Pumpkin Cake - celebrating my blog's 4th birthday

Happy New Year - 2013!

I can't believe it that I have been blogging for 4 years now! I know I have not been a regular, but it has been an awesome journey. I don't know if anyone uses this blog or not, but I am all the time refering back to it. In these days of smart phones, this blog is that recipe book that I can always access, instead of spending hours looking for my recipe book. And since the recipes are to my taste, I don't have to estimate anything.

Here is a super duper easy pumpkin cake recipe without eggs... My sister E sent me the banana cake recipe and I adapted it to my taste to make this pumpkin cake. The cake is super moist and add some chocolate chips and eat a rich and decadent cake.

Ingredients

3 Cups of all self rising flour

1 Cup of butter (Melted , Un-Salted)

2 Cups of brown sugar

1 tin of pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie)

Pinch of Salt

1 tea spoon of ground cinanmon

1 cup of milk

2 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips

 

How To

Pre-heat the Oven to 350 F ( 175 Degrees C)

Mix together butter  and sugar until they are well blended. Use your muscles, no blender, mixer needed. Add the pumpkin puree and mix well again.

In another bowl ,mix the flour and salt and spices.

Now slowly mix the dry ingredients above into the liquid mixture.

Add milk as the mixture gets thick. I used a little more than 1 cup of milk. 

Add the chocolate chips into the batter.

Pour the mixture into the greased loaf Pan.

Bake for about 40 mins

Check intermittently by pricking a tooth-pick to see nothing gets stuck on it.

Cool on rack.

 

Dig in once it cooks... Its gooey and yummy and chocolatey...

If you want you can add nuts to the cake too..

 

Happy New Year 2012

Here is wishing everyone a lovely New Year ahead! Also my toddling blog turns 3 today. I know I haven't been a regular here, but have to celebrate this blogging birthday with a cake today. I love mangoes and when I saw this cake at Evolving Tastes I knew I had to make it once. I love the taste of this cake, but it reminds me more of a rava mango halwa, than a mango cake... Hey but if you like sweets and like mangoes, you will enjoy it, after all whats in a name!

Ingredients

2 and 1/2 cup suji/rava
3 cups Mango pulp ( I used store bought Kesar Mango pulp)
1/2 cup Butter (melted)
1/2 cup sugar
2 and 1/2 tea spoon baking powder
1 tea spoon ground cardamom
handful of raisins and cashew nut (optional)



How To
This is a super easy recipe. Mix the dry ingredients separately from the wet ones initially. You don't need a mixie or a beater.
Then combine all the ingredients together and set aside for 10-15 min.
Pre heat oven to 375 F.
Pour the batter into a baking pan and bake the cake for 25-30 min.

Note 
This measurement made 1 big cake and 6 cup cakes.
As suggested by Evolving Tastes in the comments below, please use fine suji for a cake like texture.
My cake was over-baked and less sweet. So keep an eye on the cake, once done remove from the oven. It should be a nice golden yellow color cake.
My cake was slightly less sweet, so I sprinkled some powdered sugar. You can add an orange glaze.
I also tried mine with hazel nut spread! I found it divine - you tell me how you enjoyed it ?

My cup cake with icing sugar dusting and hazel nut spread

Happy Diwali with Besan Coconut Burfi

Hello All! A very Happy Diwali! Here is again something sweet and easy to prepare. If you have 1/2hr and want to make a home made sweet for Diwali puja or any puja - this is the sweet for you... It is so easy that I made it for my home science class in 9th grade. I hope you all are having a lovely Diwali with friends and family...


Ingredients


1 cup fresh coconut (or the frozen coconut thawed in microwave for 1 minute)
1 cup Besan
1 cup ghee (you can use oil)
3/4 cup sugar
freshly ground cardamom (3-4 of them)

How to

Mix all the ingredients well, other than the cardamom powder. Once mixed well it will be like a soft dough.
Heat a pan and put the mixture in the pan at low heat and keep mixing well. Once the mixture warms up, loads of ghee will ooze out.
Keep stirring for 8-10 min at low heat, until there is a nice aroma of the besan and it starts changing color.
Add the cardamom powder, mix well and remove from heat onto a well greezed tray. Do not throw out the extra ghee. Cut the mixture into diamond shapes and let it cool. The mixture hardens in 5-8 minutes and all the additional ghee is absorbed and your burfi is ready!

Enjoy it whenever you please!

Summer fun with orange (color)

Its end of summer and wow what a fun filled time it was. Evenings were fun and sunny and warm and spent in the parks or beach. The kids got a restful summer doing nothing and it is all coming to an end. Summer here reminds me of grilled corn and lemonade (kids love making it)... Of course cannot imagine summer without mangoes. So here is my ode to summer color - orange!

The orange juice is freshly squeezed by my kids. Add a pinch of salt to enhance the flavor of the juice. And if the orange is too sour - add a spoonful of sugar and mix well and serve!

The mango ice-cream was made for family friends who have a sweet tooth and are borderline diabetics. So certainly not a very healthy choice but they really enjoyed it. The ice-cream I initially served to them was not really sweet, so I had to add some honey to it while I ate it. I have added some sugar to the recipe here (adjust to taste - since I am putting approximate amounts here). I also made mango milk shake with dollops of the mango ice-cream and it was heavenly...

Ingredients for the mango ice-cream

1 can of unsweetened condensed milk
1 can of mango slices (you can use the sugar syrup if you want, I didn't)
1/2 can of evaporated milk
1/4 cup sugar (optional - use any sweetener of your choice)
1/4 cup of fresh mango sliced into small pieces

How To

Mix the condensed milk, mango slices, evaporated milk, sugar using a blender. Do it in batches if needed.
Put in a container and freeze for 2 hours. Take it out, break the ice crystals and re-freeze. Take it out after an hour, break the mixture again, add the mango slices and put it back to freeze. Let it freeze for 2-4 hrs (depending on the size of the container). Serve chilled!

Enjoy as ice-cream or mix well with milk and enjoy as a mango milkshake!

Happy Diwali with Magaja Ladoo

Happy Diwali and have a great year ahead.

Magaja Ladoo is one super duper easy sweet. It is loaded with calories and the goodnedd of wheat. This is also offered in the Jaganath temple, Puri as a bhog.

I have very sweet memories of making this with my grandma. She makes it really well and would packs loads of it for my hostel days. I used to try making it with her and most of it would break and I would happily eat the crumbs.

When I called Mom last week at home, she gave me a list of sweets that she had already made. When she mentioned Magaja Ladoo, I quickly took down the recipe and here it goes...

These magaja ladoos go to to CFK-Wheat guest hosted by Sireesha, event started by Sharmi , Sanghi's FIL-Ghee and Sireesha's Sweet Series and to Purva's Diwali Dhamaka

Ingredients

1 cup wheat flour (atta)

1/2 cup ghee

1/2 cup sugar

2 cardamom ground

4 cloves ground

How To

Take a big pan and heat it. Add the atta and keep frying at low fire for about 10 minutes. Once the atta starts changing color and starts smelling wonderful, add the ghee and mix well. Then add the sugar and mix well and put the stove off. Add the cardamom and cloves mixture and let it cool.

Before the mixture is completely cooled down, makes round balls and store in an air-tight container. I made about 15 small balls with these measurements.

Can't get the balls to form, just scoop in a spoon and eat. It tastes wonderful, but then with so much of ghee and sugar what's not to like about it....

Eggless Blueberry muffins

Parita this muffin is inspired by your blueberry muffins! When I saw her muffins, I knew I had to try it. What attracted me to the recipe was the egg less, low fat healthy version of this muffin. Mine is not low fat really, since I can't seem to enjoy muffins made in Oil. So I replaced the Oil with butter and made some minor tweaks to her recipe... The muffins came out really well. They were a little dense, but still much better than the blueberry muffins from the store. My kids had fun time packing in the blueberries into the batter and we ended up putting more blueberries than intended into the batter. That made the muffins even more flavorful... Its a simple one and takes about 20 minutes to put together, including the time for a 3 year old trying to help...

Ingredients
1 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup of oats
1/2 cut of whole wheat flour
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 cup of butter (melted to room temperature)
1 and 1/2 cup fresh blueberries

How To:

Preheat the oven to 375F, line 12 muffin molds with paper liners.
Mix the wheat flour and baking powder and salt and oats by hand.
In a separate bowl mix butter (at room temperature), sugar, milk.
Slowly add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and mix carefully.
Fold in the blueberries.
Spoon the batter into the muffin pans, filling up to 3/4 full. Bake them for 20-25 min, until tooth pick inserted comes out clean.



We all sat down and enjoyed it warm off the oven. And the rest of the muffins were gone the next day by the time I was back from work...

Cherries anyone ?

Aren't you tempted by these cherries ? I saw them in Costco in the beginning of summer and picked a box of it. I guess we ate half of the sweet yummy juicy cherries in 2 days... The rest just sat and sat. But how much of cherries can you eat ? And they do go bad soon...

So I tried 2 dishes with it. The 1st was a glaze that I had seen on Food Network. It was so simple, it was done in 5 min. The 2nd one I tried was a cherry crisp. The cherry crisp wasn't such a success - at least it didn't look good and felt kind of chewy! So I tried again, with a store bought crisp mixture. Again, not so good. The final one is what I have posted and tasted real good...

Cherry Glaze

Ingredients

1 cup of pitted cherries
1/2 cup water
2-3 tablespoon of sugar

How To

Get the water to boil. Add the cherries and sugar and let it simmer for 5 minutes or until the cherries are soft. Let it cool and pour on your vanilla ice cream and enjoy...

Cherry Crisp

I had Crisp for the 1st time last year. My husband's colleague had come for dinner and had made blueberry crisp for my mother-in-law since he knew she was vegetarian. It tasted so good that it was finished flat out. I asked him for the recipe and he of course had approximate measurements. One of the thing he had added was clove, which my mother-in-law loved, while I wasn't so fond of it. I have tried cherry crisps several times this year. The following recipe worked...

Ingredients
1 cups pitted sour cherries
1/4 cup brown sugar (add more if the cherries are not sweet)
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour

1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tea spoon baking powder
1/4 tea spoon cinnamon + elaichi powder (I usually have these 2 ground together in my pantry)
1/8 cup butter at room temperature


How To
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray 2 ramekins with non-stick cooking spray.
In a medium bowl, mix the cherries, 2 table spoon wheat flour and brown sugar.
Evenly distribute the cherry mixture into 2 ramekins.
Combine the oats, 1/2 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder and butter together. Crumble evenly over the cherry mixture.
Sprinkle the elaichi and cinnamon powder.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy warm with ice cream or eat a spoonful just like that....

So let me know if you have any other suggestions for cherries ? Those big boxes of cherries still tempt me in the stores!

Eggless Cup Cakes to celebrate July 4th

I saw these cupcakes few months back on this blog 'Evolving Tastes'. She has an amazing blog and all her dishes are awesome. I have made these cup cakes several times since then, sometimes using mini muffin cups and sometimes the regular ones. These cup cakes literally take 10 min to assemble and don't really require a mixer or any additional gadget. My 8yr old daughter assembes them with the help of my 3 yr old son and I just put into the mould and put in the oven and bake. Both my kids absolutely adore these cakes and I made them for both their birthday parties this year.

So enjoy the July 4th weekend with these yummy cakes... The recipe is noted here with slight modifications from the original. I skipped the coffee and substituted vegetable oil with butter (I feel it is ok to indulge and use butter with cakes and cookies, but use vegetable oil if you want. It tastes good with vegetable oil...)

Ingredients
Makes 6

3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tea spoon baking powder
a big pinch of salt
1/4 cup milk, or a little more if needed
1/4 cup butter (I substituted butter for vegetable oil from the original recipe)
1/2 tea spoon vanilla extract (you can skip this if you don't have it)


How To

Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin cups with paper liners.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa power, sugar, baking powder and salt.
In a medium bowl, mix together milk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Pour into dry ingredients and mix until everything is combined well.
Distribute batter evenly into prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4th full.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove from the oven to cool completely, before digging in...
And if you can't wait, eat it while it is still warm... I love mine hot from the oven. How do you like yours ?

Happy Raja with Poda Pitha

Raja is a 3 day celebration in Orissa that starts on the first day of 'Asara' month. It welcomes the rains to Orissa and usually marks the start of the agriculture season. It is a special occasion for young girls. Girls get to wear new dresses and are usually not allowed to do any house work at home. It is the festival for girls to play on the swings and enjoy good food and spend time with friends and family. The usual high-light of this festival is 'Poda Pitha', which basically means baked cake. In the days before ovens in Oriya households, moms would put the pitha in earthen vessel on top of the dying wooden embers in the night and the dish would be baked nicely by the next day morning. This poda pitha is usually served with chicken curry or mansa tarkari.

I made 2 kinds of poda pitha and will share it here with you. Both are really easy to make. The sweet one is more common.

Savoury Poda Pitha

Ingredients
1 cup of Urad Dal
1 cup of Rice

1/4 cup of cabbage cut into thin slices
1 small onion sliced into thin slices
1 small tomato cut into small pieces
a bunch of coriander leaves
Salt to taste
4-5 tablespoon of oil

How to

Soak and grind the urad dal and rice for few hours. Grind the urad dal and rice coarsely and leave aside for few hours or overnight. (If you do not have enough time for it to ferment, add 1/2 tea spoon of baking powder and leave aside for an hour).
Add the chopped vegetables and salt and mix well.
Take a baking tray, line with aluminium foil. Spray oil on the foil generously, including the sides.
Bake in a preheated over for 1 hour at 350 F.
After 1 hour, peak into the oven and you should see the sides nicely browned. If not bake for another 15-20 more minutes.
Take the cake out of the oven, flip it over and cook again for 1 hour on the other side.
Once done, both sides should look nice and golden....

Serve warm with Chicken curry. The pitha is crunchy on the outside and soft in the inside.



Sweet Poda Pitha

Ingredients


1/2 cup of Urad Dal
1/2 cup of Rice
1/2 cup of fresh home made paneer
1/2 cup of fresh shredded coconut
4 table spoon of sugar (this is not as sweet as a typical sweet dish)
handful of raisins
2 tablespoon of ghee
1 freshly ground cardamom


How to

Soak and grind the urad dal and rice for few hours. Grind the urad dal and rice coarsely and leave aside for few hours or overnight. (If you do not have enough time for it to ferment, add 1/2 tea spoon of baking powder and leave aside for an hour).
Mix the paneer, coconut, sugar and ghee well.
Add the raisins and ground cardamom powder and mix again.

Take a baking tray, line with aluminium foil. Spray oil on the foil generously, including the sides.
Bake in a preheated over for 45 minutes at 350 F.
After 45 minutes, peak into the oven and you should see the sides nicely browned. If not bake for another 15-20 more minutes.
Take the cake out of the oven, flip it over and cook again for 1/2 hour on the other side.
Once done, both sides should look nice and golden....

I had my sweet poda pitha as breakfast today with some grapes. Hope you will try this sweet dish and enjoy the monsoons....

Mitha Dahi with mangoes and Thanks

Mitha dahi is nothing but sweet yogurt. It is a famous dish in Orissa and available in nice earthern pots. This dish is completely inspired by Suparna's mango shreekhand. I was drooling over her dish and thought of trying this mitha Dahi which has been on my list to try for ages. I had never made mitha dahi before but my other bengali friend M had told me to try this out. I searched on the net and found this easy recipe for mitha dahi which was what my friend had described too. I have modified the recipe a little bit, hence I have put it here again. The dish turned out awesome for the time and effort I put into it...

Sending this off to Shanti's sweet time event

Also would like to thank Padma and Hema for sending on this award to me... Thanks friends - always a pleasure to be thought of when you are receiving such great awards and sharing it with me.

I would like to send this this award to my all my blogger friends. But I see all of have already got the award. So enjoy your awards - you truly deserve it. Padma and Hema - I am truly honored.

Ingredients
1/2 can (14 oz) Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 packet of non-fat Evaporated Milk
1 and 1/2 cup plain yogurt
handful of cashew nuts broken up coarsely
1/2 tea spoon of ghee to roast the nuts
sweet ripe mangoes cut into tiny pieces

How to
Mix all ingredients well and pour into a flat pan. If there some small lumps in the mixture - don't worry. They even out fine...
Bake at 200 F for about 1 hr.
Cool and then refrigerate (for about 2 hrs).
Garnish with cut mangoes and roasted cashew nuts.

Serve and Enjoy....

How did it fare
The sweet dish tasted good both with and without the mangoes. But I liked it with the mangoes, else it was a little too sweet for my taste.

Mother's day with Veggie burger and milk cakes

Today was a beautiful Sunday and mother's day. After getting pampered for 2 weeks by Mom with good food, my daughter and I decided to pamper my Mom. First I thought of making something authentic but knowing my skill levels at typical oriya stuff, I decided to make something that she likes and will be able to eat happily. She has a sweet tooth and though usually I stay away from sweets I made this easy milk pedas for dessert.

Dinner was a different story. I know much she enjoyed her stay with me in Delhi while I was working. All my friends would land up unannounced on weekdays or weekends and stay for a proper home cooked lunch/dinner or both. Sometimes they would come over even when I would be out. She was their good friend too. So while most days she fed us, sometimes we used to take her out to eat burgers at Nirula's or Wimpy's. Initially she resisted fast food, but after few months, she loved it too. So I made veggie burger (she is pure vegetarian) to remind her of good days...

Since its my Mom favorite recipe that I can make, I am sending this off to Shama nagarajan of easy2cook recipes who is hosting an event called MOM'S MOST FAVOURITE RECIPE EVENT.

Vegetable Burger recipe

This recipe is my Moms. I usually make it with potatoes and all vegetables, but she suggested to add nearly equal quantities (as potatoes) of paneer. The vegetable burger suddenly went from the usual to just mind blowing. Add less paneer, if you want. Replace paneer with minced soy if you like.

Ingredients for the cutlet

Home made Paneer - 1 cup
Potatoes 3 - boiled and smashed well
1 carrot - grated
handful of peas
1 onion finely chopped
green chillies cut finely
salt to taste
1/2 tea spoon of garam masala
1/2 lemon
bread crumbs - 1/4 cup
Oil for frying

Burger

hamburger rolls cut and lightly toasted in butter
Lettuce leaves washed and cut
onions cut in thin round slices
Tomatoes cut in thin round slices
Spicy Tomatoes Sauce

How to

Take 1 tea spoon of oil and fry the paneer. Add grated carrot and peas and salt to taste. Keep aside.
Take the potatoes and add the cut onions and chillies and salt and mix well. Add as much paneer as you need (I added same quantity of paneer to potatoes).
Add the garam masala and the lemon juice, adjust spice level now.
Take big rolls of the mixture above in you hand and make nice patties. Roll them in bread crumbs and keep aside for 5-10 min.
Deep fry the cutlets.

Now assemble the cutlets on warm freshly toasted hamburger rolls and serve with lettuce, onions and tomatoes. Add some spicy tomatoes sauce and serve fresh.


Milk pedas or milk cakes

My friend T promised it was a simple no frills and yum sweet done in 6 minutes in the microwave. While the recipe is not mine and I am not sure hers either, its my implementation of it. The sweet was real easy to make and tasted like the milk cakes you get in Orissa.

Ingredients

2 cups non fat dry milk

14 oz (1 can) sweetened condensed milk

1 butter stick

1/2 cup ground cashew nuts

1/4 tea spoon cardamom powder

How to

Warm the stick of butter in microwave for 1/2 minute.

Mix butter, milk powder and milk well.

Set it in a microwaveable bowl. Ensure the bowl is much larger than the content, else the mixture bubbles over and makes a nice mess (mine did...)

Microwave it for 3 minutes.

Mix well and microwave it again for 2 min.

Now, add cardamom powder, and ground cashew and and mix well and microwave it for 1 min.

Spread it evenly on a cookie sheet or a plate. Cover the surface with a very thin layer of ghee/butter before spreading the mixture. Cut into diamond shapes. Serve cooled...

My diamonds didn't look pretty, so I put in the microwave for 1/2 min extra and shaped them with my hand...

Arisha pitha

This is a typical Oriya sweet and made in most households. But if you do not know the trick it either turns out hard as a rock (mostly) or crumbles on touching... Truthfully I have never made it myself and even my mom doesn't make it. I have helped by grand mom make the round balls sometimes, and it was loads of fun. But the eating part is even better.

Here is the recipe as described by my mom....

This goes to Mithai Mela event hosted by Srivalli

Ingredients

Rice- 2 cups (do not use parboiled rice)
Jaggery or Sugar-2 cups
Ghee-2 cups
Salt to taste

How to

Soak the rice in water overnight.
Remove water and pound the rice to make powder.
The Rice has to be ground but not too fine.
Take 1 cup of water and add the sugar or jaggery and heat it.
Keep stirring it until you get a slightly sticky consistency.
Add the rice powder slowly into the sticky misture and keep stirring on low fire until you get a dough like consistency.
Heat ghee in a bowl.
Make small round shape from the dough with your hand while it is still warm.
Deep fry them in low fire until they turn brown on both sides.

These stay fresh for a month!