Apple Almond Cake

Can't believe we are heading towards 2012 at break neck speed... 

Oct in India is a festive season - full of festivals - the biggest one being Diwali - like Christmas all the buildings and houses are decked with pretty lights, lanterns and flowers. I made rangoli with fresh flowers this time and the fragrance of that and the scented diyas (yes, you read right) kept the house looking pretty and smelling good!

After the week long break of feasting, crazy card nights, losing money and then making some, lights and lots of partying followed by my son's 3rd Birthday Party, tons of gooey chocolate cake and lots of Halloween Candy - I am so ready for a Breezer - oops I meant BREATHER!

I think we need to usher in November a bit slowly so we can savor December in all it's glory - the cold weather, the nice sunny days with a cold breeze, lots of Christmas festivity and holidays and bring in the New Year with a bang.

Delhi is flooded with apples currently and it's not exactly fall but I wanted a warm cinnamony something to keep me going as it gets cold early in the morning and late evenings... so you need something to tuck in with your coffee or tea.

I read a lot of great reviews about an apple cake from Dorie Greenspan's book and went about adapting it minimally to suit my needs. It was real easy to put together and I didn't even get my electric mixer out for this.

Ingredients

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup ground almonds

3/4 tsp baking powder

100 grams salted butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

3/4 cup apples finely chopped

Prepration

Center a rack on the oven and pre-heat it to 180C.

Butter a large loaf tin and prepare. 

Whisk together the dry ingredients. Melt the butter. Whisk together the eggs and then add sugar and whisk. Now I added a third of the dry ingredients and melted butter alternatively till completed incorporated. 

I then used a rubber spatula to fold in the apples.

I decorated the bottom of my loaf tin with slivers of apple and brown sugar and poured the batter over this. And baked it for about 40 minutes.

The pictures do no justice to this cake as it was moist and had a very nice nutty flavor from the almonds. It wasn't too apple or too sweet and just perfect to enjoy at anytime!

It made a hand snack for the the toddler to take to school too and the bonus that it had fruits and nuts had me beaming at my genius!

100th POST & A Giveaway!

Dear All,

I am currently visiting my mom and do not have any pics or lovely recipes for you... BUT please, please leave me a COMMENT if my BLOG has touched you in any way - made you a laugh, cry or think about food or made you relate to any of the posts in any way!

I am always complaining about how I want to be showered by some COMMENT love... and I will send you a small package :)!

And pics and recipes will be up soon :)!!!

Lots of Love,
Ruchi.

Mango Pancakes - it's raining Mangoes!

A Double Post... coz I am finally back - was feeling really lost without my laptop and have been waiting to blog for the last few days...

Summer is here and there is an abundance of fruit everywhere. India is known for it's yummilicious mangoes in the summer and you have over a 100 varieties available in the country. If I am obsessed about baking and cooking with strawberries my love for Mangoes cannot be left far behind. I have grown up on  staple diet of luscious orangey Alphonso Mangoes and just can't resist picking up some when I am at a fruit vendors. Previously, I did the following Mango posts Mango Cream Cake , Mango Shrikhand,  Mango Yogurt Mousse , Mango Panna , Mangoes & Cream Ice cream .

Now, I landed up with a batch of not so sweet mangoes and wanted to do something different with them... the morning was rainy, I had my cuppa coffee in my hand and was standing in the balcony (Delhi / Gurgaon has been having weird weather the past week), reminiscing about similar weather in Koh Samui a couple of years back and how I was stuffing my face with some Mango Pancakes. Now, I could really stuff a number of panckes into my mouth at that time 'coz I was a couple of months pregnant and that totally gave me the license to eat my heart out!

Anyways, coming back to the pancakes... I wanted to put together something easy in a jiffy with the ingredients I had on hand and was googling around for an easy recipe but didn't find any so put together mine after reading a ton of them!

Ingredients:

1 up all purpose flour

3/4 cup milk & a little more incase your batter lacks the consistency of regular pancakes

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 mango chopped into small bite sized pieces

I mixed all the ingredients, except the mangoes, for the pancake batter and let it sit on the counter for a couple about 30 minutes. As you can see from my pictures my mangoes pieces were chunks rather than bite sized and I added them to the batter when I poured it into my non-stick. The flavour was yummy! I sprinkled some powdered sugar on them and enjoyed them with a bit of honey but the rest of the family doused them with the eternal favorite Maple Syrup. I am guessing mango essence instead of vanilla essence can also be tried but they had a pretty nice mango-ey flavor to them!

I also wanted to submit this post for Healing Foods - Mango being hosted this month by the talented Reva from Kaarasaaram. Healing Food is the brain child of Cooking with Siri - a young working girl and part-time blogger! She has an amazing collection of recipes and better pictures to match so do hop on over to her blog to catch up on some great recipes.

I am so happy with the feedback that I have received for this recipe... that it has literally left me beaming! I am going to submit this post to the Breakfast Club. Krithi from http://krithiskitchen.blogspot.com
 has been kind enough to let me submit this post to the Breakfast Club #10 that she is guest hosting. It is originally hosted by  Helen from  Fuss Free Flavours, both really great blogs that I have discovered! I am so glad to be able to discover such great blogs with awesome recipes and pictures!

Kid's Delight (Recreating Restaurant Food) - YUM- O Everyday Chocolate Snack Cake

I have long been wanting to participate in various Blog Events but something or other is always happening in my life and I am very bad with deadlines... so this year I have made a resolution to participate in as many interesting ones as possible.

March has been an interesting month and full of events that seem such fun. Also, I get to read and ogle at yummy pics from various gorgeous blogs. The event, Kid's Delight is usually hosted at Srivalli's Blog ( a very interesting blog with tons of informations ranging from parenting to kid's recipes, recipes for bachelor's and daibetic's) but this time is being guest hosted by Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen - a beautiful blog full of vegetarian delights. The brief was simple to re-create a restaurant or store recipe that is your kid's favorite.

My toddler is crazzzzyyyy about chocolate cake and cannot resist a store bought or bakery cupcake or slice of chocolate cake. It becomes a little hazardous for me to take him everywhere 'coz we can see one of his 'terrible two' tantrums underway...  So this is going to definitely become my snack box favorite.

I am usually a bake from scratch kinda person, but I have been down with typhoid and just recovering... energy levels are low - so I wanted something that I could put together in under 30 minutes (including baking time). I had a box of Pillsbury Rich Choco Cake Mix sitting in my pantry. So I just followed the instructions to  T with my own little substitutions to make it healthy.

The box read - Add 1/4 cup oil, 3/4 cup water and 2 eggs to the cake mix. I did this recipe two ways and both ways was a winner...

1 Box Rich Choco Cake Mix
1/4 cup olive Oil
3/4 cup home-made yogurt (1/2 cup yogurt + 1/4 cup water)
1 egg (I also made this by omitting the egg and adding 1/4tsp of baking soda)

I just mixed together everything using a fork and popped it into a loaf pan. It called for baking in a square or round 8-inch pan for 20-25 minutes at 170 but my cake was very dense and required at least 45 minutes at 175.

The result was a very light and healthy chocolate cake. It didn't taste even slight sour 'coz of the yogurt and I carry a slice whenever I have to go anywhere near a bakery or cake shop and my toddler is too busy chomping on this instead of asking for any other treats.

Hope your kids enjoy this as much!

Easy Strawberry Dessert...

And yet another strawberry filled dessert! Well, I bought all these strawberries and couldn't eat them 'coz I got diagnosed with Typhoid - so I am on a strict diet of  various types of rice preparations, Bottle gourd ('Lauki'), Round gourd ('Tinda') and lots of fluids. Needless to say I don't have any taste in my mouth and all I dream is about able to eat some YUMMM - O food. Not allowed to step out of the house my daily dose of television consists of Rachel Allen, Nigella Lawson and Masterchef US and all the other lovely blogs that keep updating their websites regularly.

My son has been a bit upset seeing me lying down for most parts of the day and so he has been kept company by his dad (who managed to be by my side for most of my down days), grandparents, friends. One such friend of ours has been really helping us out with the baby and sent over some yummy Mutton Biryani for my hubby (the recipe and pics of which I am going to be featuring soon...) - so as a thank you gesture, the minute my fever vanished and I could get back on my feet I whipped together the easiest strawberry dessert I could. I had to use the yummy strawberry and couldn't let it go waste.

 I have very rough estimations to give for this dessert, as I didn't taste it and didn't measure anything - but everyone said it tasted great so I am assuming it was good!

Start with about 250 grams of strawberries - wash and slice them finely.

Take about 1 cup of whipping cream and whip well. Add icing sugar and about 100 grams strawberries and whip it into the cream. Don't over puree the strawberries so you can taste chunks of the fruit in it.

Now take 3/4 cup of water, mix some sugar and chocolate powder in it and make a thick paste. Dip the lady fingers in it and line the bottom of your bowl or dessert glasses (I made it for my friends, hubby and toddler... I think I used about 8-10 lady fingers). Then cover the lady fingers with the chopped strawberries. Douse this with any leftover chocolate - sugar- water mixture. Now add the whipped cream mixture over this and decorate with cut strawberries, lady fingers and chocolate powder. Leave in the fridge to chill and enjoy!

I completely forgot that I wanted to send this as my entry to "Cooking with Fruits" event to the Tastebuds blog  http://tastebuds1.blogspot.com/2011/01/cooking-with-fruits-event.html that I came across online. It is a lovely blog with lots of interesting recipes and kitchen tips!

A few more Restaurant Reviews - Delhi & Gurgaon (ordering in)

I have waited a while to visit a substantial number of restraurants in and around Delhi & Gurgaon before writing this up. I will further divide this into take-out and nice sit-down kinda places...

For restaurant numbers and menu - do refer to Zomato.com. Also, there is another new service from bitequest.com - they made a booking for me and I received a 15% discount on my bill - how cool was that - WOW!

Take-Out:
1. Colonel's Kebabz at Arjun Marg, Gurgaon- is our standard take out choice for Indian food especially Butter Chicken or Chicken Tikka Masala though we still do not find their Tandoori Chicken upto the mark.

It used to be Nawab's at SuperMart I, Gurgaon (Needs Market) but the quality of food there has really deteriorated. Also, I have heard rave reviews about Dana Choga, though never eaten there. The hubby has and also says it's awesome.

Tried Buddy's Broaster at a friends son's Birthday and they took me by surprise. They are not exactly as good as KFC which I prefer over McDonald's but their kathi roll's were great and chicken burgers were good. Also, heard good things about their nuggets and popcorn chicken.

Another, great place to order is from Burmese Kitchen - most of the dishes we've tried at this place have been true to taste and really had the hubby and me licking our fingers. Don't know of any places in Gurgaon that do Burmese food so this is always the first choice if we have to dig into some great Khow Suey.

Will leave it to the ordering in part for now and tackle sit down fine-dining next time around

It's the season to be Strawberried....

Strawberry, strawberry here and there
Strawberry, strawberry everywhere

Two strawberry & chocolate cakes in two weeks - need I say more. The Delhi / Gurgaon markets seem to be flooded with these berries and chocolate cake is always a nice accompaniment for strawberries and cream or mascarpone!