sugar – Page 6

Sheer Khurma/ Sheer Khorma:

September 1, 2017

Sheer Khurma is also known as Sheer Khorma. The term represents Milk with dry dates. It is Vermicelli kheer with lots and lots of dry fruits and dry dates. It is a traditional sweet dish, which is served during Eid Ul Fitr.

I wanted to try this recipe from so long. I took my house-help’s help to gather how it is made and she described to me how her mom used to make this on festival days. She guided me on how to chop all these dry fruits as well.

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Ingredients:

Milk – 1.5 litres.

Ghee – 2 to 3 tbl spoon (to fry all the dry fruits)

Sugar – to taste (used almost ½ cup)

Dry dates – ¼ cup (sliced length wise)

Almond – ¼ cup (slivered)

Cashew – 2 table spoon (bits)

Pista – ¼ cup (chopped)

Raisins – 2 table spoons

Chironji – 2 table spoons

Vermicelli – ¼ cup

Saffron – 8 to 10 strands

Cardamom – ½ tea spoon.

Method:

-Take ghee in a thick bottomed kadai and roast vermicelli, remove and keep aside.

– Fry all the dry fruits one by one.

– Soak saffron in 2 table spoons of hot milk and keep aside.

– Take roasted vermicelli and dry fruits together in this same kadai and pour milk and boil.

– Cook this until you see a creamy texture and vermicelli is perfectly done.

– It takes anywhere between fifteen to twenty minutes.

– Now add in sugar and check for the sweetness and adjust the quantity and boil.

– Lastly add soaked saffron and cardamom powder.

– You can serve this as a hot dessert or chilled.

Banana Berati / Plantain Preserve:

August 29, 2017

Whenever you have large stock of over ripe bananas, this is one such procedure one can follow and finish off all the stock and preserve this for future use. This preserve stays good almost a year or more in the freezer. It is a very handy when you want to make banana payasam/kheer or Halwa. Here I have used yellow small variety of banana from Mangalore and we call this as Kadali.

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Ingredients:

Over ripe banana – 22

Sugar – 1 bowl

Method:

– Put all the peeled bananas to mixer grinder and make a smooth paste.

– Measure this by using any bowl of your choice. If this paste is 3 cups in quantity take one cup of sugar in that same measurement cup.

– So, your ratio of banana paste and sugar will be 3:1.

– Take one thick bottomed kadai, put this paste and keep gas flame in a very low flame and cook for a while.

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– When it changes its colour to milky white, then to a pale colour and when you smell the banana flavour in the air, add sugar and mix this in a regular interval.

– After some time, it will turn into a pinkish or reddish colour and it will start to leave the sides of the kadai. Now it is the time to remove it from the fire.

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– Keep as it is and when it reaches room temperature; store it in an airtight container or a zip lock.

– You can do this in a microwave as well. Only thing, you should remove the glass bowl at regular intervals and give a stir and proceed as given above.

Panchakajjaya /Naivedym which offered to lord Ganapathi:

August 24, 2017

Panchakajjaya is integral part of Ganesh Chaturthi Naivedyam. Pancha means Five. As the name suggests it is made up of five ingredients. Chana dal, sugar, coconut, Ghee, black sesame seed. cashew nuts are optional. This powdery Prasadam is a treat which we look forward to every year on this auspicious day.

Ingredients:

Chana dal / Bengal gram dal – 1 cup

Grated fresh coconut – 1cup

Sugar – 1cup

Black sesame seed – 2 tbl sp

Cashew bits – ½ cup

Cardamom powder – ½ tsp

Ghee – ½ tsp

Method:

– Dry roast Chana dal until it is light golden and fragrant. Cool and make powder by using small mixer jar. Sieve and collect fine powder. Do this in small batches, little by little.

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– Powder sugar.

– Dry roast sesame seed and cool.

– Dry roast coconut gratings until light golden. Cool this.

– Fry cashew bits in ghee and keep aside.

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– Now take one bowl, mix everything together, and sprinkle cardamom powder. Offer to God.

Beaten rice/Poha laddu:

August 12, 2017

Wish you all my lovely readers a very happy Krishna janmashtami. As beaten rice is one of the favourite things of lord Krishna. Beaten rice is also known as poha in Hindi and Avalakki in Kannada.

This ladoo is one of my twin daughter’s favourite things in this whole wide world. I learnt this addictive crunchy ladoo recipe from my sister’s Mother-In-Law. Now let’s get started with the recipe.

Ingredients:

Whole wheat flour-1 cup

Chickpea flour/Besan -1 cup

Thick beaten rice – 2 cups (thicker variety, which is used for deep frying in savoury making)

Sugar- 2 ½ cup

Clarified butter (ghee) – ½ to ¾ cup (as required)

Dry fruits – 1 cup (We like chopped almond and cashew)

Cardamom powder – 1tsp

Method:

1. Dry roast wheat flour and chickpea flour separately in a thick bottomed vessel and keep small flame in a gas stove, so that flour will not get burnt and fry uniformly.

2. Fry dry fruits with little ghee and keep aside.

3. Deep fry beaten rice and put it in a tissue.

4. Take all these things (roasted flour, dry fruits, fried beaten rice, and cardamom powder) in a large bowl, to this add powdered sugar and mix everything nicely.

5. To the above mixture add melted little hot clarified butter or ghee and mix it with clean hand.

6. Once you can make ladoo stop adding clarified butter and continue making ladoo.

7. After it cools down, store this in a clean, dry airtight container and enjoy whenever you feel like.

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.

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.

Badam Halwa / Almond Halwa :

July 5, 2017

Badam halwa, the name itself brings back so many fond memories of my two kiddos’ as well as of my late father in law. My memories go back to my delivery time. When my father in law heard about my twin daughter’s arrival, he celebrated his joy by preparing and distributing this sweet to our near and dear ones. While growing up, even my kids used to enjoy this sweet and used to refer to this as “Yellow sweet”. After so many years last weekend I prepared this to celebrate my hubby’s birthday and enjoyed every bit of the preparation by cherishing all these fond memories.

I Normally follow this age-old method-

Ingredients:

Almonds – 500 grams

Sugar – 750 grams

Milk – ½ to ¾ litre

Ghee – 1 to 1 ½ cup

Saffron – 1 tsp

Cardamom powder – ½ teaspoon

Method:

– Soak almond overnight.

– The next morning, peel the skin. Usually three fourth of the content will shed their skin, if you mash those swelled almonds inside the water, by using your palm.

– After removing the outer skin, put these in a mixer grinder jar, make paste by adding sufficient milk.

– Soak saffron in half cup of hot milk and keep aside.

– After grinding paste will look like idly batter with grainy texture.

– Put this paste into thick bottomed vessel and heat.

– Add sugar and boil for a while.

– When it starts bubbling, add ghee little by little at regular intervals until mixture becomes glossy.

– At this point, you can add saffron soaked milk and cardamom powder and proceed.

– When mixture starts to leave from the sides of the vessel and edges become dry and bubbly, switch off the fire and keep aside to cool.

– When it reaches room temperature, store this in a stainless steel or glass container.

Homemade Gelato:

June 22, 2017

Gelato is a super-rich, creamy, intensely flavoured natural ice cream. ”Gelato “is the Italian word for an ice-cream, is defined in English as a “Soft ice cream”.

It contains milk cream, sugar and puree of fresh fruit or nut.

Over ripe fruits or Unused fruits are a very good option to prepare this intense fruit flavoured gelato. Here I have used Indian black plum or Jamoon/Jamun fruit and locally we call this as “Nerale hannu” in Kannada.

Ingredients:

Jamoon/Jamun fruit – 250 gms

Condense milk /Milk maid – 400 gms

Fresh cream – 200 ml. (Used Amul brand)

Method:

– Wash Jamoon fruit remove seeds and keep aside.

– Take one mixer jar, churn this fruit only for small interval .Here you should use “Pulse” option in mixer grinder, so that fruit will be like small chunks and will not become puree.

– After this, mix in cream, condensed milk. Whip until you get nice homogenous mixture.

– Store this in an ice cream container and freeze for 5 to 6 hours and enjoy your melt in a mouth flavourful treat.

Mango Jam:

June 19, 2017

Who doesn’t love Mango? Unfortunately, all good things only last a while, but no worries, one can preserve mango by making some homemade jams to savour even after its season ends.!

I started making this Jam almost 3 years back and want to share my recipe before it vanishes from the market for this year. So, yesterday I made this and I’m sharing it with you all-

Thanks to my dear friend Poornima, who provides me with a whole lot of home grown organic Mango’s from their garden.

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Now I will proceed towards the procedure-

Ingredients:

Mango’s – 500 Grams

Sugar- 500 grams

Saffron – 8 to 10 strands

Red chilli flakes – 1 teaspoon

Method:

– Wash, Peel the mangoes and chop.

– Make puree by putting it in a mixer/ juice jar without adding any water.

– Sieve this pulp to remove fibres (Here I have taken little fibrous home-grown variety)

– Collect the smooth pulp and heat it in a low fire, until it starts boiling.

– Add sugar, saffron and red chilli flakes and cook until it is done.

– To check the doneness, take some water in a small bowl, drop the cooked mixture in it, immediately it should form a thick mass. If it dissolves, then you should proceed cooking.

– When it is done, remove from the fire and cool completely.

– Store this in a clean, dry bottle and refrigerate.

NOTE:

-If you use very sweet mango, adjust the quantity of sugar.

-If you use Alphonso variety, no need of sieving and you can directly proceed towards cooking after making pulp.

– If Mango is very sweet, then add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice at the end to give little tangy taste.

Chocolate cake from Ghee Residue:

June 17, 2017

Ghee residue is a moist, brown coloured by-product formed after preparing ghee from white butter.

Ghee residue is a rich source of essential fatty acids, natural anti-oxidants and proteins.

In olden days, people used this as a natural body scrub. When I was a child, my mum used to rub this on me, before bath and I now feel nostalgic while seeing this brown sediment and so I make it a point to use this without throwing by using either in Atta kneading or in baking.

This time, I had a couple of Pea protein powder packs in my hand, which was given by my lovely co-sister who is a Ayurvedic doctor. So, I included that as well in this brownie kind of chocolatey cake.

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Ingredients:

All-purpose flour – 1 cup

Whole wheat flour – ½ cup

Mixed millet flour – ½ cup

Choco chip – ¼ cup

Protein powder – ½ cup

Milk powder – ¼ cup

Cocoa powder – ¼ cup

Sugar – 1 cup

Ghee Residue – 2 table spoons

Milk – 1 ¼ cups

Vanilla essence- 1 tea spoon

Baking soda – 1 teaspoon

Method:

Measure everything and keep it ready. Pre-heat oven at 180 C.
Mix all the dry ingredients like, flours, protein powder, milk powder, cocoa powder and sieve couple of times and mix in Choco chip and stir nicely. Keep it aside.
If you coat Choco chips with dry flours, it will not sink in the bottom while baking.
Now take ghee residue, put milk and heat it. When ghee residue is mixed nicely with milk, switch off the gas.

Add sugar, vanilla essence and baking soda and keep aside for 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, beat this wet mixture thoroughly until mixture forms a bubble at the upper layer.
Fold in dry ingredient and make a batter. (don’t beat or over mix in this step)

Bake this in a lined baking dish in a pre-heated oven at 180 C for 30 to 40 minutes or until done (when you insert a tooth pick or knife in the centre of cake, it should come out clean)

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NOTE:

-You can use only All-purpose flour or mixture of any flour.

-If you don’t have any protein powder in hand, instead of protein powder, use milk powder.