Homemade Chocolate Fudge Sauce

For the final day of this week's marathon under 'bookmarked recipes', I have this delicious Chocolate Fudge sauce. I made it couple of months ago and finally got a chance it post it here.

 Recipe is from Brown Eyed Baker. This chocolate sauce keeps for a very long time in the fridge and is great to drizzle over ice cream or fruit or pound cake or just eat it by the spoonfuls.

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Chocolate Pudding Pops

Blogging Marathon#65: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Kid's Summer Vacation Recipes

Dish: Chocolate Pudding Pops

So for the final day of this week's blogging marathon, I have any sweet treat for the kids. The recipe for these Chocolate pudding pops is from Nupur's blog and I knew I would make them as soon as I saw her post.

Both my kids son love chocolate and these pops are perfect afternoon treat for a warm summer afternoon. They are very easy to make, make some chocolate pudding, pour into molds, freeze and serve.

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Afghan Cookies for #Food of the World

It seems like Super Tuesday today with 3 posts back to back. It's time for Food of the World monthly event and we are exploring the beautiful island country of New Zealand this month. I really had no clue what the food in New Zealand looks like. Even though it is one of the countries that I think I was very familiar -- blame it on the cricket matches I used to watch as a kid (they were quite a tough team to beat at the time).

So I googled and found out that New Zealand cuisine is largely based on local ingredients. Similar to it's neighboring country Australia, New Zealand cuisine is a diverse British based cuisine. Historical influences came from Maori culture, the indigenous polynesian people of NZ.

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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).

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Chocolate Banana Pancakes

Blogging Marathon# 62: Week 1/ Day 1

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Chocolate

Dish: Chocolate-Banana Pancakes

Today's dish combines 2 of my kids favorites -- chocolate and pancakes. I've made pancakes with chocolate chips before but never entirely with chocolate. Eating these feels like eating dessert for breakfast which I must admit was thoroughly enjoyed by all (including me).

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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.

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Canadian Nanaimo Bars for #Food of the World

For this month's #Food of the World event, we are visiting our neighbor Canada. The first dish that came to my mind when I thought of Canada was Nanaimo Bars. But I wanted to do my due diligence and googled for vegetarian Canadian dishes. None of the results I got motivated or inspired me to make the dish. So I went back to Nanaimo bars -- and I'm very glad I did.

Nanaimo bar is a popular Canadian dessert that requires no baking and is named after the city in which it was first created. It consists of a wafer crumb-based bottom layer topped with a custard flavored butter icing which is finally covered with melted chocolate. There are quite a few variations to the base recipe and are made with different types of crumb, different flavors for the icing (like Nutella, peanut butter, mint etc) and different types of chocolate topping.

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Patterned Swiss Roll Cake

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, Pallavi Purani gave us some delicious cakes to bake this month. On the list was Patterned Swiss Roll Cake. I recently watched Martha Stewart making Chocolate Swiss Roll cake on TV and mentally bookmarked it. I used Martha's cake recipe and the pattern recipe and technique from here.

I wanted to do a Spring pattern appropriate for this time of the year. I actually made this cake twice in 2 days because the first time I made, the cake broke when I tried to flip it from the baking sheet. I almost cried when that happened. I asked Gayathri on some tips and tricks she used to make her patterned cake. She was kind enough to answer all my questions, so mustered my courage and made it again.

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Self Saucing Chocolate Cake (Vegan recipe)

Happy Valentines Day to everyone.

After posting the Mango custard yesterday, I thought I should also post something with Chocolate for Valentines day. Valentines day without chocolate is probably unthinkable for some, but history channel says that this association happened only recently even though the roots of Valentines day go all the way back to Roman era. Chocolate is a well known aphrodisiac, but the main reason for chocolate being the center of this holiday could be the candy companies marketing strategies. Whatever it might be, here's another reason to enjoy our beloved chocolate.
I saw this recipe in King Arthur's catalog and made it the other day for my son's afternoon snack. It is super simple to put together and tasted absolutely a.m.a.z.i.n.g. The warm cake with chocolate sauce served with ice cream is just too irresistible.

Recipe is supposed to be made in 8~10 oz. ramekins or oven safe mugs, I didn't have either, so used 7oz. mini ramekins. Also I veganized the recipe by using soy milk, canola oil (instead of melted butter) and egg replacer (instead of an egg).

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Basic Vegan Chocolate Cupcake

After these Vegan Vanilla cupcakes, the other cupcake recipe that is made quite often in my house is this vegan chocolate cupcake. This recipe is also from 'Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World'. I tried other eggless cupcake recipes, but this recipe has always given me consistent results. The cupcakes are moist and fluffy and they hold up to butter cream frosting.

I made these cupcakes for my son's birthday and sent them to school. His class has kids who have very severe peanut allergy, so I always make sure that all the ingredients I use are peanut free.

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Mocha Ice Cream (Eggless recipe)

It looks like Summer has almost come to an end (bahhhh). Good things pass way too quickly and this summer flew past at rapid speed. Didn't do anything fun to mention with the husband travelling most of the season. I guess the only fun thing that my son did was to learn swimming :-)

I want to post some of the summer recipes that I have in drafts before the season ends. I made this Mocha Ice cream from King Arthur flour site in June, around the beginning of Summer. It is very simple to put together and even my 5 year old loved it.

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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.

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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'.

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