Maple Pecan Scones for #BreadBakers

For this month's Bread Bakers, we are baking with natural sweeteners. I looked high and low for yeast bread recipes using natural sweeteners but couldn't find one that I wanted to try. Finally found the recipe for these Maple-Pecan Scones in Vegetarian Times Magazine.

Our host for the month Mayuri (Mayuri's Jikoni) wanted us to bake using natural sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, blackstrap molasses, dates, coconut sugar etc. These are healthier and tastier alternates to refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners.

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Instant Rabdi with Malpua (Rajasthani Rabri Malpua)

BM# 63: Journey through the Cuisines 
Week 2: Rajasthani Cuisine 
Day 9: I for Instant Rabri with Rajasthani Mawa Malpua
We are starting a new week in a new state today. After all the yummy Bengali dishes from last week I am going on a culinary journey through the desert state of Rajasthan. Again I have a sweet dish to start the week -- Instant Rabdi (Rabri) with Mawa Malpua.

Letter 'I' seemed a little difficult to find recipes for and after looking around the internet, I decided to make 'Imarti', a cousin of jalebi aka jhangri (in the Southern states). It is quite commonly made all over the country and technically cannot be associated with Rajasthan, but I took the plunge and finalized it for 'I'. I watched a few videos and I was confident that I had it all figured out. I set out an afternoon making the Imarti, but unfortunately (sob.. sob..) my imarti were epic failure. They were not juicy and sweet -- instead they were rubbery and sugar crusted :-(

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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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Russian Blinis (Buckwheat Pancakes)

Buffet on Table: Breakfasts across Countries

Day 22: Russian - Blinis

We move to Russia for Buckwheat Blini breakfast. Blini are Russian pancakes made with buckwheat flour leavened with yeast and lightened with beaten egg.

I found a ton of recipes for these pancakes, some with just buckwheat flour, some with a combination of wholewheat and buckwheat flours. I followed this recipe that used both flours, but I replaced the all purpose flour with wholewheat pastry flour.

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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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Mofo gasy or Madagascar Yeasted Pancakes for #Food of the World

We are visiting Madagascar this month for #Food of the World event. Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Southeast Africa. The Malagasy cuisine is influenced by Southeast Asian, Indian, Chinese and European migrants who have settled on the island. Rice is the staple food and is eaten at almost all of the meals.

It was quite a challenge to find authentic vegetarian recipes from this Island country. There were quite a few versions of coconut rice that I could have tried but didn't feel like making just rice :-)

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Belgium Waffles for #Food of the World (Vegan Recipe)

This month we are visiting Belgium for Food of the World event. Belgium is best known for its chocolate (one of the world's best), waffles and beer. I wanted to make a vegetarian dish from Belgium, but didn't find time to do my research. So I ended up making Belgian waffles for breakfast this past weekend.

But contrary to what I thought, waffles in Belgium are not really breakfast food, they are more popular as casual snack food -- usually bought from a bakery or a street stand. The waffles that North Americans think of as Belgian waffle is actually known as Gaufre de Bruxelles or "the Brussels waffle' in Belgium.

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Bavarian Dumplings/ Dampfnudel (eggless recipe)

This month's host of International Food Challenge, Saraswathi Tharagaram (Sara's Yummy Bites) is taking us on a culinary tour of Bavaria region in Germany. Germany is located in Western Europe. The topography of the country is varied, and includes regions of deep forest and high mountains, as well as a wide valley surrounding the Rhine, Germany's largest river. The highest mountain peak, the Zugspitze, lies on the border with Austria. Less than 3 percent of Germans are farmers, and the country must import much of its food. Apples, pears, cherries, and peaches, as well as grapes for wine production, are important crops in Germany. 
German regional cuisine can be divided into many varieties such as Bavarian cuisine (southern Germany), Thuringian (central Germany), Lower Saxon cuisine or those of Saxony-Anhalt. For this month we going to try Bavarain cuisine from Southern Germany. 

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Malaysian Apam Balik (Crispy Malaysian Pancakes) -- Eggless Recipe

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: One Dish, Different Countries
Dish: Malaysia -- Apam Balik

Day 2 of BM# 38 and today I've Malaysian sweet pancakes for you. Apam Balik is a crispy thin pancake that is usually filled with sweetened peanuts. These are usually sold at specialist roadside stalls throughout Malaysia.
Watch this video to see how expertly the guy makes apam balik. I especially like the technique he uses to take them off the pan.

Traditionally these pancakes are made in brass molds since brass distributes heat evenly and the metal itself is thick and heavy, so food does not scald that easily. This post has clear pictures of the brass molds used to make Apam Balik. I don't own brass pans and have no plans of buying them, so I used a nonstick pan to do the job. After looking all those gorgeous looking pancakes, mine didn't turn out as golden and crispy in the pictures, but they tasted great.

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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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Vegan Gingerbread Cookies

For this holiday season, I bought 'Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie jar' cookbook on Amazon. For the couple of days I was leafing through the book breaking my head to decide what to make first. My son came home from school yesterday and asked me if he could have a gingerbread cookie because he made a  paper gingerbread boy in school and was wondering how it would actually taste.

I knew right away that Gingerbread cookies would be first cookie to be made from my new cookbook. Luckily I had all the ingredients on hand. My son helped me with reading the ingredients and the instructions. After I was done making the dough and set it in the fridge to chill for 1 hour, he pestered me a million times if it was time to bake. Oh these kids and their restlessness :-)

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Whole Wheat Challah Bread (Eggless recipe)

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, our host Priya Ranjit very aptly chose Holiday Bakes. She gave us recipes for holiday cookies, cakes and breads to choose from. As usual when I saw the list I wanted to bake 2 or 3 recipes and as usual I ran out of time. But I'm glad I found time to bake at least one from the list and I'll try to bake a few more before the end of the year.

We had a snow storm yesterday (all that white in the background is snow in the next picture) and as luck has it my husband was out of town on business. It was quite a feat to drop off and pick up the kids from school. I was upset that the local school district didn't announce a snow day, but then I made best of the day by baking. With the kids away I had time to bake this yummy Challah bread.

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Scallion Pancakes

This is the second dish that I made for the International Food Challenge. Scallion pancakes have been on my to-make list for a long time and when I saw them on the list of Cantonese dishes to try, I knew I had to make these. I found a recipe using whole wheat pastry flour in Whole Grains Baking by King Arthur flour and made them. They turned out great.

The dough for these pancakes is very sticky and that is how it is supposed to be to get nice and chewy pancakes. Recipe also requires quite a bit of oil, so don't attempt this recipe if you are on a low-fat diet or watching your calorie intake. But you need the oil to make the pancakes less sticky and easy to work with. 

I halved the recipe and made 3 pancakes. They are so addictive, that me and my husband ate them all in one sitting. The best part of the whole recipe is the dipping sauce; salty, sour, spicy and sweet.

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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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Corn & Scallion Pancakes

Blogging Marathon # 26: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Pick 1 ingredient and Cook from 3 books - Breakfast Combo
Dish: Corn & Scallion Pancakes

When I started looking for breakfast dishes with corn, most of the recipes used cornmeal instead of whole corn. I found this savory corn pancakes recipe in the King Arthur Flour catalog. These can be served for breakfast or even brunch with black bean salsa and a dollop of sour cream.

Recipe uses Sourdough starter and since I'm always looking for ways to use my starter I made these pancakes right away. I made a few changes to the original recipe to make it eggless and add some fiber. Pancakes turned out great - they looked and tasted like cheelas (chickpea dosas/ crepes).

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Chole-Bhatura

Blogging Marathon #24: Day 1

Theme: Cooking from Restaurant Menus

Dish: Chole-Bhatura

For this month's final week of Blogging marathon, I chose a very interesting theme, "Cooking from Restaurant Menus". Valli gave us quite a few menus to choose from and I chose "India House Vegetarian Restaurant". 

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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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Waffles with Chocolate Malted Syrup

Going back to work after a long weekend is quite an effort. Weekends always seem to be so short, but I'm happy that I got to do some cleaning and arranging things around the house and make some dishes for the blog. We also watched "Men In Black 3" in the theater, an evening show with our son for the first time. We took him to the afternoon shows since they are less crowded, but this time we took a chance. He slept after watching the previews and may be about 15minutes of the movie (oh. well......)

I was raking my mind on what breakfast to make for blogging marathon this morning and I asked my son if he wanted pancakes or waffles. He said he wanted chocolate waffles and added that he would help me make them too. 

A quick google search landed me on this recipe from Williams Sonoma, I had all the ingredients on hand except for semi-sweet chocolate, so I used a combo of unsweetened and milk chocolate. Waffles came out perfect and the chocolate sauce is to die for. I'm looking forward to use the sauce on ice-creams, pancakes, bananas,.....

I added half a measure of whole-wheat pastry flour and used Vanilla soy milk instead of regular milk.

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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.

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Tiramisu Cake

Here's Wishing everyone a Very Happy Christmas.

Hope everyone had a fun holiday with lots of good food and got to spend time with family and friends. Talking about good food, I made this delicious Tiramisu cake from scratch for my cousin who happens to love Tiramisu. For a change I wanted to use a cake as the base instead of lady fingers. I made a vanilla yellow cake from the recipe here and used half of it to make a 8" round cake. I split the cake in half and layered it with mascarpone filling and chilled it until ready to serve.

 

You can use store bought yellow cake mix instead of making your own. Just follow the package instructions to make the cake. Make a note that this recipe uses only half the cake mix, so adapt the recipe accordingly.

 

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