Friday, June 11, 2010

Delicious dessert

I made this for Nitin's birthday. Well, I first made butterscotch Ice cream for his birthday but it got little too caramalized!!! So I served it on birthday eve instead of his b'day! Finally I made this one, inspired by this website. If you love Chocolates, if you love cookies and toffees, you will love this!

Ingredients:
1.25 cups all purpose flour
3/4th cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup toffee chopped (I used Almond Rocca).

Heat oven to 375 F.
In a bowl, mix butter, vanilla essence, egg and sugar. Add flour, baking powder and salt and mix well. Mix chocolate chips and chopped toffee. Spread this on a 8 square inch greased baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes. Let it cool for an hour or two.

Sabudana vada

I have fond memories of eating Sabudana vada everytime going from Mumbai to Pune. They used to serve it with white delicious chutney. This weekend I made sabudana vada for breakfast. Its a very easy yet delicious breakfast. Here is what you will need:

1 cup sabudana (soak it in little water overnight)
1 big potato, boiled
1/2 cup peanuts, roasted and crushed
little bit chopped cilantro
2-3 green chili chopped
salt to taste
1/2 tsp black pepper
oil to fry

Heat oil in a pan. In the meantime add all the above ingredients in a big bowl and mix them well. Make vadas around 3 inches in diameter. When oil is hot, fry them crisp. Vadas are ready.

I served them with peanut chutney. I put roasted peanuts, coconut flakes, green chilli, salt, turmeric in a grinder and grinded it. Then I tempered it with hing, mustard seeds and curry leaves.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Homemade healthy frappachino

This recipe is inspired by Starbucks Caramal frappachino which is Nitin's favorite. But he cannot have it regularly as it is crazy expensive. Its difficult to make their frappachino at home because we do not have espresso machine at home, nor do we know their secret recipe. However, I came up with this healthy frappachino, which tastes amazing as well as not much dense in calories. And best part is that if you have stuff at home, you can make in 2 minutes. To make this frappachino, I bought the vanilla syrup and caramal sauce from Starbucks. I know it can be made at home too but the sauce and syrup is really not expensive and make frappachino experience really easy.
Here is how you can make it:

Ingredients:
2 tbsp Starbucks Vanilla Syrup
2-3 tbsp Starbucks Caramal sauce
1 cup 2% cold milk
few Ice cubes (I put 4 to be precise)
1 tsp instant coffee (I used Nestle instant coffee)
2 oz warm water
Some whipped cream
An attractive glass (to show off your frappachino:)

In a glass pour 2 tbsp vanilla syrup. In a bottle pour one cup milk and shake it for few seconds so that it becomes frothy (I used a cleaned pasta sauce bottle). Pour this frothy milk in the glass. Add few ice-cubes in the glass. Now in a small bottle, pour 2 oz warm water and 1 tsp coffee and shake it vigorously for a few seconds (I used cleaned baby food bottle :)). Pour this coffee gently on the glass. If poured correctly, it will reach only half way in the glass. Now add some whipped cream (Hey, not much calories. Four tbsp whipped cream has just 40 calories and 2 gm sugar). Now drizzle with caramal sauce and this delicious and healthy summer drink is ready.


Chole Palak ki sabji (Spinach chickpeas curry)

This recipe is inspired by BrijMohan Restaurant in Cincinati. We went to Cincinati couple of weeks back and we had Chole Palak for lunch. It was great and I had to try it.
I made it just 2 days back. It was a great success since Nitin liked it a lot. We had this with Parathas and it tasted awesome.

Recipe:
1 lb frozen spinach
1 Can Chole/Chickpeas/Garbanzo beans
2 big tomatoes
1 big onion
1/2 inch ginger
1 full garlic
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp kasoori methi
4 tbsp evaporated milk
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp chilli powder (or as per your taste)
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp garam masala
salt for taste

In a grinder grind onion, ginger and garlic. Keep this paste aside. In the same grinder, grind 2 tomatoes.
Heat pan and put oil. When oil is hot, put cumin seeds. When seeds crackle, add the onion, ginger, garlic paste freshly grinded. When the paste leaves oil on the side, add coriander powder, turmeric powder, garam masala, chilli powder and salt. After 1-2 minutes, add tomatoes. Keep stirring. Now add Spinach and chickpeas. Put evaporated milk. Cook on low heat for 10 minutes. Add kasoori methi. Cook for 2 more minutes. The delicious curry is ready.