HEALTHY APPLE BANANA MUFFINS

This is a sort of inspired post from here. I wouldn't do any justice if i said i tweaked it. I took the measurements as it is and changed some ingredients (well, many..). Firstly i substituted half of the mashed bananas with apple puree. Secondly i replaced AP flour with Whole wheat flour. As for the third tweak, i replaced white sugar with demerera. The resulting texture and aroma was good the next day with the sweet strong smell of demerera and nutmeg (i prefer nutmeg over cinnamon,  too pungent).

I am not preaching austerity or health benefits folks, Diwali is round the corner, so i am saving the calories for the gastronomic gushes and the overload my stomach is going to take over the month end. :-)

Here is the original + inspired  recipe

INGREDIENTS:

Banana(she used dole, long variety)	2  (i used one banana and one apple)
Flour	3/4 cup (replaced with whole wheat flour)
Walnut,chopped	1/4 cup
Sugar	1/2 of a 3/4 cup (less than half cup of demerera)
Oil	1/4 cup
Baking powder	1/2 tsp
Baking soda	1/2 tsp
Vanilla essence	1/2 tsp (replaced with 1/2 tsp of nutmeg)

1. Pre heat oven to 190^oC
2. Take the peeled bananas in a bowl and mash it well with hands to make it a paste. Add oil,vanilla sugar to it and mix well. Keep a side.
3. Mix flour,baking powder,baking soda in another bowl with a whisk.
4. Fold gently,do not over mix,just mix well so that every thing blends properly and don't beat,with 3/4 th of the walnuts added to it,reserve some for sprinkling on the top.
5. Line the muffin tray with paper liners and spoon the batter in it up to 3/4 th of it. It will raise so much so make sure you leave room for it.Top with some walnut sprinkled over it.
6. Bake for 30 minutes or until the toothpick inserted comes out clean and top turns golden brown.Mine got baked at around 28  minutes itself,so keep an eye after 25 minutes.

CHOCOLATE COOKIES

I should have posted this earlier. This is an impulsive recipe. I didn't take this from any website or cookbook. Just a spontaneous thought about what to do with the frosting that went wrong. I am jotting down the recipe (roughly)

recipe

milk chocolate (melted) - 200gms

butter                  - 200gms

icing sugar             - 400gms

instant coffee          - 1 tsp

cocoa powder            - 2 tbsp

baking soda             - 2 tsp

flour                   - 350gms

i sort of eyeballed the flour. Kept on adding it to the frosting until it came together. Mix everything, roll into balls flatten with a fork, bake for 15 mts.This will be soft when warm but hardens as it cools. Tastes chewy the same day, but better and crispy the next day.

  

BIRTHDAY CAKE

If any body cares for day 1, here it is.  


day 2). Frost the cake, check for the look and feel and ready the cake.

I sliced the cake horizontally into two. Good, no problem, that was easy with the new turn table at hand.

The icing was rock hard when i took it out from the fridge, so i thought of easing it down by whipping it once again. OH MY GOD, THE ICING FELL APART IN CLUMPS, IT HAD A CURDLED LOOK AND GOSH..! MY HEART STOPPED. I had no idea of how to repair this. After racking my brains for a few minutes, i decided to start afresh, this time going with the age old recipe of butter, icing sugar only.

So made a fresh batch of butter cream with the above ratio omitting the milk chocolate, it was a bit grainy at first, but as i whipped in intervals of 15 mts 3 times, the texture was nice and smooth. THANK GOD..face saved.

But, there is the catch, i had promised her a chocolate frosting. I didn't want to experiment again (putting the inner genius and the genie to sleep; i now understood the look on appa's face), i made a chocolate truffle by melting equal portions of dark chocolate and cream till it is of pourable consistency. Whew....let me catch some breath.

Firstly, (remember i had left the cake as it is once it was slit) i layered the cake with buttercream, then crumb coated it and set it in the fridge for 15 mts. Once set, i plastered (is it the right word..?) the cake with more buttercream and smothered the edges nice and smooth. Set in fridge for another 15 minutes. Now the cake looked half beautiful (or half ugly...!). Gently pour the cooled truffle until it coated all the sides of the cake. That was the only thing i could well in this (mis)adventure. There it was a smooth delicious looking chocolate cake.

Next, what, i let my imagination run wild and piped out designs using the remaining buttercream all over the cake. (lousy, lopsided, lethargic). These would be the words going through anybody's mind if they caught me in the act of piping. Time to get serious and get good practice. All in all, the cake was done. It looked pretty, not professional. Am waiting with bated breath about the outcome of the cake from my friend.


P.S. For people wondering what i did with the chocolate frosting "gone wrong" check out my next post.

EGGLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

I had a request For a birthday cake. An eggless one. Till then i didn't have any chance to try eggless ones, but this friend is a strict vegetarian; so, for her little one's birthday, i challenged myself to make a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.I zeroed in a recipe from a milkmaid collection recipe book of my mother's.I was not sure of how the texture of this cake is going to be or how much this will yield, so i made a trial version a week before. As this was my first cake for somebody else, i had to set out a plan to make the cake and frosting.

day 1). Make the cake and frosting, set both in fridge.

Chocolate cake recipe

milk maid - 400gms
butter- 150 gms
maida - 200 gms
cocoa powder - 35 gms
baking powder - 2 tsp
baking soda - 1 tsp
warm water - 200 ml
salt - a pinch
vanilla essence - 1 tsp

grease a 9 inch baking pan and line it with butter paper. (i always do this, makes cleaning the dishes easy)

sift the maida, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt twice.
melt butter in a bowl and allow it to cool
Add milk maid and mix well
stir in the water and mix again
when everything is a homogeneous mixture, add the dry mixture and mix lightly until they all come together.
Do not over mix.

transfer into the cake pan and bake at 150 for 45 mts.

You have to make it to believe it. The cake smells heavenly. I had made a lots of cakes before, but his was something special. It tasted so divine the next day. I had set it on the table early in the morning to cut out the wedges, the whole room smelled of milkmaid (i could eat a whole can just like that). The cake, though lacked the spring form effect of an egg based one, was dense and very very tasty, like a pound cake. But the aroma, nothing could be compared to it. So, my eggetarian friends, please try this cake atleast once in a lifetime, you will never regret it

Allow the cake to cool.

Frosting:

This was another opportunity to spread the austerity drive that i always practice. There were lots of milk chocolates in the fridge; suddenly an inner voice prompted me to substitute cocoa with milk chocolate (that was the disaster waiting to happen).

I whistled aloud of what a genius i was; Appa just gave a baffled look..!(i didn't know why).

So meticulously i took 250 gms of butter, 500 gms of icing sugar, 250 gms of melted milk chocolate and mixed everything with a hand held mixer and whipped them until they were soft and fluffy.

Notwithstanding, the inner genius (i think it should be read as genie) hinted on to add a table spoon of instant coffee powder to make it a mocha frosting.

Just imagine, a first timer dishing out a chocolate cake with chocolate mocha frosting (sounds so professional yo..).

Everything was hunky dory, the cake was good and the frosting was well done. I thanked all my stars and went to bed.