Deciding to participate in the Bake-a-thon 2018 actually helped me clean up some of my to-do list. One of them was definitely this flan cake or magic cake, as it has been called in some places. Whoever came up with this fantastic idea needs to be patted at the back. When you want cake and pudding together, but don’t want to make it in several pans, all you do it is bake them together and let the magic happen! The base is a normal chocolate cake, and the top is a creme custard, duly topped with a caramel topping. Now what happens? Here we apply a little bit of our chemistry knowledge. Haven’t you heard of density? Yes… so since the density of the cake batter is heavier than that of the flan batter, in the process of baking, the cake magically moves up and the flan pushes…
Fudge Brownies
There are always recipes that thrill us to the core, that we can’t wait to post them. 🙂 I guess there is no better time that post it during this Bakeathon! The Easy Fudge Brownies have always been a hit with many who have tried, but those brownies don’t have chocolate and butter melted, which I always feel is the essence of a brownie. Most of us have our own brownie preferences, and I have loved every brownie recipe I have tried. My most favorite one is this fat-free brownies – if you haven’t tried them, I urge you to try them as they are really fudge like and melt in the mouth… But this recipe also deserves its own place… I have always wanted to have a fudge brownie recipe on the blog. But the amount of recipes on the internet is quite scary. I went…
Malted Nutella Bread Pudding
With due permission from Valli, I decided to move yesterday’s Bakeathon post to today, since I didn’t want it to clash with the MFB post. I somehow don’t like the idea of having more than one post a day, though I have done that a few times in the past, but not with a full heart. This time, I made sure I asked Valli and as soon as I got the OK, I just went ahead with scheduling the post on the next day. 🙂 The recipe today is an amalgamation of a lot of factors – leftover bread getting stale, wanting to finish a bottle of Nutella nearing expiry date and then not liking the bottle of chocolate flavored Horlicks that I had bought. Horlicks is actually my cheat meal. Especially with nights getting quite chilled now, I always wish for a warm drink before going off…
Chocolate Labneh Cake with Chocolate Ganache
I believe there is no dearth to recipes of chocolate cakes, definitely no. 🙂 So today, I go ahead and post my current favorite. I mention “current”, since my preferred chocolate cake keeps changing whenever I bake a new recipe and fall for it. 😀 I first loved the Steamed Chocolate Cake, till I made the One Bowl Chocolate Cake, and then the vegan one and the eggless one are constantly in the competition. The final cake I fell in love was with buttermilk, and now, it has got replaced by this… 😉 To make the story short, I love chocolate cake. I only have one condition – they need to be soft, fluffy and moist. Somehow the dense cakes like the devil’s food does not appeal to me much, even though I love brownies. But I guess, slowly I am slowly warming up to those type of…
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti
Hazelnuts are pretty expensive nuts, just like pecans and pine nuts. That’s why it is something I never buy. The only times I have bought some pecans were to bake these cookies and these ones too and I treated it like gold. I buy pine nuts only when I know I have to be using it for some recipe, and that too, I buy so little that I invite a stupid look from the fellow at the counter. 😀 It so happened that I was walking towards the vegetable aisle when a box of hazelnuts stared at me. I looked at it, wishing I could buy it and then looked at the price. I re-looked at it again. And again. And again. I couldn’t really believe my eyes. The next thing that happened was that the box landed up straight into the trolley. Once the box reached home, since…
Self Saucing Jaffa Pudding | Chocolate Orange Pudding Cake
Last year in December, I had participated in the Bake-a-thon, just because I had a lot of drafts to cover and it was perfect to participate. But this time, I didn’t have much. I had to bake to cover the 13 posts for this season. But I really wanted to participate. Baking is love for me. It is a literal stress buster. Whether it is a recipe that involves numerous bowls and gadgets to ones with just a bowl and whisk, I have loved each and every recipe that I have baked and posted on this blog, irrespective of whether they are sweet or savory. But it takes no points to know that I admire the sweet ones more! 😉 After targeting weight loss this year, the first thing that went out of the window was baking. The reasons are obvious. I have time and again mentioned that…
Almond Apricot Cake
When I enrolled for the Bake-a-thon with Valli in October, I was in a lot of thought. How would the whole thing be? I have been a part of the Blogging Marathon for a few months now and it is a more themed activity, but this was thirteen days of baked goodies, with no specific theme as such. Since I had drafts available – referred to as “magic folder” by the BM team 😀 – and I thought I would be able to pull it out, I jumped into it and I am glad I took the plunge. Now looking back at all the posts I did for this marathon baking initiative, I am glad I participated in it. I sincerely hope I have done justice to it and selected the best of the baking recipes that I have tried, tested and succeeded in my kitchen. Do check out…
Samosa Cups
The climate we have here in the UAE now is just apt for fried goods – anything that is deep fried and can be had hot with a cup of hot chai! The craving keeps hitting every now and then, but most of the time you have to tame your inner beast, taking out the “bad” word CALORIES on it and not giving into it! Hehe… one of those “bad” foods is indeed samosas – deep fried, and sometimes you will get a pot of oil coming out of it when pressed with a tissue. 😉 If you crave samosas but don’t want to deep fry, then here is a baked version! The inspiration came from a contributor called Nizwa, who had shared this on a group. She had basically prepared the cups separately and filled it up with a creamy prawns filling. That is how forgiving this…
Mango Bread Pudding
Bread is something that is in my pantry at any given point of time, so the love for bread puddings comes naturally! Whenever I am lost as to what to make for dessert for the weekend, or have a pack of bread getting stale because I picked up an extra one without much thought, or I have a failed bread attempt, it immediately gets converted into bread pudding! 😀 How many like me, please raise your hands! A little search for “bread pudding” on the blog, will throw up a few options. Also this baked french toast was born in similar fashion. While placing the posts for the Bake-a-thon, my eyes chanced upon this amazing bread pudding I had made sometime ago and that left me wondering if I was posting this at a time when there are no mangoes, at least here. I was wrong in my…
Coffee Cinnamon Rolls
Cinnamon rolls took a long time to grow on me. I never liked them, I really have no reason why. Almost all malls have a Cinnabon outlet here and I would walk past them covering my nose. I never liked the smell that came out of the outlet. It smells too artificial – no offense to the Cinnabon lovers out there, it’s just with me! Each time the girls would want to try, but I just would drag them away because I simply didn’t want to buy it for them. The love for cinnamon as a spice and flavor grew on me only very recently and I have to thank blogging for the same! I now love the smell of cinnamon in bakes, and at times in my tea too, but still I couldn’t get off the thought of the smell of the rolls. Hehe… I finally baked…
Herb Crusted Baked Chicken
Some recipes happen to us in very interesting ways. This one happened on a metro journey. Last year, for a few months, I used to take the metro to office after parking my vehicle at the first station close to my house. Later, when we got parking within our office building – such a relief, Alhamdulillah! – the metro trips stopped. There is a weekly newspaper that appears at the stations every Sunday and I would faithfully pick up one copy for my browsing. There would be nothing much to read as such, but it would have some pretty pictures, little titibits and at times, easy recipes too! This baked chicken is what I discovered in that magazine and got cooking as a part of a Friday lunch as side to some corn peas pulao. The recipe comes together really easy. There is no marination required. The washed…
Cookie Butter (Biscoff) White Chocolate Blondies
The madness of cookie butter, the well known one being Biscoff is real! Here, you will find it being used in every imaginable dessert. My first tryst of it was in a milkshake. It was really thick and so calorific that it gave me a spike for quite some time. 😀 You will find it in freak-shakes, filled in crepes and even drizzled on it with a crushing of the Lotus cookies, in cakes, in ice creams, in what not! I used to love it initially when I bought it, but now as is with everything, the craze has gone down. I do stock it to spread it on toast for the kids and for B to have his occasional spoonful when he gets bored of Nutella. 😀 But I prefer it in my cooking as it gives a very nice hue. I have used it in granola, in…
Brown Butter Granola
I never liked granola till I started baking them myself. What must I say, it is just pure, unadulterated joy to have them just like that, dunk in milk or mixed with yogurt! Delicious… whether it is the plain granola, the chocolate one or laced with cookie batter, it really doesn’t matter! Actually speaking, baking my own granola made me realize how delicious home made stuff can be! I guess I had already mentioned in one of my earlier posts, that my first experience with a pack of granola I picked up from the shelf was not good at all. I don’t know how I managed to finish off that stock without letting it go into the garbage! I guess it’s with everything, whether cakes, cookies or even a simple sandwich, they taste much better when done at home, considering that you know what is going into it to make…
Vegan Raspberry Muffins
My interest towards vegan baking started only when I was forced to go vegan due to medications last year around April for a period of six months. I sometimes wonder whether I would have discovered vegan baking otherwise. Those six months made me realise how tough it is for vegans to even have something from outside. I used to get frustrated at the lack of options and how I would helplessly look at the girls while they enjoy their slice of cake or their bowl of pudding. There would be eggless options, but not vegan options. Thankfully, slowly things are changing, but still vegan options are still mighty expensive in this part of the world. It is easier to make them and eat them at home rather than buy them! Hehe… So for today’s Bake-a-thon post, these vegan muffins studded with raspberries is what I am going to…
Savory Semolina Cake
Like I mentioned in the Baked Rice Casserole post, I wanted to do make sure of adding some savory bakes into the list of posts for the Bakeathon 2017. After all, baking has a bad name of being all sweet, but that is definitely not the case. There are always awesome savory bakes in the form of buns and breads. This is one of the bakes that I have always wanted to try from the time I had started blogging and finally I did! The savory semolina cake was introduced to the world by renowned cookbook author Anjum Anand. She refers that the basis of this cake is the suji or rava dhokla, a savory snack made by Gujaratis. Dhoklas are normally plain and steamed, and finally topped with a tempering. This cake is packed with flavors from the vegetables, the tempering is a part of the baking…