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!

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

Peanutbutter chocolate fudge

As I had mentioned before, we are not peanut butter people at all. However, I thought it is a good form for my son to try his hands on peanuts. I try not to give him whole nuts until the recommended age of about four so peanut butter is good enough now. I have not tried spreading it on bread but I do know he likes the chocolate spread and may not like this much. Anyway, I thought I will make something new without the need to really cook or bake and also allow him to participate. Here is a quick and easy treat...

6 tablespoon peanut butter

¼ cup icing sugar

150g chocolate

5 digestive biscuits, crushed finely

2 teaspoon oil

Mix the crushed biscuits, icing sugar and peanut butter together, add just enough oil so the mixture comes together

Spread this on a plate to desired thickness.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler (put chocolate in a bowl and place this on a pot of boiling water making sure the water does not touch the bowl), making sure no water gets into the chocolate itself. Melt completely. You could do this in a microwave oven if you want.

Spread over the peanut butter mixture and set in fridge

Cut using sharp knife, dipping the knife in hot water

Enjoy!

Rava Laddu (semolina ladoo/rava ladoo)

Rava Laddu

With Diwali round the corner, I am quite guilty that I have not posted many recipes that signify the celebrations during this wonderful festival season. Having said that, it has been quite hard to post any recipe for that matter when we have a baby at home. I try my best to take pictures of every step and hopefully of the final dish. Diwali brings back loads of childhood memories and the ofcourse most of them centre around food and fireworks. I remember my mom used to make do many savouries and sweets although she had little children to care for. Mixture, mysore pa, murukku, thattai etc etc. Oh boy, she had so much patience! Well, as for me, I find my day filled with just the regular chores, entertaining pre-schooler and a baby, cleaning up after them and so on. However, I wish I could get a sudden burst of energy and time to make some Diwali specials just to create that festive spirit for my children, the one that we enjoyed as a child. I know I could do it next year too but I believe in the present. For that reason, I told in my son’s pre-school that i will help them with som Diwali celebration. We intend to do rangoli, paint/colour some lamps and make into festoons on one day. I will be telling them the story behind Diwali and also making a sweet with them. With suggestions from some of the lovely readers, I managed to come up with a recipe that will be enjoyable for kids and suitable for their dietary restrictions.

When I did a few experiments in my kitchen to come up with a recipe that has traditional Indian roots, yet suitable for children to make/assemble, I realised that I need to make more traditional sweets and post their recipes. Anyway, I chose this recipe because it will be easy for children to lay their hands on. The traditional rava laddu is made with loads of ghee and milk and shaped when still warm and that I thought is not ideal for children to do. For a change, I had decided to almost stick to a recipe I found on another blog as I barely and the time to experiment. However, unfortunately, the recipe did not quite work.

It is important to make sure the rava is roasted very well as that is the only way it gets cooked in this dish. This dish is quite forgiving in the sense that you could always add more condensed milk to make it thicker or add more roasted rava if it was way too soft. Treat the quantities as guidelines because different rava draw different amount of liquid and as there is no question of overmixing the dough, feel free to mix and check if you are there. The laddus will be slightly soft soon after they are made, but will firm as they rest, which however, won’t be for long. I will be skipping the nuts while making this for children due to allergies but the addition of ground almond, for those who can eat it, makes this laddu even better. If you want to skip it, replace with semolina. I had o use a bit of icing sugar as the recipe I followed did not work. However, if you find the sweetness from condensed milk inadequate, feel free to add the sugar. The quantity below will make about 15 laddus. Best kept in the fridge, but I did not have that problem as they were all gone!

1 ¼ cup semolina (fine preferably)

2 tablespoon powdered sugar/icing sugar (optional)

1/3 cup ground almond

¾ cup sweetened condensed milk

Few strands of saffron, steep it in a tablespoon hot water

Few raisins

2 generous pinches cardamom powder

Any other nuts of choice, chopped

2-3 tablespoon ghee

Heat little ghee and fry the raisins until it puffs up, keep aside

Add rest of the ghee and fry the semolina on low flame until it begins to change colour and aromatic

Transfer to a mixing bowl and add ground almond, fried raisins, saffron water, icing sugar, cardamom powder. Add most of the condensed milk and mix to a consistency when it resembles a sticky dough but you manage to roll it into balls. You can always add more condensed milk if needed

Make bite size balls. You could roll them in chopped nuts or dessicated coconuts or some coco powder

Eggless Coconut Macaroon

Eggless Coconut Macaroon

Coconut barfi is a popular south Indian sweet made for some festivals. I have a rather strange feeling for it. I like how the coconut juices just burst into the mouth for the first few bites but then as you chew, it almost dries out and becomes a bit boring. That is one of the reasons I don’t make coconut barfis. However, I thought an eggless macaroon would be a good idea and most recipes online are coconut varieties. I put my spin on it and the results were very good. I like the fact that I do not have to spend lot of time grating fresh coconut and use dessicaed coconut. I think it tasted best still warm from the oven. It can be prepared in no time, making it ideal for a quick indulgent snack or treat for sudden guests. Here is the recipe...

¾ cup dessicated coconut

¼ cup semolina

½ cup condensed milk

2-3 tablespoon milk

2-3 tablespoon nuts, chopped

¼ teaspoon cardamom powder

Mix together all ingredients to make a rather stiff batter which would just drop from a spoon

Leaving atleast an inch gap between each, drop a spoon of the mixture on a lined baking tray. Make sure you do not have any peaks, just flatten using a spoon. The peaks are likely to burn

Bake at 180degC for about 8-10 minutes, until the top turns golden brown

Allow to cool completely in the tray and then serve. Do not take it from the tray until fully cooled

Chakkarai Pongal (sweet pongal)

Chakkarai Pongal (sweet pongal)


While growing up, I was not a fan of chakkarai pongal but always enjoyed it when distributed to devotees as prasadam in temples, especially vaishnava temples. It will be given in special cups called ‘dhonnai’ which is made with a specific leaf. There will be no shortage of ghee in these temple chakkarai pongal and I always wondered what magical powers the cook in the temple kitchen (called madapalli in tamil) has to make such yummy dishes. The best part is that when they give you a small cup of the prasadam, we would wish they gave us more but by the time we finish having that cup, we will feel so satiated and full. Over the years my taste seems to have changed and once in a while I do fancy some sweets. One such dessert is chakkarai pongal. I used to make this more often in very small quantities, far less sweeter when I was weaning my wee one as it is in mushy consistency and has goodness of mung dal and as I also add milk to it, it was quite a good dish for little ones as well. I had not realised I had not posted this recipe earlier and now a reader had asked for it; so this has finally made it to the blog. During pongal festival, this dish is usually made in mud pots and in my house it is made in ‘vengala paanai’. I started making it in my vengala paanai but had misjudged the quantity and capacity of the dish and had to transfer it later. The final colour or the dish will depend on the jaggery used and you may need to adjust jaggery quantity based on how sweet your jaggery

is. It is best served warm and with a dollop of ghee on top. Some people add mace also to this but I don’t like it, so I didn’t. Here is the recipe...

¾ cup rice
¼ cup mung dal
4-5 tablespoon ghee
1 ½ cups jaggery
Couple of pinches cardamom powder
Couple of pinches saffron
2 tablespoon chopped cashew nuts
2 tablespoon raisins
½ cup milk

Heat some ghee in a heavy bottom pan and add little ghee. Add the rice and dal and fry until aromatic

Add milk and atleast 3 cups of water and cook stirring often. The dal and rice should turn out mushy. You may need to add more water to get the desired consistency

Add jaggery and little ghee and keep stirring until all jaggery dissolves and is well combined. Allow to simmer

Add the cardamom, saffron and if desired some mace and mix well and cook for couple of minutes. Again you may need to add more water to keep the consistency a bit lose as it could turn out dry once cooled

Fry cashews in ghee until golden and raisins until puffed. You could do this at the very start to avoid using multiple dishes

Add the cashews and raisins and mix well

Serve warm

Badam Halwa (Almond Pudding)

Badam Halwa (Almond Pudding)
It is said that success is a journey, not a destination and that is so true. Well, I know there are several other food blogs with even thousands of recipes and my milestone is quite a humble one but I think it is unfair for me to compare with others, each one being different. So, am going to give myself some credit and pat myself on my back for coming this far. I am very glad that I have been able to sustain my interest and not let it die away with just a few recipes. On the contrary, my interest has increased several folds and am trying to research more and more about ingredients, get hold of many forgotten ingredients and so on. With the intent of sharing as many healthy yet tasty recipes, I started off with just pictures of the final dish. I then thought it may be helpful to show step by step pictures as a picture speaks a thousand words isn’t it? For the lowest level of amateur photographer that I am, I was pleasantly surprised to receive good feedback about my clicks. I am hoping that soon I will post video recipes atleast for some recipes which seem rather tricky for many.

Coming to the 300th recipe, there is probably nothing innovative about the recipe as it is a very traditional dish and very simple by itself so adapting it would not have made meant much. Reason I wanted to post this for this milestone is that it is my husband’s favourite sweet (he does not like sweets otherwise). It was him that prompted me to start a website (in the end I chose blog) and despite not being adventurous with food he has tried almost all the dishes I make. I do not normally tell him what is in the recipe but allow him to give the feedback and these days his guesses are getting better and thinks I add goodies like millets, lentils etc. to most of the dishes I make. Having said that there is nothing innovative about this recipe, I can assure you that it is a fool proof halwa recipe. The struggle many have is usually with final consistency as some end up with a hard cake rather than a soft halwa or for some it may not come together. As we do not have a sweet tooth I added less sugar, however equal amount of almond and sugar would probably be just right for someone who likes sweets. Thanks to all the readers, especially the ones who have taken time to try my recipes, leave comments/feedback/idea. Without you readers it may have been a bit pointless running a blog. Thanks to my family for the continuous encouragement, without them I would have had nothing to write about.

2 cups almond
1 ¾ cups sugar
2-3 pinches saffron strands
About a cup of milk (may need more or less)
5 teaspoons ghee

Soak almond in hot water for atleast an hour and remove the skin

Put it in a mixie/food processor and add just enough milk to cover it and grind to a not so smooth paste

Heat couple of spoons of ghee and add the ground almond. I did add a little water to rinse off the mixie jar and added it. Add the sugar and stir well. Now begins your 20-30 minutes stirring exercise! Do not leave it at all as it will burn very easily

After about 10 minutes of stirring, add the saffron strands and more ghee and keep stirring until the ghee separates from the rest

Garnish with some almond flakes and serve!

Paal Payasam (Milk Kheer)

Paal Payasam (Milk Kheer)


Despite being a tamil Brahmin, I have never made paal payasam before. It was a special occasion at home and I thought I could very well try this recipe. These days I do not get a lot of time in my kitchen so have to make use of every opportunity I get to experiment but be safe i.e. ensure it is good enough to be served to guests. This is not really a recipe where you can go wrong although yo could make a mistake with amount of sugar and make it too sweet or not sweet for different people, but that is just personal preference. This recipe is not so sweet so for someone like my brother, it was not great. But for me and few others who do not like their desserts being too sweet, it was perfect. I think Keralites make this dish with red rice. I could have done that but I did not find time to locate my lonely pack of red rice, maybe next time.

8 cups whole milk
½ cup rice
2 teaspoons ghee
2 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons broken cashewnuts
½ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon cardamom powder
Pinches of saffron

Boil milk in a heavy bottomed pan

Grind rice to a coarse powder

Add rice and sugar to the milk, stir and pressure cook for 2 whistles

Stir well, add cardamom powder, saffron and bring to boil

Simmer for a few minutes so it thickens. Heat ghee and fry raisins until puffed and cashews until golden brown

Add this to the milk mixture and serve warm or cold