Eggless Fruit & Nut Cake

Bake-a-thon 2015: Day 6
Bake of the Day: Fruit & Nut Cake without Eggs
We are just 12 short days away from Christmas and I'm sure everyone is in full gear with holiday decorating, shopping and baking. We just put our Christmas tree up yesterday and the decoration is still work-in-progress. My 3 year old is very excited about Christmas and has been actively helping me in decorating the house :-)

This fruit & nut cake reminds me of Britannia snack cake with little specks of tutti fruity in it. I have made this cake about half a dozen times already and it has been quite a hit every time I make it. Recipe is from Nisha Madhulika's site. Recipe needs just a few basic baking ingredients and a few minutes of stirring, voila you have a delicious cake in less than an hour.

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Pumpkin Ice Cream (Eggless Recipe)

I don't want to say it loud but it has been a mild fall so far. Temperatures have been warmer than usual and we are occasionally still sporting our summer sandals and half sleeves. But the daylight hours have started to get shorter and the trees are changing into beautiful shades of red, yellow and gold.

This pumpkin ice cream is perfect for this time of the year. Fall flavors with not so fall weather calls for an dessert like this. I tasted my first pumpkin flavored ice cream on one of my recent farm visit with few of my blog buddies. It was a pumpkin-vanilla soft swirl and I loved it. Also my son randomly asked for pumpkin ice cream recently, so I've been looking for a recipe.

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Banana Nutella Swirl Muffins (Eggless recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 55: Week 2/ Day 1

Theme: Nutella Galore

Dish: Banana Nutella Muffin

We are starting a brand new week of blogging marathon today and my theme for this week is 'Recipes made with Nutella or Chocolate Hazelnut spread'. I knew right away that my kids would love whatever I make for this week since they absolutely LOVE Nutella.

For the first day, I made a moist & delicious banana muffins with nutella swirls. I can't stop myself from bananas even though I know very well that by day 4, they will start to smell very 'banana-ey' and no body in the house would really want to eat them. I try and find some interesting ways to use the overripe bananas and these muffins with Nutella swirls sounded just perfect.

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Strawberry-Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Strawberry Maple Syrup

Blogging Marathon# 54: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Fruits in any form

Dish: Strawberry-Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Strawberry Maple Syrup

For the second day under Kid's Delight -- fruits in any form theme, I made strawberry pancakes and served them with strawberry maple syrup. My kids love pancakes and waffles for breakfast, but I rarely make them. After a lot of nagging from them, I finally treat them with some pancakes.

Last month, we went strawberry picking and seeing all the beautiful strawberries we got too excited and picked way too much than we can really handle. Strawberries are quite fragile and need to be treated very gently. I sorted them out and put them in a single layer on paper towel lined baking sheets in the fridge.

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Eggless Vanilla Cake with Condensed Milk

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 20
Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Vanilla Cake with Condensed Milk

As I was organizing the recipes to post for this week, I was surprised to see that I was missing my daughter's birthday cake. Then I realized that I made an extremely small (6") cake and it was all gone by the end of the night. I only had one good picture of the cake. So I made it again recently.

It is a very basic eggless vanilla cake with condensed milk. Using cake flour makes the cake soft and gives it a great texture. It is not a very moist cake, but is not totally dry either.

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Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream) -- Peppa Pig Fondant Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 19

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream)
After my son's birthday cakes (Cookie cake & Dulche de Leche cake), I made this eggless berry cake for my niece. I was volunteering to bake cakes left and right, so I can bake new cakes for the marathon. I think some of my friends & family were even creeped out on how obsessed I was to bring a cake to the party -- poor people ;-)

I asked my niece what flavored cake she wants -- she wasn't really worried about the flavor, she just wanted a princess cake that was pink. So I accepted the challenge and even found a recipe and instructions on making a nice Barbie princess cake. Initially it seemed easy enough to make but as I kept thinking about it seemed like a daunting task, so I changed my mind and decided on making this Peppa Pig cake instead because she is a big fan of Peppa. Good that I didn't promise her a princess cake in the first place. She was definitely excited to see Peppa on the cake.

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Eggless Dulche de Leche Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 18

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Dulche de Leche Cake

After yesterday's giant chocolate chip cookie, I made this Dulche de leche cake for my son's birthday that weekend. My husband travels on business to Argentina frequently and gets this amazing local dulche de leche from there which I use in all kinds of different desserts, like this creme caramel and this yummy cake. You can make your own dulche de leche at home or you can buy the canned variety or you can use just regular condensed milk (it will taste different but it will still be good).

This is an eggless cake and is sweetened with just the dulche de leche. I always tell myself not to experiment a new recipe for a party. But I always do that -- I'm too bad that planning ahead of time. 

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Brownie with Ice Cream (Eggless recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 47: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Combo Dishes
Dishes: Brownie with Ice Cream

I am ending the final day of this week's 'Combo dishes' theme on a sweet note with this easy to make and addictive eggless Brownie and Ice cream combo. I like cakey brownies more than fudgy ones cna these brownies are cakey, moist and delicious.

I made these for our Halloween party and added a chocolate frosting and some spidery web icing on top. I made the spider web with some homemade creme fraiche mixed with confectioners sugar but another easy alternate would be some melted white chocolate.

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Pistachio Cake (eggless recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 36: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Travel Food
Dish: Dessert -- Pistachio Cake (Almost Vegan)

It has been a busy weekend with an early Sankranthi celebrations at my cousin's place. It was fun getting the kids dressed up and rounding them up for Bhogi pallu. Trying to keep the traditions alive.
Today's recipe has nothing to do with Sankranti, but is related to travel. Desserts for travel become very important when kids are involved. I wouldn't probably think of desserts when just me and my husband are travelling, but they become essential when kids are around. I usually carry cookies or Indian biscuits along. My mom used to make barfi or peanut fudge for travel when we were little.

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Fruit & Nut Cookies (Pistachio-Cranberry Shortbread Cookies)

Blogging Marathon# 36: Week 1/ Day 1
Theme: Cookies
Dish: Fruit & Nut Cookies (Pistachio-Cranberry Cookies)

Here's Wishing everyone a very Happy, healthy & prosperous New Year 2014.
Our blogging marathon group is back again in the new year with BM# 36. To start the new year on a sweet note, I'm making some cookies for the first week of the marathon. I wanted to post a savory cookie too, but posted this baked mathri last week/ year itself.

I made 3 types of cookies and this eggless fruit cake to give as edible gifts this Christmas season. Last few years the cookies I made for Christmas had eggs in them and it didn't bother me. But this year I was baking for family who don't eat eggs and I had to find eggless cookie recipes or at least recipes that had only 1~2 eggs, so I can easily replace them egg replacer.

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Eggless Christmas Plum Cake (Vegan recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 35: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: Bookmarked recipes
Dish: Eggless Christmas Plum Cake
Here's wishing everyone a very merry Christmas.

This holiday season has turned out to be the best so far with family and friends around. We have family visiting us for the holiday and everyone is just having a blast. It's now past 12:00AM on Christmas morning, gifts are placed under the tree and cookies and milk left out for Santa and carrots for the reindeers. Kids are sleeping, but I'm sure they are dreaming about the presents that Santa's going to leave them. 

I planned to make fruit cake for this Christmas a long time ago, but as with everything else I kept it till the very last minute to make it. The reason being I found Dassana's recipe that doesn't need cakes to be soaked in booze for days and I decided to make it just 2 days before Christmas. So I soaked the dry fruit and nuts in orange juice and rum on Sunday and baked the cakes on Monday.

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Hazelnut Cupcakes with Hazelnut-Chocolate Frosting (Eggless Recipe)

I think the biggest advantage of buying cookbooks instead of fiction books is once I read a novel and know the story I'm done with it and it just sits there collecting dust. Whereas a good cookbook can be used again and again. This is purely my opinion, I'm sure you might be reading the same novel again and again, I'm not judging you :-)

So point of the matter is if you are in the market to buy a book for a food blogger, it is a great idea to buy a good cookbook. With so many books available, it is also a good idea to keep the interests of the said blogger in mind. For example, Amazon shipped us a 'Paleo Diet' cookbook by mistake and asked us to keep it if we wanted it. I would have jumped up in joy if it was vegetarian/ vegan/ baking related. Paleo diet is completely foreign to me, so we sent it back. Knowing the interests is key.

My sister definitely knew my interest in baking and she recently bought me 'Betty Crocker's - The Big book of Cupcakes' cookbook. I like to bake cupcakes more than regular size cakes. They are easy to decorate and so much more easier to eat. Portion control is also easy :-)

This past weekend was my sister's birthday and she wanted a nutty cupcake like this Pistachio-Rosewater cupcake. I found these hazelnut cupcakes in the book she gifted me. The recipe is basically spiced up vanilla cupcake with chopped hazelnuts and topped with hazelnut-chocolate frosting. Original recipe had egg in it, so I used my basic vegan vanilla cupcake recipe and added the spices to jazz them up. Here's how I made these cupcakes.

Ingredients: (Makes 12 cupcakes)

All purpose Flour - 1¼cups
Cornstarch - 2tbsp
Baking Powder - ¾tsp
Baking Soda - ½tsp
Salt - ½tsp
Soy Milk - 1cup
Apple cider Vinegar - 1tsp
Canola Oil - 1/3 cup
Sugar - ¾cup
Vanilla extract - 1tsp
Ground Cinnamon - 1tsp
Ground Nutmeg - ½tsp
Hazelnuts - ¾cup, toasted and skin removed

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350°F and line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
• Whisk soy milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside for a few minutes to curdle.
• Beat together the soy milk mixture, oil, sugar, vanilla in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon and nutmeg and mix until no big lumps remain.
• Stir in the chopped hazelnuts.
• Fill cupcake liners 2/3rds of the way full and bake for 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Transfer to a cooling rack and let them cool completely before frosting.

Hazelnut-Chocolate Frosting: This is a super simple frosting with semi-sweet chocolate chips and Nutella (or other chocolate-hazelnut spread).
Ingredients:
Semisweet Chocolate Chips - ¾cup
Butter - ¼cup
Nutella or other hazelnut spread with cocoa - 2tbsp
Whipping Cream (heavy cream) - 3½tbsp

Method:

• In a small saucepan, combine all the ingredients and heat over low heat, about 10~15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until chips are melted and mixture is smooth.
• Cool until the frosting thickens. To speed up the cooling process, refrigerate the mixture for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. 
• Once the cupcakes are cooled completely, frost the cupcakes. Sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts.

Sending these over to Valli's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge'.

Update December 2013: Sending these cupcakes over to Valli's Cake Mela.

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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