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.

Sweet Idli

India is such a vast country both geographically and gastronomically. Sometimes you will be surprised to see some dishes which are eaten across two ends of the country with same love. Recently I had same experience while eating breakfast of Idlis. We are now so used to eating Idli-Sambhar and chutney, that we might not think about any other combination. In Orissa, people used to eat sweet Idlis for breakfast without any need for chutney or sambhar. These idlis are prepared in similar fashion like normal idlis.

All you need is to idli batter (2 cup rice + 1 cup urad dal soaked for 6-8 hrs and grounded to paste). Make sure the batter is fermentated for 6-8 hrs (or overnight). Add salt to taste. For the sweet filling, mix grated coconut and jaggery in equal proportion (adjust amount of jaggery depending on your sweet tooth). Now pour the idli batter in the idli moulds. You can add the filling on the batter or you can have layers like batter then filling and then again batter. Steam the idlies for 10-15 min.

You can eat these idlis as it is for breakfast.

Or if you want to serve some special sweet then, you can prepare sweet idlis in coin form and serve with chilled rabadi.

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.

Ganapati special: Ukadiche Modak

For all Mumbaikar Ganesh festival is "THE" festival of year.B'lore,Karnataka also celebrates ganesh festival, but with bit of less glamour. As any pukka "Mumbaikar" I feel that ganesh festival is celebrated best in Mumbai,Maharashtra :) :)
This time Ganesh Chaturthi was on Sunday so I got time to prepare Naivedya (including Modak). Now in Mumai, we get modak in almost every shop (though with hefty price of Rs.10 per piece).Here we don't have any other option, so we had to settle with modak specially hand crafted by me :). The shape was not exactly what I would have liked, but taste was great.
Earlier I used to thought that modak is prepared only in Maharashtra, but I was wrong. The shape is specifically from Maharashtra, but preparation is also common to Oriya or eastern side food. In Orissa, it called as Pitha. They can be of different type, steamed or rice/made with rice floor/suji etc. They eat one more type of pitha called "Arisa pitha" which is nothing but "Anarase". When I tasted it first time I was so surprised that 2 states separated by miles have exact same sweet dish (with almost similar name) :).
Anyways, today's focus is on Ukadiche Modak.
Again preparation is simple, but skill is required to get the exact shape. Else you can prepare stuffed round balls which will still taste good.

Ingredients:
. For cover:
- 1 cup(heaped) very fine rice flour.In Mumbai/Pune you can get this rice floor easily (its called "Modak pith" itself).
- 1 spoon maida (refined flour). This is optional. Its used to add slight stickiness to rice floor cover.
- 1 tbl spoon salt
- 1 spoon oil/ghee
- 1 cup water
. For stuffing
- 1 full coconut, grated. Make 2 heaps of same.
- 1 heap of jaggery (i.e. 1/2 of grated coconut).
- 1-2 tbl spoon ghee
- cardamom powder and finely chopped dry fruits.

Preparation
. For cover:
1. Boil water in a pan. add salt and oil/ghee.
2. Take it down from gas(and switch is off). Now add rice flour (and maida). Mix well.
3. Again keep it on low flame for 5 min. Cover with lid.
4. Switch off the gas. Invert the pan over lid and keep it covered.
5. Once the flour cools down little bit, start kneading and make smooth dough. You can use water or oil to prepare dough.
. For stuffing:
1. Heat ghee/oil in non-stick pan.
2. Mix coconut and jaggery and then add to ghee/oil.
3. Cook till jaggery is completely melted and stuffing is dry (but still moist).
4. Add cardamom powder and dry fruits.
. Making modak
1. Round up a small ball of rice dough. Pat it into think sheet.
2. Now pinch sides of the rounded sheet. Pinch at least 4-5 times to give flower like appearance.
3. Add stuffing and then try to round up dough sheet. Get the petal like pinches together to get modak shape.
4. Once 4-5 modaks are prepared, put then on muslin cloth (water soaked) on keep it on steel strainer.
5. Steam it in cooker (without whistle) for 10-15 min (till you get whietish steam jet from cooker).
6. Serve modaks hot/cold with ghee.