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

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

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 and Cherry Palmiers

Chocolate and Cherry Palmiers

Palmiers or elephant ears, is a dish of European origin, not sure if it is French or Germans that originated it. Does no really matter as it just tastes so good you would not want to research the origin but just the recipe. These are so easy to make if you have puff pastry in your fridge. I do not make my own puff pastry and hey, don’t judge me for that, even the best of bakers like Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood once confessed they don’t either. I actually made them for the first time to offer to my son’s friends who were meant to visit us for navaratri. However, I had to cancel their visit due to my daughter’s illness. Anyway, the point is that even if they had come, I did not make near enough of these as it turns out. They literally go flying and I kept making them throughout navaratri as we had a constant flow of guests. This is one version of this dish and I intend to post more of these so you get a variety of flavours.

½ sheet of puff pastry

2 tablespoon or so of chocolate spread like nutella

5-6 glace cherries, chopped

Spread the puff pastry sheet and smear it with the chocolate spread evenly, upto the edges. Dot with glace cherries here and there and use more if you want.

Roll both sides of the pastry so each half then meets at the centre, gently press. Wrap it and refrigerate for atleast 30 minutes or put in freezer for 10-15 minutes. This is important as puff pastry always needs to be cold and has to go in a very hot oven, else, it will not puff.

Cut into about 1.5cm thick slices and place on lined baking tray with good space between them. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200degC for about 8-10 minutes, until golden.

Cool and serve!

Nutella cookies

Nutella Cookies

What a day it has been!! I have barely slept in several nights, thanks to the kids becoming poorly one after another. Not to mention that has not left me with my usual energy levels, however, when special days come around, one just has to find the energy from somewhere. So what was special about today, it was my kid’s first day at school! I wanted to make something that he would like to have as an after school snack and thought a chocolate cookie is unlikely to go wrong. I wanted it to be reasonably unhealthy as well and not pure indulgence so I added millet flour and wholewheat flour. I tried dusting the cookies with icing sugar before baking them hoping it will have a nice white appearance when baked but it did not turn out as expected as it melted in the oven. However, it did give an interesting texture and taste and was not all too wrong afterall. You may want to try it or skip that bit.

4 tablespoon nutella

80 gram i.e. 1/3 cup butter, softened

½ cup sugar

½ cup wholewheat flour

½ cup ragi flour (if you do not have any, you could use any other millet flour or more wholewheat flour)

½ cup all purpose flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon soda bicarbonate

1 tablespoon milk, if needed

2 tablespoon icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 degC. Line the baking tray with greaseproof sheet

Cream together the butter, nutella and sugar

Sift the flours with the soda bicarb and baking powder. I also added a tablespoon of coco powder to make it more chocolatey. Mix to form a soft dough, add a bit of milk if needed. When you pinch a ball and roll, it should just about hold comfortably

Pinch small lime sized balls and flatten with your hand by pressing down. Dust the cookie in icing sugar and line on the tray with atleast an inch between each other

Bake for about 8-9 minutes. Be careful as i is hard to determine if the cookies have browned as the chocolate is already brown. I usually go with the smell. By eight minutes, it is aromatic, utmost a minute more would usually be enough.

Leave on the tray outside for about ten minutes as they will be very soft. Then cool completely in a cooling rack

Nutella Pinwheel Biscuit

Nutella Pinwheel Biscuit
It is customary to take some gift when you visit people in their house but I do not find it particularly easy buying something especially if we barely know our host. You never know if they will like it, if it will be useful, if it is appropriate etc. and for that reason I have started resorting to home-made gifts, especially edible ones! Just gobble it, like it or leave it. On one such occasion, I decided to make a variety of biscuits to make an assorted biscuit box. One of the varieties was this pin-wheel biscuit. It is actually very easy to make it, although you may not believe me until you read the recipe. It can be a bit misleading as it appears quite small before it goes into the oven but grows inside, thanks to all the butter and rising agent. So make sure you leave enough gap between them while placing on the tray. Here is a simple yet delightful biscuit.

1 ¼ cup flour

½ cup butter

¼ teaspoon soda bicarbonate

3-4 tablespoon nutella

½ cup sugar

Cream together the sugar and butter

Add the flour and soda bicarb and make a soft dough

Roll it into a disc about 5 mm thick and spread the nutella. I placed this on cling film and rolled flat so it becomes easy to roll it up.

Roll it up and refrigerate

Cut into about 5-7mm thick discs and place it on lined baking tray, atleast an inch apart.

Bake at 170degC for about 8-10 minutes, until sides become light brown.

Cool completely and store in air tight container

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.