Banana-Walnut Bread

All the ingredients for this recipe can be combined in a food processor which makes it a perfect entry to Mansi’s BBD# 18: Quick Bread event. Bread Baking Day (BBD) is the brainchild of Zorra @ Kochtopf.

This recipe is from Vegetarian Bible by Sarah Brown. The recipe used pecans and dried apricots, I subbed them with walnuts & raisins resp.

Recipe adapted from Vegetarian Bible

Ingredients:

Self Rising Flour – 2 cups (I used 2 cups AP flour + 3 tsp Baking powder + 1 tsp salt)

Butter – ½cup, melted

Eggs – 3

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Bananas – 3 ripe, chopped

Walnuts – 1 cup

Raisins – ½ cup

Method:

• Reserve ½ cup walnuts for garnish.
  
• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8” circular baking pan or 9”x 5” loaf pan.
• Add bananas, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, nuts & raisins to the food processor; pulse till well combined. (I had some technical problems with my processor when I tried to turn it on after dumping all the ingredients in it; so I had to dump everything back into a bowl and use a hand mixer to mix. It was a little annoying cleaning up the mess, but the bread turned out just fine).
• Pour into the prepared pan; arrange the reserved walnuts on the top. Bake for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
  
• Cool in pan.

This bread tastes great toasted with some butter. I brought it to my colleague’s birthday breakfast and everybody loved it.

Tried & Tested – Tasty Palettes

I’m a frequent visitor to Suganya’s blog; for her recipes definitely, but also mostly to gawk at her snatch-from-the-monitor worthy pictures.

I have tried quite a number of recipes from Tasty Palettes before, but I have not taken pictures of them. But I made sure took pictures for this month’s Tried & Tested event being hosted by Sweatha @ Tasty Curry Leaf. Tried & Tested is the brain child of Zlamushka @ Burntmouth.

First of is Sweet Ragi Dosa. These dosas are sweet, but not overly so and my son absolutely loved them. Will be making more of these.

Lentil Fattoush: One of my colleagues was kind enough to bring me Sumac from a middle-eastern market. This fattoush turned out awesome, very flavorful and filling. The only change I made was to use avocado instead of cucumber. This will also made again.

Godhuma Rawa Halwa (Broken Wheat Halwa)

I find the broken wheat or Dalia that we get in the Indian groceries here in US is coarse and little too chewy to my taste. I love it in upma and khichdi, but halwa needs a finer rawa. My MIL was kind enough to send me some very fine godhuma rawa and that is what I used in this recipe.

Ingredients:
Godhuma Rawa (fine cracked wheat) – 1 cup
Water – 3 cups (try a combination of water & milk or all milk for creamier halwa)
Sugar – 1cup
Cardamom – 4 pods crushed
Cashews/ Almonds/ Raisins – as per taste

Method:

• Heat 1tbsp ghee in a pan, add the rawa and fry on medium flame till lightly roasted and fragrant.
  
• While the rawa is roasting, bring water (or milk) to boil in a saucepan.
  
• Once rawa is roasted to golden brown, slowing add water (milk); reduce the flame to low and keep stirring to make sure that there are no lumps. Cover and cook on medium-low flame till rawa is cooked thoroughly.
  
• Add sugar and cardamom powder; mixture will get liquidy and will slowly start to thicken again. Turn off the stove once the desired thickness is reached. Stir in fried raisins, cashews and almonds. Serve at room temperature or cold.
  

This is my entry to this month’s JFI-Wheat being hosted by Roma @ Roma’s Space. JFI is the brainchild of Indira of Mahanandi.

Ugadhi Subhakankshalu

Virodhi Nama Samvathsara Subhakankshalu