Khara bun

A very happy New Year to all my blogging friends. Our trip to Bangalore was short & sweet with both the little ones enjoying it to their best. But for us the most shocking experience was, the soaring prices of basic amenities. On the last day of our trip, we went out to an Iyengar bakery near our home. We relished on some Yummy vegetable puffs & palya buns. It was after a long time with lot of courage we ventured to eat out. Thatz when the idea of baking Khara buns stuck to me.

I'd a recipe from the blogging World readily available. I've so many new recipes in hand these days that I just have no time to try them. But taking it up as a challenge to get back to pre-parenting days to start blogging again. One of the recipes for Khara bun I came across was while Face booking :) LG posted it some time back; was very much determined to try it. Sunday was a gloomy day here & was some how trying to squeeze in time to prepare the buns. AmAr looked after all the routine cooking for the day & let me indulge myself into baking the buns.

LG's recipe using the bread machine is here. I don't have one. So I followed the recipe as LG suggested from her friend's blog. LG, believe me I would love to try the combination of Congress with the bun. I'll surely make Congress some other day.

Ingredients: -

For the dough: -

1 1/2 cups Maida

1 1/2 tsp active dried Yeast

1/4 cup Milk + 1 tbsp Milk, to brush the buns

1/2 cup Water

1 1/2 tsp Sugar

3 tbsp Ghee (2 tbsp for the dough preparation & 1 tbsp for brushing the buns after baking)

Salt

1 tsp Sesame seeds, Poppy seeds or Mustard seeds (The recipe says optional),to sprinkle over the buns

For Masala: -

a pinch Asafoetida

1 tsp Cumin seeds

1 tsp Mustard seeds

3/4 cup finely chopped Onion

4 Green chilies, finely chopped

Curry leaves, finely chopped

Coriander leaves, finely chopped

Salt

Oil

Method: -

1. Mix water & milk & microwave till Luke warm.

2. Blend in sugar & yeast to the luke warm milk. Set it aside for 10 - 15 minutes till the milk mixture becomes frothy. The yeast activates.

3. In a mixing bowl add 2 tbsp of ghee first, then 1 ½ cups of maida, salt & the activted yeast mixture.

4. Knead the dough. I used a hand kneader. Check the dough.

5. Add the other ½ cup of dough & adjust the dough. It should be little sticky.

6. Scrape the dough out of the bowl on to a clean working area.

7. Knead the dough by adding maida as required to make it non-sticky.

8. Make small pit in the center of the dough & place the Onion mixture.

9. Knead well so that the masala incorporates evenly into the dough.

10. Keep the dough covered in a warm place or in a sunny spot for a minimum of 2 hours. The dough doubles in quantity.

11. Punch the dough down & knead well.

12. Pre-heat the oven for around 10 minutes at 180 Deg C. I used the fan setting for both pre-13. heating & baking rather than using the broil setting.

14. Divide the dough into equal portions.

15. Give each portion a bun shape & place it on a butter paper (on a baking tray).

16. Using a pastry brush, brush each portion with Milk for the browning reaction / Maillard reaction.

17. Sprinkle Sesame seeds, Poppy seeds or Mustard seeds on each portion. Pumpkin seeds can also be used.

18. Place the baking tray into the oven & let the buns bake for 20 - 30 minutes.

19. Once the buns turn golden brown, remove from the oven & brush each one with the remaining table spoon of ghee. The recipe says, this is done to retain the color, smell & soft crust.

20. Serve warm or cold.

Onion Masala preparation: -

1. In a hot pan add 2 tsp of Oil.

2. Add a pinch of asafoetida & mustard seeds. Once the mustard seeds begin to crackle, add curry leaves, green chilies & turmeric. Roast for a few seconds.

3. Add finely chopped onion & little salt. Saute till the onion becomes transparent.

4. Remove from fire & garnish with finely chopped coriander & keep aside for cooling.

Banana Walnut Cake with Lemon icing

After seeing the previous post, realized it's been an year since the last post. I did bake the Spritz cookies this year too. After the arrival of our daughter Nidhi, I've become a very active mother, not spending too much time on the Internet. So blogging has taken a back seat. I've so many recipes to be published. They are sitting in the posts Queue as of now. I've a few cake recipes, which I need to publish, else will surely forget the way how I baked them.

I came across the recipe for the Banana Walnut cake on Facebook, posted by one of my friends. You can find it here. I'd two eggs about to hatch in the refrigerator if not used :). I went through the list of ingredients required to bake & I did have most of them except for buttermilk & brown sugar. This is my first recipe using brown sugar. So here goes my version.

Ingredients: -

1/2 cup Butter

1 cup white Sugar

3/4 cup Brown Sugar (Brauner Rohrzucker)

2 Medium sized Eggs (Egg white & York separated)

4 ripe Bananas (Puree before using)

1/2 cup Buttermilk

2.5 cups Maida

1 tbsp Baking powder

a pinch of Salt

1/2 cup chopped Walnuts

26 diameter baking pan is ideal for baking.

Method :-

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 Deg C for about 15 minutes.

2. Grease the baking pan with butter & dust some maida in it.

3. Sieve Maida & combine it with baking powder & salt.

4. In a bowl, combine butter & sugar with the aid of a Hand mixer, till fluffy.

5. Add egg white & beat well. The mixture will fluff-up a little more. Then add the Egg York & continue to beat for another minute.

6. Add the butter milk & then the Banana puree & beat well.

7. In the end add the flour mixture. Using the mixer, beat the mixture well & then transfer half of it to the baking pan.

8. Add the chopped walnuts & pour the remaining half of the batter into the baking pan.

9. Bake it for like 30 - 40 minutes.

10. Let it cool down completely, if you wish to frost or decorate it. I used the simple Lemon icing.

Pound cake

It's Christmas time. I bought a new baking pan, which is in the shape of a Star. There came a recipe with it. So the final decoration is just my innovation to make it colorful.

Ingredients: -

40 g Cornflour

80 g Butter

80 g Sugar

100 g Maida

2 Eggs (Separate Egg White & Egg York)

1.5 tsp Baking powder

2 tsp Vanilla powder (Says the recipe. I dint use it)

1 tsp Vanilla essence (I added it)

I used a ready made icing, along with some Smarties (M n Ms) & colored chocolate bits.

Method: -

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 Deg C for about 15 minutes.

2. Grease the baking pan with butter & dust some maida in it.

3. In a bowl, combine butter & sugar with the aid of a Hand mixer, till fluffy.

4. Add egg white & beat well. The mixture will fluff-up a little more. Then add the Egg York & continue to beat for another minute.

5. Next add the Vanilla essence, Backing power & Maida.

6. Using the mixer, beat the mixture well & then transfer it to the baking pan.

7. Bake it for like 40 - 45 minutes.

8. Let it cool down completely before you can start to decorate.

Spritz Cookies

I came across this recipe here while browsing for Christmas goodies to try this year. The recipe makes around 50 cookies. But I altered the recipe to make around 30 Cookies. Coming Sunday is the first Advent. So wanted to try something new, which Siddi can also enjoy. He doesn't like sweets at all. It's been hard to get him to eat fruits. So baked a batch of cookies with less sugar. The recipe surprisingly doesn't use baking powder or baking soda. This gave me an opportunity to use the new hand mixer & cookie press that I'd bought long back.

Ingredients: -

150 g Maida

115 g Butter

50 g Sugar

1 Large egg (Separate Egg white & Egg york for better results.)
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
Use all the ingredients at room temperature to make the cookie dough.

Method: -

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 Deg C for about 20 minutes. Two cookie baking trays would be needed.

2. In a glass bowl beat the butter & sugar until fluffy using the mixer.

3. Add the egg white first & beat. This should make the mixture more fluffy. Now add Egg york & beat for a minute.

4. Add vanilla extract & beat well.

5. On low speed, add Maida & salt. Don't add Maida all at one, add it in gradually.

6. Fill the cookie dough & use the Star stencil.

7. Start pressing the dough through the press on to the tray with 1" space between each other.

8. Bake them for 10 minutes & check. If the tips of the cookies are light brown, its time to get them out.

9. Cool them on a wire rack.

For variation, one can add Orange essence or try the recipe without any essence.

Tandoori Roti

After almost 1.5 years taking some time out to start blogging again. My lil one is keeping me on my toes. So hardly get any time for blogging these days. I've been trying out new recipes every now & then. But can't blog.

This is my first hand at baking Tandoori rotis. They turned out to be excellent. We enjoyed them for dinner with Shahi Gobi. I got the recipe from here.

Ingredients: -

1 cup Wheat flour
1/4 cup Maida
1/4 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
1.5 tbsp oil
1/4 cup Yogurt
Water
Ghee

Method: -
1. In a bowl combine both the flours, baking soda, sugar & salt.
2. Add oil along with yogurt & mix to make the dough.
3. Add water & make the dough smoother. Knead well.
4. Cover it with a damp cloth & keep it in a warm place for an hour. 30 minutes is what is recommended in the recipe given by Manjula aunty.
5. Pre-heat the oven to the maximum temperature with the baking stone in it for around 30 minutes. I set it at broil.

6. Divide the dough into 4 equal parts. The ingredients will give us 4 rotis.
7. Roll out the dough like Chapatis.
8. With wet palms, flip the rolled out dough & drop it into the oven on to the stone.
9. The roti begins to fluff up in a few seconds after its in the oven. Observe the color. It should turn golden brown.

10. Take roti out of the oven & brush it with ghee. Repeat the same with the other three parts of the divided dough.

11. Relish it hot with any side dish.

Forgot to take a photo of the final roti. We were very hungry :)

Our lil Einstein

Hello all,

After a long time making myself free to post. We've been doing well. Not trying anything new in the kitchen because of all the post pregnancy restrictions :( But will be back soon.

Yes we are proud parents now of a cute adorable boy, Siddhanth. He was born on the 12th of July. So been very busy. The three things during a day that happens continuously without any delay are feed, clean & sleep :) I'm back to my good old call center days. I can manage staying up all night looking after him. But for his dad, it's a bit too much to ask for. My parents come in handy during the night. They have practised all the songs that are needed to keep Siddhanth quite. :) My MIL does the day duty :) This has been our story for the last 21 days.

Hope everyone had a nice festival on Friday. Happy friendship's day to all of you.