Semolina Cake a.k.a Basbousa

Semolina Cake a.k.a Basbousa

There was a time when I used to bake everyday. Gone are those days and now it is a matter just about managing to make everyday meal from scratch. I found a pack of fine semolina in my pantry while doing the all important pantry stock taking task. I thought I will try this middle eastern dish a try and take it to friends who we were visiting that evening. The recipe is somewhat altered from Nestle's website. Here it is...

2 1/2 cups semolina

1 tin condensed milk

generous pinch of saffron steeped in 2 tablespoons warm milk

1 cup melted butter and bit more to grease the tin

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

For the syrup

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

dash of lemon juice

Bring all ingredients for the cake together but leave the baking powder to be added last. Mix together until combined. Add little water if needed to bring to thick batter consistency

Pour into a cake tin and bake in preheated oven at 170degC for about 35-40 minutes (until skewer comes out clean and top has browned)

In the meantime, add sugar and water in a pan and bring to boil. Allow it to reduce to make a syrup. You know it is ready when the sugar water is sticky to touch. If you reduce too much, you will not have enough for the whole cake. Add lemon juice to the syrup so the sugar does not crystallise

The syrup should have cooled down while the cake should be warm when you pour the syrup on the cake. I pour the syrup while the cake is still in teh tin but on teh cooling rack. I alo pierced some holes using the skewer. You can garnish with some chopped nuts. I used almonds and pistachios but wait till all the syrup has seeped through

Biscuit Pudding

Biscuit Pudding

While doing winter de-cluttering and organising, I found a few packs of biscuits. Although biscuits do not tend to get wasted, I wanted to try some dish with them. I chose biscuit pudding and when looking up recipes, I learned that it is rather popular in SriLanka. I have adapted Tarla Dalal’s recipe here...

Note: 

1. some people who do not like coffee may prefer to have he biscuits dipped in milk rather than coffee

2. replace dark chocolate with milk chocolate if you prefer

12 Rich tea biscuits or Marie biscuits

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

5 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoon custard powder

1 ½ cups milk plus 3 tablespoon milk

100g dark chocolate, melted

Grated nuts for garnish

Dissolve coffee powder in hot water. You need enough water to quickly dip the biscuits in it. Dip the biscuits very briefly then break them into pieces and put in individual serving bowls

Dissolve the custard powder in 3 tablespoon milk

Heat the rest of the milk until it is just about to boil. Now add the dissolved custard powder and make sure you stir well. Cook on low flame until it coats the back of the spoon.

Now add the sugar and melted chocolate and stir well. It will thicken but still be of pouring consistency.

Pour this on the biscuit and garnish with chopped nuts

Rice Pudding (with variant for Chakkarai Pongal)

Rice Pudding (with variant for Chakkarai Pongal)

I had bought couple of small tubs of cream in the hope to make ice cream. One of it fell from the fridge and went down the drain so I had the second one had to be finished somehow. I did not want to slave over it so kept looking for ways to use cream in dishes that need next to no attention. I came across rice pudding and what a finding it is! The pudding came out really good albeit for people with sweet tooth, it could have done with more sugar. Here is the recipe...

100g rice

600-700 ml rice (i used basmati but you could use pudding rice)

100g sugar

300ml double cream

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

4 small knobs of butter

Chopped nuts for garnishing

Preheat oven to 150degC

Take a deep (because shallow would let milk spill over while cooking) oven proof dish and grease with butter. Add washed rice, sugar, cream, milk, vanilla essence and mix. Dot the butter here and there and put in the oven for about 1.5 hours. You can stir half way through and add bit more milk if needed. Depending on the rice, t he amount of milk needed may vary.

Take out and garnish with nuts

I had made this and taken to a friend’s house and it was given thumbs up. I then decided to adapt this to make it south Indian and save some time while preparing other dishes for a festival.

Short cut yummy chakkara pongal:

Put a cup of rice, handful of mung dal, ¾ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup white sugar, 300ml cream and 600ml milk in a greased deep oven proof dish. Dot the butter like above and cook just like above. Add some saffron after steeping it in hot water or milk. Add milk if needed and stir in between.

Cadbury Creme Egg brownies

Cadbury Creme Egg brownies

I realised I have gotten dangerously close to forgetting the steps to blog so ready or not, here I come. This was a recipe I meant to post for Easter, but hey, I am quite early for the next one. With very little time left before I get swamped in my day job as a mum, cook, cleaner, wife etc. here is a recipe...

The basic brownie recipe was ever so slightly adapted from here

¾ cup flour

1 cup yogurt

½ cup brown sugar

100g dark chocolate, melted

4 tablespoon coco powder

4 creme eggs, chilled well and cut into half

½ teaspoon soda bicarbonate

½ cup water

Sift and bring together all dry ingredients except the crème eggs. Then add the melted chocolate, yogurt and water to make batter just about spooning consistency

Line a square pan with greased baking paper and pour the batter in. Bake in a preheated oven at 180degC for about 20 minutes

Take out of the oven and gently insert the crème eggs here and there. Bake for another 5-10 minutes, just until it melts.

Cool well and slice into pieces

Cheats Cardamom Cheesecake (actually no cheese!!)

Cheats Cardamom Cheesecake


Want a sinful indulgence? Here it is, that too with very little effort. It is a great dinner party item and if at all there is any left over, you can feast on it later. I made this with lots of doubts about whether it will set or not so added icing sugar so the corn starch in the sugar will help set and make it failure proof. You will find most other recipes do not use icing sugar so if you want to skip it, do so at your risk. I go with my gut feel usually and as I was making it for Diwali pot luck dinner and was hoping to create a wow factor, I did not want to fail . This is an incredibly easy dish that you can whip up he previous day so you have one less thing to worry about on the day guests come. I did not want to use more butter so I actually baked my biscuit base. If you do not want to bake, you can add about a 100gm more melted butter and make teh base by setting it in the fridge for about an hour. Next time I make it I intend to make it richer with saffron as well. I stuck to more desi flavour of cardamom as it was Diwali but we can even add orange or lemon zest or plant some strawberry pieces here and there to give a fruity flavour. So, here is the recipe itself...

1 tin sweetened condensed milk
600ml double cream
15 digestive biscuits or ginger nut biscuits
50gm melted butter
Generous amount of crushed nuts
½ teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
3 tablespoon icing sugar

Crush the biscuits coarsely or finely based on your preference and add the melted sugar. Mix and put it on a lined springform cake tin. I usually do the mixing inside the tin to save using another dish. Spread this uniformly to form the base. Bake at 160degC for about 6 minutes, would just start to brown. Cool completely

Beat the cream until stiff peaks form. Electric beater is recommended if you are like me 

Next beat the condensed milk until it thickens in a separate bowl

Mix the two together along with the icing sugar and cardamom. I ground the cardamom with the sugar in my mixie. Fold them together as whisking again would loosen the mixture.

Pour this on cooled biscuit base, wrap it up and set in fridge atleast overnight. Sprinkle the nuts just before serving!

Just to show how well it sets, here is a slice...

Almond Ricotta Cheesecake – Indian Kalakand with my spin

Almond Ricotta Cheesecake – Indian Kalakand with my spin

Diwali is a wonderful festival as it always brings back great memories. The purchase was big, food was big and emotions were plenty. This year, I was keen to share that feeling with my children as well and wanted to get into this habit of making Diwali special to them. Although we did not splash out on shopping for outfits like how my parents unfailingly did, I wanted us to be with people we were comfortable with. A few friends got together and had a potluck dinner and what a great evening it was! My son had his friends to play with and the firework itself took a good hour of the evening. Considering I have a little one as well, I thought potluck would be the way to go but being a food blogger I could not stop myself from trying couple of more things. As time and energy were tight, I chose to make milk sweet that literally needed to be whipped up and briefly cooked. It turned out to be so awesome that we kept trying more and more in the name of tasting, who were we kidding!! In the end, there was no enough to offer my friends and their families, ouch! To me, this is a classic Indian recipe made the western way – bake!

This recipe is dedicated to Ms Tarla Dalal. She has been a great inspiration and will live in my kitchen through the wonderful books I have.

150g coarsely ground almonds

1 tin of condensed milk

1 tub ricotta cheese, 300g or so

Pinch of saffron

Few chopped nuts

Ghee to grease bakeware

Mix together everything but the nuts

Pour into over proof baking dish hat has been greased with ghee. I wanted the cake height to be about an inch or just about so chose a suitable rectangular dish

Bake at 180degC for about 15-20 minutes. It will just begin to brown on top, sides will start to pull from the dish and it will still be a bit wobbly. Sprinkle nuts on top, cool and cut to required slices.

Enjoy this without having to slave in the kitchen for such a yummy desi treat!

Chocolate Pudding (eggless!)

Chocolate pudding

If you are a chocolate lover, you will love this. I wanted to make this for my son to have as pudding after dinner to mark his first full day at school. It went down a treat with my son and husband, that means it must have been atleast good J. I used dark chocolates I got from Lidl and find their quality quite good and would strongly advise to get fine chocolate otherwise it will show in the quality of the dish. You can keep this in the fridge for about 3 days if it lasts. If you have a chocolate loving guests, you can make these the previous day and refrigerate. Here is the recipe, no fuss and just indulgence...

Makes 6 servings (6 ramekins)

1 pack of dark chocolate

2.5 cups of milk

1/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoon cornflour

Add the cornflour to the milk and beat so there are no lumps. Heat this on a double boiler while stirring all along and do so until it coats the back of the spoon

Add the chopped chocolate and sugar and keep stirring and keep it on the double boiler until all the chocolate melts and it thickens and it looks shiny.

Pour into serving dishes, cover and refrigerate for atleast 3 hours

Yum yum!

Fruit crumble (very low in fat and refined ingredients)

Fruit Crumble

First time I ever had crumble was in a canteen in the company I used to work in. I was a savoury crumble and I actually liked the dish. However, I never got to try the sweet crumble for some reason. When I used to watch the food channels, sometimes I would run into crumble recipes and the amount of butter and flour would put me off. In the recent past, I did get to try crumble in some nice restaurants but did not quite enjoy it as the crumble itself seemed to have been made with crushed biscuits and nothing exciting. I then decided to make a version of healthy crumble that can arrest any sugar craving one may have while being healthy at the same time. I used oats to get the crumbly texture and the coarsely crushed nuts also add to the lovely texture. I have used very little refined flour and just one spoon of sugar in the crumble mixture as I was hoping this would be enough to trigger the fruits letting out their juices. If you are on a calorie controlled diet or you just like to be mindful of what you are eating, this is a great dish to fill you up so you can reduce the main meal. The oats provides some carbohydrates, so you are not drained and needless to say how good fruits can be for you. Although cooked fruits may not preserve all goodness from uncooked state nevertheless, it is still nutritious. You could start your day with this too if you are not a porridge person. Nuts are an essential part of a balanced diet and they are also said to help protect against cardio-vascular problems. Whenever I have over ripe fruits, I just roughly cut them up and bingo, a lovely dessert is ready. I am trying to watch the quantity of food I eat and this dish is a lovely way to cut out the junk. This could be a snack or a dessert or even a breakfast. I urge you to try it and let me know what you think.

¾ cup oats

2 tablespoon flour

1-2 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon sugar

2 pears, 2 apples, 2 bananas chopped (I add cherries, raspberries, strawberries as well when available)

Handful of raisins or currants

Handul of nuts, chopped

Put all fruits together in a oven safe dish

Mix the flour, butter, oats, nuts and sugar and spread over the fruits to cover evenly. Use cold butter an duse your fingers to work the butter into the mixture

Bake in preheated oven at 180degC for 15 minutes or until top turns golden brown

Serve warm. It is even better when served with ice cream but that is not if you are watching what you eat.

Custard and Fruit Tart (eggless and low fat)

Custard and Fruit tart

I was looking for custard recipes just to use up the box of custard powder and reclaim shelf space. However, now I wonder if custard powder will become a staple in my pantry as it is so great to make quick and tasty desserts. Unlike traditional tart shells, I adapted Tarla Dalal’s recipe to make a low fat shell. If you wish, you could even use store bought short crust pastry or refer to my earlier post on shortcrust pastry.

Here are few things you need to keep in mind while dealing with shortcrust pastry:

• Do not knead the dough too much. The idea is not to make the gluten form else the pastry will not be crumbly
• Try to refrigerate the dough for few minutes, wrapped in film or just in an airtight box
• Do not stretch the dough while rolling to make it fit the tin. The pastry will shrink in the oven so the more you stretch now, the more it is going to shrink. Instead, roll out the right dimension and fit properly
• Before blind baking, prick with forks so it does not rise. Also put greaseproof paper and some baking beans or any other beans or rice. The weight of this will prevent the pastry from rising.
• After putting the pastry in the mould, you could refrigerate it before baking. This is particularly helpful when you use pastry with more fat than the recipe here. This helps the butter stay cold and takes a bit longer to cook in the oven. This is said to help result in a more crumbly shell.

 I think this is a yummy, fresh and rather light dessert, just perfect for this summer. Recipe here...

For tart

¾ cup flour

2 teaspoon butter

1 tablespoon custard powder

1 tablespoon sugar

Pinch of baking powder

Required cold water

For custard

1 ¼ cups milk

2 tablespoon custard powder

2 tablespoon sugar

Loads of fruits

To make the tarts:

Combine the sugar and butter

Sift together the baking powder and flour and add the custard powder and sugar. Add required water to make a soft dough

Roll into about 3 mm thick disc and line on tart tins. If you do not have tart tins, use muffin moulds to make wee cups.

Prick in a number of locations and bake in preheated oven at 200degC for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Cool

For custard:

Dissolve the custard powder in about quarter cup of milk and heat the rest of the milk, do not let it boil

Add the custard powder and milk mixture to the heated milk and keep stirring until it thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Add the sugar

Once custard cools down, pour into the tart shells and refrigerate until set. Serve with loads of fresh fruits like berries.