Happy Birthday!!!!

I have been working on the cake for the last couple of days... 'coz I have the tiniest oven ever and to just get some great sponges out took me two days - baby calling every time I start beating the egg whites and sugar, once the cake turned out half baked 'coz I took it out in panic as it was getting charred on the top but all in all I was pleased with what I got.

My husband really likes the taste of fresh fruit, some cream and mascarpone with the fruit. I couldn't think of a winter fruit that I would put into a cake at this time of the year so first I got two butterless sponges  out of the way - to save on the calories. Sandwiched three layers of cake with whipped cream, mascarpone cheese and a tin of strawberries from the strawberry filling sans the syrup - I used to the syrup to brush the sponges and soak in it. Topped it with whipped cream, chocolate shavings and chocolate squiggles!

Since I couldn't lay my hand on any fresh strawberries  there aren;t any on the top but they would have completed the look... I am going to soon put up a piece of cake to show all the layers! This is the first time I have been able to decorate a cake without feeling awfully bad about it... so here are the pics I have already.

The most sinful Chocolate Cupcakes Ever...

My son's best friend turned a year older and to celebrate her b'day in school I did a batch of chocolate cupcakes - but the school teachers didn't want them frosted! So for the last few days I have been looking for a recipe for a cupcake that would remain moist without any frosting and thinking up ideas to decorate it without adding a ton of extra sugar to it...

I luckily chanced upon the Cupcake Project at the nth hour and it was a boon! I found the best cupcake recipe ever and it worked out well!

So here goes - the order was for 20 cupcakes and so I made two batches of batter and got about 24 cupcakes from it. The recipe calls for filling the muffin liners about 2/3 full but I wanted a puffed up top and filled it almost to the top. The result was gorgeous peaked cupcakes that melted in the mouth and gave an extra bite of chocolate chips in every mouthful... absolutely sinful for the children!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup Cocoa Powder
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/3 cup mini milk chocolate chips

The only thing I omitted here is the salt since my butter was salted and I added a 1/4 cup of brown sugar to make this more moist and give it a deeper flavor.

Beat the butter till softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating till well combined and you seemed to get a wonderful mousse like batter. Combine all the dry ingredients into a separate bowl. Stir the milk and vanilla together in another bowl.  Now add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar-egg batter and combine. Now add the milk-vanilla to this and beat. Keep alternating till all the dry and wet ingredients have been incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips with a rubber spatula till just combined. Now scoop it into muffin liners till almost full. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree Celsius for 20 minutes.

Since the cupcakes have to be delivered at 8am, and I wanted them to be as fresh as possible - I have just finished baking and decorating them. And since the pictures were taken around 11pm the pictures are very dark and grainy but for now they will have to do and maybe I can try and get some more pics in the morning?

Also, since I couldn't do any frosting I just decorated the cupcakes with smiles made of sparkles and silver sugar balls and heart sugar candy.

Pictures from my kitchen....

I have been really caught up with Diwali, celebrating my son's second birthday and travelling a bit with my hubby - so blogging has been on the back burner and though the cooking and baking is happening there hasn't been time for quality pictures. There have been a few dinners and kiddie parties that I managed to get pictures from that I thought I would share with you...

The first one is from a kiddie party - Burgers and Yummy Garlicky Mashed Potatoes - except for the bun the burgers were homemade from vegetables, potatoes, soy chunks and the kids loved it! The masked potatoes were boiled with garlic and herbs, milk and cream added to the mash to make the potatoes really soft and creamy.

The next one is Nachos with refried beans, cheese and spring onions.

The third one is a trifle again done for a kiddie party that's why the somewhat garish colors - it was filled with custard, home made spongecake and fruits - topped off with a low fat cream whipped with icing sugar and decorated with fresh cherries and sparklers - all in all a pretty healthy dessert.

Lastly, there is some corn on the cob in the background and individual no bake blueberry mousse cups!

Hopefully, I should be back with some more fun stuff soon!

Roasted Pumpkin & Caramelized Onion Soup

Well to be truthful it isn't exactly fall like weather in India but it has gotten a bit cool in the mornings and late in the evenings. But this soup is dedicated to my days in NY when I could barely put together a meal to save my life but a warm soup with cheesy bread was a welcome respite during Oct-Mar and I had an open kitchen and my roommate was always hassled about our clothes smelling of food. Now I do not have to worry about things like that and there is always SOME smell wafting from my kitchen - I like my house to smell warm - like cinnamon and spice or like bread baking or freshly baked cookies. The best compliment I did get was from my neighbor sometime back that whenever she opened her house she felt like coming into mine coz of the smells wafting from it.

So I got myself some pumpkin because my baby insisted and I thought I would humor him and then just didn't know what to do with it. Pumpkin or kaddu is usually cooked in a sweet / savory way to be had with pooris in our house but I am just not a poori person. Also, baby didn't like poori and hubby travelling so no one to eat poori and my hubby does run a mile from some veggies I may add that pumpkin is one of them... so I am sitting in my room looking at this huge piece of pumpkin thinking what I can do with it when I decided to roast it whole so it doesn't get spoiled. I just drizzled it with some olive oil and popped it into the oven for an hour at 250. The house suddenly started smelling gorgeous with the smell of roasted pumpkin. Sometime earlier I had sautéed some onion, ginger and garlic for curry and all the smells combined together smelled heavenly... so I decided to just combine them into a soup!

So, everything for this was totally done andaaz se - please follow your nose for this recipe and when it smells right I think you're done :)!

Roasted about 300grams of pumpkin
3 red onions sliced thinly + 3 spring onion bulbs
3-4 big cloves of garlic
4-5 cups vegetable broth

Saute the onions in some olive oil, then add some garlic and salt for seasoning. Cook this mixture down till the onions turn burnt sienna colored and are absolutely caramelised. Add the pumpkin and mash it all up - add some of the broth so that the veggies don't burn. Now puree this and add more broth  - till you like the consistency. I didn't make this soup too thin - 'coz the thickness gives it more flavor and depth. Add a bit of fresh cream to season this if you are not worried about the calories and some brown bread croutons or garlicky cheese bread to make a complete meal out of this! 

And sorry about not putting up pics folks.. I am travelling again - nothing exotic - just visiting my parents.. and I forgot my camera in the hurry of packing all and sundry for my 2 year old... so I have a huge backlog to catch up on!

Really Dense Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes with a wonderful Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

My mil's birthday was yesterday and we needed  an eggless recipe - the first eggless recipe I have tried and I think everyone seemed happy to eat these lovely cupcakes and they were approved by my son too! My family has always been very supportive of my baking and have eaten whatever I have put in front of them - when I first started out my cakes were very amateurish and kiddie looking and I didn't think they tasted great but were always met with rave reviews from my hubby and his parents. Back in time, I didn't know you could get whipped cream in India and didn't know fine sugar and butter would make a lovely cloud like, ethereal and fluffy white mousse like mass with which I could decorate my cakes and cupcake with but I have definitely come and long way from there  :)!

So there really easy chocolate cupcakes have one key to their softness - stir in the same direction - do not change directions. This should make about 11-12 cupcakes. Bake for about 18 minutes but check after 15 - since one of my cupcakes got slightly burned from the corner.

1.5 cup flour
1/3 cup good cocoa powder - like Hersheys
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup fine sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup buttermilk (milk + 2 tsp lemon juice)

Sieve the dry ingredients. I used a hand mixer to mix the sugar and oil. Then added the buttermilk and vanilla extract. Then to this I added the dry ingredients and mixed it together with a spoon. I found that I needed to add a couple of teaspoons of milk to this to make the consistency right. The vinegar was added in the end and mixed and immediately poured into the cupcake liners. But I had switched off the oven b'coz od some incessant bells and the cupcakes still rose inspite of discovering it after a whole 5 mins of the cupcakes being inside - maybe coz the oven was already hot - I don't know but my guess is that the recipe was good?

Vanilla Buttercream frosting:

1/2 a vanilla bean
3:1 sugar and butter ratio - depending on how much frosting you want to make i.e. 3 cups sugar and 1 cup butter
2 tablespoons whipping cream

Whip together with electric mixer to form a cloudy mass. I frosted the cupcakes by piping the frosting on and then added some chocolate chips on top to give a nice contrast on the top.

The pictures were taken in the evening so aren't very bright but should be on soon.

And the carrot cupcakes got over before I could take any pictures... so am going to bake a batch soon to have them on here!