If you are a novice baker looking for an easy recipe to be successful with or in a hurry to whip up a batch of delicious cookies then this brown rice flour chocolate chip cookie recipe should be your first choice. Unlike the regular chocolate chip cookie recipe, this one doesn’t need butter, so you save time on bringing it to room temperature. This is almost instant. Just mix together flour, sugar, oil and a couple of other ingredients and by the the time the oven is preheated your cookie dough is ready. So within 30 minutes warm, delicious, fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookies is ready.

This recipe is based on this barley chocolate chip cookie recipe. I used a mix of oat flour and brown rice flour instead. Since cookies don’t need much of rising unlike quick bread and cakes, I think you should be fine using any other flour in this recipe. This cookie recipe is also gluten friendly. If you make sure all the ingredients are gluten-free, this is a wonderful recipe. It’s vegan too when you use vegan chocolate chips. These cookies remained crisp even after a week.

Hello friends, hope you are all doing great. Firstly I would like to apologize for taking off just like that. I didn’t think that my absence would be noticed until I started receiving emails and comments from fellow food bloggers and regular visitors. I really feel very blessed to know that there are so many people to care about me. Thank you very much friends for your concern and wishes. A couple of things are happening at my end (everything good though) not allowing me to blog regularly and answer your emails immediately. I think it’s going to take some more time for me to get back to the routine here. I sincerely hope that you will still remember me and extend your support to the blog once I come back.

Now to the round up. This is the first time that I have not even posted a single recipe for the whole grain baking event. I did bake some delicious chocolate chip cookies using brown rice flour but didn’t get the time to write the post. Hopefully I will get to that in a couple of days and include it in the round up later. I didn’t want to keep the round up pending just to include my recipe, so here it is. Thank you my dear food blogging friends for whipping up so many mouthwatering dishes with brown rice.

Champa's Chewy Granola Bars

Champa's Vegan Banana Brownies

Champa's Almond Coconut Cookies

Kizzy's Eggless Persian Cookies

Priya's Brown Rice Chocolate Cookies

Priya's Savory Peanut Butter Cookies

Priya's Vegan Chocolate Cookies

Madhuram's Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Priya's Onion Sesame Crackers

Priya's Vegan Rice & Oats Crackers

Sadhana/Muskaan's Multigrain Crackers

Champa's Orange Cranberry Muffins

Kizzy's Eggless Bluberry Muffins

Latha's Baked Brown Rice Appam

Priya's Multigrain Carrot Muffins

Sadhana & Muskaan's Multigrain Bread

Sadhana & Muskaan's Multigrain Pineapple Muffins

Sweatha's Gluten Free and Fat Free Banana Bread

Sadhana & Muskaan's Multigrain Chocolate Muffins

Priya's Brown Rice Patties (Baked)

Priya's Multigrain Chocolate Cake

When I chose ragi (a.k.a Finger Millet) for JFI I didn’t expect my inbox to be flooded with so many healthy recipes. Some of these ragi recipes are traditional, some very modern. There is something for everybody, so there is no more excuse for not using this healthy grain regularly. I thank my food blogging buddies for their enthusiasm in participating in this event and making this a grand success. Now let’s check the recipes.

The recipes have been classified under various categories. Please click the drop-down menu to see the recipes:

I usually do not buy sugary cereals. It is always Fiber One and plain old Cheerios. My son likes both. Others which I get occasionally are corn flakes, puffed brown rice, puffed millet and puffed corn. I once tried the cocoa pebbles and felt that it way too sweet. My son keeps asking for chocolate flavored cereal and I keep telling him that I cannot get it because it is not healthy. Finally I got the idea to make my own chocolate cereal.

I decided to mix cocoa powder with ragi flour; sweeten it with maple syrup; form a smooth dough and try to cut out small circles and bake it. After I was done preparing the dough, I was able to roll it out but was not able to remove the circles off the surface. It was sort of sticky. So I decided to score it into diamonds instead and bake it like crackers. Even though I was not able to do exactly what I had planned to but the experiment did end well. My son loved this homemade chocolate cereal. Keeping the recipe I have given as a base one can try this with a variety of flours and come with a lot of healthy variations.

Shall we bake with whole grain rice this month? Whole-grain rice is usually brown – but, unknown to many, can also be black, purple, red or any of a variety of exotic hues. So for this event you can bake with any whole grain rice which is easily available.

Why brown rice is considered to be nutritionally superior to white rice when both have similar amounts of calories, carbohydrates and proteins? Like any other whole grain, brown rice (or any other whole grain rice) has the bran and germ intact. The outermost layer of the rice (husk) is only removed in brown rice whereas the husk, bran and germ are all removed leaving the starchy endosperm alone in white rice. In this refining process several vitamins and minerals are lost too, thereby making brown rice the best. To know more about the benefits and nutritional value of brown rice check here.

Whole grain forms of brown rice (or any rice) includes long or short grain rice, brown rice flour, cream of brown rice and even brown rice puff cereal. Make sure that the package reads whole grain or 100% whole grain. Recently I discovered brown rice farina also known as cream of brown rice. Bob’s Red Mill has a huge collection of whole grain stuff. So be sure to check for this brown rice farina too in the organic aisle of grocery stores or health food stores. Brown rice flour is also available from the same company. I have used both brown rice flour and cream of brown rice in Indian cooking instead of its white counterpart and the dishes turned out very good. Can’t wait to use it while baking.

• Recipes using Cream of Brown Rice
• Recipes using Brown Rice Flour
• Recipes using Long Grain Brown Rice
• Recipes using Short Grain Brown Rice

1 Bake anything egg less using one or more of the whole grain forms of rice (whole grain rice, whole grain rice flour, cream of whole grain rice, whole grain rice puff cereal etc).

2 Post it in your blog between Jan 18th 2010 and Feb 17th 2010. The dish can be anything sweet, salty or spicy. The recipes must be either vegetarian and eggless or vegan. If the recipe is from books/blogs/websites, please link back /mention the original source.

3 Multiple entries are more than welcome. Recipes posted prior to the announcement of this event are also welcome provided it qualifies the above criteria and is linked back to this event. Reposting is not necessary. As always there is prize for this event too and old entries will also be considered.

4 Email me your name, blog URL, name of the recipe, recipe URL, photo in 150w x 120h size to wholegrains(at)egglesscooking.com with Rice as the subject.

5 Non-bloggers you can submit your entries in Eggless Cooking Forums under Share Egg Free Recipes. You have to register first and it’s free! Send me an email after updating there and I’ll include it in the round up.

The title must have made you curious right? Before I proceed to make the announcement I would like to wish all my Hindu readers a very Happy Pongal/Makara Sankranthi.

At this point I just want to tell what the news is, but I’m trying to build some suspense here. It’s going to be difficult though because the one thing I’m very bad at, is writing interestingly. I especially admire my friends Dee, DK, Srivalli and Sunshinemom for their style of writing. They can turn even a simple recipe post into something very special. Me on the other hand, I have an interesting news to share with all of you and I’m already struggling for words.

I don’t know if you all have noticed a pattern in this blog over the past couple of months? I know that some of you did, from the emails I have been receiving. Any guesses? It’s that it has been ages since I have posted any non-baking recipes in EgglessCooking.com. In the past 8 months I have posted only 2 non-baking recipes and the remaining were all egg free baking recipes. It did not happen just like that but I have been doing this on purpose. I felt that posting other cooking recipes might distract the attention of the visitors who come here looking for just eggless baking recipes. I didn’t want to dilute the essence of this blog by posting other recipes. So I started to post only egg free baking recipes here. I still was cooking a lot of interesting stuff and was taking pictures of it too. I don’t know for what though. At the back of my mind I had this idea of having another blog for all those recipes but things were not coming together. We started the Forum, I made a trip to India, came back and started taking the Wilton’s Cake Decorating courses and lot of other things were happening.

In the meanwhile I also started receiving mails from some of the regular followers of this blog telling that they were missing the vegetarian and vegan cooking recipes I used to post earlier. This made me thinking and with a lot of pressure from my husband I decided to do something about it. Just a quick digress, I’m still trying to find out if it is a good thing or a bad thing that your husband is very supportive of your blogging! I completely agree that this blog will not be what it is now without his hard work but sometimes it is too much to take.

Now back to where I left. Finally I did decide to start another food blog to feature other vegetarian and vegan non-baking recipes. So that’s my news. We have been working on this for a couple of weeks now and wanted to make it public on the 1st of January 2010 but then we were going back and forth and felt that everything was not perfect and wanted to improve a lot. Later we realized that improvisation is a never ending process so it is better to get it done when you still have some enthusiasm left for the new project. So we decided to go public today because it is believed by Tamilians around the world that the month of Thai (beginning today) is auspicious and it paves way for new and better opportunities.

I wanted to try soaking the cornmeal in buttermilk or water for an hour or so and then use it, but couldn’t get to it. I have some more cornmeal left and hopefully I will try that method and will record my observations here when I’m finished. Maybe the soaking will soften it and yield a better texture in the baked goods. I have seen a couple of recipes wherein rolled oats was soaked for a good amount of time before baking. So I think this trick should work for whole cornmeal too.

Now to the cornmeal recipes round up.

Champa's Mexican Corn Bread

Priya's Portugese Yeast Corn Bread

Priya's Vegan Cornmeal Dinner Rolls

Sadhana & Muskaan's Quick Corn Bread

Champa's Vegan Peanut Butter Cornmeal Cookies

Madhuram's Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Priya's Tutti Fruiti Cornmeal Cookies

Swathi's Eggless Almond & Cornmeal Cookies

Champa's Hot Cornmeal Muffins

Priya's Cheesy Corn Muffins

Priya's Vegan Cornmeal Mini Muffins

Renu's Eggless Cornflour Strawberry Muffins

Madhuram's Cornmeal Snack Cake

Madhuram's Vegan Blueberry Coffee Cake

Priya's Caramel Popcorn Crunch

Congratulations Champa! Please forward your mailing address using the contact form.

In my previous post I mentioned about the Taste of Home website for a huge collection of baking recipes and how I like to linger around there. Another website I often visit is Weight Watchers. Whether your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight or not I think it is always better to look for healthy meal ideas and what better place to look for than Weight Watchers. They have a good collection of dessert, baking recipes too. I have tried a couple of recipes from that site as well with some tweaks here and there and have liked it very much.

The following chocolate banana cake recipe too is my version of the Dark Chocolate Cake recipe in that site. The cake recipe is egg free already. All I did was to substitute a cup of pureed sauerkraut with a cup of pureed banana and made it vegan by substituting canola oil for the melted butter. I also used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose flour. What is sauerkraut? I too was not aware of such a thing until I saw it mentioned in the cake recipe. I understand that it is fermented red cabbage pickle in laymen terms. For detailed information check this sauerkraut recipe, which has detailed instructions with pictures.

As for my chocolate cake with bananas, it came out very well. One of the reason I chose to bake this cake was, I recently purchased a bundt pan and was waiting for a chance to use it. I saw that this cake recipe too used one and was egg free too. Another reason being, I had very ripe bananas at home which I didn’t want to throw it away. So I decided to use it in this recipe and I’m not regretting it at all. The flavor of bananas in the cake is very mild. I was expecting that the banana’s flavor would be dominating but was surprised that it was not so. The cake was moist, had a very good texture; neither dense nor crumbly, perfect for decorating for birthdays and anniversaries. The only change I would make in that case is to use butter instead of canola oil to give it a rich taste.

• Cakes and Cookies event at SpicesEtc
• Show me your cake event at Dil Se

]]> http://www.egglesscooking.com/2010/01/06/vegan-chocolate-banana-cake/feed/ 32 http://www.egglesscooking.com/2010/01/04/vegan-orange-cranberry-muffins/ http://www.egglesscooking.com/2010/01/04/vegan-orange-cranberry-muffins/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:49:58 +0000 Madhuram http://www.egglesscooking.com/?p=1685 Flavorful orange and cranberry muffins studded with pieces of pecans. These muffins are vegan and low fat too but this does not affect the taste. Flax seed powder is used as an egg substitute in this recipe.]]>

I have used a lot of dried cranberries while baking but am picky about the fresh ones. So far I have tried only one recipe using fresh cranberries. It is this cranberry bars recipe from the Joy of Baking website. Although it did come out well and tasted good, somehow I did not develop a liking for this beautiful red fruit. I think part of the reason is my quirky food likings. I usually don’t like sweet and sour or sweet and spicy together. A dish has to be either fully sweet or fully spicy. So its obvious that I do not like the combination of tart cranberries and sweet in baked goods. Anyhow I decided to give it a shot once again this cranberry season.

Lately I have been seeing a lot of Indianized cranberry recipes. Cranberry rice, cranberry pickle, cranberry dal, etc. just to mention a few. So I decided to try at least that if at all not baking with cranberries. Recently I also got hooked to the Taste of Home website. I have got a baking book published by that magazine and am a fan for those recipes. I have had a 100% success rate with those recipes. I don’t know what stopped me from visiting their website all these days. A couple of days back I borrowed a Taste of Home Cookies book from the library. It has 623 recipes and I was so tempted to get one for myself. That’s when I decided to check out their website to see if they have free recipes online and I was overjoyed to find the same. I looked for some cranberry recipes in there and bookmarked this cranberry muffins recipe. It was a simple straight forward recipe and the egg substitution was easy too. I decided to use flax seed meal as the egg substitute like I used for the vegan cranberry quick bread recipe and it turned out great.

For the past couple of months I have been incorporating a lot of whole grains and whole grain flours while baking. So I decided to used plain all purpose flour this time. Partly the reason being, my phobia for cranberries. Since I was not sure if I would like cranberries I didn’t want to use whole wheat flour and mess it up further. Surprisingly these cranberry muffins did not fail me. It tasted pretty good with mild sweetness, occasional tartness from the cranberries here and there and a nice crunch from the pecans. I would definitely try this recipe again but would increase the quantity of sugar a little bit.

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year 2010. JFI was the first food blog event I ever participated after starting this blog. Now I’m a proud host of the same. Thank you very much Indira for giving me this opportunity.

JFI means Jhiva for Ingredients and every month a natural ingredient relating to India or Indian cuisine is featured. I couldn’t think of any ingredient other than Ragi (Finger Millet). I feel that this grain is being neglected by us (or at least by me) like many other healthy Indian food ingredients. We are generous enough to embrace ingredients from other parts of the world, not that its wrong, but I feel that we should do justice to cereals and grains grown in our home country too.

From this year onwards I’m going to take a resolution to try at least one Indian ingredient every month, which I have been neglecting all these days, starting with Ragi in Jan 2010. Are you with me on this? Thanks to the Internet and food blogs, I’m seeing a lot of ragi recipes off late. So it should not be a problem to prepare at least one healthy meal, if not more using whole ragi or ragi flour.

Send in your entries (old and new) and let us create a hub for ragi recipes to benefit everybody. Please note that the ragi flour we get in Indian grocery stores is devoid of the bran which is rich in fiber. So its not a whole grain flour, but this should not stop us from using this quite often, because something is better than nothing. If possible try to use the whole ragi by soaking and sprouting it.

Now for the rules of the event.