All of us have to start baking at some point in our lives. I started when I was 10 because I have a mom who baked a lot. Even then, we had just 2 cake trays - one was round and the other was heart-shaped. We had no cupcake trays so we never baked cupcakes.
Idli Upma with Leftover Idlis Amma makes idlis in bulk and stores them away. We also have dosa batter at home, dosa is our staple food, much like rotis are to those of you who have it every night or almost every night. For us, it's dosa. Idli was initially meant to be made only the day after the batter was made but later on, amma started making idlis with more than half the batter and storing them away.
We kids are not fans of idlis. So when we visit, she tries to make things more interesting by either making us some other kind of breakfast like appam or puttu or idiyappam, or we have idli upma. Simple, mild, and a delicious breakfast with hot filter coffee or cardamom tea.
Sambar rice made in rice cooker is an easy one-pot weeknight dinner for us on many days of the month. I posted a poll on the sidebar a few months back asking if you had a rice cooker or not. More than 70% came back with a yes. Well, I have one too and I hardly ever make anything in it apart from rice, which is inexcusable because there's so much more you can do with a rice cooker.
So I am starting a mini-series in here featuring rice cooker recipes. If you have a favourite, please leave a comment, I'd love to try it.
My rice cooker is a Zojirushi 5.5 cup induction cooker which I bought from Tokyo. Frustratingly, it was more expensive than Amazon and in-store in Singapore but I like to believe it's worth it. It does cook rice perfectly each time and by perfectly, I mean it's fluffy and soft and unlike any other rice I've cooked using any other method. Anyway, more on that in a review soon.
This post is long overdue like pretty much every post I write these days. So I am going to cut the yada-yada and cut right to it.
Saee has a lovely blog and you must all check it out. That's the gist of what I want to say. But, I have to highlight what I love about it, right? So here goes.
Reason #1: Her videos.
Some of you may remember this video of beet cake that I posted a while back. Well, her videos are made along the same lines. There's no talking, no person standing behind a kitchen counter with manicured fingernails pointing at perfectly chopped onions, no gleaming refrigerator in the backdrop reminding you that you don't recall the last time you cleaned out yours... well, you get the idea!
Here's my favourite video from Saee's YouTube Channel. I am yet to see a video that makes me want chocolate cake rightthisminute like this one does.
In fact I love all her videos but I try not to watch them over a week day because it makes me want to jump into my kitchen and start on it already!
Sometimes, you need to bake something for friends you are visiting for dinner. When you are trying to decide what to make, you need to figure out how to use that amazing Valrhona cocoa powder you've been saving up for too long, the doughnut pan which you thought was such a smart and essential buy, and you also need to make sure your own chocolate craving is satisfied.
I turned to one of my favourite books to address all of the above - A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman. I managed to use up the cocoa powder, inaugurate the new doughnut pan which I am in love with now, and get some super fudgy, sticky, not-so-sweet, delicious chocolate doughnut cakes.
Win!
The original recipe was for Dark Fudge Bundt Cake but that shouldn't deter us. Make it into anything you like - a cake, bundt cake, cupcakes, or these lovely doughnut shaped ones if you have the right pan.
It was love at first sight when I saw this gorgeous adai on Anu's blog. I made it soon after and absolutely loved it. Since adai batter doesn't need fermenting, this is far easier to make than regular dosa. I had the batter for 3 days in the refrigerator and it was just fine.
Lakshmi - Peanut Bar
Seema - Black Eyed Peas - email entry Swasthi - Crunchy Walnut Laddoo Raks - Oats Kozhukattai Ramya - Fig n Date Balls Jeyashri - Broken Wheat Upma
Vidya - Baked Paniyazam - email entry Preethi - Banana Sandwich Sharmi - Bajra ki masaledar roti Priyanka - Spicy Indian Cookies
Nisha - Cutlets - email entry
Also, as you may remember, we have one book to giveaway to a lucky winner chosen from these entries and that goes to - Priyanka! Congratulations Priyanka.
The winners can get in touch with Megha at her email megha@thebalancemantra.com to schedule their sessions and get more details about what the session entails. Have fun with it and thanks for playing!
Rajma Masala is a great side dish for chapati and roti and goes fantastic with a hot bowl of jeera rice too. Apart from the soaking of the rajma (red kidney beans), this recipe requires very little time to prepare. If you buy canned rajma, you can avoid even that long step.
I am in New York for a week and as is the norm, after a total travel time of 28 hours (including a 6-hour delay in Frankfurt), I feel brain-dead. The euphoria of being in New York again helps but not enough to bring me out of my migraine-induced coma.
But wait, I should have written this in the past tense because it's been 1.5 days since I got here and I am better. Not yet perfect, but better. And as Mondays have the tendency to come sooner than later, I am at work, taking a quick coffee break.
So a quick post this shall be.
Rajma Chawal (kidney beans gravy in rice) has often been described to be as comfort food. Not so much to me because I didn't grow up on rajma. In fact, my sis introduced Rajma to my mom a few years back and she called it Rajamma for the longest time :D
Anyway, while dal chawal and I have become fast friends, I don't turn to rajma chawal for comfort. But it's still a great dish to cook up when you are short on time.
How long does baking a cake take you from start to finish? 2 hours? 3 hours? Somewhere in between?
What if you could bake one in 40 mins, frost it, and serve it within an hour? That's almost like magic, right?
This is the third cake I tried from A Piece of Cake by Camilla Saulsbury and I must say it worked like a charm. I made it for dessert on a weeknight (as you can tell from the pics) when we had guests over and I made it alongside dinner. How many cakes can you say this about?
Confession: I didn't know Soya Chunks were called Nutrela. Or textured Vegetable Protein (TVP). Anyway, my mom never cooked with it much and I have only ever known them as soya chunks or "chung chung" as amma calls them, with emphasis on the 'g'!
Turns out TH really likes soya chunks and I try to make different things out of it as much as possible. Cooking it with potatoes and tomatoes is probably my favourite. It goes well with rotis and is neither too watery nor dry - just perfect!
I love waffles. They are a great breakfast option and I make them as often as I can, always defaulting to this basic waffle recipe that works well for me each time.
But I don't always have eggs in hand. And, the beating of the egg whites until stiff in that recipe puts me off sometimes. So I decided to come up with a super easy eggless waffles recipe. Just to kick it up a notch, I made it with whole wheat flour (not atta, the pastry flour) and it turned out nice.
