Exotic Summer Fruit Salad

I am desperately waiting for rains now..The scorching sun and rising humidity is just making it difficult to experiment in the kitchen, apart from making us miserable! The will to cook and eat anything laborious and heavy has dwindled...The thought of popsicles, ice-cold thirst quenching drinks and chilled fruits keep nagging all the time, Well actually on hind sight is not that bad, the fruits definitely are an upside to this heat. Fresh Juicy fruits are abundant and there is a long list of these cold refreshing fruity treats that’s running through my head right now. The first thing that I decide to put together (it’s so simple, that I can’t say ‘make’ hence using ‘put together’ J ) is a light , summery, refreshing, (and incidentally J) healthy fruit salad.

Recipe           

There isn’t any recipe for this as such, since I’ve pretty much tossed this together.

The fruits have been tossed with a few mint leaves and half a teaspoon of Vanilla sugar and have been refrigerated for about half an hour before being served.  

I would really recommend that you use fresh mint leaves with your fruit salad, the addition of mint gives the salad this fresh minty twist that that undeniably tastes like summer!! The addition of vanilla sugar enhances the flavours of fruits and shines through. The refrigeration after the addition of sugar results in slight maceration; the fruits give up their delicious sweet juices and the fruits soak in it, making it much sweeter.

Ingredients:

Fruits

½ tsp Vanilla Sugar

Mint Leaves

Fruits that I have used in my salad:

Raspberries

Blueberries

Mango (Chopped)

Yellow Plums (Chopped)

Strawberries (Chopped)

P.S: If you are in an indulgent mood and wish to improve on perfection :) , please go ahead and enjoy this fruit salad topped with some yogurt or better still, with a scoop of Vanilla Ice-Cream!

Blueberry Pancakes

Growing up I had often seen families sharing a breakfast of hot, fluffy pancakes. It would either be a romantic gesture by the guy or the girl, or a Dad doing a special breakfast for the kids n wife etc etc.... in most of the English sitcoms, soaps & movies. The idea of having pancakes for breakfast was always shown as a special thing and I found it very charming (or advertised in a manner that it at least felt so J ) So charmed by the thought, over the years we explored this breakfast option at various restaurants but it sadly never lived up to the expectations set by the television/movies & the travel & living food shows. After a while I tried making it at home, it turned out to be a disaster. After this failed attempt of making it at home, I moved on to the boxed Pancake mix, it was much better but was still a far cry from the real deal. Then came Martha Stewart my knight in a shining apron :D, I discovered her recipe for the ‘Best Buttermilk Pancakes’ in one of her old cookbooks and just had this intuitive feeling, that my search for an awesome homemade pancake recipe was finally over. I am thrilled that contrary to my earlier belief flipping perfect fluffy pancakes isn’t daunting anymore. I can flip-up a delicious homemade batch of pancakes whenever I want in a jiffy..

These pancakes are delicious. They are fluffy, light & spongy, with just the right amount of richness and perfect golden crusts. The blueberries bring a nice sweetish tang to the pancakes, you can add any other berry if you prefer.

They are incredibly easy to make! Please do give it try and trust me you will never go back to the boxed pancake ever again nor will you have to drool at those amazing looking pancakes on the screen like me J

Recipe (yield about 15 pancakes – approx 4 inches each)       

Ingredients:

2 cups Flour (Maida)

2 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Salt (use only ¼th tsp is using salted butter)

3 tbsp Castor Sugar (Powdered Sugar)

3 cups Butter Milk (I used 1 cup curd and ½ cup milk instead as Butter milk is not available here)

2 Eggs (Lightly beaten)

4 tbsp Butter plus 1 tbsp for brushing the pan/girdle

1 cup Blueberries (Fresh or Thawed Frozen)

Method:

1) Place a  girdle pan or skillet over medium heat.

2) Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs,   

    buttermilk (curd & milk) & 4 tbsp butter and whisk lightly to combine. Make sure that you do

    not  over combine the batter. The batter should still be a little lumpy after whisking. 

 3) Test the skillet/girdle by sprinkling a few drops of water on it. If the water spatters it is hot

     enough. Brush the skillet with very little butter (the remaining 1 tbsp melted butter) using a  

     pastry brush.

4) Using a Ladle/large spoon, pour the batter onto the skillet in pools at least 2 inches apart. Dot

     the cooking batter with blueberries, pressing them in slightly. Flip the pancake when the

     small bubbles rise to the top of the batter & it is slightly dry around the edges. The moist batter

     could ooze out or blueberries may roll out while flipping the pancake, just push it in with the

     spatula. Cook for about a minute till the bottom is golden brown and then remove from the

     skillet.

5) Serve warm with dusted icing sugar & some fresh blueberries, you can also pour some maple

    syrup like we did if you like!

Tips:

   · There is a secret ingredient to this recipe J. Malted milk powder!! add 1 1/2 tbsp of malted milk powder to the dry ingredients before making the batter. This is the key ingredient that diners & pancake houses have been using for a long time to give the pancakes an undeniable depth of flavour.  

   · To give the perfect fluffy, airy yet rich texture to your pancakes ensure a thick moist batter and proper cooking temperature. The batter should be just thick enough for you to be able to pour it onto the skillet in a slow ribbon. The skillet should be heated to a medium-high, so that the pancakes cook quickly but don’t turn dark and remain uncooked in the centre. Small lumps in the batter also ensure light pancakes, so it’s important not to over mix the batter.

   · Always dot the batter with blueberries or any other fruit that you may be using after you have poured the batter onto the skillet. This ensures even distribution of the fruit as well as less messy looking pancakes compared to mixing them with the batter earlier.

Plum Galette

It’s a lazy summer afternoon, lunch is ready & I am craving for something sweet. For some reason I am stuck with the thought of a yummy Tart but I want to make something easier, quicker, less fussy.  To satisfy my craving of a Tart and still trying to get away with much less work I turn to the beloved Galette! J The galette is a gift for such lazy days, it’s a free form Tart that can be made with just about any fruit or a variety of fruits that you can manage to get your hands at in your refrigerator. It’s one of those deserts that require little effort but have a big impact. It is so versatile; one can experiment with various combinations of fruits. The result is still stunning enough to be served to guests at a fancy dinner and is unquestionably lip-smacking good! J

I had some delicious yellow Plums in my refrigerator, so I decided to make my galette with plums and pistachios. You can use any other nut that you prefer or completely omit it if you wish. I chose pistachios simply because I loved the idea of their colour combination J plus the fruit n nut combination never fails J  

Recipe           

Ingredients:

For the Crust: ( yields 2 galettes)

175 gms Flour (Maida)

1 tbsp Castor Sugar

100 gms Butter (Cold, cut into cubes)

1 tbsp Sour Cream

50ml Water (Ice cold)

½ tsp Salt

For the Filling

1 tbsp Cane Sugar/Castor Sugar/Dermera Sugar

1 tbsp Butter (chilled and cut into cubes)

350gms Plums (Washed, pitted & sliced)

20gms Pistachios

Method:

1) To make the dough: Pulse the flour, sugar, salt & butter in a food processor that has

    cutting blade at short intervals until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

    Gradually add the sour cream & water and pulse very briefly just enoygh to combine

    the dough. (The dough can be prepared by hand also: rub the dry ingredients with the    

    chilled cutter cubes till the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs and then add

     sour cream & water gradually, and mix all the ingredients with a fork)

2) Divide the dough into 2 parts & shape the dough into 2 disks (make sure that you

     don’t over knead)

3) Wrap in cling film & refrigerate for at least 1 hour

4) Preheat the oven to 180 degree

5) Roll out the chilled dough until about 0.1 inch thick (a neat trick to avoid messy

     rolling is to roll the dough between 2 sheets of cling film, you won’t require any flour

     for dusting not the problem of dough sticking to the surface or the rolling pin)

6) Transfer the rolled out dough onto a parchment paper on a baking tray (it will be

     extremely easy to do this with the help of the cling film)

7) Place the slices of fruit on the dough, leaving a border of about 2 inches. Sprinkle the

     sugar over the fruit and distribute the knobs of butter.

8) Fold the sides towards the centre and place the baking tray in the oven. Bake for

      about 30-35 mins at 180 degree. The fruit should become soft and the crust a nice   

      golden brown.

9) Garnish the galette with some roasted pistachios and enjoy it warm either on its own

     or with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

Tips:

  ·       The key to a nice flaky crust is that all the ingredients should be cold. Ensure that the butter being used for the dough is chilled and use only ice-cold water, you can even refrigerate the flour if you wish a little ahead of time.

  ·       The small pieces of butter peeking through the dough ensure the flakiness of your crust. While baking the butter melts and creates these air pockets that gives it the flaky texture. So please ensure that you Do Not over knead the dough as the heat from your hand may melt the butter and that will result in a flat, non-flaky crust.

Apple & Cranberry Crumble

Last night my friend ‘A’ posted a request of Facebook for an eggless apple recipe, she has her refrigerator full of apples and wants to bake something nice with it this weekend. I promised her I will post an apple recipe for her today. I have zeroed in on an Apple and Cranberry Crumble...such a simple desert and yet a good apple crumble combined with a scoop of Vanilla Ice cream could be a desert to die for.. and it is by far one of the easiest deserts to make, can be put together in a jiffy whenever the desert craving kicks in! J

Posting this in a hurry since I wanted ‘A’ to have the recipe asap, will post the rest of the pictures in a while J

Ingredients

This will make 6 small ramekins/portions of crumble. Please double the quantity in case you are using larger dishes.

For the filling

        1 Large Apple

2 tablespoons Castor sugar (you can replace this with artificial sweetener if you like)

100 gms Cranberries (I used dried ones, cranberries can be completely omitted if not available)

Juice of 1 orange

Insides of half a vanilla bean scrapped

1/4^th teaspoon Cinnamon Powder

1 teaspoon Brown Sugar

For the crumble

35 gms Butter

50gms Plain Flour

50gms Almonds

50 gms sugar

              

Method:

·       Preheat oven to 190 degrees. Peel core and chop the apples in cubes.

·       Put apples, cranberries, sugars, orange juice & the cinnamon in a pan and cook for about 5-8 mins on low flame.

·       Spoon the apple & cranberry mixture into ramekins or any other small oven proof dishes that you may have.

·       For the crumble I pulsed the sugar and almond together in the mixer. You can use caster sugar or powdered sugar and almond meal if you like. (the almonds give a nice nutty flavor as well as a crunchy texture to the crumble)

·       To make your crumble topping, use your fingers to lightly rub together the flour, almond & sugar mixture and butter (please use refrigerated butter cut into approx.1 cm cubes) until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

·       Sprinkle the crumbs over the apple & cranberries mixture and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 -25 mins depending on the size of your ramekins or dishes, or until the fruits are bubbling up and the crumble is golden.

·       Serve with some soft whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of each crumble. (Crumbles should be eaten warm)

Pink Lemonade & Lemon Iced Tea

I haven’t been having the greatest of time since the last 2 weeks…wish I could turn back time and go back…but well… I am no Einstein, so can’t do anything about that… It’s better to do things that I do best and that can comfort me rather than moping over things that I can’t control or change. Whenever I am in a ‘not so great’ mood I tend to go back to my happy memories, little things that make me happy…  Like enjoying summer…

It may sound crazy, how could anyone possibly enjoy this crazy heat?? But trust me there is nothing that I enjoyed more, than summers as a kid.  The sheer joy of experiencing the freedom and happiness that summer holidays brought with it each year is still un-paralleled. For me and my brother it meant even more, it used to be the best 2 months of the year because this was the time that we got to be with our parents (as kids me and my brother stayed with our maternal grandparents, as Dad was in a job that required moving way too frequently and our parents didn’t want to put us through uprooting ourselves every few months from one place and moving on to another which would’ve affected our studies as well)

I have the fondest memories of me and V (my brother) raiding the kitchen as soon as Mom n Dad would go off for their afternoon nap. We would make ourselves Nimbu Pani (Lemonade), pour mango shake into the ice tray and make ourselves some mango icicles, Roof afza shake, iced tea....those endless kitchen experiments were such fun for us. We used to sit with the chilled glasses of Nimbu pani and Mango icicles right in front of the large noisy desert cooler and watch cartoon movies the entire afternoon.

Yes, those were my summer afternoons and to this day the loud creaky fan running at full speed, the sight and smell of mangoes, the touch of a chilled glass of Nimbu Pani in the sweltering heat brings back those precious memories and makes me Happy!! J

So I made myself a nice big Jug of improvised Nimbu Pani..the Pink Lemonade. The addition on Raspberries just makes this perfect summer drink a little more ‘perfecter’ J the raspberries lend their amazing flavour to this already delicious drink and also gives it the prettiest pink hue!! J

Recipe       

    

There is no real recipe for neither the Lemonade nor the Iced Tea, you can pretty much adjust all ingredients as per your preference.

And btw here is what R doodled for me, aren’t these cute! J

Ingredients for Pink Lemonade:

Juice of 4 Lemons

2 Litres of water

10-12 Raspberries

4-5 tbsp Sugar

1 tsp Salt

Ice Cubes

Mint Leaves

Method:

1) Put all the ingredients except in the water, stir it well to dissolve the sugar.

2) Refrigerate for at least 2 hrs for the raspberries to lend their lovely flavour and colour to the lemonade

3) Serve in a glass filled with ice

Ingredients for the lemon Iced Tea:

3 tspn Tea Leaves

4-5 tbsp Sugar

2 Litres of water

Juice of 2-3 Lemons

Mint Leaves

Ice Cubes

Method:

  1)     Boil the water along with the sugar. Remove it from the burner and add the tea leaves. Leave it to steep for about a minute and then strain it into a jug. Leave it to cool off.

  2)    Once it’s cool, add the lemon juice and mint. Refrigerate for at least ½ an hour and then serve with ice cubes.

Chocolate & Blackberry Mille-Feuille

Me and R both had this chocolate craving last weekend and I started thinking of what could be made.... and I somehow kept coming back to a delicious vanilla bean mille feuille I ate at the Breadkraft in Hong Kong. It was one of those days when I wanted to make something fancy and new and definitely had to be chocolate but the heat these days is just about un-bearable and the idea of spending a lot of time in the kitchen trying out a proper mille feuille frankly wasn’t that appealing to me just then...plus getting a puff pastry dough together with the butter behaving crazy because of the heat was also going to pose a huge problem (not making excuses...it really is that hot!). So I decided to make a Cheat’s Mille Feuille J

Since we wanted chocolate, I decided to use swiss thins instead of the traditional puff pastry/layered pastry and make some chocolate ganache, and use strawberries for the fruit layering. That’s when I saw the precious box of Blackberries that I so tediously carried back with me from Hong Kong...and I smiled J I knew me and R were going enjoy a rich dark chocolate mille feuille with the summery freshness of these plump juicy sweet blackberries! J

Recipe 

          

Ingredients:

100gms Chocolate, chopped (Use the best quality chocolate that you can get, I used Ghirardelli 60%cocao)
50ml Heavy Cream
1 tbsp Blackberry Jam

A small box of Swiss thins

50gms Fresh Blackberries

1 tbsp Cocoa Powder

Method:

1) To make the ganache, heat the cream till just simmering and then pour it over the chopped chocolate. Stir it gently till smooth. Add the blackberry jam and stir again until well incorporated. Place it in the fridge for about 15-20 mins to firm up.
2) To assemble, place the swiss thin over a parchment paper. Remove the ganache from the fridge and whip it with a spatula just to fluff it up.
3) Pipe or spoon the ganache onto the thins and top it with fresh blackberries, either repeat and create another layer or top it with another thin (place just a dot of ganache on top of the blackberry so that the thins stick)

4) To finish, dust it gently with cocoa powder.

5)  Serve immediately or refrigerate

The mille feuille was delicious but I don’t think I will try this again in such heat. The chocolate was extremely difficult to handle and kept melting even with the heat of hands L This is how they were looking by the time I could take the second shot.

But this will surely be the go to recipe for a fancy looking desert that is so simple to make J!

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

The inspiration for the colors...

This is from Last month; there were 2 occasions, one of my dear friend’s birthday and the anniversary of another couple who are our neighbours as well as good friends. I decided to bake cakes for them both and decided to make a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. People usually end up with a lot of chocolate cakes on such occasions and my friend S is not even particularly fond of chocolate or things that are too sweet, so I thought a spicy moist carrot cake with the twist of a cream cheese icing would be a welcome change for her and T&A (my other friends celebrating their anniversary).  

Since I was anyways baking I made one extra heart shaped small cake for my beloved R, how could I leave him without one J

Recipe             

For cupcakes:

Ingredients:

100gms butter at room temperature
200gms All purpose flour
150gms sugar (I used powdered sugar, u can use castor sugar if u like)

25 gms Dark Muscavado Sugar
1 1/2cups (about 160gms) finely grated carrots
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda/sodium bi carb
1 tablespoon milk
1 Egg

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 170 degrees
2) Cream the butter and sugars
3) Add the egg and mix for about a minute
4) Add the carrots and nutmeg and the milk
5) Sift in the the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and cinnamon powder
6) Stir the mix just till its all combined with a rubber/silicon spatula
7) Spoon the mixture into an 8 inch cake pan/mould
8) Bake at 180 degrees for about 35-40mins or until a skewer comes out clean

For the Icing:

Ingredients:

8oz Cream Cheese
75 gms Butter
150gms sifted Confectioners’ sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

Method:

1)     Beat the cream cheese and butter together till creamy then gradually add the sugar n vanilla and beat till fluffy and smooth.

2)    If you wish to create the pink lattice pattern on the cake then just dip a toothpick in wilton red food colour and mix it evenly into 1/4th of the cream cheese icing and keep aside.

3)    Once the cake has completely cooled down, slice it into half horizontally.

4)    Spread the white icing on the lower half, leaving at least an inch on the sides (to avoid spilling from the sides as the icing will spread once you place the other half on the bottom slice)

5)    Place the other half on top of the iced bottom layer

6)    Cover the cake with the non-coloured icing with a flat spatula and then using a decorative icing tip create the lattice pattern with the pink coloured icing.