Pumpkin Tiramisu (Eggless Recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 34: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Desserts with Vegetables
Dish: Pumpkin Tiramisu

If you are still thinking of what to make for Thanksgiving dessert, then here is a perfect recipe for you. I made this couple of weeks ago for our (very) early Thanksgiving party. After that party I realized that we don't really have to wait for Thanksgiving to give thanks to people we love and care about, it can be and should be done any time.

I was asked to bring a dessert and I thought something with pumpkin will be appropriate. I found a recipe for Pumpkin Tiramisu on Martha Stewart's site and I planned to make it. Recipe used uncooked pumpkin puree for layering with the lady fingers. I wasn't sure if it would be too pumpkiny, so I scratched that recipe. Then I found vegan chef Chloe Coscarelli's Vegan Pumpkin Tiramisu and after reading through the mostly positive reviews, I made it for the party.

This dessert is a little time consuming to make, but it totally worth the effort. Pumpkin crème layer can be made at least 2 days ahead and kept in the refrigerator until ready to use. Once the cakes are baked and the trifle is made, it needs to be refrigerated for at least 3~4 hours or overnight to set. The original recipe uses whipped coconut cream to make it completely vegan, but I used regular whipping cream since I never whipped coconut milk and didn't want to take try my luck at this party.

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Eggless Carrot Cake with Ricotta cheese & Indian flavors

Blogging Marathon# 34: Week 3/ Day 1
Theme: Desserts with Vegetables
Dish: Carrot Halwa flavored Cake with Ricotta cheese

It's week 3 of BM# 34 and my theme for this week is 'Desserts with Vegetables'. I rarely make desserts with vegetables except for carrots and occasionally pumpkins. I would never dare to make desserts with vegetables that in my mind are meant for savory preparations. When I signed up for the theme, I was planning to get adventurous and try some desserts that were totally out of the box like potato halwa or something with beets. But when I saw my tasting committee, I decided to stay close to what I always make and so for the next 3 days I'm going to post dessert recipes with vegetables that you already know, but slightly jazzed up versions.

I'm continuing my baking spree with the third baked goody of the week (after this Chatti Pathiri and Kolacky Cookies). I have been planning to make carrot halwa flavored cake for a while now. Initially I wanted to make cupcakes, but after researching on various recipes I ended up making it as a bundt cake.

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Almond-Cranberry Biscotti (Eggless Recipe)

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, Priya Suresh @ Priya's Versatile Recipes wanted us to bake some crispy & crunchy Biscottis. She gave us options to bake either savory or sweet biscottis. Since I have a housefull of sweet toothed people, I made the sweet biscotti. 

I have been planning to bake biscotti for a while now, but didn't get a chance to try them. I was excited when I saw Priya's picks for this month and I wanted to bake both sweet and savory biscottis, but couldn't find time to make the savory one. I'm glad that I was able to make the sweet version that was liked by all at home. Hopefully I'll make the savory ones too some time soon.

The biscotti I made is a variation to the American Style Vanilla Biscotti that Priya wanted us to bake. Biscottis are Italian cookies that are twice baked. Italian biscottis are hard, but these American style biscottis are light and crunchy.

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Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes and a First Birthday celebrations

This post has been due for over a month now. My daughter turned 1 last month and I wanted to share the pictures with you. But September was dedicated to 'A-Z dishes from Andhra' and with the other things that were going on in  couldn't post this earlier. It is better late than never, so here are with some pictures of my little one's first birthday.
Since it was a late Summer birthday I wanted a backyard party. We were lucky to have a perfect day weatherwise. I wanted to have a Minnie Mouse theme -- just because I wanted too :-) Our friend N did all the decorations. Only thing we made (actually it was my idea, but the whole project was done by my husband) was the time-line garland with the pictures of the birthday girl from every month (in the first pic)

Time-Line garland with birthday girl's pics from 1st to 12th month

This was the 'Focus' wall

Minnie Mouse Cupcake Stand

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Vyborg Pretzels (Eggless version)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: BM# 32 Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Vyborg Pretzels by Chef Mireille

I am revisting my fellow bloggers posts from the A-Z Alphabet marathon for this week of BM# 33. Like I said yesterday it has been tough finalizing this week's 3 dishes. I still have no idea what to make for tomorrow from the very long list of short listed dishes. I've to check my pantry and the fridge to see what can be made with th time I have. I wish I can try all the recipes, but alas I can't.

So for Day 2, I made Chef Mireille's Vyborg Pretzels. These pretzels are popular in the city of Vyborg, which was previously part of Finland. These pretzels caught my eye the minute I saw them. I've been planning to make pretzels for quite some time now and when I saw these I knew this was going to be my very first pretzel recipe to try. I wasn't disappointed. This recipe makes 4 huge challah bread style pretzels that are soft, slightly sweet and super flavorful from the addtion of saffron and cardamom.

Changes I made were, use egg-replacer in place of eggs, brush with heavy cream in place of egg yolk-milk mixture and sprinkle some turbonado sugar on top for some extra sweetness and crunch. My pretzel shape did not turn out as professional as Mir's, but they tasted amazing especially when eaten warm. They stay fresh when wrapped well and stored at room temperature for couple of days.

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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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Eggless Black Forest Cake

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Black Forest Cake

For the third day of BM# 33, we are celebrating my husband's birthday with an eggless Black Forest Cake. He was travelling on his actual birthday, so we are celebrating it over the weekend. 

Black forest cake brings back fond memories of enjoying time with family and friends back home. This was the usual pastry that we used to order at a bakery next to our school and this was also our favorite cake to order for birthdays and other occasions. Cool cakes, like this Pineapple Cool Cake, are quite famous in India. I remember black forest cake to be cool, moist and juicy -- not too sweet with super light frosting that was simply to die for.

It has been a very long time, infact many many years, that I ate this cake. But I wanted to recreate the cake as I remember it. So first I looked for an eggless chocolate recipe and found this Moist & Soft Chocolate Cake recipe @ Rak's Kitchen. Then I looked for black forest cake recipes for the filling and frosting ideas. After reading through a number of recipes I came up with below recipe.

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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 Chocolate Cake with Jam for a Celebration

May is a month of celebration in my real home and also in my virtual home. It happens to be my birthday month (yup.. I'm a tough Taurean :-) ) and of course there's Mother's day celebrations. It is also my blog anniversary month -- Cook's Hideout has completed 7 years of blogging. 

Blogging years seem to me like dog years. There are a quite a few blogs that were active at one time, but are no longer virtually alive. I feel like a veteran among many new and upcoming food bloggers. I have to thank my family for their support and patience without whom I wouldn't have been blogging for so long. I was telling my mom the other day that I cook and eat well even when I'm alone because of my blog. 

Big thanks to Valli, the master mind behind Blogging marathon and all my fellow marathoners for their infectious enthusiasm.

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Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes for Wilton Course 1 - Class 3

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 6
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1 - Class 3
Dish - Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes

For Class 3, we were asked to bring 6 cupcakes and butter-cream icing ready to use in piping bags. So by 3rd week, I realized that this decorating course definitely needs quite a bit of prior preparation. It took me  about 3-4 hours spaced out in 2 days to prepare the cupcakes, make the icing, fill the bags and get everything else ready. So if you want to take the course make sure that you have some free time to prepare for the class. We started out with 3 students in the first class, we were 2 in second class and I was the only one in the last 2 classes. It was good in a way that I got 100% attention from the instructor, but I would have liked to see how others did in the class as well.

Week 3 is about decorating cupcakes, using various tips to make flowers, leaves, scrolls etc. What I learnt was different consistency icings are used to make different shapes, for example medium consistency icing is used to make the flowers and swirls (pink & blue icing in the pics below) and thin consistency icing for leaves.

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Eggless Pineapple Cool Cake

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 1/ Day 8
Theme: Occasions/  Birthday
Dish: Pineapple Cool Cake

For the last day under "occasions" theme, I made this simple Pineapple cool cake. Cool cakes are basically moist cakes that are chilled and are very common in India. I made this cake for my daughter's 7th month birthday. Time seems to fly by and before I know it will be time to plan her 1 year birthday. But thankfully my blogging buddies have posted everything one needs to have a party. So don't forget to check them out here for tons of party ideas and delicious recipes.

Cool cake is something I wanted to bake for quite some time now and finally got to try it now. I used the eggless pineapple cream cake recipe from Divine taste.

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Meatless Meatballs with Soy Crumbles

My theme for this week's Blogging Marathon is "Lunchbox Recipes for Kids". Now this is a very challenging theme for me because of 2 reasons: One: my 5 year old has become a very picky eater and packing his lunch is quite a challenge most of the times. Two: Schools don't have microwaves to reheat the lunch, so whatever we pack has to taste good even at room temperature.

When my son was in kindergarten, his daycare had a very good lunch program. He had a vegetarian option everyday and the food was served hot. But now in kindergarten, school lunch menu has hot food everyday, but there are hardly any vegetarian options and so we have to pack him lunch. One thing we figured out is rice gets too cold and is tough to eat by lunch time, especially in winter. 

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Eggless Zucchini Chocolate Cupcakes

For the 3rd day of BM# 23 under "Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes & Muffins", I made Zucchini chocolate cupcakes with a fudge chocolate frosting. Even though these cupcakes are not technically considered "healthy", they sure pack a healthy amount of shredded zucchini. By substituting the white flour with whole wheat flour and reducing the sugar a little bit, these cupcakes can definitely make a healthy and delicious breakfast food. Since it is the holiday season, I didn't make any healthy substitutions.

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Eggless Chocolate Vanilla Cupcakes with Mocha frosting

Today's "Eggless Chocolate-Vanilla Cupcakes" are a result of contradicting requests from the kids. When you ask kids what flavor cupcake they want, half of them scream "VANILLA" and the other half want "CHOCOLATE". But most of the time we only have time to make just one type of cupcakes and these two-in-one cupcakes seem to satisfy everyone.

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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.

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Lime Cookies (Eggless)

Finally after 18 days of waiting we have our kitchen counter and sink fixed. Yay!!! It almost felt like the ordeal was never going to end, but thankfully the Granite guys were really professional and they scheduled the installation as soon as they were fully functional. It feels great to be in my (almost) new kitchen. 

Both the Katlis and the mixture were made when the kitchen was half functioning. I made these cookies after the kitchen got back to normal. 

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Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

We begin the 3rd week for Blogging Marathon today and my theme for next 3 days is "Kid Friendly recipes with Chocolate" for Kid's Delight event. I know first hand how much my kid loves chocolate. I mentioned about his LOVE for all things chocolate a number of times here and so when I saw the theme with chocolates, I thought this what could be better than making more chocolate delicacies for my son.

Since all these recipes are going to Vaishali's Kid's Delight - Chocolate event, they have to be eggless. So for today's chocolate delight, I made this "Double chocolate Zucchini Bread" from King Arthur flour site. The original recipe had eggs, but I used egg replacer to make it eggless.

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Cinnamon Sticks

This is a recipe that my sister, who lives in India, wanted me to make since her hubby really likes Cinnamon sticks. I looked for recipes online and found this recipe on King Arthur’s website. Recipe seemed simple to make with very few ingredients that are easily available in India. But she wanted the recipe to be eggless, so I substituted the egg with egg-replacer.

I sent my sister detailed pictures on how to make the cinnamon sticks along with KAF recipe. She tried them and reported back saying that the taste was great. Personally I thought the cinnamon sticks were a little too buttery, but my husband and my BIL seemed to like them. I halved the recipe from the original.

Ingredients:

All purpose flour – 1cup

Sugar – 1½ tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Butter – ½ cup or 1 stick (4 oz.), softened to room temperature

Milk – 1tbsp

Egg-replacer powder – 1½ tbsp (original recipe used 1 egg, since I halved the recipe, I used half of the required egg-replacer)

Cinnamon – 2tbsp

Granulated Sugar – ¼ cup

Milk or cream – to brush the pastry

Method:

• Whisk flour, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Work in the butter into the flour mixture until it forms crumbles and holds shape when squeezed.
• Whisk egg-replacer powder and milk in a small bowl and add to the flour mixture and mix just until everything is cohesive.
• Roll the dough and pat into a 3”x5” rectangle; wrap in plastic and refrigerate it for an hour or for up to 2 days.
• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a 10” x 15” rectangle about 1/8” thick.
• Brush half of the lengthwise surface (i.e. the 5” x 15” strip) with milk/ cream and sprinkle cinnamon sugar** evenly all over. Fold the unfilled side of the pastry over the filled side and press the edges lightly.
• Brush the resulting 5”x15” pastry with milk/ cream and sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar. Using a pizza cutter or a sharp knife, cut the pastry crosswise into ½” strips that are 5” long.
• Hold the strip on each end and twist them to give them the characteristic “cinnamon stick” shape.
• Place them on a prepared baking sheet and bake the cinnamon sticks for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and after couple of minutes, place them on a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy with your evening cup of tea or coffee.

**Note: To make cinnamon sugar sugar, simply mix the 2tbsp cinnamon with 1/4 cup of granulated sugar.

Cinnamon Sticks making pictorial:

Sending these Cinnamon sticks over to Harini for her "Only Baked" event. Only baked is the brain child of Pari @ Foodelicious.

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.