Caramel Custard

When I was a little kid, my favoruite non Indian dessert was Caramel Custard. Back then, we weren't exposed to tiramisus and cheesecakes as much as we are now and getting to eat caramel custard was a welcome luxury. My aunt Malathi Mallya would make this delicious dessert whenever she invited us over for dinner and I would lap it up and would always want a third or fourth helping! I have made a few changes to my aunt's recipe and have stuck to this recipe for quite sometime now. So here's it :


Video :

Ingredients :
For the caramel
4 tbsp sugar
2 tsp water

For the custard
4 eggs

½ cup sugar
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (approx 500 ml) milk.


Method :
Caramel :
In a saucepan, pour sugar and water. Turn the heat to medium and let sugar melt. Stir using the handle or kitchen pincers and not a spoon as the spoon can get stuck to the caramel. Once sugar melts, turn heat to low and let it change colour to amber or golden brown colour.

Immediately pour this into a vessel that fits into your pressure cooker / steamer. Allow to cool and refrigerate for 10 mts.

Custard:

Whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence. I prefer using a blender. Pour (room temperature or cold) milk little by little and whisk well till all ingredients blend well.

Through a sieve pour the custard mixture onto the caramel. [The caramel should be completely cool].

Steam in a pressure cooker or steamer for 30 minutes on medium or low or till the custard is done.

Once out, allow to cool and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours. Run a knife along the edge of the vessel and invert the caramel custard onto a plate.
Enjoy!!

Chicken Ghee Roast

I'm not too happy with this picture (took it from my cell phone camera) but I'm darn excited about how this dish turned out. This is the first time I made chicken gheeroast and I must say it tasted quite good. I had been to my friend's place for lunch and as she cooked her signature chicken biryani on one side of her kitchen, I hijacked the other side to make chicken gheeroast. It was a fun cook out (though we cooked in), while our kids enjoyed their playdate in the living room.  As we sunk into the aroma of the dishes, I managed to take some quick pictures with my cell phone. Hopefully one day I'll update these with better pictures.

Before I go to the recipe, just wanted to let you know that this is a spicy Mangalorean dish made of a particular type of dry red chilles called byadgi (or kumte mirsang). They look like kashmiri chillies.

They are not particularly too spicy but do give a nice deep red colour to the dish. If you are alarmed by the number of chillies used, you can reduce the number and later on if you think the dish needs to be spicier, you could add some red chilli powder (roast it a bit in hot ghee before adding).
Also, I love adding different kinds of spices to this dish, If they are not available you can add some basic spices and omit "optional" spices.

Also please note that in between all the talking and laughing, I may have eyeballed the ingredients so here's a rough estimate of what I had put in. Please don't hold it against me :D. If the dish turns out too spicy, squeeze some lemon juice. If it doesn't turn out spicy (and M'loreans like this spicy), you could add a tsp or more of red chilli powder in the end (like I mentioned, roast it a bit in hot ghee before adding). I did end up adding chilly powder even though I used so many chillies!

Ingredients:
1 kg chicken
¼ cup yogurt / curd
1 tsp chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
30 long red chillies (byadgi chillies / kumte mirsang)
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
2 to 4 cloves
½ " cinammon
8 to 10 garlic cloves
½ tsp khus khus (optional)
½ tsp fennel seeds (optional)
5 to 8 peppercorns (optional)
1 lemon-sized tamarind or 1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 tsp sugar
Salt to taste
¾ cup ghee*

*This is called ghee roast for a reason.

Method :
Marinate chicken with curd, salt, red chilli powder and turmeric powder for atleast 2 hours.

Meanwhile make the red chilly paste. To do this, in a large pan, heat 1 tbsp ghee. Add coriander seeds, jeera, cinnamon, cloves, garlic  and the optional spices and roast lightly till you get a nice aroma. Transfer this to a blender jar.
In the same pan, heat 1 tbsp ghee. Roast the chillies. Slowly pour one cup water on the chillies and cook for a couple of minutes. Allow to cool. Remove and transfer the chillies along with the water to the blender jar with the roasted spices.
Grind with tamarind and sugar into a SMOOTH paste. Add more water if needed.

In a deep pan heat 2 tbsp ghee. Add chicken pieces. Cover and cook till chicken is 90% cooked.

In the meantime, in a large deep bottomed pan, heat the rest of the ghee. Add the smooth red chilli paste, 1/2 cup water and keep roasting this masala on medium or low heat for about 10 minutes. Add the almost cooked chicken, salt to taste. ( You can add more water if you want some gravy with it).

Cover and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes till the chicken is completely cooked and coated well with the masala.

Again, if you cannot digest spicy food, this dish may not be for you. But ofcourse, you can halve the chillies and try it out. This tastes good with bread or pav or naan or any kind of rice.

(H)ap(p)y 5th B'day Apy Cooking!

Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/Apycookingonline.

Yes, a video recipe! Something I've been wanting to do for a long time.
I've kept the video short, with not too many frills and I do hope you like it. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks to all my readers for visiting my blog, reading my ramblings and actually trying some recipes. Your comments and encouragement have kept me going these five years, despite disappearing from the blogging world for long stretches. I hope to do more videos in the future, as and when time permits (and boy, you do need a lot of time for the videos, yes even the under 5 minute ones!).
Thanks again and Happy Cooking!

Eggless Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes / Mini Cupcakes / Muffins

[Video update on 4th March:

 ]

Who likes a hint of coffee in a moist, luscious, chocolate cupcake? I do! And so, when I was trying a batch of mini chocolate cupcakes last month, I went ahead and added some coffee in it. I loved the result and thought of sharing with you all. For this post, I made regular muffins, but given a choice, I'd go for a mini muffin any day. They are cute, just a tad bigger than bite-sized and, they've always been my favourite form of cake! If you do not have a mini muffin tray, you can use a regular muffin tray, but like I have said in my earlier posts here and here, do try to get your hands on one!

 I have not iced these cupcakes because they taste great as they are. The recipe is slightly modified from my earlier post on eggless chocolate cake. I halved the recipe and made some minor changes. If you want to make only chocolate cupcakes or just an eggless chocolate cake, then you should definitely try that recipe.

Ingredient:

1 cup water

1 ½ tsp coffee powder

1 ½ cups maida or all purpose flour

3 tbsp cocoa powder 

1 ¼cup sugar

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup oil

1 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice (or vinegar)

1 tsp vanilla essence

* Preferably caster sugar. If using regular granulated sugar, grind in a dry mixer for a couple of seconds. This is to dissolve sugar easily later. Optional step.

Method:

Bring water to a light boil and dissolve the coffee powder in it. Allow to cool completely.

Meanwhile in a bowl, mix maida, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. [ Run them through a sieve if they have lumps].
In a large bowl, mix all the wet ingredients - coffee solution, oil, vanilla, lemon juice, Add sugar and blend with a hand-held electric mixture till sugar dissolves. To this add the dry maida mixture little by little and mix thoroughly to get a smooth mixture. Blend for a few seconds.

Preheat the oven to 170  ͦC [340  ͦF].  

Line a muffin or mini muffin tray with paper liners. Pour in the batter till they are 2/3rd full.

Bake for about 20  to 22 minutes for muffins (15 to 18 minutes for mini muffins) or till fork inserted in the centre comes out clean.

NOTE: If the cupcakes are overdone, the edges tend to become crisp and stick to the paper liner.  Every oven differs in baking time so keep an eye. Once they are done, leave them to cool completely and refrigerate for atleast 30 minutes. Otherwise they may not come off easily from the paper liner.

You can easily double the recipe if you are looking to make lots of cupcakes. Infact I made a huge batch of these cuties for my son's birthday. The picture below is of a mini muffin tray and of the cute li'l muffins ready to be arranged for the party on their cupcake stand.

Go ahead and ice these cupcakes with icing of your choice and sprinkle some sprinklers on them if you like them pretty. As for me, I was content with these cuties adorning the dining table during the party. A proud moment indeed :)!

Paneer Mushroom Bread Masala / Paneer Mushroom Stumbler

If you like paneer and mushrooms and are looking for an easy, one pan dish for breakfast, lunch, dinner or even a tea-time snack, then dish is for you. You could say this dish is a spin-off of my earlier post on Stumber which, btw, tastes great if you eat eggs. I replaced the eggs in the recipe with paneer and mushroom one day, because I wanted to, and loved the result. Go ahead and make this. The bite of mushrooms, the creaminess of the paneer and the softness of the bread will make you want to make this again and again! Oh and just a small tip. if you have no problem with using an extra couple of spoons of ghee, go ahead and drizzle it. Ghee lends a lovely flavour to this dish.

Ingredients:

4 large onions

2 tsp chilli powder

1 or 2 green chillies

1 1/2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp haldi (turmeric powder)

2 medium tomatoes

200 g mushroom

200 g paneer

4 or 5 slices of bread

One handful coriander leaves

Ghee or oil

Salt

Method:

In a large pan, heat 2 tbsp ghee. Add chopped onions and sauté till they become brownish. Now add chillipowder and roast for a couple of minutes. To this add finely chopped green chillies and chopped tomatoes and roast till the tomatoes are completely cooked. Add garam masala powder and haldi powder and roast for a minute. Now add chopped mushrooms and 1 tsp salt and cook for a few minutes. To this add paneer chopped to 1" cubes and mix gently. Cook for a couple of minutes. I added another 3/4 tsp salt. Now add bread chopped to 1" cubes and mix. Cook covered on low flame for a couple of minutes and mix well. Adjust salt and spices according to your taste. Sprinkle chopped coriander leaves and mix well.

Happy Cooking!!

Palak Paneer / Indian Cottage Cheese in Spicy Spinach Curry

Many a times when I have had palak paneer, in a restaurant or elsewhere, I couldn't help noticing the difference in the shades of green this dish comes in. Cooking the dish for an extra few minutes can slowly deepen it's colour. Some like to cook the palak minimally to retain it's colour while some overcook it to make it a lot darker (unknowingly so). Some add milk or cream which makes the colour lighter while others prefer to just go by water. Though I like all the different shades (because I love palak paneer), I invariably tend to overcook the dish, probably because in the back of my mind I like the colour to ripen from a rich emerald to a deep olive green.

Ingredients :
2 bunches palak
1" piece ginger
3 tbsp oil or ghee
1 tsp jeera (cumin seeds)
3 medium onions
2 tsp ginger garlic paste (or crushed garlic and ginger)
1 large tomato
1 1/2 tsp garam masala powder
1 1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
200g paneer, chopped into 1" cubes
Water
Salt


Method :
Wash palak (discard the stems) and boil with ginger in half a cup of water for a few minutes. Allow to cool. Drain the water out but reserve it.

In a deep bottomed pan, heat oil/ ghee. When it's hot, add cumin seeds. Once the seeds splutter, sauté chopped onions. Add crushed garlic and ginger or their paste and sauté till the onions turn brownish. Now add the powders and roast for a couple of minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and sauté for  4 to 5 minutes till tomatoes are cooked. Allow to cool.

Transfer half of this into a blender. Add the boiled palak also into the blender. Blend into a smooth paste. Transfer this back to the earlier deep bottomed pan. Mix the blended paste with the rest of the sautéed onion mixture. Add the reserved water and bring to a boil. Add enough water to get a gravy like consistency. You can also add a couple of tablespoons of milk or cream. Add salt and bring to a boil. Now add the paneer cubes. You can fry paneer before adding. I did not fry. Cook for a few minutes.

Tastes best with rotis / chapatis.

Basic Cake / Vanilla Cake

Under all the beautifully hand crafted fondant, the deliciously flavoured frosting and the subtle, creamy filling, lies a simple cake that holds these elements together. Here's a recipe of one such cake.

This is a vanilla cake by virtue of the vanilla essense I added, but you can experiment with any flavour of your choice. Another similar post that I have is of a simple yellow cake which is very easy to make, but I wanted one which required only 1 cake pan. So I went ahead and halved the ingredients of the famous 1234 cake adjusting butter according to the way it's packaged in India. Here we get butter in 100g slabs unlike the sticks it comes in elsewhere. 1 stick equals 113 g or 1/2 cup while a slab weighs 100g.

Ingredients :
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour (maida)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
100g butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk

Note:
-All the ingredients, specially butter, should be at room temperature.
-Baking powder is different from baking soda.
-Please check the contents of the butter. If it has salt, don't add extra salt. You can add a small pinch if you want to. I forgot the butter was salted and I did add a pinch, but the cake turned out fine. Besides, I like salt. If the butter is unsalted, add a good pinch of salt.
-Try and use castor sugar (thin granules) if you want the butter and sugar to cream beautifully. I used granulated sugar which I found in my nearest small grocery store. The kind you run to after you start cooking. This sugar was very stubborn and did not want to get creamed easily.
-Try to get your hands on good quality vanilla essence. Always smell it before you add it. There was a time when I threw my cake because the synthetic vanilla essence I used was horrible. It was horrible. Did I tell you it was horrible?
-Try to get your hands yet again, on good quality parchment paper. It's a big boon. You don't have to grease too much and your cake will pop out right out when you invert the baking pan.
-Before using all purpose flour (maida), sift it to remove lumps/ impurities, if you wish to do so. To sift, just pass it to a large sifter / strainer.

Method:

First mix the dry ingredients. For this, in a bowl, add maida, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix well.

Now in a large bowl, take some butter. The butter should be soft enough to be mixed easily. Add sugar and mix with a spoon or spatula. With a hand held electric mixer, blend the sugar and butter for a minute or two till you get a nice creamy mixture. Add eggs and vanilla essence [ Notice how well I've succeeded in highlighting the eggs and not focus on the "creamed" sugar and butter, because, well, it did not cream well]  Blend to get a creamy mixture. To this add milk and flour mixture [the dry ingredients which you had mixed earlier] little by little and blend gently as you add. Towards the end, mix well with a large spoon or spatula, scraping the sides.

Preheat the oven to 170C [340F].

Grease the sides and bottom of an 8" or 9" baking tin with oil, butter or ghee. I also lined the base with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the tin. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or till a fork inserted in the centre comes out clean. [ I baked for 35 minutes so the cake browned a little more, but the taste was great. Infact I like it that way. I'm not justifying]. Allow to cool and invert on to a cakeboard / plate.

So now that you have a simple basic vanilla cake, you can experiment with flavours, fillings, icings, toppings and what not. Happy Baking!

Easy Eggless Banana Cake

Usually when I buy bananas, I end up buying a dozen of them. They come home with me and sit stubbornly in the fruit basket, as if gesturing to stay away for a few days till they ripen. And ripen they do, all together, making me wonder if they take a silent pledge of equal fruition. Almost always a couple of these bananas, specially the ones that stay at the bottom of the pile, end up getting ignored, and they seem to vehemently make this clear by quietly changing colour.

That, ofcourse, is not an excuse to bake this cake. Infact, I made this cake just as the bananas ripened, because I was waiting to lay my hands yet again on my new OTG after the delicious outcome of my earlier experiment - Eggless mini mango muffins. Just like the mango muffins, this is an eggless cake that comes out soft and light.

So here's the recipe. It's easy to make with ingredients probably available in your house right now.

Ingredients:
2 medium-sized ripe bananas
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup yogurt (curd)
1/4 cup oil
1 pinch salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup maida or all purpose flour

Method:
Roughly chop bananas and blend with sugar and yogurt for about 20 seconds to get a smooth paste (there shouldn't be any banana chunks).
Transfer this paste to a large bowl. Add oil, mix gently till you fold it in and then mix thoroughly. Add salt and baking soda and mix. To this add maida little by little mixing as you add. Mix thoroughly, scraping the sides, and get rid of all lumps to get a nice and smooth paste. [You can use an electric hand mixer]. Make sure there are no lumps and that all ingredients are mixed really well.

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).

Line a baking tin with parchment paper or grease it well with oil. [ Use a 7" round tin. I used 8" and the cake became thinner than I'd have liked].
Pour the cake batter into the baking tin. Bake for 35 minutes (+ or - 5 minutes depending on the oven), till a fork inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool. Invert the cake (gently peel off the parchment paper if you have used it).

My husband's serving suggestion - have this hot with ice-cream. Sounds yum!

Eggless Mini Mango Muffins

[Video update on 30/4/2015 :


 ]

Mango is such a divine fruit.  Mangoes are pulpy, juicy, sweet, luscious. Their bright orange-yellow colour plays with your eyes and their succulence makes them totally irresistible.

Here's an easy, eggless recipe with easily-available ingredients to make mini muffins out of these delicious mangoes. I prefer mini muffins to muffins because they are smaller, good for a quick bite and can be very appealing. If you don't have a mini muffin tray, you can use a regular muffin/ cupcake tray (baking time will increase by about 10 minutes), but I would urge you to get yourself the mini muffin tray. A few online stores seem to sell them. Mini muffins look very cute and you can serve them at a party or take them to your friend's house or to your child's play date and they will be immediately liked. You can even slip one into your child's tiffin box.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups Maida or all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

¾ cup sugar

3 to 4 cardamom pods

½ cup melted butter OR ghee

½ cup thick yogurt/ curd

2 large or medium mangoes (for 1 cup thick

mango pulp)

Note :
- I used 2 regular sized mangoes for the pulp/ puree. For best results use ripe and sweet mangoes.
- All ingredients, specially the mango, should be at room temperature.

Method:
In a bowl, combine maida and baking soda and keep aside.
Discard the skin and blend cardamom with sugar for about 10 seconds. Take this powdered sugar into a large bowl. Add ghee and mix well. Get rid of lumps. To this add curd and mix thoroughly. Get rid of lumps.

To make the puree, chop mangoes roughly and blend for 10 to 15 seconds or till you get a fine puree. Measure out one cup [You may need more mango depending on the size. ] Add puree to the above mixture and mix really well. Get rid of lumps. You don't want any lumps.

To this, add the maida+baking soda little by little and mix thoroughly [ I used my handheld whisk. You can use an electric hand mixer to get a smooth mix.]  Make sure you get rid of lumps. The batter should be smooth and lump-free.

Preheat the oven to 170˚C or 340˚F.

Line a mini muffin tray with paper liners. If you don't have a mini muffin tray you can use a regular muffin tray. The baking time will vary.
Using two spoons get the batter into each liner till it's 3/4th full.
Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, till the muffins are done and a fork inserted in the centre comes out clean.
[If you are using a regular muffin tray, bake for about 22 minutes.]

Allow to cool. You can frost these muffins and make cute cupcakes out of them. [If you are using a regular muffin tray and you realise only later that the inside in still a little sticky, then refrigerate the muffins and they should be good after an hour].

Enjoy these cute treats with your family or friends!

(H)ap(p)y 4th B'day Apy Cooking! Celebrating with Churmundo (Wheat Flour Laddoos)

Long before I relished rasgullas and rasmalai, tasted tiramisu and tres leches, or polished off pies and puddings, the homely, humble and hearty burst-in-the-mouth churmundo, stood tall as one of my most favourite desserts in my early childhood. Memories of my granny, Amma and Pachi (aunt) sitting around a huge vessel and shaping these laddoos as I hovered around 'sampling' a couple here and a couple and a half there are still very vivid.  

Today being the 4th 'Bloggiversary' of Apy Cooking, I thought of making these simple, easy laddoos  just to walk down the memory lane a little bit, and sought help from my Pachi for the measures. There are a few variations to this laddoo - some people add besan (gram flour) and some prefer to throw in raisins and cashewnuts.  I have kept it simple with the usual four ingredients.

Ingredients :

2 cups wheat flour (chapati atta)

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp ghee

1 1/4 cup sugar

7 to 8 cardamom

Note: Reduce sugar if you don't like the laddoos very sweet.

Method:

Pour 1/2 cup ghee into a  heavy bottomed pan and place on low heat.  When the ghee turns slightly warm, add wheat flour little by little and keep mixing and roasting for about 10 to 15 minutes on low heat till you get a nice aroma and the flour appears to change in colour. Remove from heat and keep aside till it cools completely.

Meanwhile, grind sugar along with cardamom (skin removed) in a blender for about 15 seconds till you get a fine powder. Add this powdered mixture to the roasted flour. Mix really well. Add another 2 tbsp ghee and mix well (knead with your palm).  Grease your palms with a little ghee and taking about a fistful of mixture at a time, shape into lime-sized balls.

To shape the laddoos, press the mixture by tightening your fist and move it along the fist as you press it hard. As the laddoo gets it's shape, decrease the pressure, or else it can collapse in your palm. 

You can add a little more ghee to the mixture if the balls don't hold their shape. Just mix well again and rework the laddoos.

The recipe yields 20 to 22 laddoos.

(H)ap(p)y 3rd B'day Apy Cooking!

Apy Cooking turns three today. And as it always happens, I was taken back to my very first post.  My most favourite dessert. Something I could eat all day, everyday, if my metabolism worked overtime like Jughead's. So I thought of mentioning this delicious dessert yet again along with two others that I made to celebrate the earlier birthdays of Apy Cooking.

Tres Leches

Is this cake? Nope, it's heaven's delight. Take a bite and feel the burst of sweetened milk dancing on your palate. 

[Original post here.]

Tiramisu

Coffee at it's best. Coffee and cream. Coffee and cake. Coffee and chocolate. Layers of happiness. "Pick me up"? You bet!

[Original post here.]

Doll Cake

Every girl likes dolls. Imagine one made of chocolate. And hazelnut spread. And wrapped in delicious pink fondant. With purple beads.  A cake that will make any girl squeal with delight. 

[Original post here.]

I absolutely enjoyed every tiny moment I spent on making these beauties. Specially when I poured the three milks all over the cake when making tres leches. And when I made the different layers of tiramisu. And when I rolled the fondant to make the doll's dress. And I enjoyed all the little trials and errors that went into making every single post on Apy Cooking. Happy B'day Apy Cooking and thanks to all my dear readers!

Super Easy 5 Minute Eggless Microwave Oreo Biscuit Cake

[Video update on 22/02/2016

 ]

Hungry for a cake, but lazy to make an elaborate one? Here's a quick and easy recipe for a semi-homemade cake, so to speak.

Ingredients :
1 large packet and 1 small packet of oreo biscuits (19 pairs. 38 biscuits in total)
1 cup milk (240 ml)

¾ tsp baking powder OR ¾ tsp Eno

3 tbsp sugar


Method:
Crush the biscuits roughly.  [Do not remove the cream]. Transfer to a blender. Add the other ingredients and blend into a smooth paste.
Grease a microwave safe dish liberally with butter, oil or ghee. [You can also line the base with parchment paper/ butter paper to get a clean top while inverting. Please use good quality parchment paper. I first greased the bottom and sides and placed the parchment paper like so:









]

Transfer the cake batter into the dish. Microwave for 5 minutes [in regular microwave mode]. You will see some moist spots on the top and sides. That's fine.
Do not touch the cake for atleast another 15 minutes, you want to let it cook with the heat trapped inside.

[If you wish to invert the cake, let it cool for 30 minutes. Check this post for more tips. If you have used parchment paper to line the base, you can invert it in lesser time. ]

You can top the cake with sugar powder. Just take some powdered sugar in a strainer and splash it all over the cake.

Perfect for a last minute (oops last 5 minute) snack! Happy New Year!

Update : Made this with Oreo orange creme biscuits.  Loved the subtle orange flavour. This time, I used baking powder instead of eno. And the lines on top - that's Nutella!

Thanks to the internet for letting me know you can make cakes with biscuits! I experimented with my favourite Oreo cookies and now I have a quick cake recipe.

A couple more eggless microwave cake recipes -
Eggless Microwave Chocolate Cake
Eggless Microwave Coffee Cake

My Baby Turns Four!! Celebrating with Banana Cupcakes Iced with Delicious Flour Frosting

It's my son's b'day again and the time to bake a cake for him! However, this time I made something different - I made several cupcakes and brought them together to wish my son a Happy Birthday! The cupcakes are made of banana - click here for the step-by-step pictures - and the frosting is made with flour! Don't be alarmed when I say flour because the icing comes out so airy and delicious, you want to lick the spoon as you ice the cupcakes. Go ahead, try it for yourself! Here's the link for the flour frosting.

The chocolate frosting I used for the letters is store bought - Pillsburry Creamy Chocolate Icing - and I also swirled some frosting on some cupcakes for a chocolaty taste. If you want different frosting colours you can mix some food colour (the Wilton fan that I am, I used Wilton gel colours) with the flour frosting till you get the hue you desire.

Thankfully, my son had no complaints about the simplicity of the cake which was devoid of any cartoon characters or action figures. Thanks for that Vineet!! Happy B'day!!

Fondant Pumpkins made with Homemade Marshmallow Fondant

A huge pile of giant pumpkins is what comes to my mind when I think of Halloween. So how about some really cute mini-pumpkins made with homemade marshmallow fondant. Sounds yummy, yeah?  Luckily I found a bag of white and pink marshmallows in Nilgiris in Mangalore. I used only the white ones and nibbled on the pink ones while I made these.

Check my post on Homemade Marshamallow Fondant to get step by step pictures on how to make fondant.
I used only 1 cup marshmallows with 1 cup sugar and 1 tsp water. You can easily increase or decrease the quantities depending on how many pumpkins you want to make.
[You can, of course, use store-bought fondant].

Once you make the fondant, just eyeball, or roughy divide it into the number of pumpkins and their size, setting aside a little bit of fondant for the stems and leaves. Colour the fondant orange, green and brown accordingly. [You can even use a piece of chocolate instead of brown fondant for the stem.] I used Wilton's Icing Colors (concentrated gel).
To colour, just make streaks with the colouring with a toothpick and knead really well to spread the colour evenly (Check this post). Repeat till you get the shade you desire.

Take a small portion of the orange fondant. Roll it into a ball. Using a toothpick poke a hole in the centre at the top, and make verticals markings on the side (you can even use a butter knife).There, you have a cute pumpkin. Make small stems with the brown fondant. For the green creeper, just curl green fondant around a toothpick like you see in the picture. Remember, fondant dries easily and won't be very malleable once it dries. You may have to knead it again to mould it into the desired shape.  To fix the stem and leaves to the pumpkin, use a dab of water.

You can serve these pumpkins as is or station them on a yummy cupcake. Now how is that for a super-cute Halloween treat!!

Here are a couple more. Go on, rock your halloween!
Pumpkin Sugar Cookies
Spiderweb Muffins

Roasted Garlic Mushroom Soup / Cream of Mushroom Soup

It's raining here tonight (yes, in October) and what better companion than a bowl of hot soup to keep you warm! The only thing missing is my husband's company since he is miles away, but that's not going to stop me from relishing this creamy, steamy, earthy, delicious soup!

[Video Update on 26/07/2016

 ]

Ingredients:
12 to 15 garlic cloves, chopped
200g mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp maida (all purpose flour)
1 cup milk
3 cups water
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground pepper (or pepper powder)
Salt to taste

Method:

In a pan, heat butter. Roast garlic for a couple of minutes. Add mushrooms and roast for a few minutes. Remove about 2 tbsp of this mixture and keep aside in a bowl (for garnishing).
Add maida to the remaining roasted garlic and mushrooms and roast for a few minutes.
Transfer to a blender and blend with 1/2 cup milk (add milk a little at a time). Add 1/2 cup water and blend again.
Transfer to a vessel. Add another 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup water and bring to a boil. Sprinkle ground pepper. (If you are using fine pepper powder, mix with a little water before adding). Add salt to taste and add the roasted garlic-mushroom kept aside for garnishing. Cook for a couple of minutes. Watch the rain, sip the soup and stay warm!

Note : You can adjust the quantity of milk and water depending on how thick or thin you want your soup. This recipe serves 2 and you can easily increase the measures. Also, I prefer to grind whole pepper and add the fine granules which give a better peppery flavour, as compared to store-bought pepper powder.