Sourdough Banana Bread

This is the last of the banana recipes from my drafts. This banana bread recipe uses 2 ingredients that I always have on hand, my soudough starter and of course the bananas. My starter is now more than 3 years old and it has been through a lot already in these 3 years. I forget to feed it regularly, but in spite of the neglect it has been doing well (knock on wood). 

Even though this bread has sourdough, it does not taste sour. All you can taste is the banana. I think the sourdough makes the bread really moist and gives it a soft crumb.

Chocolate Banana Cake

This is yet another Banana cake from my drafts. I made it for my daughter's 10th month birthday. I can't believe she'll be 1 very soon. I've already started thinking about what to do for her birthday. Pinterest has been a great resource and I've found tons of ideas for the party. I still have to come up with a theme and make a list of everything else that needs to be done before the d-day. I will keep you posted on that. In the mean time enjoy this super moist and delicious banana cake.

I think this will be my go-to banana cake recipe (using egg) going forward. This cake uses eggs and whipping the egg whites before adding to the batter makes the cake moist and light. Recipe is from BBC goodfood. It had a sour cream based icing with dried banana chips on top, but I made a simple butter-cream cheese icing instead.

Coconut Buns (Pani Popo)-Eggless Recipe

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Tea Kadai Menu
Dish: Coconut Buns (Pani Popo)

Today's dish has been on my to-make list for a long time and when I saw Coconut cream buns on Valli's 'Tea Kadai menu' theme for BM# 30, I knew it was time to make these buns. I'm not sure how the actual coconut cream buns that are sold at the the stall look like, but I went ahead and made these super soft and fluffy buns with a sweet coconut glaze. We loved them a LOT.

I bookmarked this recipe for coconut buns aka Pani Popo from King Arthur's site over 2 years ago. Pani popo are Samoan coconut buns where soft, tender buns are bathed and baked in sweet coconut syrup. The thought of gooey sweet creamy coconut was so enticing and delicious, but it took me all this time to finally make them.

Baked Masala Peanuts

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: Tea Kadai Menu
Dish: Baked Masala Peanuts/ Ver Kadalai

Day 2 of BM# 30 under the the theme 'Tea Kadai' menu , I made Baked masala peanuts from Valli's list. I wanted to make either ellu urundai (sesame balls) or por urundai (murmure balls), but after making 2 desserts for last week's theme, I wanted to something savory. But I wasn't sure what Ver Kadalai or Pattani Kadalai meant. 'Google' only returned kurma or curry recipes and I bothered Sandhya to get some clarification.

Sandhya was very extremely helpful and she emailed me back saying that they are actually roasted peas and peanuts. So I went ahead and baked some masala peanuts. I remember seeing them on Jugalbandi's site quite sometime back and followed their recipe to make mine. Our own Valli also made these a while back :-)

Masala Vada/ Paruppu Vadai

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 4/ Day 1
Theme: Tea Kadai Menu
Dish: Masala Vada/ Paruppu Vadai

We are starting the last week of Blogging Marathon for this month and my theme for this week is 'Tea Kadai Menu'. Valli gave us a set of typical dishes that feature in the roadside Tea shops in Tamil Nadu. For the first day I made 'Masala Vadai/ Vada'.

I love masala vada, but don't make it often at home because of the deep frying that is involved. BM gave me a chance to try my favorite snack and we thoroughly enjoyed these deep fried goodies.

Banana Chocolate Swirl Bread

Bananas are probably the most consumed fruit in my household. Even my picky 5 year old eats banana without too much complaining. All the other fruits have to be converted into juices & smoothies for him. But the problem with bananas, that too buying in bulk, is the whole bunch ripens at the same time and all of them go from bright yellow to speckled and then over-ripe in matter of 2 days, especially in the hot weather. Which is why I'm always looking for recipes to use my excess bananas and I have posted quite a few different recipes from smoothies to breads to brownies with bananas.

 

When I saw Chef Mireille's announcement for 'Taste of the Tropics - Banana', I knew this is the time to publish my banana recipes that have been in my drafts for quite some time now.

Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Kid's Delight - Summer Special
Dish: Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

Day 3 of Blogging Marathon# 30 and today's kid approved Summer treat for Chef Mireille's Kid's Delight: Summer Special event is this cool and creamy Milk Chocolate Ice cream. This is a very decadent dessert, perfect on a sunny day (or any day for that matter). 

I've been making eggless ice creams for quite sometime now and I've had good success with it. But this recipe uses 4 egg yolks. I had frozen some egg yolks after using the whites in making Strawberry birthday cake for 2 little girls who share the same birthday. As I was looking for recipes to use up the frozen yolks, I found this recipe for Milk Chocolate Ice cream on Annies- Eats. The recipe sounded amazing and the pic was too tempting, so I gave it a try and the resulting ice cream was super creamy and delicious.

After visiting Annies Eats I realized that July is National Ice Cream month. 3rd Sunday in July (that is the 21st of this month) is declared as 'National Ice Cream Sunday'.

Chocolate Custard with Custard Powder

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Kid's Delight - Summer Special
Dish: Chocolate Custard with Custard Powder

Day 2 of BM# 30 and my theme for this week is "Summer Specials". This month's Kid's Delight event is being hosted by the talented Chef Mireille @ Global Gourmet. I love her theme because it is crazy hot here and my 5 year old is driving me crazy with his little demands. So I've been looking for some kid friendly recipes to please my picky eater.

Today I made something sweet with one of his favorite ingredients, chocolate. He doesn't eat vanilla in any form and he wouldn't even touch the regular custard. So I added some cocoa to custard and made a chocolate version of it and he loved it. I wish I had thought of it earlier!!

Homemade Tortilla Chips with Creamy Avocado Dip

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 3/ Day 1
Theme: Kid's Delight - Summer Special
Dish: Homemade Tortilla Chips with Avocado Dip

We begin our 3rd week of Blogging Marathon# 30 today and my theme for this week is 'Summer Special' dishes for Kid's Delight event being hosted by lovely Chef Mireille @ Gourmet Global. Valli @ Spicing Your Life is the brain behind Kid's Delight event. 

We are currently experiencing a heat wave in our neck of woods and it has been might hot outside. Kids and I are staying inside and only get out if it is absolutely necessary. I guess that's the joy of being a stay at home mom. It has been a challenge feeding a picky eater who's home for summer vacation and he says he's hungry ALL the time. So I've been looking for some quick and healthy snacks to feed my little one.

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.

Chana Dal Kebabs (Vegetarian Kebabs with Chickpeas)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Get it Rolled
Dish: Chana Dal Kebabs

Day 2 of BM# 30 and today's dish under 'Get it Rolled' theme is Chana dal Kebabs. When you think of kebabs, you think of skewers and meat. Here's some Wiki gyan about Kebabs - 'Kebab is derived from the Arabic word 'kabab' which means to 'fry'. I especially like this story about the origin of kebabs -- Persian soldiers used their swords to cook meat on open fire and hence started the 'kebab' way of cooking meat.

Well since this is a vegetarian food blog, I decided to make some kebabs with beans. This recipe is inspired from one of the Telugu cooking shows. Original recipe used only chickpeas, but I had some cooked mixed beans (from this dal biryani I made earlier) which is used instead. These kebabs were filling and delicious.

Pinwheel Cookies (Vanilla Chocolate Marbled or Pinwheel Cookies)

Pinwheel Cookies are the second cookies I baked for this month's Home Baker's Challenge. The first cookie I bakes was these peanut butter cookies. Actually the first one I wanted to bake were these pinwheel cookies, they looked so cute and the pics that Viji shared from Heritage Cook were to die for. I knew right away I wanted to bake these and I'm do glad that I did.

These cookies look so fancy, but they are not that difficult to make. Even my chocoholic son loved them because both the flavors of vanilla and chocolate are balanced. The only hard part is the waiting for the dough to chill, other than that these cookies can be made in no time.

Peanut Butter Cookies

This month we are baking cookies for Home Bakers Challenge. Viji @ Virunthu Unna Vaanga gave us quite a few options to choose from. I made 2 different cookies as I had to bake cookies for two separate parties and what better way to try 2 recipes. Both of them turned out great.

Today I've Peanut butter cookies and I used Dorie Greenspan's recipe instead of Martha Stewart's recipe that was given to us by Viji. Martha Stewart's recipe only had 3 stars and since I was making these for a lunch party, I wanted to make use a recipe that would definitely work. So I used the recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my Home to Yours cookbook.

Vegetarian Summer Rolls (Vegetarian Vietnamese Rolls)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 2/ Day 1
Theme: Get it Rolled
Dish: Summer Rolls (Vietnamese Rolls)

We are starting our 2nd of Blogging Marathon# 30 today and my theme for this week is "Get it Rolled". Any dish that is cooked rolled or served as a roll. Summer rolls were the first thing that came to my mind and with the temperatures soaring in the 90s (degree Fahrenheit), these are perfect no-cook rolls that are filling, healthy and delicious. They are salad rolled up into a portable package -- easy to eat and very convenient.

Summer rolls are very versatile and any of your favorite veggies can be used. I followed Nupur's recipe for Summer rolls. The spicy peanut dipping sauce is to die for -- its salty, spicy, sweet and very addictive.

Rajma Mutter (Kidney Beans & Green Peas with Yogurt & Cream)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 1/ Day 3
Theme: Cooking with Curd
Dish: Rajma Mutter (Kidney Beans & Green Peas with Yogurt & Cream)

As I was looking through 660 Curries for dishes to make with yogurt/ curd, I found a recipe that used Lotus root and I wanted to make because I've never cooked lotus root before. I remember seeing it in my local Korean store and went there this morning, but I was totally disappointed seeing dried out and almost rotten lotus roots.

Came home and went back to 660 Curries. I love beans and I found Rajma and Mutter curry with yogurt and cream. I was skeptical on how the combination of yogurt and cream would take like, but I trusted Raghavan Iyer enough to give the dish a try. I'm glad I did, it turned out to be a spicy and creamy dish that is unlike I've ever tasted. The textural difference between the nutty bite of kidney beans and the soft squishy green peas was very appealing especially with the creamy-tart yogurt base.

Dahi Bhindi (Okra in Yogurt Sauce)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 1/ Day 2
Theme: Cooking with Curd
Dish: Dahi Bhindi

For some reason the first dish that came to mind when I was thinking of dishes for 'Cooking with Curd' is this Dahi Bhindi. I don't remember tasting this dish, so I went with my instinct and made it based on what I think dahi bhindi should taste like. I liked the final dish, it was simple and quite tasty.

I didn't have fresh okra (ladies finger), so I used frozen baby okra. I sauteed them in little oil along with some vinegar to remove the sliminess and then added them to the yogurt sauce. Frozen okra is very convenient to use but can be a little tricky to cook with. If not handled properly entire dish can turn slimy and inedible. I do not thaw frozen okra and add them directly into the hot pan, this way the water starts to evaporate as soon as it hits the pan. Also I don't stir it too often.

Patli Dal (Yellow Split Peas & Kale in a Yogurt-Peanut Sauce)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 1/ Day 1
Theme: Cooking with Curd/ Yogurt
Dish: Patli Dal

I seem to be saying the same thing again and again, but I still can't believe that it's July already and today we begin 30th edition of Blogging Marathon. My theme for this week is 'Cooking with Curd/ Yogurt'. I wanted to do this theme because I rarely use curd/ yogurt in cooking because of my husband's aversion towards it. He's been travelling which gave me yet another reason to take this theme :-)

Since I'm the only one eating yogurt in the house, I used to buy yogurt from the store. But when my mom visited us last year, she couldn't get over the stickiness of the store bought yogurt. I never realized that until she mentioned it, I guess after all these years I forgot how yogurt felt or tasted back home. Anyway, long story short -- we got hold of some good yogurt culture and started making our own yogurt at home. Even after my mom left, I kept making it and recently I started feeding my daughter home made yogurt, hoping to have someone to share my yogurt based dishes in the future.

Raspberry Lemonade

Here's another refreshing Summer drink that can be made ahead of time and can be served any time you have a craving for something cold and sweet. I was looking for a recipe to use up some raspberries I had in the fridge and found this Fresh Raspberry Syrup Soda recipe @ Savvy Eat. 

I made the syrup as per the recipe, but when I made the soda with just the syrup it tasted too sweet and one dimensional. Then  I added some lemon juice and voila it was instant hit with everyone.

Strawberry Pink Lemonade

Summer is officially here in our neck of woods. Even though there has been more rain in the forecast than real sunny days, we are enjoying this time of the year to the maximum extent. This past weekend has been great, got to meet and spend time with some very good friends -- lots of yummy food and relaxed time. 

So if you are planning to entertain this summer, I have a great drink recipe that is sure to be a it at your next backyard/ BBQ party. It's super refreshing and can be made ahead of time.