Butter – Page 3

Mango Truffle Cake:

June 25, 2018

It is a ritual at our home to make mango stuffed chocolate cake every year when king of fruit is in season. This year, I had a lot of over ripe mangoes and wanted a way to utilize it in this cake itself. I tried mango sauce as a topping and it worked out wonderfully and kids gang liked it too.

Truffle cakes are melt in the mouth chocolate and cream cakes but when fresh fruit is added as a stuffing between the layers it tastes rich with a natural fruit flavour. I normally prefer less cream or high calorie stuff when I am baking for my family and friends. If you are looking out for healthy options for truffle cakes, this recipe is for you.

Now we will see the procedure, how I went ahead –

First – For the chocolate cake:

Ingredients:

Very fine semolina – 1 ¼ cup (Known as Chiroti Rava)

Ragi / finger millet flour – ½ cup

Cocoa powder – ½ to ¾ cup

Baking powder – 1 tea spoon

Baking soda – 1 tea spoon

Eggs – 2

Butter – 100 grams

Sugar – ¾ to 1 cup (if you want less sweet use ¾ th cup)

Milk – ½ cup

Instant coffee powder – 1 tea spoon

Hot boiling water – 1 cup

Method:

-Pre- heat oven @ 180 °C and line a baking tin with butter paper.

-Take one bowl, prepare dry mixture. Take semolina, Ragi, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda by using wire whisk or you can sieve all these twice or thrice.

-In another bowl we will prepare wet mix, beat egg one by one, add milk, sugar, butter and beat until frothy.

-Boil water, mix in coffee and pour this into wet mix and once again beat and make a homogenous mixture.

-Now fold in dry ingredients by using wooden spatula. Don’t over mix this content.

-Pour the batter to lined baking tin, bake for 40 minutes in a pre-heated oven.

-when it is done, remove, cool and keep it ready for stuffing.

Second – Mango filling:

Ingredients:

Mango – 1 or 2 (depending on the size)

Icing sugar – 2 tea spoons

Method:

-Peel the skin, hold the mango flat on your left hand. Mark so many cuts in horizontal and vertical manner and make tiny square pieces. Finally squeeze the seed to extract remaining pulp.

-Add icing sugar or sugar powder, mix nicely and keep this in the fridge until you are done with the sauce making and slicing the cake.

Third- Mango sauce for dressing or to drizzle:

Ingredients:

Mango – 1 or 2

Icing sugar – 1 or 2 tea spoons

Butter – 1 table spoon

Juice of Lemon – 1 tea spoon

Method:

-Remove outer skin of mango, chop and make a puree.

-Take one sauce pan, add mango puree, butter, icing sugar, lemon juice and boil it nicely and switch off the gas.

Fourth: Now Comes the assembling part:

Step 1: Take the cake (completely cooled one) and slice it horizontally. You will get 2 discs.

Step 2: Take out mango filling, equally spread this on one of the flat disc.

Step 3: place another halved disc on mango filling.

Step 4: If you like mango, go ahead and pour the sauce as a dressing to cover the top of the cake and slice it or you can drizzle the sauce while serving as well.

NOTE:

-One can use 2 cups of All purpose flour as well in place of 2 combined flours OR Use 1 ½ cup of All purpose or whole wheat and ½ cups of Ragi as well.

– To substitute eggs, use flax gel and recipe is here.

-I have used is ¾ cup of brown sugar. Cake was less in sweetness and it tasted more like coffee and was chocolatey.

-You can use less or more chocolates according to the quality of brand which you use.

Walnut – Chocolate chip Coffee Cake:

January 27, 2018

Coffee flavoured cake happened by chance. I had some unused Nescafe instant coffee and wanted to finish it ASAP. So, I thought of baking a cake. It is made up of healthy flour and a very good option as a snack.

While getting ready to assemble everything, I thought of adding chocolate chip and walnut as an attraction to kids and it worked out very well with finger millet or Ragi flour as well. Now we will see how I proceeded with the ingredients.

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Ingredients:

Whole wheat Flour – 1 cup

Ragi/ Finger millet flour – 1 cup

Baking soda – ½ tea spoon

Baking powder – ½ tea spoon

Salt – ¼ tea spoon

Walnuts – ½ cup

Choco chip – ½ cup

Butter – 100 grams

Eggs – 2

Sugar – 1 ½ cup

Hot milk – 1 cup

Instant Coffee powder – 1 to 1 ½ table spoon

Hot water – ¼ cup (you can take little less than ¼ cup)

Method:

-Pre heat oven at 180°C, line a baking tray with the butter paper.

-Take one bowl and mix all the dry ingredients like, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, walnuts and Choco -chips.

-In another bowl, beat melted butter, eggs, sugar, milk by adding one by one respectively.

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-Make dark coffee by mixing powder and water. Mix in the liquid and beat.

-Now wet mix is also ready.

-Pour this wet mixture to dry ingredients and fold the batter by using any spatula.

-Pour the batter in lined baking tray and keep this for baking until done.

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-It takes anywhere between 40 to 50 minutes.

-Before removing, check with a knife by inserting, in the baked cake.

-Knife should come out clean.

-Remove the cake, cool before cutting, and serve.

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Note: For the Eggless Version, use 1/2 cup of flax gel and you can refer my earlier post for the preparation.

Sweet Corn and Cheese Paratha/Parata:

November 4, 2017

Week days are really challenging for moms of school going kids. We must see the nutritional factor as well as the taste. This stuffing is such, it is tasty, nutritious and loved by any kids from tiny tots to teenagers. It has sweet corn, cabbage and cheese.

These three are very tasty and nutritious as well. Sweet corn contains a lot of vitamin B12, Iron, Folic acid and soluble fibre etc.

Cabbage also is rich in vitamins; minerals and it is quite filling as well. In India, the only concern is that it has high pesticide content. So, wash with salt or vinegar solution a couple of times, drain and use.

Now it is cheese. Who doesn’t love cheese? Like all dairy products cheese also provides required calcium to our body and kids need it even more. Usage in limited quantity is always good 😊

Ingredients:

For Chapati dough:

Whole wheat flour- 2 cups

Salt- ½ tsp

Water – as required

Oil – 1 tsp

For stuffing:

Cabbage – 3 table spoons

Sweet Corn – 3 table spoons

Capsicum – ½

Onion – 1 (small)

Oregano or Any pizza seasoning – ½ to 1 tsp

Chopped Garlic – 3 flakes

Red chilli flakes – ½ to 1 tsp

Salt

Turmeric – ½ tsp

Grated cheese – 2 table spoons.

Method:

-Make soft pliable chapati dough by mixing all the above ingredients under chapati. Keep aside.

-Boil corn and drain water.

-Chop garlic, onion, capsicum, cabbage.

-Churn or crush cooked corn, cabbage and capsicum in food processer or veggie chopper.

-Take one wok, add oil, chopped garlic, onion, turmeric and fry for a while.

-Next add crushed veggies, put salt and seasoning. Fry for 2 minutes or until it wilts.

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-Cool and add grated cheese and mix nicely and make small balls.

-Now take lemon sized chapati dough in hand, spread as a small disc by using fingers.

-Keep this in your left palm, in a cup shape, put filling (smaller in size) and cover it.

-Now take extra flour for dusting and spread or roll this ball with light pressure by using a roller.

-Cook both the sides by using either oil, ghee or butter.

-Enjoy this either with ketchup or pickle.

Note:

-Instead of chopped garlic and salt, one can use garlic salt as well.

Healthy Chocolate Brownie:

August 7, 2017

Here healthy refers to ‘No maida’ and personally I prefer to include healthy flours instead of maida and experiment with the same. Today I made this multi millet flour brownie. These brownies turned out to be a soft, fudgy and delicious and no one cribbed about the altogether elimination of all-purpose flour in this bake. It was so delicious, and my dear hubby was all into praise!!! That was the highlight and I don’t get this every day. Yes!!! I need to work hard for it.: D He usually doesn’t prefer to compromise on basic taste. Today I did achieve to get that “classic brownie” taste without any compromising.

This is an excellent,an easy recipe which you can prepare in advance when you are entertaining guests and have many other stuffs to prepare. It is a perfect dessert option along with an ice cream. Re- heat before serving to give an extra zing with cold ice cream.

Ingredient:

Sprouted finger millet/ragi flour – 1 cup

Mix millet flour – 1 cup

Walnuts – 1 cup

Eggs – 2

Cooking Milk chocolate slab – 300 grams

Cocoa powder – 2 table spoons

Butter – 100 grams

Curd – ½ cup

Light brown sugar – 1 cup

Method:

Assemble all the materials and keep it ready.
Put butter and cooking chocolate in a sauce pan and melt.

Add sugar and switch off the gas.
Cool this mixture for 2 minutes.
Add in beaten eggs and curd. Mix thoroughly.

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This is your wet ingredient and keep it aside.
Break walnuts into tiny chunks.
Now mix all the dry ingredients, two flours, cocoa powder and walnut chunks in one bowl.

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Dry mix all the dry ingredients and pour wet ingredient mixture into this bowl and fold in.
Pre-heat oven at 180 C

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Pour this batter in a greased, butter paper lined baking tin for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife comes out clean while checking the doneness.
After it is done, remove from the oven and cool.

-Serve hot brownies as it is or with vanilla ice cream.

Note: If your cooking chocolate has sugar, please reduce the sugar quantity to ¾ cup.

Tadka dal- Seasoned lentil :

July 22, 2017

Tadka dal is a simple, nutritious side dish from northern India. Tadka dhal is a blend of a couple of lentils, cooked and seasoned with ghee as well as butter. It is a very good side dish and goes very well either with roti, plain rice, jeera rice or Kashmiri Pulav.

Ingredients:

Toor dal/ Pigeon peas – ½ cup

Masoor dal/Red lentil – ½ cup

Ghee – 1 tbl sp

Cumin – 1tsp

Turmeric – ½ tsp

Onion – 1 small

Garlic – 4 to 5 cloves

Ginger – ½ inch

Tomato – 1 big

Coriander powder – 1 tsp

Cumin powder – 1 tsp

Red chilli powder – 1 tsp

Salt

To Garnish – Chopped coriander, sliced garlic – 3 cloves, butter – ½ tbl sp

Method:

-Wash both the dals, cook with sufficient water.

– Take chopped onion, garlic and ginger in a small mixer jar and make rough paste and keep aside.

– grind tomato as well and keep aside.

-Now take one kadai, put ghee. When it is hot add Cumin then ground onion mixture, turmeric and fry until it is light brown.

-Now add ground tomato and fry this until raw smell vanishes and add Coriander, Cumin and Red chilli powders.

– Add cooked dal, salt and sufficient water. Boil.

-Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.

-Fry chopped garlic in little butter and add this into dal.

Enjoy this Dal with Kashmiri Pulav, plain rice or roti.

Millet Choco chip cookie:

July 18, 2017

Millets are a very good alternative to normal All-purpose flour or whole wheat flour in gluten free baking. You can’t even recognize the core ingredient. It is gluten free as well as high in nutrition too.

When I was trying out some recipes for 2017 Millet calendar, I dished out a couple of recipes, which has turned out super tasty, and at the same time, healthy too.

At first, I tried Chocolate based cookie and it tasted good and here is the recipe-.

Ingredients:

Mixed millet flour -1 cup

Ragi flour – ¾ cup

Cocoa powder – 2 tbl sp.

Salt – ¼ tsp

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Egg -1

Sugar – ¾ cup

Butter – 100 gms

Curd – 2 tbl sp

Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Choco-chip – 2 tbl sp

Powdered sugar – to roll the dough.

Method:

-Put all the dry ingredients- flours, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and soda, Choco chip in one bowl, mix nicely and keep aside.

– Take another bowl and put butter and sugar, beat until sugar dissolves and butter becomes smooth.

-Add in egg and beat, add vanilla essence, curd and beat until batter is smooth.

– Now add dry ingredient flour mixture and make cookie dough by mixing like Chapati dough.

– Take one round spoon and make uniformly sized ball, dip in a sugar powder and arrange in a lined baking tray.

– Bake this in a pre- heated oven at 170º C for 12 to 14 minutes or until base becomes light brown.

-When it is done, remove and cool. Store this in an air tight container.

Note: This measurement yields around 28 cookies of this size.

Cornmeal-Cranberry Scones:

February 21, 2017

These are very soft, crumbly and melt- in- the -mouth kind of delicacies. It has rich corn meal flavour and it is neither a cookie nor a cake and is very mildly sweet. It does not need any side dishes like butter or jam and one can enjoy it as it is with a cup of tea or coffee.

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Ingredients:

All-purpose flour- 1 cup

Cornmeal- ¾ cup

Butter- 100 grams

Dried cranberries- ½ cup

Baking powder – ¾ teaspoon

Baking soda- ¾ teaspoon

Salt – ¼ teaspoon

Sugar – ½ cup

Butter milk – ½ cup (chilled)

Topping – Sugar crystals

Method:

Pre heat oven at 170 C
Take one mixer jar or food processor. Put all the dry ingredients like flour, corn meal, salt, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Dry grind all these for a couple of rounds.
Chop the butter into bite size pieces and add. Again dry grind until flour becomes crumbly and wet.
Add buttermilk and run the food processor. Dough will become a little sticky.
Line the cookie tray with butter paper.
Drop the dough into lined cookie tray either by using spoon or ice cream scoop.

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Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake this in a pre-heated oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

It yielded 15 scones for me and I have used small ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough.

Chikki from ellu bella/ Energy bar from left over sesame mixture:

February 2, 2017

Makara sankranti festival is over and you may have left over Ellu Bella which you got from your near and dear ones during distribution to each other.Usually there will be no takers for this after two days of festival. Even I had some left over sesame mixture and tried this Indian Chikki or energy bar from these power packed ingredients.This mixture usually has lots of sesame seed, which is a high iron source, peanuts, coconut bits etc.

Ingredient:

Left over ellu bella mix – as much as you have

Sugar – 3 to 4 spoons (What I took)

Butter – 1 table spoon

Cardamom powder – ¼ teaspoon

Method:

Separate Sugar blocks as well as jaggery chunks from the mixture.

Take one thick bottomed vessel; add all these jaggery and sugar chunks as well as extra sugar with butter.
Heat this by constant stirring, until it becomes caramelized liquid.
Immediately mix in the rest of the sesame mixture and cardamom powder mix nicely to coat caramel liquid uniformly.

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Spread this on a clean kitchen counter or butter paper laid baking tray and press this nicely till it is uniformly flat.
You can use either pav bhaji masher or roti belan to press this mix.
Make a mark when it is hot by using sharp knife.
When it is cool, store this in an airtight container.

Makki di Roti/Maize flour flatbread:

January 11, 2017

Makki Ki roti/Makki di roti is the staple food of Punjab and tastes really good when we pair this with Sarson Ka Saag. Usually Makki Ka roti is made by using maize flour and patted by hand. It is slightly thick and firm in texture. We like our roti to be soft and puffy like regular phulka.

That is the reason I do this by adding whole wheat flour and roll like a regular roti. So, my version is light and soft but has Makki Ka flavour.

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Ingredient:

Maize flour – 2 cups

Water – 2 cup

Whole wheat flour – to bind

Salt

Ghee – 1 tsp

Method:

-Boil water, put salt, ghee and maize flour and mix by using one spoon.

-Mixture will be sticky so adjust this by adding the required amount of whole wheat flour to make firm dough.

-Keep it covered and keeps aside for 5 to 10 minutes.

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– Roll out roti’s like a regular Chapati.

-Keep Dosa tawa on fire, when it is hot, cook both the sides of this roti, and hold the roti over the gas flame.

-when it fluffs, remove and keep it on the plate.

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-Apply some ghee or butter and serve. Enjoy this roti with Sarson Ka Saag or any other side dish of your choice.

Sarson Ka Saag/ Mustard greens curry:

January 8, 2017

Come January, my veggie vendor will bring mustard greens and Bathua greens. In Kannada, we call Bathua as chakotha and mustard as sasive soppu .Last week I got a bunch from him and I prepared this curry. I love to include seasonal veggies in my cooking and it is a yearly ritual to make Saag at least once in winter.

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How I make –

Sarson / Mustard greens – 2 bunches

Bathua / chakotha leaves – 2 bunches

Palak/spinach – 2 bunches

Onion – 1

Green chillies – 4

Garlic – 10

Ginger- 1 inch

Maize flour – 1 table spoon

Cumin – ½ teaspoon

Turmeric – ½ teaspoon

Hing- ¼ teaspoon

Butter – 1 table spoon

Salt

Method:

Clean all the greens remove stalks and discard.

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Wash and chop the leaves into fine strips and cook this in a vessel by putting half cup of water, little salt, sugar for 10 to 15 minutes.
Take one mixer jar and put sliced onion, crushed ginger; chopped chillies and garlic, dry grind all this into rough paste.
When greens are cool, grind this as well. Don’t make smooth paste. Whip only once or twice, you will get required consistency.

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I usually use earthen vessel to cook traditional items. If you have one, you can use it otherwise use normal kadai.
Take vessel, put butter, when it is hot add cumin and hing. Then onion and chilli paste. Fry for a while. Add turmeric and salt. Salt will help to ooze out water from the onion and will retain moisture while frying.

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When it is light brown, add maize flour and fry for 2 minutes.
Add one cup of water and mix onion and maize flour mixture. This will look like a paste now.

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Add Ground greens and boil, If you feel water is needed you can add water and cook until you get the right consistency, and when it is done , mixture becomes like a mass and surface becomes little glossy.

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Serve this with Makki Ki Roti or Phulka with little butter.