Chocolate banana bread

This is the recipe that convinced me that it doesn’t have to be complicated to be delicious. I found it one day while randomly surfing through Joy of Baking and I decided to try it. That was around 5 years ago. Since then this chocolate banana bread is a well-loved favourite at home and I make it every time I spot bananas in the house!

I suppose why I really like this recipe is because how simple it really is. No need to even wait for butter to soften because you have to melt it anyway. Here’s the recipe for it:

Ingredients

1 ¾ cup flour

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

100 gms white butter

2 eggs

3 bananas mashed

1 tsp vanilla essence

½ cup toasted walnuts, ½ cup white chocolate chips

Method

Grease a loaf tin and preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Melt the butter and let it cool. Add the mashed bananas, sugar, eggs and essence to the melted butter. Sieve flour with cocoa, baking powder and baking soda. Lightly fold in the dry ingredients into wet and until batter is thick and chunky. Fold in nuts and chocolate chips. Scrape batter into pan and bake for 30 to 35 mins. (You might have to split the batter into two loaf tins)

Tell me how goes when you make it!

Caramel Cake – an old favourite

This one was a favourite during the days of my first pregnancy and I was bored and had too much time on hand. I can’t imagine how jobless I used to be back then! I found the recipe at the back of a baking powder can (no internet back in those days) and I thought I could try it out. Making the caramel was always a tricky process back then and I would inevitably burn it but the cake was always appreciated because it had this warm stickiness that is always associated with home baked goods.

On impulse I decided to make it last night. Got Saboor to help me beat the butter. It was merely an excuse to make sure he wouldn’t nod off to sleep before I made dinner and it worked. My leftie son gets awkward with handling these things but for once I was not a monster mom last night and encouraged him to beat it in one direction only. The recipe is very simple and we finished the batter in fifteen minutes, right in time for Masterchef Australia to start on TV.

As an aside, everyone at home watches Masterchef Australia, including my MIL and the kids. MIL thinks that one of the judges, George, constantly bounces on the balls of his feet enthusiastically and she’s nicknamed him ‘uchal-billa’ in Urdu. Ha ha! It merely means someone who is fidgety and constantly jumping around in excitement. I think.

Anyways, without further delays, here’s the recipe. Every time I think I should take a picture, I think I’ll do it later and by then there’s nothing left.

Ingredients

200 gms white butter
2 cups maida
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 and 1/4 cup sugar (granulated will do)
1/4 cup sugar for caramel
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup water

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs and beat well. Add the essence. Sieve maida with baking powder and fold into the mixture gently. To make caramel, melt sugar over medium heat until it’s a shade darker than golden brown. Immediately pour in the water (it makes a big crackling noise) and swirl the pan quickly before caramel sets at the bottom and pour into the cake batter. Mix evenly and the batter acquires a beautiful toffee brown colour. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes.

Millionaire’s Shortbread Bars

It was very quiet in my house last Saturday night. The reason? Both boys were at my mother’s and I had the house to myself to make my famed chocolate cake pops for my niece Zoha’s birthday party the following day. Unfortunately I couldn’t get hold of any cooking chocolate and so I had to nix that plan. I made something I had made on Azhaan’s birthday last month – Millionaire’s Shortbread Bars.

It’s hard to describe these bars without going into raptures because they’re so, so good! There’s a crunchy shortbread base at the bottom, topped with a layer of dulce de leche (cooked condensed milk) and further topped with melted chocolate.

For small amounts of chocolate, I don’t mind using Bourneville Dark Chocolate because it’s pretty good and can be used as cooking chocolate as well. So armed with the ingredients, I set out to make these delicious squares which were a great hit the following day at the birthday.

I found the recipe at Joy of Baking and I followed it exactly. I did notice a couple of changes from the first time I made it though. For instance, the dulce de leche was creamier and more evident in this one. The picture in the Joy of Baking website shows the second layer to be almost caramel coloured but I couldn’t achieve it.

For the dulce de leche, I cooked the condensed milk in the microwave at a very low power, around 50% for the first four minutes and then reduced to 40% for another 8 minutes. It’s important to beat the dulce de leche when you remove it from the microwave so it becomes smooth and creamy. And yes, it’s preferable if you cook the shortbread before this step so that the shortbread is cooling while the dulce de leche is cooking. Pour it on the shortbread and spread it immediately or it will begin to harden.

For the layer of chocolate, I simply melted two large bars of Bournville over a double boiler and poured it over the dulce de leche and left it to set for sometime in the fridge. When it was half set I marked lines on the chocolate and then put it back in the fridge. Later that night I removed the shortbread bars and realised I couldn’t remove the first piece without causing cracks on the chocolate surface. So I made a narrow line on one of the edges and removed a piece from it so that I had leverage to remove the other squares. And the narrow edge belonged to moi! All the itsy bitsy pieces of chocolate and dulce de leche covered shortbread was MINE. And I ate it all as I cut out the rest and then when I went to sleep that night, I couldn’t get any sleep because of a butter and chocolate overload in my system.

Pepper chicken

I firmly believe that not everyone can make everything well, no matter how much they try. So if you are great at making chicken, you don’t really have to be good at churning ice cream, or vice versa. So with that philosophy in mind, I’ve often consoled myself whenever a chicken dish goes horribly wrong. But when it does go wonderfully right, I thought that it deserved to enter the blog even though I’d professed that I would write mostly about desserts.

I’ve made this chicken dish before also and it won’t win any prizes for innovation. The only prizes it would probably win is in simplicity. And that it can be cooked really quickly. A word of caution though. Since cooking is an art for me, I don’t really use proper measures, just approximates so adjust according to your taste. And don’t blame me if something goes wrong!

Ingredients

Chicken – 1/2 kg
Onions chopped – 2 medium sized
Tomatoes chopped – 2
Mustard seeds – a pinch
Haldi – a pinch
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Garam Masala powder – 1 tsp
Dhania powder – 1 tsp
Pepper powder – 1 tsp
Fresh coriander – a handful chopped roughly
Ginger garlic paste – 1 tsp
Salt to taste

Method

Heat oil in a kadhai and add mustard seeds. When they sputter add the ginger garlic paste, fry for around 15 to 20 seconds, add the chopped onions and saute until golden brown.

Add the chicken pieces turning them over and sprinkle garam masala,salt, red chilli powder and haldi. Stir well and shift the chicken around in the kadhai until it starts getting cooked. Add the dhania powder and pepper powder and mix properly. When the masalas have coated the chicken add the chopped tomatoes and lower flame to let the tomatoes soften. Cover with lid and let it simmer for some time. Mix well and add chopped coriander and cook for a little more before switching off the stove.

I tried taking a picture but it didn’t quite come out well so I didn’t bother. If you’re trying this out, let me know how it went or if I can improve it?

One more from Kitchen Klutz

God how I loved KK. She made it sound like fun although when something really bad is happening in the kitchen you get this horrible burning feeling at the bottom of your stomach. And then you realise that the burning is not just your usual attack of acidity but is happening on the stove as well.

This one actually happened. And my sister in law helped me flush it down the toilet. The tomato soup I mean.

I always thought I was a reasonably good cook. And then I got married.

Only after said event did I realize that making toast without burning it and boiling water for a tea bag didn’t count as cooking.  In fact, my husband did that better than me.

Back in those good old days when I was newly married and could get away with just about any crime in the kitchen with the simple words ‘I don’t know’, life was good. We usually had takeaway dinner and lunch from the neighbourhood restaurant and no one really minded that the little eatery had got a fancy canopy and had expanded tremendously since we moved to the locality.

Then one day, the inevitable happened. My mother in law came to visit us. Which was totally fine, except that I felt slightly weird ordering food from the restaurant when she was there. She knew I didn’t cook. But I think she thought that the moment I got married, some dormant gene in me must have got activated and I was now churning out all sorts of yummy dishes for her laadla beta.

Before I could tell her that the only work I did in the kitchen was hunt for take away restaurant menus, she put me on the spot by asking me if I could make tomato soup.

Where was a Knorr packet when you needed one? To make things worse, she added ‘I’m sure you can make tomato soup, dear. It’s the easiest thing there is.’

I kept my mouth shut. It was easy. She said so herself. Maybe I could wing it. She was visiting us for just a few hours anyway, and all she’d asked for was tomato soup. Well, no harm done.

I opened the fridge, took out a couple of tomatoes which we kept for salads or face packs and washed them in the tap water. From outside, I could hear the sound of the TV.  I tossed the tomatoes in a pot of water and put it to boil. Sometime later, I saw that the peel was floating on top and the water had started looking distinctly red.

Pleased with myself, I switched off the gas and strained the water into a soup bowl. But something seemed wrong here. I peered into the pot and saw that the tomato was all mushy. Maybe we had to put some of that mush in the bowl. Using a spoon, I ladled some of the bits and pieces into the soup bowl.

This still didn’t look like the soup we ordered in restaurants, so there was something missing. Salt? Pepper? Yes. I liberally sprinkled both into the bowl and watched. Would it transform itself into something thick, like soup?

Furtively, I called Sunita to ask her if she knew how to make tomato soup. Sunita was my younger sister by the way. She was out shopping and the sound of the traffic interrupted what she was saying. I could only hear the words cornflour and eggs.

I ended the call and thought for a moment. We didn’t have cornflour, whatever that was. But there were a few eggs in the fridge. I dumped the contents of the bowl back into the pot and switched on the gas. Then I broke an egg into a bowl and then dropped it into the boiling tomato soup. Was this the way they made egg drop soup? Yeah, I probably was an instinctive cook, I thought. I only needed to be let loose in the kitchen and things would rearrange themselves magically and emerge perfectly. I only needed my mother in law to make me aware of that fact. I thought of her a little fondly as she watched some soap on TV outside.

A moment later I turned back to the pot and saw that the horribly curdled mess in the pot didn’t resemble tomato soup from any quarter. Maybe it would settle down once I put it in the bowl. I watched with horror and fascination as huge lumps of egg fell into the bowl, along with tomato water.

This was no tomato soup.

‘Are you done yet dear?’ she called out from the living room. ‘Can you make croutons to go with it?’

Croutons? She asks for croutons? I found myself giggling nervously like a maniac as I wondered how I could salvage the situation. I could probably tell her that the soup was disastrous, but she’d want to look at it. And then she might relate it to everyone about how I cannot make even an easy tomato soup.

Simple solution. I’ll tell her that I was ladling it into a bowl and my hand slipped and everything fell inside the sink. Yes. Unceremoniously I dumped the contents of the pot into the sink and watched bits of egg float and then block the sink. So now my sink was all clogged with steamy red stuff and boiled egg pieces. And I had a mother in law outside waiting for croutons to go with it. There were two messes in this kitchen. One was the sink and the other was me. Any ideas on how I could get out of it?

 

Poor KK didn’t have an enterprising sister in law like I did.

Chocolate cake pops

For the inventor of the cake pops, it must have been a moment of pure inspiration following a disaster when the cake didn’t come out clean from the pan. How I wish someone had told me that it was possible to salvage a cake from the pan back in the days when I had started baking? I’d have been saved so much teasing from everyone.

Anyways, I don’t quite recall how I came across chocolate cake pops. Maybe it was on Bakerella, or probably some other such fantastic website and I made it one day thinking it would be a pretty easy thing to do. Surprisingly it was! What it was though, was time consuming. I had to stay up till around 1.30 in the morning making these cake pops and in minutes they were gone.

They’re very popular and the kids keep demanding I make them but I haven’t made them in months. Simply because I get a bit sick from licking off all that chocolate from the bowls and my hands.

Here’s how they’re made -

One cake yields around 60 cake pops.

Chocolate cake

This is my standard chocolate cake recipe, although you can make it the way you usually do also.

200 gms butter
1 1/2 cup sugar, (powdering it is optional)
1 3/4 cup maida (all purpose flour)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup curdled milk ( 1/2 cup milk with a tsp of lemon juice, let it stand for sometime until milk curdles)

Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time and then the vanilla essence.

Sieve maida with baking powder and fold it into batter gently.

Mix the curdled milk but don’t over beat. Mix, until just incorporated. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for about half an hour.

Let the cake cool and then in a huge bowl, crumble it all up. This is the fun part because your cake doesnt have to look perfect or emerge from the pan perfectly either.

Chocolate frosting

Now this is what I keep forgetting each and every time. I mean, I simply forget what kind of frosting I make and I improvise each time. So, doing this from memory now. I make a terrible absentminded cook .

3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk

Mix everything and cook for a minute. Beat well until it is glossy.

To assemble cake pops

Pour the chocolate frosting over the crumbled cake and knead it like dough. Make small balls out of it and line it on parchment paper. Freeze for half an hour.

Melt chocolate in the microwave or a double boiler. Dip each ball into the melted chocolate and let it rest on the paper. The chocolate hardens slowly and you can lift each ball off the paper easily enough.

Quickest firni you can make

I’ve always been partial to things that can be whipped up almost instantly. Which is why I am very partial to Top Ramen noodles. But we’re talking about desserts here at my food blog, so no place for instant noodles. And I am not saying that even one bit disdainfully. We can discuss Top Ramen noodles on Facebook or Twitter if you want.

So, as I was saying, my mom found this recipe for firni in the recipe book that came with my Sumeet Mixer Grinder. She tried it once and immediately we were transported back years ago to Kolkata where we’d tasted similar firni and I’d never quite forgotten it. The delicate aroma, the texture and the taste seemed almost similar to what I’d had eons ago. While I do hold my olfactory senses to be very strong (or khatarnaak  naak as my husband says), I was very young when I had that firni back there. So it might actually be nothing like it, but it works pretty well for us now.

See, Kolkata was on our route to Hong Kong back in those days when there were no direct flights from Bangalore. The trip to Hong Kong was such a big adventure because we had to travel to Kolkata, go to Dhaka, take a flight to Bangkok and then go to Hong Kong, and I guess Abbu kept such a convoluted route because he had some work to take care of in each of these destinations. So in Kolkata, my memories were always of food. However, I don’t recall much about that also, except that the aromas of even the curries were sweet in a way that was very appetizing.

But the dessert was always firni. Yes, this same firni. The only difference was that it used to be much more thick, and set in clay bowls. So, we had to scrape off the firni from our bowls, and I think the clay added its own special aroma and taste to the firni. This isn’t really like a recipe with ingredients and method unfortunately. It’s more of me rambling on about how you can do it or how you shouldn’t do it.

Soak half a cup of rice in water for half an hour, drain the water and run in the mixer until it becomes a smooth paste. Remove the paste from a mixer into a bowl and keep separately(I have a very good reason why you should do that. Will elaborate later)

Then, boil one liter milk and let it simmer for about five minutes. While its simmering, pour the paste into the milk while stirring continuously. – If you let the rice paste remain in the mixer, then what happens is that it becomes a bit difficult to pour with one hand. (Because you have to scrape out all the rice paste from the bottom, between the blades and all that jazz) And if you don’t stir with one hand while you’re pouring, you’ve got lumpy firni. And who wants lumpy firni?

So, keep stirring, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan until the firni looks a little thick. Add sugar(how much ever you prefer, or how much ever your sweet tooth allows you!). Stir well and switch off the gas.

Let it cool and then mix in a few drops of rose water or kewra essence and then sprinkle generously with slivered almonds and pistachios. Pour into individual cups and let it set in the fridge.

I’m pretty positive you can’t make firni quicker than this. And if you want to know how we make traditional firni at home? It’s very different from this quick fix firni, I assure you – You’re going to have to wait till my book comes out. And I’m not kidding. I really have written a food book (given my penchant for laziness and inability to copy-paste traditional recipes) I will be just talking about the food there. I can see that you’re not amused.