Thursday 12 June 2014

Cinnamon Creamy Biscuits

This is one of those recipes that are conceived when you work with what you have. You go to your kitchen, look around, and pick up a few things based on a vague idea and end up with something delightful. I think this could be a good exercise once in a while for optimizing your creative output. You never know what loveliness you come up with.

As I was saying, I had not given this recipe much of a thought. I simply went to the kitchen because I was bored of studying and wanted to eat something, something 'good'.The only problem was that I did not want to spend too much time on thinking or cooking because I wanted to get back to my studies. So I decided not to cook anything and settled on having cream biscuits, but as luck would have it, we were out of those. But now I absolutely wanted to have cream biscuits! After a couple of minutes of cribbing to my mom about it while she paid no attention whatsoever, I remembered I had some fresh whipped cream sitting in my fridge. A slow grin appeared on my face. I am sure you've guessed what I was thinking.

Cinnamon Creamy Biscuits

I went to my pantry and fetched a pack of sweet and salty biscuits. I had decided the flavor of my cream, cinnamon, my favorite; no brainstorming there, and a few other ingredients. In the end it turned out to be a '5 ingredient' recipe which satisfied me enough to resume my studies happily.

This could be a quick fix party snack and hold on, could it also be used as a dessert? May be, not sure, but it is as delightful as it can get! I hope you enjoy these.

This recipe will make 5-6 Cinnamon Creamy Biscuits

Be sure to check out the tips section at the end of the post.

Ingredients:
Sweet n salty biscuits- 10-12 nos (I used Krack Jack)
Sweetened fresh whipped cream- 3-4 tbsp
Vanilla extract- 1 tbsp
Cinnamon powder- 1 tsp
Chocolate sauce for drizzling

Recipe:

Add vanilla extract and cinnamon powder to cream and stir well to mix uniformly. You might want to start by adding smaller quantities of vanilla and cinnamon and adjust according to your taste. I added these to my cream until both flavors were balanced and well pronounced in the filling, though cinnamon took the higher stand.

Then spoon some of this cinnamon cream on a biscuit. Place another biscuit on top of it like a sandwich. Repeat with all other biscuits. If your biscuits are slightly broken on the edges, don't worry. Those taste better!

Drizzle some chocolate sauce and enjoy.

Cinnamon Creamy Biscuits


Tips:
I ate a couple of these as soon as I made them, put the remaining in a container and kept it in the freezer out of  fear that the cream would melt and make the biscuits soggy. I reached for them the next day and found that the cream had set really well and tasted better.
Lastly, drizzle chocolate sauce just before you are about to have these. Chilling with chocolate sauce drizzled upon these sandwiches will make them stick to one another.

Friday 6 June 2014

Sukhi Masala Arbi


We all trust our moms, don't we? But what if one day when you are grown up and your grandmom tells you that your mom used to make you eat something in the name of something else when you were a kid? Yep! My mom used to pass off Arbi (Taro root) as potatoes to me all the time. When confronted, my mom said that she only did that because I was a fussy eater and wanted potatoes for every meal. Well, O.K. mom, but I still don't think it was fair. Poor me. God knows how much arbi I ate in the name of potatoes. I wish I was a smarter kid to see through her trick. That's the past and now I am not a kid and she cannot pull off such tricks on me anymore and I will eat only what I like, which is pretty much everything these days. Yeah, the exclusive potato days are over.

Talking about arbi now, it is a very healthy, fibrous vegetable that is tasty and easy to cook. In this post I will be sharing a recipe for dry arbi, but it is equally delicious cooked in yogurt gravy. I will also share with you my nani's recipe for arbi kebabs very soon.

Sukhi Masala Arbi


In my opinion, the star ingredient of this recipe is 'dried mango powder'. It adds a subtle sour flavor to our dish and sort of gives it a finish. So make sure you don't skip on it.

A quick tip before we begin: Arbi can get very sticky while cooking. So you want to avoid water as much as you can if you are going for a dry version. What I do is that I wash arbi a couple of hours ahead of cooking so it is dried thoroughly before peeling and cutting.

Ingredients:

Arbi- 1/2 kg
Cumin seeds- 1/2 tsp
Dried red chilly- 1 nos
Turmeric powder- 1/2- 3/4 tsp
Coriander powder- 2-3 tsp
Garam masala powder- 3/4 tsp
Red chilly powder- 1-2 tsp (adjust to taste)
Dried Mango powder- 2 tbsp
Salt to taste
Oil- 3-4 tbsp


Sukhi Masala Arbi

Recipe:

Peel and cut arbi lengthwise in about 1/4 inch thick pieces. The point is, don't slice them too thin. Think fries!

Heat oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds. Break dried red chilly in half and add.

When tempered, add arbi and give a stir to coat with oil.

Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes on low flame with occasional stirring.

Add all powdered spices except mango powder.

Mix well, cover and let cook for another 5-10 minutes with spices.

Turn off the flame.

Now add dried mango powder and mix well.

Serve hot with naan/ parathas or have it as it is!

Taro root recipe

Stay tuned for Arbi Kebab and many more recipes or follow by email or add me on Google +


Wednesday 4 June 2014

The Birthday Cake

What is it about a birthday cake that makes it so special?

 Let's do a little exercise, and I am not talking about the one you have to do after eating the cake. Yeah, talk about pros and cons! But anyway, for this exercise, close your eyes and think about a birthday cake. What do you see? Do you see your favorite, tempting cake? Yes, probably. But is it just the cake? When you think of a birthday cake, you see yourself, happy, surrounded by smiling and laughing people, friends and family with party hats, and you see yourself holding the knife, ready to blow out the candles, making a wish and wishing it to come true. Yup! You see your own birthday. At least I do. That's what makes a birthday cake so special. It is a maker of beautiful loving memories, an agent of your day.

It was my birthday yesterday. You guessed it! That's the precursor of this post and I am all about having a rule that mandates having at least one birthday cake.

Sure it's great to be surprised with a birthday cake at midnight by your friends, or at work by your colleagues or just ordering a cake for yourself from your favorite bakery, but baking your own birthday cake isn't too shabby either. And don't be afraid if you are a newbie at baking, just like me. So what if you screw up a couple of cakes and your cake gets finally ready only minutes before you are supposed to be cutting it. If anything, you should be getting a pat, or even two at the back for being such brave risk takers on your own birthday.

Here's what my 'final' cake looked like. For a baker who is not perfect, well, not yet anyway, this was a lovely looking birthday cake that tasted good.

Vanilla Cake

And the best part is the fun my cousins, Nidhi and Amrita, and I had screwing up and baking cakes throughout the day. It was like a festival. My mother was more worried than me about my cake. I had initially decided to make a mango-butterscotch cake. But after two trials, adjusting the batter consistency and everything we thought could have been wrong that the cake wouldn't bake through properly, we gave it up. Although I must say that we tasted the God-knows-what's-wrong mango-butterscotch cakes and they tasted yum!
Then we decided to make my tried and tested vanilla cake recipe so I at least had a cake to cut in the evening. And thank god it turned good.


I am not sharing the recipe of vanilla cake in this post because, like I said, I am not a perfect baker and anything I post in this blog quite simply has to be perfect. I wrote this post just because I wanted to share my initial attempts at baking with you all and make a memory of my birthday.

I hope to see you soon with improved baking and that won't take me another birthday, I promise.