Wholewheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Blogging Marathon# 64: Week 3/ Day 3

Theme: Wholewheat Dishes

Dish: Wholewheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

So for the final day of 'Wholewheat dishes', I have my kids absolute favorite cookie, Chocolate chip cookie. They were so happy when I made them and I was happy that they are made with wholewheat flour are a little more nutritious than the ones with all purpose flour.

Whenever I'm making any baked goodies for the family, I usually sub at least half of the all purpose flour with white wholewheat or wholewheat pastry flour. I don't care if the texture suffers a little bit with the substitution but I feel better serving the family something that is a little more nutritious than just empty calories. My next focus is in cutting down sugar -- lets see how that one goes.

Read more »

Chocolate Yeast Bread for #BreadBakers

All the recipes so far this month revolve around Chocolate. After 4 posts for kid friendly chocolate posts from last week, I have yet another recipe with chocolate and this time it is for the Bread Baker's group. Our lovely host for the month Shireen Siqueira wanted us to make any bread with cacao, cocoa or carob in form.

Initially I was planning to bake something that is good for Easter, like chocolate babka or something in those lines, but when I saw this chocolate yeast bread recipe on David Lebovitz's site I dropped all the earlier ideas and made that instead. I have only tried baking chocolate yeast bread twice before, first time in this chocolate cherry bread and then in this sourdough chocolate bread, so I was intrigued on how this bread would turn out.

Read more »

Chocolate Ricotta Muffins

Blogging Marathon# 62: Week 1/ Day 3

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Chocolate

Dish: Chocolate Ricotta Muffins

Today's recipe was born out of necessity. I had another chocolate recipe planned for the third day of Kid's Delight -- Chocolate event being hosted by Kalyani, but the container of ricotta needed to be used up before anything. I landed on Joy of Baking recipe for these muffins and made them right away.

Ricotta cheese makes these muffins extra moist and gives them almost-cheesecake like texture. I used part-skim ricotta but the original recipe suggests using whole milk ricotta. I replaced all of the all-purpose flour with wholewheat pastry flour and even with that the muffins turned out soft, fluffy and moist. I subbed the eggs with some egg replacer powder (flaxseed meal will be a great alternate too).

Read more »

Fudge Brownies for Valentines Day

Valentines day is just around the corner and these cute little fudge brownies are just perfect for the occasion. I saw the recipe in King Arthur Flour's newsletter and have been itching to bake them. 

Just in time my daughters school had Valentine's day party today and I signed up to make some brownies. These brownies need just one bowl (or a saucepan). Unsalted butter is melted first (either on the stove or in a microwave) and then sugar is added. The mixture is heated once again and this heating ensures more sugar to melt and gives the brownies a nice shiny crust. Once the sugar is melted, all the  other ingredients go in and then it's baked until done.

Read more »

Chocolate Cookies (Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies)

Blogging Marathon# 59: Week 4/ Day 3

Theme: Holiday Bakes

Dish: Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies

Hope all of you are having a good holiday weekend. Mine turned out to be busier than expected and I couldn't find time to type the posts that I planned for the weekend. These chocolate cookies were supposed to be posted yesterday but with my poor time management they are a day late :-(

I made these Chocolate chip cookies aka World Peace cookies by Dorie Greenspan twice this month. I sent a batch with my mom for my cousins in India and the second batch went to my son's school as a holiday treat. I kept a few home and left them out along with some chocolate-chip cookies for Santa on Christmas eve.

Read more »

Mini Chocolate Chip Scones

Bake-a-thon 2015: Day 4

Bake of the Day: Mini Chocolate Scones

I think scones are one of the easiest baked goods, they can be made without any prior planning with ingredients straight from the fridge. When I see any new scone recipe, I bookmark it right away. This mini chocolate chip scones recipe is from King Arthur flour.

Mini vanilla scones are sold at Starbucks for about a $1, but they are quite easy to make at home for fraction of the cost. Except for using some wholewheat pastry flour I followed the recipe to the T and these mini scones are really very addictive -- flaky and delicious.

Read more »

Chocolate Granola

Blogging Marathon# 55: Week 3/ Day 2

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Healthy Breakfasts

Dish: Chocolate Granola

Today's kid friendly breakfast happens to be my favorite too. I couldn't stop myself munching on this delicious and addictive granola. Recipe for this chocolate granola is from Bobby Flay's 'Brunch with Bobby' cooking show. I had the recipe bookmarked for a very very long time and finally made it for the kids.

Original recipe is with chocolate and coconut, but I skipped adding the coconut chips and coconut extract to the granola because I didn't have neither at home. But even without them, granola tasted amazing.

Read more »

Chocolate Hazelnut Quick Bread (Nutella Chocolate Quick Bread)

Bake-a-thon 2014: Day 2
Bake of the Day: Chocolate Hazelnut Quick Bread
Smart phones are so convenient to take photos of just about anything we see anytime, anywhere. I browse through food magazines at the check out lanes and click photos of interesting recipes on my phone. Doctor's office is another place where I usually end up taking lot of recipe photos on the phone.

Today's quick bread recipe was one of those I clicked from Food Network magazine in a grocery store. I think there were abut 50 quick bread recipes, both sweet and savory, and they looked very interesting -- so I made sure I saved them.

Read more »

Almond Butter-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Blogging Marathon# 45: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Kid's Delight -- Nuts & Legumes for Kid's Lunchbox
Dish: Almond Chocolate Chip Muffins

For the 3rd and final day of this week's BM, I made Almond butter-Chocolate chip muffins. I saw the recipe for hazelnut butter-cranberry muffins lot time back in Vegetarian times magazine. I wanted to make them ever since, finally got a chance to make these for this week. 

I always have almond butter in the fridge and use it quite often to spread on my morning toast and add it to Indian curries to make them creamy. So I used it instead of hazelnut butter in these muffins. Also since I was baking for the kids I added chocolate chips instead of cranberries. These muffins also use half all purpose flour and half spelt flour making them more fiber and whole-grain rich.

Read more »

Whole wheat Banana Chocolate-Chip Muffins

I made these banana chocolate chip muffins couple of months ago and they were a hit with the kids. I have bananas at home all the time and the last couple overripe ones are the most neglected ones. So I'm looking for recipes to use them up. This recipe is from King Arthur Flour's 'Whole Grain Baking' cookbook.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

Eggless Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Today we begin the 3rd week of blogging marathon, BM# 23 and my theme for this week is "Egg less Chocolate Cupcakes & Muffins". With a chocoholic 5 year old at home, its almost impossible for me to not take up this theme, so now you know who is happy at home!!!

As I was thinking about this week's theme, I realized that I haven't posted many recipes that are eggless. Even the eggless bakes that I have posted usually use store bought egg replacer powder or some other ingredients that are not commonly available in an Indian household. So for the next three days, I'm going to post recipes that use ingredients that are very commonly available in any pantry, even those that don't bake much.

Read more »

Strawberry Ice Cream (Eggless)

Even though it's not technically winter yet in our neck of woods, temperatures have been hovering around freezing for the past few days. I have started to think about summer already and to remind me of the hot weather I'm posting my Strawberry ice cream recipe. This post has been in my drafts since summer but I haven't had a chance to post it, I thought it's better late than never. Also it's probably summer in some part of the world and I'm sure they have strawberries in season.

Read more »

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

VeganMofo Day 27: I had to make some snacks or treats for my son's Kindergarten class yesterday and I decided to try these Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies that I found at Erica's Sweet Tooth blog. I had all the ingredients on hand and the resultant cookies turned out delicious. Feedback from my son's class also came back positive (you know how brutally honest a bunch of 5 year olds can be).

 

Read more »

Vegan Banana-Chocolate Chip Cupcake

VeganMofo Day 8: This is going to be a quick post with a delicious Banana-chocolate chip cupcake recipe. I wanted to use up some of the very ripe bananas that I had on hand and found this recipe. Though I was only able to use only of the 1 of the said bananas, I was happy I tried the recipe. These cupcakes are moist with subtle banana flavor and the almond extract totally complements the flavors.

Read more »

Banana-Chocolate Bread

Today's bread is my son’s absolute favorite. He loves chocolate in about anything; pancakes, cookies, pies, roti anything at all. If you ask him if he likes to eat something, his question would be does it have chocolate in it? So when I saw this Banana-Chocolate bread recipe in Everyday Food magazine, I just had to make it. 

This is a quick bread which almost has a cake-like moist texture. Since I have both bread & cake in the same sentence, I started to think what the difference between bread and cake is – you have banana bread and then you have banana cake. I wasn’t sure and then when I googled it, I found that David Lebovitz also has the same question. At that point, I stopped looking for an answer and went to enjoy my banana bread.

I used half whole wheat pastry flour and half AP flour to make it a little healthy.

Read more »

Almond Butter & Chocolate Chip Waffles

I make pancakes or waffles almost every week. It is really convenient to have some homemade goodies stacked in the freezer for quick weekday breakfasts. Every time I ask my 3-year old what pancakes he wants his very prompt reply would be “chocolate”. I try to reason with him and say too much chocolate is not good, but sometimes I have to give in and add some chocolate chips into the batter just to please him.

So for Day 3 of our blogging marathon, I made these Almond butter & chocolate chip waffles. The recipe is from Whole Grains Baking by King Arthur Flour, this cookbook is like a bible with over 600 pages and tons of recipes using whole grains. Original recipe was for Peanut Butter & Chocolate chip Waffles, but I prefer other nut butters over peanut butter, so I used almond butter instead. Also the recipe uses Spelt flour which is a much healthy alternate to all-purpose flour. The waffles turned out just perfect, fluffy and delicious.

Read more »