Chocolate Truffle

Chocolate Truffle

What a day it has been! Started off with a severe migraine and I thought one more day of my life goes a waste. But when you are so far away from home and help, regardless of how unwell you are, you just got to get on. So I did. Made a simple lunch and then slowly started feeling better. I had been feeling terrible about not making much progress on the book front as I only have 3-4 recipes firmed up so far and have miles to go. With the holiday season round the corner, I wanted to bring the right mood in my household too. I have heard about truffles but as I am not a huge fan of chocolate I don’t think I have tried them before. I wanted to whip some up, but as you can imagine, the traditional one is not something I can quite make as it comes with loads of guilt. I wanted a sinless dish and not a sinful one. I had some shredded wheat (breakfast cereal) left over as my son stopped eating them suddenly. I did not want to throw them away so put them to good use here. I rolled the truffles in good coco powder. However, the bitterness of the coco was quite strong. For that reason, I am suggesting it be mixed with icing sugar or even powdered sugar and then rolled. Alternately, you could use coco powder which has lesser coco. I had made them bite size so once you put them in your mouth, the bitterness hits but is soon followed by sweetness from dried fruits. This recipe makes about ten truffles. You could use any other dried fruit like prune or apricot too. . Dry fruits are a good way to get your recommended quantities of fruits and these goodies will appeal to the young ones too. I will be working on few more varieties of truffles, but until then, here is an easy peasy one..

1/3 cup dates

1/3 cup raisins

¼ cup ground almonds

2 tablespoon coco powder

1 tablespoon icing sugar

1 shredded wheat biscuit or about 2 digestive biscuit

In a food processor, pulse the dates and raisins. It should not become pureed but just lumpy

Add the ground almond and broken shredded wheat and pulse few more times so they all come together

Roll into bite size balls and roll this on a mixture of icing sugar and coco powder

Dive in!

Multigrain Mango Muffin

Multigrain Mango Muffin

MMM recipe! Sounds tacky isn’t it? Well, I thought it is a good acronym for this really multigrain mango muffin. I had some left over mango pruee following my eggless mango cake trial and wanted to make a good breakfast. I thought cardamom would go well with mango as it is not a very strong flavour and will not fight with mango. I tried to take as many clicks as possible as I made the muffins but towards the end, after resting them, I thought they may not be good enough. I was so wrong and my fear of the effect of the ingredients I used was unjustified. I thought it will be an extremely dry muffin and will have a poor texture. However, it was quite good. It was quite springy, soft and easy to eat. Usually, millets tend to make the baked product a bit dry and difficult to swallow but I think it is the fruit puree that helped this muffin. If you find you child binging on this, just as well, the goodness in it will help their growth. Here is the recipe, lets get the holiday season started. Like most of my recipes, this is not very sweet so if you have a sweet tooth, please increase the sugar but have in mind that the mango pulp is sweet as well.

¼ cup ragi flour

¼ cup oat flour (oats ground)

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

¾ cup all purpose flour

½ cup water

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup mango puree

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoon oil

2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix together the flours, baking powder, sugar, cardamom powder and salt

Add the oil, mango puree and water and mix until just combined

Pour into muffin moulds, about 3/4^th full and bake in a preheated oven at 180degC for 20-25 minutes. A skewer inserted in centre should come out clean.

You may dust with some icing sugar and serve.

Lemon Pickle

Lemon Pickle

Pickling is an age old process. The intent was to preserve fruits or vegetables for seasons in which they were not available. My favourite pickle is mango (avakai) and lemon pickle is my husband's favorite. I took this recipe from my grandmom and am glad I will be preserving and passing this on. Whenever you make pickles, please remember it needs an extra dash of salt at the time of preparation for couple of reasons. One is that salt is a preservative and pickling itself is nothing but preserving. The other reason is that when kept for some days, the saltiness comes down, so it needs that initial boost at the start. If you are concerned about people with high blood pressure eating these salty pickles, my suggestion would be to make small batches of the pickle, add less salt. This will be great with parathas and rotis too. I prefer to use unwaxed lemons for pickling and specifically buy them for this.

4 unwaxed lemon, cut into chunks

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds

A small piece of solid asafoetida (use powder if solid not available)

Turmeric powder

1-2 teaspoon chilly powder

Salt

Cooking oil preferably gingelly oil

Cut the lemons into chunks and sprinkle some salt. Cover tightly and keep aside for 1 or two days. This will tenderise the skin

Heat a kadai and roast the fenugreek seeds until its colour starts to darken. Heat little oil and also fry asafoetida until all its sides puff up and start darkening. Cool and grind to powder

Pour more oil in the kadai and add mustard seeds. Once it crackles, add turmeric powder and the salted lemon with any liquid it may have, mix

Cook this for couple of minutes and add the ground powder, required salt. Remember pickles need to be salted a wee bit more as the saltiness reduces over time. Having said that, if lemon pickle will be consumed very quickly in your house, you can reduce amount of sugar as you do not worry about how long it will keep.  Add chilly powder, more oil and stir. 

Cook this for atleast 10 minutes. You will notice the skin is now much softer and more liquid has come out. However, do not cook too long and allow all the moisture evaporate as it will make the pickle dry

Store in an air tight container, preferably in the refrigerator