Sweetcorn Halwa

Sweetcorn Halwa

Sometime back I watched a cookery contest on a tamil tv channel. Celebrities from small screen contested for the kitchen superstar title. As it was food related, I quite liked the program, however, I do think it was a miserable effort to emulate the likes of Gordon Ramsay and other celebrity chef hosted contest. Anyway, one contestant had made sweetcorn halwa and received great reviews from the judges. The recipes were not made available so I would normally guess what might have gone into the dish and tried some recipes. This halwa is one such recipe and I knew khoya was one of the key ingredients. My difficulty is that I do not get khoya here and that I cannot really find time to reduce milk to khoya consistency in my kitchen. I did take a good shortcut that I had posted earlier and had no regrets. The halwa came out super doper scrummy and I struggled to stay away from it. The mild flavour of sweet corn, the not entirely smooth consistency and the crunch from the nuts were simply wonderful. This halwa does not need an awful lot of ghee so that is a bonus. I used semi skimmed milk powder to make the khoya and having said all that, at the end of the day, it still is a dessert and I have tried to reduce the guilt as much as I can. Here is the recipe...

2 cups sweet corn (I used frozen)

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk powder made into khoya

2 tablespoon ghee

Couple of pinches of crushed cardamom and saffron, optional

Slivered nuts for garnish

Grind the sweet corn to powder. I used frozen corn so it was quite easy to powder. If you are using fresh, try to avoid water to grind and make it as fine as possible. Heat some ghee in a kadai or hevay bottom pan and add the ground corn, stir well. Cook until a nice aroma comes (about 3-5 minutes)

Add the sugar and khoya (grated) and literally just add drops of ghee every now and then. 

Keep stirring well and cook until it leaves the sides and comes together as a ball. This should be another 5-10 minutes or so.

Garnish with nuts, serve.

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.

Bread and Butter Pudding (eggless and wholemeal)

Bread and Butter Pudding (eggless and wholemeal)
If any of you see me at the end of the billing counter while buying groceries, you will think I am crazy because of the amount of fuss I make about packing. I like to keep things to be refrigerated in a separate bag, freezer items separate if possible and food items that can stay on the counter separate; food to go into cupboard in a bag and any cleaning stuff separate. All this fuss makes unpacking at home easy, especially when I am tired because I just stick things in the fridge and freezer and leave the rest for later. However, my husband usually finds all this a bit too much. I try to keep them in such an order on the conveyer belt while billing. What may help is shopping in the same order but I think that could be a bit too obsessive. Anyway, reason I am telling you this is because I had a big pack of bread that had completely lost its shape as it was kept down in the bag with loads of other stuff on top of it. The bread was so shapeless that there were no takers at home. I had to use as much as possible and also had another cupboard item, custard powder, I am trying to use up. I was fancying bread and butter pudding with a crusty top and pudding like consistency inside. Bread and butter pudding is suppose to be a very traditional British pudding but from what I have seen on the tele (food channels), it needs loads of eggs and butter. If you know me or my way of cooking, you guessed it right, I just cannot dump all those eggs and butter in. It had to be eggless and much low in butter but full of flavours. I also had a small tin of evaporated milk to finish off. Evaporated milk, I believe was used in the past as fresh milk was not always available. When diluted with equal amount of water, evaporated milk can be used in place of fresh milk. If you do not have custard powder, use cornflour and add some vanilla essence.If you like chocolate bread pudding, add some coco powder to the milk. This is really easy to make, specially handy for times when you want to focus on main meal. Here is the recipe...

6-7 slices wholemeal bread (white would do as well)
½ cup sugar (just shy of half cup, add more if you have a sweet tooth)
2 tablespoon custard powder
1 ½ cups milk
2 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoon raisin
2 tablespoon chopped nuts

Put torn pieces of bread in an oven proof dish and pour melted butter over it

Dissolve the custard powder in about quarter cup milk and heat the rest of the milk

Add the custard milk mixture to warm milk and heat until the sauce thickens slightly. Add sugar to this and dissolve the same (you can take it off the flame to mix sugar)

Pour the custard over the bread and using a fork gently mix so the custard gets into every nook and corner. Put the raisins and nuts and mix very gently

Bake at 180degC for 30-35 minutes until top is golden brown and custard is set

Strawberry Cheesecake (Low Fat without cream cheese)

Strawberry Cheesecake


After my first baked cheesecake attempt, I felt more confident that I could experiment with a bit complicated baked dishes. I was fancying the mango cheesecake and thought I should make some soon. I remembered to stock mango pulp but had not bought enough cream cheese to make cheese cake. Well, it is not a part of my shopping list usually but that particular week I had ordered some thinking I will make cream cheese frosting for an important cake I was going to make. I then tried buying flavoured yogurt and thought that will be a good experiment, also keeping the fat content low. However, call it my luck, I could not find any flavoured luck in the local shops. I did manage to buy just a four pint bottle of semi-skimmed milk. I later read online that some people struggle to buy cream cheese in many parts of India as it is not very popular. As paneer is far more popular and also can be made at home, I went for a paneer based cheesecake. I somehow have reservations about using agar agar etc. in dishes, may be I just need to get over the mental block, but that’s something for later. I stuck to baking the cheesecake and prepared the paneer by curdling the semi skimmed milk using lime juice. I drained and refrigerated the paneer overnight as I did not have time to make the cake the same evening. I used couple of spoons of greek yogurt to add some texture, you could use hung curd instead or skip it. The final colour was not as lovely as the strawberry pulp itself but who cares, it tasted divine. I did not have butter on hand so used low fat spread to make the base too. This time, my wee one loved it too! Do check out the mango cheesecake post for more tips on making cheesecakes. I checked the calorie difference between the cream cheesecake (low fat) and this version made with paneer, the latter is about 60cal lower than former and almost only half the saturated fat is present.
275g paneer
2 tablespoon greek yogurt
2 ½ tablespoons all purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup strawberry pulp
For base
12 digestive biscuits
2 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon sugar

Crush the biscuits in a Ziploc cover or food processor. Add melted butter and a tablespoon sugar and mix well so you can pat it on the base on a lined springform cake tin

Bake this in a preheated oven at 180degC for 8 minutes

In a food processor or mixer combine the paneer and sugar and mix well

Add the strawberry pulp and mix until combined

Add the flour and mix until just combined

Add yogurt and mix until just combined

Pour this mixture over the baked biscuit base and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes. You know it is done when the edges brown and the centre is still wobbly/jiggly when tapped on the side

Leave it in the oven (with oven turned off) to cool for about two hours and wrap in a cling film and refrigerate for atleast a night

Eggless Mango Cake

Eggless Mango Cake

Baking is so relaxing these days. I find myself wanting to bake if I feel very stressed. It is a bit strange therapy for me, but it works and what better than having something yummy to eat at the end of a stress relieving session. I somehow avoid eggs in my baking mainly because not everyone in my family eats eggs and I noticed that not all my readers eat eggs. Many have been quite keen on eggless recipes and I am trying to make as many as possible. I am trying to perfect my cake making or any baking skills and have been reading a bit about it. This cake recipe, which is dairy free and low in fat, is very easy. However, it is following the nuance disciplines while baking that makes a difference. I was trying my best to make a moist and crack free eggless cake. Even professional bakers get cracks but they tend to cut the top off. Anyway, I tried a few tips I learned over the last few days. Right from sifting the flour – this helps aerate the flour so it will rise. Next is fold the batter slowly in only one direction and just until no lumps can be seen. Anymore mixing will make the cake hard. Tapping the cake tin filled with batter to allow excess air to escape. And most important, have the patience to wait until the cake has cooled before cutting it. Result, a cake that got good feedback from a number of people who tasted it. I used blueberries for topping; you could use any fruit of choice or even skip it.

1.5 cups all purpose flour
1.5 cups mango pulp
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
Couple of pinches of salt
1/3 cup oil
½ teaspoon almond extract/vanilla essence
2 tablespoons flaked almonds
Handful of blueberries

Preheat oven to 180degC and grease the cake tin sides and line the bottom with greaseproof baking paper

Put some blueberries on the base of the cake tin and also the almond flakes

Sift the flour and baking powder together

Add the salt and sugar to the flour and mix well

Add the mango pulp, oil, almond extract and gently fold in until just combined. Do not over mix the batter

Pour batter into the prepared cake tin and level it. Gently drop the cake tin about 10 times from about 3-4 inches height. This is to allow excess air entrapped to escape so cake rises well

Bake for 30 minutes or so (until a skewer inserted at the centre comes clean)

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then open the tin and cool the cake in cooling rack. Put a sheet of baking paper on the rack before placing the cake so the rack does not damage the cake. Also peel off the baking paper from the cake

Once completely cooled, cut and indulge!

Apple Halwa

Apple Halwa


Somehow I seem to have been left with atleast a couple of packs of apple to consume. I am not one of those that can just grab an apple and snack on it as I like them cut into bite size pieces. Ofcourse, one needs time and energy to do that so you guessed it right, I seldom have apples. I have tried a few milkshakes with apple and intend to post some of those recipes sometimes. For now, I came across some apple halwa recipes and thought now is probably a good idea to try it. It is a mix and match of few recipes I came across online and the good thing is it does not needs cups of sugar. I absolutely loved the result although was a bit disappointed that it did not have the same consistency as tirunelveli halwa or something, in the sense that despite me trying to slice them, the slices were not firm. So these would be best serve in cups with spoon like carrot halwa. The combination of the almonds with the sweetness and mild tartness from the apples was fabulous. Here is how I made it...

3 apples, peeled and ground to paste
3 tablepsoon sugar
2 teaspoons ghee
2 teaspoons flaked almonds or any other nuts of choice
2 tablespoon milk powder

Heat a saucepan and add the ground apples with a spoon of ghee. Cook until almost all moisture has evaporated stirring frequently

Add the milk powder and mix well

Add sugar and flaked almonds and mix well and cook until it all comes together. Add little more ghee and cook until it all comes together like a ball

Serve!