Macaron frenzy ends..having cheerios to celebrate.. ;)

I have been busy..crazy busy..with work and with crazy unplanned macaron adventures! Finally after about 6 batches of macarons I can claim that I can make good macarons!! Yippee! :) I set out at the beginning of this month on a macaron learning process, the french ones ..oh yeah! And 15 days later here I am feeling so much confident about it. Here is a sneak preview of it:



I am making them for the upcoming San Diego Bake Sale on April 28th.

So after I reached a point where I felt confident of that the fact that I wont be messing up things at the last minute before the sale, I realized that I really wasn't baking anything else! OMG! So when I found my mind macaron free I baked my heart out.. :D.. first up was a savory dish baked bakarwadi..sadly I cant find which memory chip I put the pictures on, I will find them and post them later on.

But yesterday after going through a periodic pantry clear up process I found that I had few over-ripened bananas and a box full of cheerios cereal! I keep this cereal in my pantry as a backup cereal..yes I am a freak..but it helps to have a couple of choices for cereal. :) So when I realised that this box was moving towards getting too old I had to find alternate options to use it and this experiment just found the right place for it! :) When I googled for cheerios recipes I actually found a lot of recipes on their own website..they looked pretty good and inspired from them I decided to experiment.

We have banana-nut loaf/muffin all too often to feel the need to experiment with it..but I still decided to go ahead and give it another stroke of newness..so here it is..the muffins came out really good..light yet satisfying!

Cheerios banana nut muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups Honey Nut Cheerios cereal
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  2 tbsp packed brown sugar
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 ripe banana
  1/2 cup yogurt
  2 tbsp canola oil
  1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  1 egg white
  1/4 cup chopped walnuts
  1 tsp coarse or granulated sugar 

• Heat oven to 400°F. Spray bottoms only of 8 regular-size muffin cups with cooking spray, or line with paper baking cups. Spray bottoms only of paper baking cups with cooking spray. In large resealable food-storage plastic bag, coarsely crush cereal with rolling pin or meat mallet.
• In a bowl, mash the bananas and mix in the yogurt.
• In another bowl, mix crushed cereal, flour, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. In a mixing bowl, beat oil, vanilla and the egg white until blended. Add the yogurt mixture and mix well. Now add the flour mixture followed by the walnuts. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.
• Bake 15 to 18 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from pan to cooling rack. Serve warm or cool.

Snap n its spring!

The spring has officially started and its going to be more exciting than ever!
I have been missing for the past month or so..but no I did not forget my blog and neither was I on a break from baking. If anything else I am baking way more than usual but its mainly experimentation. I was postponing to post anything because all my baked goods are currently meant to be for the upcoming Bake Sale in San Diego. Today's recipe is a contender for the bake sale, just that it has gone one rank down in my list. :P



I have had this recipe bookmarked for almost 6 months now. Initially I didn't pursue it because it had ingredients which I usually don't find in my pantry but with my hubby's love for gingersnaps I finally got to this recipe. Its actually a recipe tried and tested by the very famous David Lebovitz. You can find the original recipe here. After I saw the recipe for the first time I was really curious! Fat-free gingersnaps, is that even possible? And to my finding yes it is!

I used the recipe as is, just switched half of the flour with whole wheat flour and used light brown sugar since I had it in my pantry. I did make the candied ginger at home and it was way easier than I thought it would be. I used the recipe suggested by David Lebovitz again and you can find it here.

Now for the fun news. When I moved to San Diego last year, I heard about the bake sale from my friend, but I wasn't really setup to do anything..much rather bake! So it was something I was looking forward to this year. And finally it is this very month that San Diego will have its blogger's bake sale! If you are in the San Diego area then do drop by and enjoy the goodies and have some fun! You could also donate to the charity and join in! More details available here: http://sdbloggersbake.wordpress.com/. Hope to see you all there!

Time to celebrate!

I am feeling so good about writing this post. Its my 25th post! yay! The first recipe is quiet special, especially because I learnt this one from my mother-in-law! I spent most of January with my in-laws and I got to enjoy a new cuisine which wasn't very different than the food I grew up eating but it was more rather an adaptation of a cuisine to locally available ingredients. To top that my mother-in-law is an excellent cook who also enjoys experimenting with recipes so I have been lucky to have her around me! :) I am in food heaven! :D

My in-laws come from the central region of India which is majorly dry and mostly warm. The cuisine is quite rich and bursting with spices. I can't begin to list and describe all the different dishes I tried out, I could go on for days! So after a few weeks of being back in the US, I of course started to reminisce about all the yummy things I had and to end that craving I was set on recreating some of them.

The first one that came to my mind was the Baingan Bharta (Eggplant curry). It was one friday night when I realized that I had all the required ingredients to make it and decided that my weekend would start with a delicious dinner! I have made this dish quite frequently but not in this way! So here goes:

Baingan Bharta (Eggplant curry)

Ingredients:
1 Large eggplant ( the big sized ones usually used in Italian dishes too)
2-3 medium spring onions chopped
2-3 green chillies split vertically
2-3 cloves garlic chopped
curry leaves
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp vegetable / canola / EVOO oil
1/2 tsp asafoetida (optional)
1.5 tsp coriander-cumin powder
1 tbsp lime juice
salt to taste
cilantro for garnish

• Roast the eggplant in the oven or on the gas flame. Its done when the skin starts peeling off. Once roasted, peel the skin off the eggplant, separate off the flesh from the head of the eggplant and mash it well.
• Heat some oil in a pan. Add in the mustard seeds and curry leaves. Once the mustard seeds splutter, add in the asafoetida followed by the chillies and garlic. Once the chillies are almost fried, add the spring onions and let them cook well. 
• When the onions become transparent, add in the eggplant and mix well. Add in the lime juice, coriander-cumin powder and adjust the salt to your taste. Let the whole mixture come together, it becomes like a slushy mass. Season with cilantro. Enjoy with hot chapatis!

We had it with some home-made garlic chutney, sliced raddishes and chapatis! yumm!

Now to celebrate my 25th post and the International Women's day, here is the recipe of the roasted plum and peach ice-cream I tried out, inspired from this recipe posted by Deeba on her lovely blog! I of course tried to give it a healthy twist.

Roasted plum and peach ice-cream (low-fat) (eggless)

Ingredients:

4  plums

2 peaches

1.5 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup roasted almonds coarsely chopped

250 gms low-fat greek yogurt

200 ml half-n-half

4 tbsp sugar

6-8 tbsp honey - adjust the honey based on the sweetness that you like

• Preheat the oven to 375 F.
• Combine sugar and vanilla. Arrange the peaches & plums skin side down on a baking tray and sprinkle with the vanilla/ sugar mixture. Grill in the oven for 20 minutes or until the top of the peaches appear caramelized.
• Remove the skin from the peaches as soon as it is cool enough to do so. Puree the peaches and any juices in the baking tray in a blender.
• In a separate bowl combine the half-n-half, greek yogurt and peach/plum puree. Adjust sugar as required. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. About 5 minutes before switching off the machine, add in the chopped nuts. Refrigerate for about 2 hours and serve! 

Hope all you lovely ladies out there had a great Women's day! Also here is to hoping that I get to write many more blogs!

Say cheese!!

Alrite, I am late for this post. I was truly missing the treats I would enjoy back in New York and Abby's recent #baketogether challenge gave me the perfect opportunity. New York cheesecake has been one of my favorite desserts for quiet sometime now! I know many might think cheesecake really? but yes I love it! And look how pretty!! :)

Mini cheesecakes

I usually try to experiment with this challenge but this time I wanted to preserve the essence of a New York cheesecake and hence kept the recipe pretty much same. But one thing is for sure, instead of making a whole cake, I prefer making them in petite form just so that I can control the portion size better and further on reduce the guilt. The two missing in the photo below is just because they were consumed before realizing that no pictures had been clicked.. :P

The only thing I changed was the crust. I didn't have any graham crackers at home and used what I found in my pantry, in this case it was a mix of marie and Nice (a spiced sweet biscuit - Indian) biscuits. The crust tasted really good, and the amount of spice gave a nice contrast to the filling.

I won't be posting the recipe for this since it is the same as suggested by Abby in her post. As for the crust below are the ingredients (I cut down the original recipe to half):

Ingredients:
1 cup marie and/or Nice biscuits ( I used about 10-12 biscuits)

1 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Unplanned success!

I had no plans of baking on weeknight especially after having a busy and tiring work day. But in the spare 10 mins of my lunch hour I was trying to find a recipe to use up the all-so-ripe pears sitting in my kitchen. Well, instead of that, something else caught eye..this lovely Raspberry Buttermilk Cake on one of my favorite blogs: Smitten Kitchen! :)

After reading this recipe, I just couldn't let it go! I had fresh raspberries from the farmer's market sitting in my kitchen just waiting to be baked. :) So the moment I got home I was ready to whip it up, of course with a healthy twist. I replaced a good bunch of things but kept the essence of it intact. The cake turned out beautiful and light! I cut down the sugar quiet a bit, but the ripeness of the raspberries made up for it.

Raspberry Yogurt Cake

Ingredients:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup plus 1tbsp sugar, divided

3 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest (optional)
1 large egg
1/2 cup yogurt
1 cup fresh raspberries

• Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.
• Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat oil and 1/3 cup sugar until pale and fluffy, followed by honey, then beat in vanilla and zest, if using. Add egg and beat well.
• At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with yogurt, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter raspberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 tbsp sugar.
• Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

Overall a perfect treat for breakfast or an accompaniment a light lunch/dinner.