella into tall dessert cups)
• Cover and chill in the refrigerator for an hour.
• Serve cold, topped with almond flakes, chocolate chips or chocolate sprinkles.

 Note:

• I used non-dairy whipping cream, and it did not need any extra sugar.
• The quantity of Nutella can be increased as per taste.
• The mousse can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

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! 

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! 

Cheese Quesadilla

Last weekend we had a few friends over for lunch.  We really loved hosting these lovely friends whom we lost to Ireland 10 years back! It was so much fun catching up…and we chatted till our jaws hurt! This was a pretty last minute lunch date so I didn't have time for any elaborate south Indian style lunch menu. But there were 4 kids coming, so I wanted to make something quick and yummy.

I made some marshmallow pops (recipe to be posted soon) and these quesadillas. And I couldn't believe how fast these got gobbled up! The quesadillas where slathered with sauce filled with cheese which are always a super hit! For the recipe post I added some chicken sausages. But if your guests are vegetarians like mine were, then you can totally omit the chicken and just go with the veggies.

So now you have this super quick appetizer recipe to wow you “mini” guests! Tried and tested! The kids loved the quesadillas so much that they forgot the rest of the dishes on the table!

Cheese Quesadillas

Serves: 4

Recipe Adapted from budgetbytes.com

Ingredients:

Tortillas – 4 (I used MISSION Multi-grain Tortillas)

Mozzarella Cheese – 2 cups (shredded)

Pasta Sauce – 2 cups (I used PREGO Pasta Sauce)

Onion – 1 Med Size (thinly sliced)

Capsicum – 1 Med Size (thinly sliced)

Olives (black or green) – 1 cup (sliced)

Chicken Sausage (optional) – 2 (thinly sliced)

Oil – for sauteing

Directions:

• Slice all the veggies, drain the olives and keep aside.
• Add a little oil to a pan and saute the thinly sliced chicken sausage for a few minutes until cooked. Drain on paper napkins.
• Take one tortilla wrap and spread ½ cup of pasta sauce on it.
• To this add a little capsicum, onions, olives and the sauteed chicken sausage. Then add ½ cup of mozzarella cheese and fold the tortilla in half.
• Heat a flat based pan with a little oil and cook the tortilla until brown and crispy on both sides.
• Cut into wedges and serve warm.

 NOTE:

• You can prepare the tortillas a couple of hours beforehand. When your guests are ready to eat, cook and serve the quesadillas immediately, otherwise they tend to get soggy.
• You can add or omit any of the toppings you want to suit your needs. 

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Rolls

Hello my dear bread bakers, this is a recipe for a healthy morning breakfast rolls.  I am always in the search of healthy breads recipe. This recipe was a great hit. So much health and goodness in one simple roll.

 This is great for the busy mornings, just slit it open and slather with a fruit spread and butter and you are good to go.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Rolls

Makes: 15 rolls

Ingredients:

1 Cup – all purpose flour

3 ½ cups – whole wheat flour

1 cup – rolled oats

2 cups – water

3 tablespoon – Butter

1 tablespoon – instant yeast

1/3 cup – honey

1 ½ teaspoon – salt

1 egg + 1 tablespoon water – for egg wash (Can use milk instead of egg)

Rolled oats for sprinkling

Directions:

• In a pan, boil 1 cup of water. Add the oats and butter to the water and cook for 1 minute. Remove from heat and set it aside to cool.
• Take 1 cup of warm water, along with the yeast and honey. To this add the cooled oat mixture, salt and all purpose flour, beat until smooth.
• To this mixture slowly add the whole wheat flour to form soft dough.
• On a floured surface, knead the dough for about 6-8 minutes, until smooth and elastic, add more whole wheat flour if needed.
• Place the kneaded dough in a greased bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let it rise to double for about 1-2 hours.
• After rising, punch the dough down and let it rest for another 10 minutes.
• Divide into 15 equal portions and roll into a ball. Place in 1 or 2 greased pans.
• Cover with damp cloth and let it rise for another 45 mintues.
• Before placing into oven, brush the dough tops with the egg wash or plain milk, and sprinkle with the oats.
• Bake at 180° for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan and let it cool.

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!

Chocolate Pudding

Puddings were a new concept to me. When I first moved to Singapore, I tried these small mango pudding cups from Fairprice. These were almost a jelly than a pudding, so I was never really interested in puddings again. But some years later a friend of mine from Germany said that she was totally addicted to chocolate puddings! So I gave chocolate pudding a try, and they were pure bliss! 

I stumbled upon a wonderful site pixelandcrumbs.com, I found this easy recipe for chocolate pudding. Her pictures were so inspiring for my photo shoot as well.

Recently we went to a close-friend’s daughter’s birthday. I wanted to make a quick and eggless dessert to take to the birthday party. And this pudding recipe seemed the perfect dessert for a 9 year old and a 3 year old! The adults too enjoyed their sweet little chocolate cups!

Chocolate Pudding:

Makes: 12 small jelly cups of pudding

Ingredients:

¼ cup (30 grams) – Corn-starch ( I used tapioca starch)

½ cup (100 grams) – Sugar

1/8 teaspoon - Salt

3 Cups (705 ml) – Milk

170 grams (6 ounces) – Baking Chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used Hershey’s chocolate chips)

1 teaspoon – Vanilla essence

Directions:

• Use a double broiler, or place a large stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering hot water.
• In the stainless steel bowl add the tapioca starch, sugar and salt.
• Slowly add the milk to the bowl. Keep stirring constantly to mix all the ingredients.
• Keep the stove on medium, and continue to stir for about 10-15 minutes.
• As the mixture begins to thicken, to test the consistency, use a spoon to see if it coats the back of the spoon.
• Now add the chocolate and keep stirring until dissolved for about 3-5 minutes.
• Remove from heat and add the vanilla essence.
• If there are any lumps, strain the pudding through a strainer. This is not necessary if the pudding is of smooth consistency.
• When still hot, spoon the pudding into serving bowl or individual cups.
• Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and upto 3 days. 
• Serve chilled with a topping of strawberries/whipped cream/ any nuts.

Double Broiler Method

The mixture coating the back of the spoon.

Coconut Pudding

Hey there! How is everyone? Sorry for being away so long. Have been held up at work. But I have been trying out new recipes, just dint have time to post them. So I will try my best to post them all ASAP.

I came across this recipe for tender coconut pudding in a beautiful Indian blog collaborativecurry.com. The recipe called for tender coconut and its water, this sounded interesting. So that weekend I went to Little India and bought this huge coconut! At home hubby helped to cut open the hard coconut, we did it with a butcher knife. 

This pudding is rich in taste, the natural coconut pulp and the coconut water is such a refreshing flavor.

This is a quick and easy dessert, so make this for you next dinner party and wow your guests!

Pudding in silicon cupcake cases.

Coconut Pudding:

Yeilds:  8 Cupcake size puddings.

Ingredients:

Milk – 2 cups

Condensed Milk – 1 can (12 oz)

Tender Cocnut water – ½ cup

Tender cocnut pulp – from 1

Unflavoured Gelatin – 2 Tablespoons

Directions:

1. Using a knife cut open the top of the tender cocnut, and preserve the water. 
2. Then break open the coconut and scoop out the pulp with a spoon. Cut the pulp into small pieces.
3. In a bowl, take 5 tablespoons water and sprinkle gelatin over and let it bloom.
4. In a pan, heat the milk and condensed milk together until scalded.
5. Mix in the bloomed gelatin with the hot mixture until completely dissolved. 
6. Let the mixture cool to room temperature. 
7. Add the coconunt water and pulp and mix well. 
8. Pour the mixture into moulds or bowls, and cover with plastic wrap.
9. Keep refrigerated until set for 3-4 hours.
10. Serve cold, with chopped almonds, cashews or pistachios.

Note:

• I have used Gelatine to make the jelly; you can also use Agar Agar powder, both available in supermarkets. 
• If using Agar agar powder, use (same amount as gelatine) – 2 tablespoons
• If using agar agar flakes use – 4 tablespoons. 

No-Bake Nutella Cheesecake

     Happy Easter wishes to everyone. Hope you enjoyed the long weekend. I did a lot of shopping. Hubby dragged me to the new G.I.Joe movie, and for the first time ever I managed to fall asleep in a theater! And this was after my experience with the looong musical movie Les Miserables!! The movie was too boring for me.

     We had some guests over on Saturday. I got to try out two new recipes, Palak Poori and this Nutella Cheesecake. Both came out great. I am a fan of both dishes now!

     This No-Bake Cheesecake is so quick and easy to put together, but looks like you slaved over it. It was so rich and chocolatey, melt in your mouth goodness. If you are mad about chocolate desserts, then this one is going to steal your heart! Make this ahead of time and store in the refrigerator, and enjoy it at the end of your meal with friends.  

Crushing Oreo Cookies in a zip-lock bag.

No-Bake Nutella Cheesecake:

Yields: 5 – 6 Servings

Recipe from mybakingaddiction.com

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

12 Oreo Cookies – Crushed into Crumbs

Unsalted Butter – 2 Tablespoons,Melted

For the Filling:

Cream Cheese – 1 Cup, softened (I used Philadelphia Block Cream Cheese)

Nutella – 2/3 cup

Vanilla Extract – 1 teaspoon

Whipped Cream – 1 Cup (I used whipped cream from a can)

For the Topping:

Whipped Cream

Almonds – Chopped and roasted

Directions:

• Place the Oreo cookies in a zip-lock bag and crush it with a rolling pin. (Rolling Pin: Used to make Chapattis)
• Mix the crushed cookies with melted butter. Divide equally among individual serving dishes and press it down to for the Crust Layer.
• In a bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the softened cream cheese and Nutella until smooth.
• Now with a rubber spatula, fold in the whipped cream with the cream cheese and Nutella. Mix gently until no white streaks are seen.
• Pipe or spoon in the mixture, on top of the Oreo cookie crust layer.
• Cover and refrigerate, for 2 hours.
• Serve cold, topped with whipped cream and roasted almonds.