Honey Cake

Happy New Year!!!!

To celebrate new year , prepared 2 cakes this year. My son's fav Chocolate cake and wanted to prepare something spl - Honey cake.
There is 40 years old iyengar bakery near my house.When you pass that lane in the eve, you can smell the fresh aroma of bread, cakes. Wow.. Sooo yum. Forget all those diet and feel like just munching...
The best in  iyengar bakery is dil pasand, honey cake. People who stay in blore are aware of this awesome cake. I used to love the jam and coconut on top of the cake. This is soo juicy.
Dad used to pack them while coming back from office. There used be a small newspaper cut and on top of it was honey cake packed in a cover.Newspaper used to be soaked in that juice and the cover had cream attached to it. Finger licking good:)
Enjoy this cake!!!




Basic Cake 

Maida: 3/4 cup
Sugar : 1/2 cup
Baking Powder: 1tsp
Yoghurt : 1/2 cup
Milk : 1/4 cup
Oil: 1/4 cup
Vanilla Essence: 1tsp
Baking Soda: 1/4 tsp

Method:

Sieve the dry ingredients well.
Preheat the oven at 180 degree for 20 mins.
Mix all wet ingredients and then dry ingrdients.
Grease the pan and line up a butter paper.

Now pour the cake mix and bake at 180 degrees for 30 mins.

To Make Honey cake.
Boil 1 cup water , add 3 tbsp honey and let it boil for 5 mins. Let it cool .
Now pour this mixture on the cake so that it soaks well.

Heat 4-5 tbsp fruit jam in a non stick pan .
Spread the jam mixture on the cake .
Now sprinkle dessicated coconut on the cake,

You can decorate with whipping cream

Happy Baking:)

Aloo Paratha (Bangalore Ishytle)

I love adding lot of onions, garlic and ginger in my food. I always felt the aloo paratha in north restaurants were never interesting to me. Tried making this south indian version and was a instant hit with my family, relatives. Whenever my hubby’s relative prepare this , they say they prepared smitha’s aloo paratha. Hiihihi.

I prepare this aloo palya for dosa/poori and ofcourse to prepare this yummilicious parathas. 

Ingredients:

Boiled Potatoes: 2

Finely chopped onions : 1

Finely chopped Chillies : 3

Garlic chopped – 2

Ginger chopped – 1inch

Mustard seeds – 1tsp

Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

Chopped Curry leaves

Coriander leaves chopped – 2tbsp

Oil

For Chapathi Dough:

Warm milk – 1 cup

Wheat flour – 2 cups

Ghee – 1tbsp

Salt

Method

To prepare dough:

Mix wheat flour, ghee, milk, salt to a fine dough. Add more warm milk if required. Cover with a lid and let it rest for an hour.

To prepare aloo palya:

In a kadai add oil, add mustard seeds. Once mustard seeds splutters, add onion, chillies, ginger , garlic, curry leaves, turmeric powder. Fry well until golden brown.

Peel boiled potatoes and smash well. Add them in the kadai, salt and mix well.

After 5 mins, turn off the stove. Add coriander leaves and mix well.You can add lemon juice if required. I add them as it gives tangy flavor.

To make parathas

Make small ball of dough and potato mixture.

Need the dough to a small round shape. Keep the potato mixture in it and close as in the below pic.

Now again, knead it well to a round shape.

Heat tawa on a stove, place the kneaded paratha on the tawa. Add butter/oil on it. Turn over and add butter/oil.

Let it cook until goldern brown on lo flame.

Paratha are ready to be served with curd/pickle.

Happy cooking

Crispy Tomato Gobi

Its raining in blore. The best part of blore is we never know when it will rain after a sunny afternoon. Born , brought up in blore ,i love blore weather and find it very difficult to adjust else where. True bangaloreans know that when it rains it ought to be the best filter coffee, bajji , onion pakoda or mangalore bajjis. This time wanted to treat my taste buds with something different. Had one  cauliflower floret in the fridge. So here I go with a diff gobi for evening snacks

Ingredients:

Cauliflower : 1

Tomato : 2

Jeera : 1tbsp

Coriander leaves: 4 tbsp

Dry red chillies : 14

Ginger garlic paste : 1 tsp

Corn flour : 3 tbsp

Gram flour : 4 tbsp
Salt : as required

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Clean the cauliflower and add them in boiling water and salt. Remove cauliflower after half an hour

Now blanch the cauliflower florets by adding water for 10 min. This should be half cooked.

In a mixer grinder add, red chillies, ginger garlic paste, coriander leaves, jeera, corn flour, gram flour water. Grind to fine paste.

Now add the strained cauliflower in the mixture. Add less salt(remember salt is added while boiling)

Mix well. Let it rest for a while.

Deep fry in oil.

Serve hot with tomato sauce .

Happy Snacking: )

Steamed Fish in Banana Leaf

Love sunday's as i have guests visiting our place and i get to try new stuff (Means new bakra's for my trials):P. I was craving for fish the whole week and had decided to prepare all fish delicacies today (Chicken ke liye break).We stay close to the conventional market and get awesome fresh fish. Here goes the menu to impress my guests -  Fish tawa fry, Steamed fish in banana leaf ,Fish Biriyani, Fish gravy with ragi balls. This was fish overload today:). To end with, had prepared Pepper rasam as soup. Now its time to say Yummy Tummy. Hope my tummy won’t crave for one week now.

Prep Time: 10 mins
Cooking Time : 30 mins
Cooking complexity :Medium

Ingredients:

Fish no bones – 1 Kg

Julien onion – 2

Green chilli – 10

Coriander Leaves – 200 gms

Mint Leaves – 100 gms

Jeera – 1 tbspn

Ginger – 1 Inch crushed well

Garlic – 10 pods crushed

Banana leaf: 1

Salt as per your taste

Method:

Clean Fish and slice them in to thin pieces.

Coarsely grind chillies, coriander leaves, mint leaves, jeera.

In a bowl mix the above ingredients with onions, salt, ginger & garlic.

Mix the fish in this and let it rest for 2 hours.

Cut the single banana leaf in to four. Place the fish with some of the above mixture and fold them well and tie them well using thread.

To steam: Heat water in a bowl , place a bowl and align the fish pockets in them . Close the lid.

Cook them on low flame until the banana leaf colour changes. It takes 30-35 mins.

Pasta with homemade white sauce

Kids love pasta and Tejas is no exception. After Maggi disaster, we have moved from noodles to Pasta every sun.(I miss Maggi badly). Usually i used to buy Maggi pasta but this time decided to make the sauce by myself. This was a big hit and my 5 year old son loved this so much and went gaga about this whole day. What more does a mom want:)
Try madi and let me know if you like this.

Prep Time: 15 mins
Cooking Time : 20 mins
Cooking complexity :Medium

Ingredients:

Butter : 2 tsp
Maida: 2 tsp
Milk - 1 glass

Chillies - 4
Onion - 2
Capsicum - 1
Pasta : 100 gms
Cloves - 3
Oil - 1tbsp

Method:

White Sauce:
Heat butter in a kadai. When butter is melted add maida and fry well. In meanwhile boil milk, add cloves , half onion. Switch off the stove once the milk boils.

Remove onion and cloves from milk. To the maida mixture, mix milk and stir well.Keep stirring until there are no lumps. Let the stove be on sim and keep stirring until the sauce is medium thick in consistency.

To cook Pasta
Boil water and add pasta. Let it cook for 5 mins.. Strain the water and keep it aside.

In a kadai fry onion, capsicum, chillies. Add pasta ,white sauce, salt. Allow it to cook for 5 mins and serve