Spiced Pumpkin Bread

 My mother prepares these amazing sweet pumpkin thalipith (paratha). It is labour of love. This thalipith should be cooked over low flame, so for 8-10 thalipiths it can easily take over 1hr.
So today I was just thinking about this delicious thalipeeth and it strike me that I can easily bake some kind of pumpkin bread with this receipe. So I immediately started working on the receipe, and happy to say its a winner. You can try this simple receipe on some winter morning, the cinnamon in the bread will fill your whole house.

Ingredients:

3.5 cups grated pumpkin
2 cups* atta
2 cups grated jaggery
1/4 cup oil
1 heaped tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking soda
Handfull of sultanas

Receipe:

Mix grated pumpkin and jaggery and keep it for 10-15 min. This will help the water ooze out. Add sultanas, salt, oil and cinnamon powder. In the wet mixture add dry ingredient (atta + baking soda). You need to adjust atta quantity such that the final mix is not too wet. Transfer mix in baking tin. Bake for 35-40 min at 180 C in pre-heated oven. Cool over rack and serve immediately.

P.s. If you feel the mixture is too dry then add little bit of milk.

Carrot- Beetroot cake

Ingredients:

1 cup atta/maida

¾ cup curd
¼ cup oil
¾ - 1 cup powdered sugar (you can use granulated sugar also, depending on sweetness from carrots/beets adjust quantity)
About 1 cup grated carrot + beetroot
¼ cup raisins / finely chopped dates

1 tsp kesar-elaichi syrup/vanilla essence

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

Recipe:

Beat together curd and oil to make smooth paste. Add powdered sugar, kesar-elaichi syrup next.Next add dates, grated carrots+ beetroots. In the end add atta mixed with baking soda and powder.Once the batter is ready, shift it to greased pan and cook @ 180C for 20-25 min.

Note: Next time I am planning to use 1.5 cups of atta as I felt the cake was bit extra moist.

Something fruity something nutty

Banana bread with nuts is really simple to make and yummy to eat. I wanted to bake one for long time but was not able to keep bananas at home till they are overripe. But finally it happened unexpectedly. So decided to make an eggless version so that my mother can also enjoy this. By the time I finally wrote this blog I have tried two different recipes. You can follow the recipes from

http://www.archanaskitchen.com/desserts/cakes/181-eggless-banana-bread
In this recipe I've done 2 changes. I did not use any butter or oil. Also I adjusted quantity of sugar as the bananas were very sweet.

Second recipe is from http://medhaa.blogspot.com/2008/05/eggless-banana-bread.html Again I reduced quantity of sugar and replaced butter with oil. Both times the results were good tastewise. But in first case the cake was bit dense. Still I liked it as it was low on calories. You can also try it sometime.

One note I would like to add for this receipe. To simplify the preparation, I mixed all ingredients using mixie pot. So start with bananas, mash them well. then add sugar, then oil/ghee, next milk and in the end dry ingredients. The result is smooth and airy batter. The result was delicious

Rava/ Suji Eggless Cake

My last post was somewhere in oct'11 and though I was trying out various receipes I did not update on the blog. Most of the times the reason is that I forgot to take photo of the final product immediately after preparation. And most of the times when I remembered there were no left overs :).
So I was noting down all tried and loved receipes in my lil' blue diary. I am planning to now post is one by one and may be update the images later on.

As usual I am restarting blog writing with a "Sweet Receipe"

This is a simple eggless cake prepared with superfine semolina/rava/suji. I had prepared this cake for the first time on my son Aditya's 2nd month b'day. Had learned about this receipe from a cookery show on either "Mee Marathi" or "Saam TV", i don't remeber now.

The receipe is really simple. Only important thing is that the batter should be prepared well in advance so that the semolina is soaked in the milk+ curd for atleast 2-3 hrs. So that the cake is really soft.

Eggless Rava Cake

Preparation time: 10 min to mix all the ingredients + 2-3 hrs for resting batter.

Ingredients:

 

- 1 cup superfine semolina. In Bangalore they call it "Chiroti Rava". You can use Upama rava, just soak for more time.

- 1 cup milk

- 3/4 cup sugar. (Original receipe had 1 cup sugar. You can adjust this as per your taste).

- 1 cup curd

- 1/2 to 1/3 cup oil. (Original receipe had 1 cup ghee/clarified butter. But I prefer oil. I reduced quantity, but the cake turned out pretty moist).

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1 tbsp Keshar-elaichi syrup

- Chopped walnuts/almonds/kismis (optional)

 

1. Mix all ingredients (except soda) together and let the mixture rest for atleast 2-3 hrs.
2. Pre-heat oven for min. 5 min (180 C, I use only bottom rod heating in Bajaj OTG) before baking.

3. Mix soda in the cake batter and encorporate it well.

4. Pour the mixture in prepared (grease the pan) cake mould.

5. Bake at 180C for 30-35 min.

6. The cake is now ready to eat. In case you have leftovers, make sure to fridge it.

 

There is one variation to this receipe I call it "Satyanarayan puja prasad cake".

Basically you need to use Panchamruta (Ghee, Sugar, Milk, Curd, Honey) + Riped banana + Semolina as ingredients. You need to adjust quantities for Sugar,Honey and Banana as per your liking.

 

Next time when you have puja at home, do try this option for prasad.

Carrot Halwa Cups/tarts

After successfully baking few cakes, I decided to turn my attention towards pies and tarts. I love to watch TLC or any other channel which shows cookery programs specially related to baking. Nigella Lawson and Rachell Allen are my favourite hosts and I love their baking. So I decided to first try the popular Apple pie. I actually followed recipe from http://www.joyofbaking.com/ApplePie.html this site. And I felt this is lot of work because of all the work I had to do for apple filling plus I'm the only one who like apple pie at home. So instead of baking huge pie, I decide to make smaller version of pies and tarts and savoury or sweet fillings. Now I really dont know difference between pies and tarts, so for my understanding I say covered once are pies and open once are tarts. The thing I liked about pies/tarts is once you know how to make short crust pastry you can perpare any kind of filling. I had once tried savoury cups with vegetable filling. I had prepared white sauce mixed it with assortment of vegetables (carrots, peas, french beans, spinach, sweet corns, mushrooms, etc). Once filling is done all I had to do is fill the cup size tarts (I used muffin/cupcake mold), put some cheese on top and bake. It proved to be instant hit as snacks. Advantage with using cupcake mold was each individual got to enjoyed his/her own customized tart and they looked beautiful on everyone's plate when served. Next time I decied to make sweet tarts. I had some condensed milk left so decided to make most popular bollywood sweet Gajar ka halwa in tart form. First I will explain short crust pastry preparation Ingredients: 2 cups Maida/ All purpose flour 1 cup butter (chilled and cut into cubes) 1 tsp salt 2-3 tsp sugar (skip this when making savoury pies/tarts) 1/2 cup cold water Mix maida, salt and sugar. Start adding butter cube by cube to maida. Mix it well so that the mixture looks crumbly. Add water (in small quantity) to this maida-butter mixture till you manage to make dough. Cover this dough in cling film and keep in fridge for minimum 30 mins. When you want to use it, take it out from fridge and roll out into desired thickness round. As I had to make separate tarts, I divided dough in 6 portions for 6 cupcake molds. Depending on the bakeware you are using you might have to modify quatity. But remember maida to butter ratio 2:1. Once you fit the rolled out dough in desired bakeware, you've to blind bake (refer to this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind-baking for details) this for 6-8 mins at 180 degree C. Make sure oven is preheated for 10-15 min. I've bajaj OTG(some 23ltrs capacity) in which I use top shelf for baking and use both side rods for baking. Once the cup tarts are baked, add the desired filling and bake for another 15-20 min or till filling is cooked. Now this timing will vary depending on wheather filling is partially cooked or completely cooked. You may have to do some trial and error on this one depending on your filling. Do try short crust pastry preparation at home and impress everyone. Only you'll know how simple it is. Regarding the butter quantity I've heard that you can replace it with milk and oil combination. I've not tried this, but will sure try and update this post accordingly. Till then happy baking.

Simple Delicious Eggless Chocolate cake

To start with new food blog, what's better than sweet. I thought what better than simple yet delicious cake. I learnt this from mother-in-law who is very good cook. Come to think about it, I think most of Oriya people are good cooks(at least the people I know). Saikat, my husband is really very good at cooking (better than me actually which I hate to admit).I think Oriya's live to eat unlike Chitpavan Brahmin's like my family.

So back to the recipe.We'll need following ingredients

2 Cup maida
1 Cup milk powder
1 cup sugar (use regular sugar)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup milk(you might need to add more to thinner the batter if required).
1 tbl spoon baking powder 1/2 tbl spoon backing soda (don't use Eno, use baking soda)
3-4 spoonfuls of cocoa powder
Dry fruits
vanilla essence

Start with mixing milk and oil together. Soak sugar in this mix.
In another bowl sift together maida, milk powder,cocoa powder, baking powder and soda.
At this time you can start heating oven (180 degree C for around 10 min).
Now slowly start adding maida mixture to milk-oil mixture. Make sure you move spatula (or beater) in one direction only (either clockwise or anti-clockwise). If you feel batter is thick add little bit milk. Add vanilla essence and dry fruits. Save some dry fruits for topping.
In the cake tin add some ghee and heat it. Coat all sides of tin with ghee. Pour the cake batter in tin. If cake tin is around half filled then cake turns out better. Add dry fruit toppings.
Now place the tin on lower shelf with only lower heater on. Set timer to 25min.
Check after 20-22 min for clean knief test. If knief comes out clean, you can switch off oven. Don't take out cake tin. Let it cool with oven itself. This keeps cake fluffy.
If you dont like chocolate, you can remove cocoa powder from list to prepare basic cake. Sometimes I divide the batter in 2 portions and add cocoa powder to one portion only. Pour plain and chocolate batter together in tin to get marble like pattern. It looks good and tastes even better.Do try.