Carrot Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting

My next experiment with baking is a double layered carrot cake. Make this delicious, super moist, melt-in-mouth, spicy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting this Christmas and surprise your near and dear ones. This cake is rich and flavourful and the cream cheese frosting gives another dimension to the cake, a must try for all the cake and bake lovers. Got this recipe from the net and with all those red juicy sweet carrots of the winter the recipe was simply irresistible….so off I went with it.

Carrot Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting

Chicken Dak Bungalow ~ An Anglo-Indian Delicacy

The name itself takes you back to the British colonial era, you can picturize a quaint loghut with British architecture amidst a dense forest. The Dak Bungalows or the bungalows on the postal (dak) route served as rest houses during the hunting trips or long journeys to the remote places for the British officers who spent some days in the serenity of the woods and enjoyed country fowl curry whose more popular Bong term is ‘Bon Murgir Jhol’ cooked by the caretakers or the ‘Khansamas’ of that bungalow. This special curry was cooked with the elementary spices freshly ground, potatoes and boiled eggs.

Chicken Dak Bungalow

Daal Puri (Indian Bread With Dried And Split Yellow Chickpeas Stuffing)

Continuing with my exploits with the winter delicacies, here’s the next one in the series…. Daal puri. With a delectable stuffing of chana daal (dried and split yellow chickpeas) this features in the list of my most favorite Indian bread. You can relish these with aloo dum or any spicy potato curry or even without any side dish, just with a cup of steaming tea.

Daal Puri

Pound cake

Christmas is nearing and getting inspired by all the awesome bakes being posted on various food groups couldn’t resist myself. This is a simple bake, nothing too rich and heavy. A pound cake is something you enjoy at anytime, delicious, moist and fluffy, a good accompaniment with tea or coffee which often becomes the saviour in this cold season.

Pound Cake

Though maa n grandma’s pound cakes were typically old school, I baked this using my imagination, added some cashews, dark raisins n tootty truity to make it more appealing to my son. I’m not a baker by any means but this tasted superb. So those of you looking for an easy bake before the real Christmas stuff, this is the recipe for you.

Pound Cake

What you’ll need:

• 11/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 11/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 eggs at room temperature
• ¾ cups of granulated sugar
• 15 tablespoons of salted butter melted
• 1/3 cup of whole milk at room temperature
• A fistful of tootty fruity
• A fistful of dark raisins
• A fistful of cashews

 

Pound Cake

Process:

Step1:
 

First soak the cashew and raisins in warm water for  5-7 minutes and strain the water.

Step 2:

Sift flour and baking powder together 2 times.

Step 3:

Now in an electric mixer, mix these along with the sugar on low speed until nicely blended.

Step 4:

Beat the eggs, and add to it the milk and the vanilla essence and mix well.

Step 5:
 

Now mix the dry ingredients in the mixer with melted butter and half the egg mix on low speed for 10 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the container and mix again on low speed for 20 seconds. By now the dry ingredients will be moistened. Pour in the remaining egg mix and again blend on low speed for 30 seconds twice at an interval. Your batter is ready by now.

Step 6:
 

Gently mix the cashew, raisins and tootty fruity with a ladle and pour the batter in a well greased and powdered baking dish.

Step 7:

Preheat the oven to 180 degree centigrade and bake for 55 minutes-1 hour. Do the toothpick test, before removing. The toothpick should come out clean when inserted at the centre.

Pound cake

Step 8:

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack before removing from the baking dish.

Stuffed Parantha #IndianBread

On a chilly winter evening is there anything more inviting than a plate of hot stuffed parantha with a dollop of butter melting on the top, a cup of steaming ginger tea to go with it, curled up inside the warmth of a quilt watching a good movie with your favorite person?

Stuffed Parantha

This is the season when you can indulge in a bit of oily stuff which you normally avoid in the summers. And with all those fresh winter veggies flooding the market you can stuff your parantha with those of your choice. I stuffed mine with potatoes, carrots, beans, green peas, onions, ginger, chopped green chillies and lots of chopped coriander leaves.

Stuffed Paranthas

Here’s the recipe of this delish Indian bread…..

Ingredients:

• 3 large potatoes peeled
• 3 carrots peeled
• 300 gms green peas peeled
• 12-14 beans
• 2 large onions finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ginger finely chopped
• 2 tsp green chillies finely chopped
• Lots of coriander leaves finely chopped
• 2 tsp chat masala powder
• Wheat flour for the parantha dough
• Salt to taste
• A mix of white oil and ghee/clarified butter for frying the paranthas

Stuffed Paranthas

Procedure:

Step:1

Cut the potatoes in four dices, and boil/ steam them together with carrots and beans. In a separate bowl boil the peas with a pinch of salt. Keep on a plate to cool after straining the water. The veggies must not be overboiled.

Step 2:

Prepare the dough for the parantha. Knead it soft.

Step:3

Now prepare the stuffing. Mash all the boiled veggies and mix chopped onions, ginger, green chillies and coriander. If the stuffing becomes a bit soggy sprinkle some flour and mix. Add salt and chat masala powder. Check the seasoning before stuffing.

Step 4:

Now tear out small dough, flatten it with hands, fill in the stuffing and carefully fold it in all sides so as not to spill the filling. With the help of a rolling pin flatten it out into paranthas.

Stuffed Paranthas

Step 5:

On a tawa fry the paranthas well on both sides and serve hot with any chutney dip of your choice or malai. I just love them with a heap of butter. Yummmmmmm……

Nolen Gur diye Sewainer Payesh (Vermicelli Pudding With Date Palm Jaggery)

Date Palm Jaggery/ sugar is a special sweetener made from the juice/sap of date palm trees. The sap is collected by tying a pot with the tree trunk, and later boiled to make date palm sugar or jaggery. You associate the name with Bengal only because of the availability and as this state has been producing sweets of incredible variety and taste with date palm jaggery since time immemorial. The uniqueness and popularity of the flavour of this special jaggery have made it reach places outside Bengal and India. Now available almost at all the places nested by Bongs, I manage to get hold of it from C.R.Park a predominantly Bong inhabited region in Delhi.

Nolen Gur Diye Sewainer Payesh

Date Palm Jaggery is available as both syrup and solid. I usually use the solidified form better known as ‘Patali Gur’ for payesh/pudding/kheer. This pudding is most often cooked with rice, but other variants like suji/semolina, sewain/vermicelli prove to be equally delectable.

Nolen Gur Diye Sewainer Payesh

Nolen Gur Diye Sewainer Payesh

Nolen Gur Diye Sewainer Payesh

Now the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 litre whole milk
• Date palm jaggery according to the sweetness you want
• A fistful of cashew
• A fistful of raisins/kishmish
• A fistful of vermicelli/sewain
• 1 tablespoon ghee/clarified butter

Process:

Step:1

Boil the milk and reduce it to two third. Now in a pan heat ghee and roast the vermicelli until it takes a brownish hue.

Step:2

Throw in the cashews and raisins, stir for a minute.

Step:3

Pour the whole thing (vermicelli, cashew, raisins) into the milk. Let them simmer in the milk until the vermicelli is done.

Step:4

Now add the date palm jaggery broken into small pieces and stir the milk until they are completely dissolved.

Nolen Gur Diye Sewainer Payesh

Step:5

Serve warm or chilled, it will taste divine.