I got the idea for pumpkin kulfi last year itself while I hosted AFAM-Pumpkin. I did try it but with canned pumpkin puree and the taste was not good. So I just abandoned the idea. Sometime back I saw Jyoti’s Mango-Passion Fruit Kulfi and was impressed so much by the picture of the cute kulfi that it inspired me to give my pumpkin kulfi idea another shot. I’m glad I tried it once again because it was extremely good. Thanks Jyoti.

The preparation of this kulfi is very simple. Quite similar to the pumpkin kheer I have posted before. Instead of using plain milk, for the kulfis I have used evaporated milk and condensed milk to give that extra richness and creaminess.

Hi friends, I’m back. Actually I came back from India in the last week of August itself, but did not feel like blogging all these days. The trip was mostly good except when my son fell very sick when swine flu was at peak there. Thankfully it was regular flu and he is fine now. I thought of meeting all the food bloggers in Chennai but couldn’t organize it with an hectic schedule. Hope to make it at least the next time.

On a different note, ladies, do you think that your husband is not appreciative of your efforts you put in the home front? Doesn’t he help you around the house? Then pack your bags immediately and fly to India (or anywhere) and stay there at least for a month and see (enjoy) the respect you get when you come back! Even the simplest thing you do will be noticed by your better half. I’m loving it!

I didn’t bake much in the past 2 weeks but for the vegan chocolate cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday (she came with us) and Shilpa’s eggless date cake. The date cake has been in my to-bake list for quite sometime now. Somehow I didn’t get a chance to bake it until recently. We got a big pack of (Lion brand) seedless dates from India and I wanted to use it up. My son also has started going to school full time and I have to pack lunch for him. He usually eats some fruit or some healthy sweet after his lunch and dinner. So I decided to bake this cake.

This date cake has got raving reviews and I have also tasted it myself when my friend Lakshmi baked it for me as muffins. I followed the original recipe mostly but made some changes:

1 I wanted to try a vegan version because I was having some unsweetened soy milk at home. Sometimes soy milk (some brands) can leave an after taste. So I also added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract which was not mentioned in the original recipe. You can also try flavoring it with cardamom powder.

2 We had kept the dates in the refrigerator and it was very hard. So I soaked it in 3/4th cup warm soy milk. I left it soaked for nearly 15-16 hours. Maybe that much soaking is not required but I didn’t find time to bake it earlier. I blended it in my food processor with the required amount of sugar and while doing so felt that some more liquid might be necessary. So added another 1/4 cup of soy milk (this is not mentioned in the original recipe).

3 1/2 cup of oil is mentioned in the original recipe. Shilpa also mentions that she has tried baking the cake without oil and it turned out good as well, dense though. So I used 1/4 cup vegetable oil and 1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce. Measured the oil in liquid measuring mug and the applesauce in dry measuring cup.

The quantity of sugar mentioned is 3/4 cup but I scooped out 2 tablespoons of sugar after measuring.

4 Another change I made was adding 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts instead of just a tablespoon.

5 After incorporating the flour to the wet ingredients I felt that some more liquid can be added so I used 1 tablespoon water.

6 I did not want to frost the cake so I was thinking of something to make the cake look good and the idea of using blanched almonds clicked. So I decided to bake it in an 8-inch square pan and use 16 almonds (4 rows and 4 columns) to decorate the cake, so that I can cut the cake into 16 pieces and each piece will be adorned by one almond. The idea worked and the cake looked very good and was easy to pack as well.

7 My cake was done around the 32nd minute itself. The smell lets you know and you can also see the cake pulling from the sides of the pan. Move the pan to a wire cooling rack. Left it like that for an hour. Tried removing it from the pan later but couldn’t. So I stored it in the fridge overnight and it came out without any difficulty in the
morning.

The cake tasted very good. I’m sure that I’m going to bake this date cake quite often. It’s a hit with everybody in my family and my mother-in-law has already asked me to bake this for her when she leaves to India.

Thank you very much Shilpa for posting such an awesome recipe. Special thanks to your aunt for coming up with this fantastic recipe.

I would also like to thank Vaishali for suggesting my blog for the Tried and Tasted Event (which highlights one food blog every month and other food bloggers cook from that blog) started by Zlamushka. Thanks to Zlamushka for accepting the suggestion and also to Poornima for hosting it this month.

Although not low in fat technically (because of the almonds), since the percentage of saturated fat is quite low this blueberry coffee cake goes to my Low Fat Baking Event.

Another change I made was using a 13X9 inch baking pan instead of a loaf pan and also increased the oven temperature. The time mentioned to bake the bread was 60-75 minutes. Yesterday I found time to bake only at 10pm and I didn’t want to spend 1 hour for a single fruitcake, when I had plans to bake cranberry shortbread bars also, both to be gifted to the firefighters and others before christmas. So I decided to use a 13X9 inch pan, which definitely was wise because the fruitcake was done around 35 minutes itself. This was also very convenient to cut them into small pieces.

I also flavored the fruitcake with Supreme Spice’s Tea Masala Extract. For long time now I have wanted to try spice extracts, finally ordered it last week and got my shipment of Tea Masala Extract, Kesar Milk Extract and Tulsi Extract. The tea masala extract is my absolute favorite now. You have to try it to believe it. It transforms your ordinary tea into something exotic and it’s especially refreshing in this gloomy weather these days.

Tea masala extract is a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, clove and pepper, which I thought would be perfect to pair with this fruitcake. At first I added 5 drops of the extract to the dough, but felt that it was not enough and so added another 5 drops and mixed the dough well. While the cake was baking the kitchen was filled with so much aroma of the spices, which made me think If I had gone overboard my adding 10 drops. I couldn’t wait until it was cool enough to cut it and have a bite. Anyway I let it cool on a wire rack overnight and cut them today. But by then the pungency of the spices had reduced and the cake tasted very good with the flavor of the spice extract in the background.

My Notes 1 Any combination of nuts and dried fruits can be used in this fruitcake. The only thing to be followed is that it should be 3 cups of nuts and 3 cups of dried fruits. I used 1 cup each of walnuts, pecans and sliced almonds. For dried fruits, I used 1/2 cup each of raisins, dried cranberries, dates, apricots and 1 cup of dried and sliced figs.

2 Let the fruitcake cool completely in the pan before inverting it. I was not patient enough and turned it over and the cake broke into 2 pieces. Fortunately I was able to patch it up. So I would suggest cooling it overnight.

This christmas fruitcake goes to
1. Egg Replacement Event – Pureed Fruit hosted by me.
2. Baking for Beginners hosted by Vandana.
3. Homemade Christmas Gift hosted by Happy Cook &
4. Santa’s Holiday Challenge hosted by JZ.

I’m a mother of a preschooler and like many others of his age he is also picky when it comes to food. Earlier I didn’t have any problem at all with him during mealtime. He used to eat a lot of veggies, rice, chapathis and fruits etc. But not anymore. So these days I’m hunting for healthy and tasty recipes which appeal kids. While browsing the “Vegetarian Times – Fast and Easy” book I found many such recipes.

The crispy breakfast bar recipe, especially caught my attention because these were “no bake” bars which can be prepared in a jiffy and are healthy too. These are crunchy chewy bars. They get fiber and iron from whole-grain puffed cereal and protein from almond butter and almonds. The original recipe does not have almonds, but I added it to give the extra crunchiness and protein boost.

Following the basic method, one can come up with a couple of variations, like using peanut butter and peanuts, chocolate chips, etc to mention a few. A variety of whole-grain puffed cereals are available in the grocery stores these days. I saw puffed millet and other puffed cereals too.

The prep time is only 15 minutes, which includes the time to take out the stuff you need from your pantry and you have to freeze the mixture for 30 minutes. So in 45 minutes you have a healthy treat ready, without any elbow grease.

So how does it taste? As I have mentioned earlier, my son “the picky eater” loved it so much, he ate 2 pieces as soon as he got home from school. We adults also liked it very much. Actually it’s a fancy “Pori Urundai” (puffed rice balls) with almond butter, raisins and honey instead of the jaggery syrup we Indians use.

This is my entry for:
1. Suganya’s Vegan Ventures.
2. DK’s AWED – Amercian.
3. Pallavi’s Sunday Snacks – Fix It.

Pumpkin payasam (Kheer) is our favorite kheer next to carrot kheer. The speciality of this kheer is, you will not be able to taste the pumpkins at all. It’s also very easy to prepare.

This is my entry for AFAM – Pumpkin hosted by me this month.

For long time now, I have wanted to prepare vegetarian burgers, or rather it was my husband’s long pending request and I finally made it yesterday from Jai and Bee’s blog. Their Spicy Kidney Bean Burgers is a fantastic recipe. I was able to prepare it for dinner in no time.

I used canned and drained kidney beans (2 cans, 15.5 oz each). It was also the “No Salt Added” store brand canned beans, this allowed me to control the sodium content in the burgers.

I don’t have a food processor, so at first I just drained one can and rinsed it well and mixed all the other ingredients listed in the recipe and blended it using my Indian mixer. And let me tell you, it was little tricky to get the right consistency. Initially it did not grind at all and once I added a little water it became very mushy. I was glad that I reserved the other can. Now I opened the 2nd can, drained and rinsed it and mashed the beans nicely with a potato masher and mixed the ground mixture to this. Even then I was not able to make balls out of it. So instead of adding flour to the mixture as they had mentioned, I added a handful of quick cooking oats and I got the desirable consistency to shape them into burgers.

I also used curry powder and Maggi’s tomato chili ketchup to give it a desi taste. The original recipe mentions to use either ajwain (omam) or cumin, but I strongly suggest to go with ajwain, because I felt that it gave a very good flavor and aroma to the burgers. I also did not have nutritional yeast, so used roasted chick pea flour (besan) instead. Also don’t forget to add the 1/4 cup of chopped almonds, because this gives a nice crunch to the burgers, which you don’t want to miss.

I used a stove top non stick griddle to cook the burgers. Sprayed the grill with non stick canola oil spray and placed the burgers on it. It took around 8 -10 minutes for one side. Let it cook completely on one side, don’t be in hurry and bother to turn them immediately, because it will lose it’s shape. After 8 minutes or so, slowly flip it over the other side and let it cook for another 7-8 minutes. For 2 cans of beans I got 8 medium size burgers.

For the buns, I used Arnold’s Select 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins. It is a mere 100 calories, with 6gm fiber and 5gm protein and it doesn’t taste like mulch also

We had our burgers on a bed of iceberg lettuce, grilled zucchini with a side of potato/sweet potato fries. (Ya I know, was trying to reproduce their original menu!)

Jai and Bee we loved them absolutely. Thank you very much for such an easy and healthy recipe. Your Recipe Rocks!

This is also my entry to Zlamushka’s Tried and Tasted event.

I missed DK’s earlier 2 events, so this time I wanted to send at least one entry as early as possible.  This month’s theme being Italian and since I’m into eggless baking, I searched for Italian cookies and found this.  Lot of versions of these cookies are available throughout the net, but I found this one to be the easiest.  These are eggless whole wheat flour cookies, with a lot of almonds and raisins.

Ingredients

Margarine – 1/2 cup (I used 1 stick Smart Balance 50/50 Unsalted Butter Blend, more details in My Notes)

Cocoa, unsweetened – 2/3 cup (I used Droste, dutch processed cocoa powder. 2/3 cup = 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons)

Light brown sugar – 2 cups

Water – 1/2 cup

Whole wheat flour – 2 1/2 cups

Baking powder – 1 1/2 teaspoons

Cinnamon – 2 teaspoons (I used vanilla essence instead of these spices)

Cloves or allspice – 1 teaspoon

Almonds, finely chopped – 1 cup

Raisins – 1 cup

Yield: 53 small cookies

Step-By-Step Procedure(Click on the thumbnails for a bigger view)
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Combine first four ingredients in a saucepan.

3. Heat slowly, stirring till the mixture resembles a syrup. Let cool to room temperature.
4. Combine flour with baking powder and spices (if using).
5. Pour in chocolate syrup and work into a stiff batter. (See My Notes)

6. Add almonds and raisins. Raisins generally stick together, so take little flour and mix it with the raisins and separate them with your fingers, so the raisins will be spread uniformly throughout the batter.

7. I scooped out the dough using half tablespoon (see My Notes) and dropped it on the cookie sheet. The cookie does not spread, so leaving 1/2 inch space in between is sufficient. I was able to arrange 24 cookies in a large baking sheet.

8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.
9. Remove it from the oven and let it cool in the baking sheet for 5 minutes.
10. Then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.

The cookies tasted more like chewy brownies with the perfect amount of sweetness from the combination of brown sugar and raisins.