Eggless Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Bake-a-thon 2015: Day 7
Bake of the Day: Eggless Strawberry Creamcheese Cupcakes
Did you know that yesterday, December 15th, was National Cupcake day? I didn't either, but it was on my daughter's calendar and that's how I found out :-) So here's a recipe celebrating the cupcake day.

I actually made these for my mom's 60th birthday couple of months ago. We also celebrated my daughter's 3rd birthday on the same day, hence the 60 & 3 toppers on the cake. I decorated some with fresh strawberries and some with fondant toppers. Base is my favorite vegan vanilla cupcakes stuffed with a piece of cream cheese which is in turn topped with strawberry jam.

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No-Bake Nutella Cheesecake

Blogging Marathon# 55: Week 2/ Day 3

Theme: Nutella Galore

Dish: No-Bake Nutella Cheesecake

Here's another lip smacking dessert using Nutella, a no-bake cheesecake. I usually plan the dishes to make for the marathon, well ahead of time. But for this week except for the muffins I made for the first day, I had nothing planned for the next 2 days. I was able to make the s'mores based on my son's tv show, but I was clueless as to what to make for today.
Clueless because there are sooooooo many dishes that can be made with Nutella and I'm sure every single one would taste amazing. I was very tempted to make Valli's Nutella mousse in chocolate cups, but was too lazy to make the chocolate part.

Then I saw this no-bake Nutella cheesecake on Pinterest and made it right away to make sure I don't change my mind :-) Original recipe used frozen whipped topping, but I didn't want to wait for the whipped topping to thaw, so I whipped fresh cream and folded it into the nutella-creamcheese mixture.

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Cucumber Tea Sandwich

Blogging Marathon# 52: Week 4/ Day 3

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes

Dish: Cucumber Sandwich
Today's recipe is very very simple with just few ingredients. Many of you might even think that this sandwich doesn't really need a recipe post because it's that easy and simple.

All you need is green chutney, cucumber, cream cheese (or thick curd) and bread slices. With all the sandwich breads that I have been making, I was looking for simple sandwich recipes and I landed on this post by Sala @ Veggie Belly. Her clicks make you want to grab a sandwich right out of the monitor :-)

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Neapolitan Tarts (Chocolate crust with No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake filling)

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 23
Bake of the Day: Neapolitan Tarts (Chocolate crust with No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake) 

I can't believe we are almost at the end of April and our mega baking marathon is going to be done in 4 days. Time sure flies when we are having this much fun. If you want to know what I baked so far for the marathon, then check here.
For the final week I have some miscellaneous bakes, basically dishes that didn't really fall in any of my chosen themes for the previous weeks (breads, breakfast & cakes). First up is this Neapolitan tart -- with a chocolate crust and a no-bake strawberry cheesecake filling. 

Chocolate, Vanilla & Strawberry are the classic Neapolitan flavor combination (like in the ice cream). In this recipe, they are showcased in chocolate tarts filled with vanilla flavored strawberries. Recipe is from Vegetarian Times magazine.

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Apricot Creamcheese Scones

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 15

Bake of the Day: Breakfast -- Apricot Cream cheese Scones

I love making scones because they come together very easily and are relatively quick to bake. Also they need all cold ingredients -- so there's no need to wait for the ingredients to come to room temperature (or worry about the melted butter that you hurriedly wanted to bring to room temperature in the microwave).

Scones from some of the bakeries are very heavy, dense and flavorless. But I am very tried so far happy with the scone recipes I've tried so far. They are not very dense and quite flavorful.
I've posted scones made with cream before and today's are made with cream cheese. Full fat or low fat cream cheese can be used and like other scone recipes, these are easy to put together and quick to bake.

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Individual No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecakes (in a bottle)

Summer is officially here and we are already in the middle of serious Grilling season. With 4th of July approaching real fast, I thought I will share some of my favorite dishes that can be made for your next backyard bbq or bring them to a potluck or even a picnic. 

First up is a no-bake cheesecake with layers of cookie crumbs, chocolate cheesecake filling, toffee bits and chopped nuts. Doesn't that sound delicious. These are a big hit every time I served them at parties. They are easy to make and can be made ahead of time, so you are ready to chill and enjoy your party.

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Caramelized Onion & Zucchini Quiche (with Spelt flour Crust)

To me making a pie crust has always been a daunting task. I've had couple of bad experiences both with homemade and store bought pie crusts in the past which made me avoid making a pie altogether. To be honest I'm not a big fan of pie. Given a chance I would rather enjoy the filling without the crust.

But quiche is a different story. I fell in love with quiche the first time I ate it about 10 years ago. One of my co-workers brought it over for potluck lunch and I probably ate almost the whole pie. I tried to recreate it at home a couple of time, but the pie crust failed me. I finally gave up on it. I never dared to make it even though it was always on the back of my mind.

Finally this weekend I decided it was time for me to try my hand at making the pie crust and quiche. I already had a bookmarked recipe for quiche with spelt flour crust from Culinate. It is not the recipe that made me bookmark the article, it is the way the author gives you confidence in making the pie crust. She makes you feel that anyone can make a pie crust and the detailed instructions really help. 

This pie crust is made of Spelt flour (equal quantity of whole wheat flour can be substituted here) and uses a stick of butter and half a stick of cream cheese. The dough is soft and really easy to handle. I had trouble fluting the edges and at one corner I trimmed too much of the excess which resulted in shrunken crust after baking. But that didn't really affect the final taste of the quiche, the crust turned was flaky & buttery.

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Kolacky Cookies

I'm in a baking spree for the past couple of days. I made Chatti Pathiri, the Indian version of Turkish Baklava, yesterday for Indian Cooking Challenge and today I made these melt in your mouth European Kolacky Cookies for this week's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge'.
I bought some cherry pie filling a while back when I was making this Black Forest Cake. I had some leftover in the fridge that needed to be used up. I saved the wrapper from the container (Solo brand) because it had 2 recipes using the pie filling. These Kolacky cookies caught my eye because it had very few ingredients and seemed easy enough to make.

The filling for these cookies can be just about anything. Any flavored pie filling or jam or fruit preserves would work. Even chocolate-hazelnut spread would be great. I made a batch with cherry pie filling and the other with Nutella. I was worried that the filling would melt and ooze out after baking, but they held up pretty good and there was no melting whatsoever.

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Eggless Mango Cake with Mango Cream Frosting

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Mango Cake with Mango Cream Frosting

Second Cake for this week is a very moist and addictive Eggless Mango Cake. My cousin and her husband have their birthdays within a week of each other in October and we celebrated with this yummy cake at my other cousin's place. I baked the cakes at home, wrapped them up and took them to my cousin's place, then frosted the cake at my cousin's house.

Recipe is adapted from Vaishali's Mango cupcakes recipe. I made the cupcakes once before and for this cake I doubled the recipe to get 2 8" round cakes. This is yet another simple recipe to make, just mix wet & dry ingredients separately then mix them together to make the cake batter.

I actually wanted to make a Mango cool cake, but the cake itself was so moist I didn't want the cake to fall apart, so left it as is. The final cake was a super duper hit with everyone. 

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Eggless Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange Cream cheese Buttercream frosting

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 1
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange Cream cheese Buttercream frosting

September & October are birthday months in my house. Both my kids are September born and my husband is October born. So when I saw the theme 'Eggless Cakes' for this edition of BM, I knew I have to take it up to try new cakes to celebrate the birthdays.

For my daughter's b'day I made - Pistachio Rosewater cupcakes & Chocolate-Vanilla Marble cupcakes. Both of them were a hit at the party.

For my son's birthday which is exactly 15days after my daughter's I knew I had to make a chocolate cake. I asked my son if he had any preference and he said he wanted a orange flavored chocolate cake. His latest favorite show is Pokemon and can talk about the characters for hours. So I made him a Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange cream cheese-butter cream frosting and I tried to add one of the Pokemon characters in the frosting.

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Eggless Stuffed French Toast Roll Ups

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Get it Rolled
Dish: Eggless Stuffed French Toast Roll Ups

Final day of Blogging marathon and today's dish was the toughest of all to select. I usually make a note of all the dishes that I want to make for the theme right after Valli announces the themes. But this week under the theme 'Get it Rolled' I had the first two dishes cooked and done (Summer Rolls & Chana Dal Kebabs) long back, but the third dish was eluding me.

I probably went through 10 different things to make--mentally, but some seemed too elaborate (no time for that) or involved deep frying (it's too hot to deep fry) or I didn't have the ingredients to make a dish. As I was quickly exhausting all my options, one morning I woke up and wanted to make French toast for breakfast and remembered seeing French Toast roll ups on Pinterest. I made them eggless following Hari Chandana's recipe from here.

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Eggless No-Bake Mango Cheesecake (using Agar-Agar)

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Bookmarked Recipes

Dish: Individual Eggless Mango Cheesecake without Gelatin based on Nags recipe @ Edible Garden

Day 3 of BM# 29 and today I have made a delicious No-Bake Eggless Mango Cheesecake that is to die for. I actually made it 3 times to get the measurement of agar-agar (Chinagrass) right (and to gobble it down of course). Nags original recipe used gelatin and the first time I tried I added the same quantity of agar and the result was rubbery mango jelly. As I said it took me two more attempts to get the right quantity for soft and smooth mango layer.

This dessert is a crowd pleaser. I made it for my blog buddies and also for another get-together party. This is one recipe that looks sophisticated, but it takes very little time to put together.

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Grilled Veggie & Cheese Stuffed Rolls

After that decadent stuffed breakfast and indulgent stuffed lunch, I have a light & healthy stuffed dish for dinner. Today's recipe is from King Arthur Flour's Baking Sheet newsletter. In this dish, roasted vegetables and cheese are rolled in a yeasty bread dough and baked to make light & flaky stuffed rolls that are perfect for a meal with some salad on the side or even as a quick pick-me up breakfast. 

The original recipe used roasted vegetables, but I used left over grilled vegetables. Also the original recipe  called for garlic herb cheese (like Boursin) or goat cheese, but I used a combination of cream cheese and grated mozzarella. 

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Stuffed French Toast

Time seems to fly. I can't believe we are in the middle of July already, before we turn around it will be Christmas and New Year again **sigh** I wish time could stay STILL for a little while. Keeping still is something I keep telling my 4 year old who bounces around the whole house to do. But just like time he keeps running away.

Speaking of running time, today starts the 3rd week of Blogging marathon and the theme I chose for the week is "Stuffed Foods". I tried 3 new stuffed dishes for this week that I've never made before and I actually surprised myself on how good they turned out (if I can say so myself).

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Mango Ice Cream and a Birthday

Cook's Hideout completed 5 years this month. I created this blog as a hobby and a way to document my cooking trial and errors and I'm happy that I'm able to do just that even today. I've met so many incredible food bloggers along the way in the past few years and I've more virtual friends than actual real-life friends. I think about some of them who have stopped blogging over the years and wonder what they are up to now. I have to thank Srivalli for organizing the blogging marathons that keeps me on my toes and makes me post everyday, bonus being getting to know new bloggers and their amazing blogs. Thanks to my family for their patience. Thanks to each and every one of you who come to my blog for your encouraging words. I hope to keep going on many more years to come.

Mango ice cream is something that I absolutely adore and thought would be a perfect recipe to post for the blog's birthday. It used to be a delicacy when we were growing up, only available during summer time. I’m not sure if the situation is still the same in India, but here in the US, Indian groceries carry Mango pulp all through the year making mango ice cream accessible any time you want it.

I already posted a Mango ice cream recipe couple of years back, but this time I wanted to use the cornstarch thickening method that I’ve used for my vanilla ice cream to make it creamier and less icy. The end result was this creamy and delicious ice cream with no added preservatives, but filled with yummy mango goodness.

Ingredients:

Mango puree – 2½ cups

Heavy cream – 1 cup

Whole milk – 2cups

Sugar – ¾ cup

Cardamom powder – 2tsp

Cornstarch – 1½tbsp

Light Corn syrup – 2tbsp

Cream cheese – 3tbsp, softened (to make ice cream scoopable)

Method:

• Whisk cornstarch with 3tbsp milk in a small bowl and set aside.
• Add the rest of the milk to a sauce pan along with cream, corn syrup and sugar. Bring to a boil; lower the heat and simmer the mixture until sugar dissolves, about 5-6 minutes.
• Add the mango puree and simmer for another 2 minutes.
• Take off the heat and slowly stir in the cornstarch slurry, mix thoroughly and put it back on flame.
• Return to boil and cook on medium flame until the mixture thickens a little, about 2 minutes.
• Take the mixture of the heat, whisk in the softened cream cheese and cardamom powder.
• Allow to cool completely; chill for 4 hours or overnight.
• Once chilled, follow the ice cream machine’s instructions to make the ice cream. Enjoy!!

Restaurant style Mughlai Paratha

Today I have a restaurant style Mughlai paratha, it sounds pretty fancy and exotic, but it doesn’t need any special ingredients except for some yogurt and cream cheese. Recipe courtesy India curry and I followed it pretty much to the T.

What did I learn: Restaurant style Parathas CAN BE MADE AT HOME.

Ingredients:
Atta (Chapati Flour) – 1 cup
All purpose Flour – 2 cups
Salt – 1tsp
Ghee – 1½ tbsp
Cilantro – ¼ cup, finely chopped
Yogurt – ¾ cup

Cream cheese – ¾ cup, softened (I used whipped cream cheese which doesn’t have to be softened since it’s already whipped)

Method:

• Sift atta, all purpose flour and salt.
• Add ghee and rub into the flour and mix until it resembles crumbs.
• Add cilantro and mix well.
• Blend yogurt and cream cheese into a smooth past and add to the flour mixture.
• Add water as needed and mix to form smooth dough. Knead for at least 5 minutes. I used my stand mixer to knead and it came out perfect.
• Cover the dough with damp paper towel or kitchen towel and rest for about 1 hour.
• Divide the dough into 8-10 equal parts.
• Roll each dough into 6” round or oval discs and cook them on hot skillet (tawa) until brown spots are formed on both sides, brush with ghee while cooking if desired.

Serve with your favorite restaurant style curry. I served paneer kofta curry and simple peas pulao on the side to make a truly restaurant style dinner.

Lets see what my fellow marathoners BM#4 have been cooking up today.

Diabetes Diet/Management: Kamalika, Smitha, Suma
Kid Friendly Recipes: Anusha, Cool Lassi(e)
Seven Days of Soup: Priya Suresh
Seven Days of Indian Bread: Jayasree
Seven Days of Cakes:Priya Vasu
Seven Days of Preserves: Gayathri Kumar, Vaishali
30 Minutes Meals: Priya Mahadevan, Srivalli

Eggless (Yet Creamy) Vanilla Ice Cream

The last ice cream I made was sooo good, rich and delicious, but it had way too many eggs in it that I couldn’t pull myself to make it again. At the same time it was soooo good, creamy & yummy, that couldn’t go back and make my eggless icy crystal version.

So that meant the ice cream maker had to collect dust for a couple months until I found this eggless version that is just as good but without the eggs. So when I saw this recipe that uses corn starch to thicken the ice cream, I had to make it right away.

I made this basic vanilla ice cream thrice already and it was a hit each time. Recipe also uses just little bit of cream cheese to give the final ice cream better scoopability & softness. The final result was this creamy with no crystals and an ice cream that melts in your mouth. I used whipped cream cheese on my second try and it made life much easier as you can use it right out of the fridge and don’t have to worry about softening it on the counter.

Ingredients:
Whole Milk – 2 cups
Heavy cream – 1 ¼ cups
Sugar – 2/3 cup
Light Corn syrup – 1½ tbsp
Pure Vanilla extract – 2 tbsp
Corn starch – 1tbsp plus 1tsp
Cream cheese – 3tbsp (1½ oz.), softened.

Method:

• Mix corn starch with 2tbsp milk in a small bowl and set aside.
  
• Add the remaining milk, heavy cream, sugar and corn syrup in a large sauce pan. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook on moderate heat until sugar dissolves, about 4 minutes.
• Turn off the heat. Gradually whisk in the corn starch mixture. Return to boil and cook on moderately high heat until the mixture thickens a little bit, between 1-2 minutes.
  
• Remove from heat and mix in the softened cream cheese. Let cool. Once the mixture is slightly cooled add the vanilla extract. Chill the milk mixture for at least 3-4 hours or overnight.
• Once thoroughly chilled follow your ice cream machine instructions to make the ice cream. Enjoy right away or freeze for later.

I served my ice cream topped with the chocolate ganache I made here.