Saturday, August 21, 2010

Lemon Date Cupcakes


Recently i started watching food network and some programs are really good.. One of them is Cup cake wars.. I was amazed at how people come up with their own recipe and create those beautiful cupcakes. So here i my share of mix and match inspired cup cake.

Lemon Date Cupcakes
Ingredients
4 Cup Maida
3 Cup Dates
2 Cup Milk
1 Cup Butter
2 Cup Cream
1 Cup Icing Sugar
1.5 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
2 Lemons
1 Spoon Baking Powder
1/4 Spoon Baking Soda
Salt to taste

Method
  • Grind a cup of dates in with the milk to form smooth paste. Keep aside.
  • Whip sugar and butter using hand mixer till mixture is smooth and fluffy
  • Add eggs and blend well to get smooth mixture.
  • Sieve Maida, Baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
  • Add it to the butter, sugar - egg mixture in portions alternating with milk-date mixture, beating well with each addition.
  • Add in remaining 2 cups of dates - chopped and a lemon's peel grated and as well as its juice. Mix lightly till combined.
  • Preheat oven to 350F/180C
  • Line the cupcake pan with the cupcake paper cups and fill each of them to 2/3rd with the cake batter
  • Bake the cakes at 350F/180C for 25 minutes. Keep aside to cool down completely.
  • Add cream in a bowl and mix it with the icing sugar.
  • Whip it using hand mixer on low speed till the cream becomes fluffy and stiff
  • Scoop it on each cup cake or decorate using piping bag. Garnish with grated lemon peels.
Notes
I created a cone that i made from the parchment paper and piped the icing on top of few cakes and scooped the icing on others. So making cone is alternate to using piping bag :)
While whipping the cream its better to use hand mixer as its easy, fast and reliable. :)
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Okra Fry


The Inchin bamboo garden here serves this dish and its Ajoy's favorite. Of course it was Milind who introduced us to this dish given his liking for Okra. I wanted to try this out when he was staying with us but somehow it just remained a wish. Today finally I try this and I am glad I did. The dish turned out very nice. Worth making it multiple times.

Okra Fry
Ingredients
5 Cups Okra
4 Spoon Maida
4 Spoon Corn Flour
1 Onion
1 Green Chili
3 Dried Red Chillies
2 Garlic Cloves
2.5 Spoon Soy Sauce
1/2 Spoon Red Chili Powder
1/4 Spoon Garlic Paste
Oil
Salt to taste

Method
  • Mix in Maida, corn flour, red chili powder, garlic paste and salt to taste toegether.
  • Add in water and make a running consistency batter for pakodas.
  • Add in handful of okras in the batter and take them out into hot oil.
  • Fry them in oil on medium - high heat till the okras are golden in color. Keep aside on tissues to drain the oil. Fry all of the okra pieces similarly.
  • Heat couple spoon of oil and add thinly sliced onion, green chili and garlic cloves. Saute till it turns light brown in color
  • Add in dried red chillies crushing them by hand, soya sauce and saute.
  • Add in fried okras and stir. Serve immediately
Notes
If you are going to serve this to guests, it would be good idea to keep fried okra ready but saute them in the sauce only just before serving that would help in keeping the crunchy, crispiness of the okra.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Crabs Pulav


Recently we started getting the crabs from Costco. The first thing I made was this Pulav, an impromptu attempt to make something quick yet tasty. It turned out such a hit that we craved for more for days.. So this dish these days makes appearances in our meal quite regularly.

Crabs Pulav
Ingredients
1.5 Cup Rice
300g Crabs Meat
1 Cup Curd
1/2 Spoon Red Chili Powder
1/2 Cup Black Pepper Powder
1/4 Spoon Coriander Powder
1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder
A pinch of Cinnamon Powder
A pinch of Cloves Powder
Salt to taste
Ghee

Method
  • Mix in curd with red chilli powder, black pepper powder, coriander powder, jeera powder, Cinnamon powder, cloves powder and salt to taste.
  • Add in the crab meat to the mixture and keep aside for hour or two.
  • Soak rice for half an hour.
  • Boil water and add in rice. Cook till rice is almost done. Keep aside.
  • Heat ghee and add the crabs-curd-spices mixture and on medium heat cook till the crabs are done and the mixture separates from the ghee.
  • Add in the cooked rice and mix lightly. Sprinkle salt to taste.
  • Cook for a minute or two. Serve with raita.
Notes
Here we get big crabs, we got around 1.5lb = 0.7Kg and then after washing removed the meat from the shell and used the meat. If the shell is too hard or crabs or small try with shell.
To get the crab meat out from shell, we cut the shell with sharp knife and take the meat carefully out.
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