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Homemade Chocolate Cereal using Ragi Flour

Madhuram — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:52:39 +0000

Ragi (finger millet ) has not been my favorite for a couple of reasons and this month I have tried my best to start liking it by using it in interesting forms and surprisingly I did like it. I think the one common reason why some people may not be excited about ragi is the dull appearance it lends to the cooked dish. I think that a dish should not only be healthy but it should look good too. So I was thinking of ways to make ragi look more appetizing and came up with this idea.

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.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Homemade Chocolate Cereal

Dry Ingredients:

Ragi (Finger Millet) Flour 1/2 cup

Whole Wheat Flour 1 tablespoon

Flax Seed Powder 1 tablespoon

Cocoa Powder 4 teaspoons

Wet Ingredients:

Vegetable Oil Spread 1 teaspoon

Maple Syrup 3 tablespoons

Water 3 tablespoons

Vanilla Extract 1 teaspoon

Yield: Approximately 2 cups.

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven at 375F/190C for 15 minutes. If using a cookie sheet with edges, flip it over (so you get a flat top) and grease it with some oil spread. Or you can use a flat cookie sheet and grease the same. You will be requiring 2 sheets.

2. Meanwhile combine together the dry and wet ingredients into a smooth dough.

3. Divide the dough into two equal parts and roll each half directly on the greased cookie sheets. Roll as thin as possible and using a knife/pizza cutter score it into diamonds/squares directly on the cookie sheet; do not separate. Bake for 8-15 minutes. The baking time depends on the thickness of the rolled out dough.

The first set I baked was thicker than the second set. So the first one took approximately 12-13 minutes but the 2nd was done in about 8 minutes itself. You can smell the cocoa and also can see that the pieces around the edges turning sort of black. Keep a watch and remove the pans immediately out of the oven.

4. The pieces will start coming off while you are removing it from thee sheet. Spread it on a plate or another cool sheet. Once the chocolate squares have cooled completely store it in an airtight container.

How to serve it?

This chocolate cereal is not crispy like the store bought ones. The texture is like that of a cracker. So I would suggest to warm the milk before adding to the cereal so the heat will soften it up and give the right texture. I served this for my son with some warm almond milk and a hint of maple syrup and he loved it. He was asking for more on the same day. He also had it as a snack by itself.

This ragi chocolate cereal goes to this month’s JFI-Ragi hosted by me and originally started by Indira.

Vegan Orange-Cranberry Muffins

Madhuram — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:49:58 +0000

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.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Vegan Cranberry Muffins

Dry Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour 2 cups

Brown Sugar 3/4th to 1 cup

Baking Powder 2 teaspoons

Pecans, chopped 1 cup

Wet Ingredients:

Canola Oil 1/3 cup

Orange Juice, freshly squeezed 2/3 cup

Flax Seed Powder 2 teaspoons

Water 1/2 cup

Orange Zest from 1 orange

Fresh Cranberries, coarsely chopped 1 cup

Yield: A dozen cranberry muffins.

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven at 375F/190C. Grease or line a muffin tin with paper liners.

2. In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients and keep it aside.

3. In a blender/food processor blend together the flax seed powder and water until its nice and frothy.

4. Measure orange juice in a liquid measuring mug, add water until you reach 1 cup measure in the mug. To this also add the flax seed mixture, orange zest and stir together well.

5. Pour the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until just moistened. Fold in the cranberries too. Do not overmix.

6. Spoon in the batter in the greased muffin tins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

7. Move the muffin tin to a cooling rack and let it cool for just 5 minutes. Then remove the muffins from the pan and cool it completely on a wire rack.

My Notes:

1. The quantity of sugar mentioned in the original recipe was 3/4th cup and I used the same, but felt that the muffins could have been a little more sweet. So you can increase the quantity to 1 cup.

2. I always prefer freshly squeezed orange juice in baking recipes. I have found out in my experience that the store bought orange juice is slightly bitter and the bitterness reflects in the baked goods too.

3. If you wish to use frozen cranberries, do not thaw it. Use it directly from the freezer otherwise the berries will start bleeding turning the batter red.

Outrageous Oat Bran Cookies

Madhuram — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:10:00 +0000

In my previous post I had written about how I miss few things in Canada and how I was a little disappointed. I think I have to take back my words now, because I have discovered few amazing things here. I’m sure I’m going to find more interesting stuff once I start exploring the place. Last week we had been to a mall and found a store called Bulk Barn. From where I was looking I was able to see only the name of the store in big letters and big packets of bird food. With the name and the bird food I thought it was some pet store where they were selling pet supplies in bulk and was thinking of skipping it. But I turned back again and marched towards the store and I’m so glad I did it or else I would have missed something very amazing. It’s a grocery store where supplies are sold in bulk and not in ready to go packs, so you can decide to buy how much you want. Also they have an unbelievable selection of specialty flours/grains, baking supplies, nuts, candies and many more. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was able to find a lot of stuff which was not easily accessible to me in US as well.

Another exciting find was the community center in our area. It’s just 7 minutes walk from our home. It has a decent size library (not much in the cooking section but a lot of materials for my son) and also a fitness center with reasonable prices. There are a couple of parks and walking trails also nearby. I’m loving it here!

Now coming to today’s recipe, while grocery shopping last week I found oat bran and wheat bran in the store. Back in US these and similar items were available but was either costly or I had to make a special trip to the health food store. So I did not get a chance to use oat bran. When I saw it here I immediately grabbed a pack of each. I didn’t know what I was going to do but bought it anyway. Here I have to mention something, I’m a shopaholic. Not that I buy countless dresses and shoes (I used to be one back in India) but I love to buy grocery supplies and cookbooks. While browsing the web for recipes using oat bran I found this recipe. I have tweaked it little bit to suit our taste.

Ingredients

Butter, softened 3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 stick)

Brown Sugar (I used light) 3/4 cup

Granulated Sugar 1/3 cup

Unsweetened Applesauce 1/2 cup

Vanilla Extract 2 teaspoons

All Purpose Flour 1 cup

White Whole Wheat Flour 1 cup

Oat Bran 1 cup

Flax Seed (I used powdered flax seed) 1/4 cup

Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon

Baking Soda 3/4 teaspoon

Ground Cinnamon little (optional

Raisins,Nuts,Coconut,Chocolate Chips 1/2 cup (optional)

Yield: 44 cookies.

Procedure1 Preheat oven to 350F. Grease the baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

2 In a big bowl combine together the flours, bran, flax seed, baking powder, baking soda and raisins (if using) and set aside.

3 In a medium bowl, blend together butter and sugars until creamy.

4 Add applesauce and vanilla and mix until well blended. If you use an electric beater to mix the applesauce it may look curdled, but don’t worry.

5 To the wet ingredients add the dry ingredients and mix well.

6 Drop the dough by tablespoon on prepared baking sheets. Lightly spray the tablespoon with non stick spray, so that the dough will drop easily. Use a butter knife to scoop out the dough from the tablespoon.

7 The baking time mentioned in the recipe is 8-10 minutes. The cookies look very even after 9 minutes but I removed them out anyway. After it cooled we tasted it and felt that it required further baking. So baked again for another 3 minutes. This time it had a nice golden brown color. Leave it in the baking sheet itself for a minute and then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.

Taste The earthy smell of white whole wheat flour was predominant when the cookies were consumed fresh (on the day of baking). But they tasted very good the second day. The smell was very mild. My son is enjoying the cookies very much, so I guess he doesn’t even smell anything different.

My Notes1 I reduced the quantity of both the sugars considerably and even then felt it was quite sweet. So check the original recipe if you like your cookies very sweet. I also used 3/4th cup of raisins, which was optional in the original recipe.

2 I’m not a cinnamon fan, so I used very little of it. I think the earthy smell of the whole wheat flour can be overcome by using considerable amount of cinnamon (about 1 teaspoon).

3 If oat bran is not available, you could also use coarsely powdered quick cooking oats.

4 Using non hydrogenated margarine or any vegan butter will make these cookies even more healthy by cutting back on saturated fat and cholesterol.

5 Usually I bake the entire batch on the same day and the cookies vanish in no time. So this time I decided to freeze the dough. I baked only 20 cookies. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop tablespoonful of the remaining dough onto the sheet. Cover it loosely with another parchment/wax paper and freeze it for an hour or until it is firm enough. Then transfer the frozen cookie dough to a Ziploc bag and write down the name of the cookie and date when it was prepared and put it back in the freezer. I read that the dough keeps good anywhere between 1 month to 3 months. Thawing of the dough is not necessary while baking it. Just bake for additional 2-3 minutes. In this recipe it would be around 13-15 minutes.

Update: I baked the frozen cookie dough and it was even better than the fresh ones. I baked it for 16 minutes at 350F, switched off the oven but kept the baking sheet in the oven itself for another 10 minutes. The cookies had a very nice golden brown color. They were crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.