Wednesday, June 22, 2011

KAJU BARFI



This post is a bit late, actually the first post abroad. Landed in the cleanest city of the world five days back and am awestruck by the clockwork precision of things managed in Singapore. Since i didn't bring in much for A to eat, i thought of making it here; there is no dearth of shops that supply exclusive Indian goods here. This is the first of many to come (or so i hope).

It was pretty easy. Just mix in powdered cashew nuts with sugar syrup and tada...you are done.The one thing i was blown over again by how clean the sugar was. Not a speck of dirt. In the other post of Kaju Katli, the color was a bit ashen (courtesy:India sugar industry). I was too apprehensive to use any bleaching agents to whitish color (as in store bought ones). I just add milk to the sugar syrup to remove whatever slime that floats by. This time i didn't have to do anything, the syrup was crystal clear. A had already ordered the moon cake moulds online. The sweet came out beautifully and were lip smacking to taste. Aren't they cute..?

Thursday, June 9, 2011

JUMBO VANILLA CUPCAKES


The day i sulked about sponge cakes, the baking fairy must have heard it. She turned around and stayed with me for the next two endeavours (devil's food cake and the current post). The cupcakes turned out beautifully. More beautiful than i had expected. They were absolutely spongy, melt in the mouth cupcakes. I had never dreamt that i would bake such beautiful cupcakes one day.


Thanks to "The little teochew". This is her recipe for clear water sponge cake. I added a dash of vanilla to make it a vanilla cupcake. Next time, should try it with orange or lime flavour.



Friday, June 3, 2011

DEVIL'S FOOD CAKE




This is my second frosted cake. As i have already said, frosting is not my forte, but this seemed quite easy. The recipe is HHB's Devil's Food cake.This is a deeply dark, chocolaty, velvety cake. The only thing i tweaked is, i omitted the bananas in her recipe and i think i went overboard with the spikes on the cake. Her cake's spikes are much gentler. Should work upon it next time. May be i was very much carried away by the way the frosting was responding to the movements of the spoon. They spiked very nicely. Only after seeing the picture did i realise that i had played too much with it. Other wise, for a person like me who doesn't like chocolate too much, this was an occasion to fall in love with chocolate.


Another tweak was that i didn't use dark chocolate for frosting, i used milk chocolate (phew, there were so many leftovers..)along with low fat cream (that is all i could manage in chennai). The cake was overall received well, but i will stay with my bet with fruited cakes that are my all time favourite.








Wednesday, June 1, 2011

KULFI



Chennai's summer was at its best this year. Temperatures soared in par with gold prices. The best thing to cool off was the CSK matches and they kept winning and winning. They were great and unstoppable. Glad they won the cup again.

Summer brings with it all kinds of coolants. Seasonal fruits, vegetables and other delicacies that are synonymous with summer crop up at every nook and corner of the city.

When we were young (i am not old now :-}), a kulfi man with his trademark red cloth bundled over a barrel of kulfis, would ring his trawler's bell (wonder why they didn't' have the conventional horn...!). All the kids would be out and throwing tantrums at their parents to get what they wanted. But, once amma tasted it and decided to make it herself once she saw our (we are three gentle giants) appetite for it.

The recipe is very simple: Whole milk boiled for a very long time along with crushed almonds,cardamom with a dash of cornflour and sugar. Once it cooled off, they re poured into kulfi moulds and frozen till rock hard and all of us would delve into it as much as we liked.

I grew up with this; when it was time to make my own, i started to improvise. I omitted cardamon and added badam flavouring (MAS is the best), and thinly sliced almonds to give an extra kick to this dessert. Biting into the almond slices midway adds richness to this dish and we all love it.




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