Spiced up Carrot and Apple Muffins

Rishan’s school is now closed for Easter and I am looking forward to trying something healthy and include as much as fruits and vegetables into his diet. He is not a picky eater, but when he goes to school, he is quite concerned about what he carries in his lunch box -  No Indian Food, no cold food and but only couple of sandwiches that  he loves. So, it’s not always possible to make his diet wholesome and healthy.

 Here is a one of our favourite muffin recipes that I made quite a few times and he carries in his lunch box once in a while. These are great whilst warm and are packed with fruits, seeds and carrot without any pronounced taste of any. The seeds give a bite to the muffins which could easily be omitted if you dislike. These cup cakes are moist, healthy and simply delectable. As the muffin uses oil instead of butter, it stays soft and moist without going tough unlike many butter based cakes. The spices nutmeg and cinnamon works very well with carrot and apple and make a perfect combination. These are delicious plain and you wouldn’t want to laden yourself with calories by frosting it. You may use cream cheese frosting if need be. The recipe is adapted from the Gulf News cookery book that I possess so fondly. It was gifted to me by my dear uncle about 15 years back.

Spiced up Carrot and Apple Muffins

Serves 6-12

preparation time: 15-20 mins

Bake time: 20-25 minutes

Ingredients:

75 g (1/2 cup  -1 tablespoon) Plain flour

½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp  ground cinnamon-
¼ tsp  freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of salt
1 large organic egg

40ml, 4 tbsp olive oil/sunflower oil

70g caster sugar
½ tsp vanilla essence

55g- ½ cup grated carrot
50g grated apple, unpeeled

1 tbsp milk
25g raisins

25g sunflower seeds

For 12 muffins:

150g all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated if possible)
Pinch of salt
2 large organic eggs

80ml sunflower oil (I used olive oil)
140g castor sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

110g grated carrot

100g grated apple, unpeeled

1 Tbsp milk

50g raisins

50g sunflower seeds

Preparations:

1.Set oven to 175°C and preheat for 10 minutes. Line the muffin tin with individual muffin cases.
 

2. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
 

3. Beat together eggs, oil, vanilla and castor sugar, and then mix in the grated carrot, grated apple, raisins and seeds.
 

4. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the liquid. Using a large spoon, stir just enough to moisten the mixture.
 

5. Don’t worry about lumps, these will bake in and are part of the muffin texture.
 

6. Spoon about 2/3^rd full into each muffin cases, and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the skewers/toothpick inserted in the middle of muffins comes out clean without being sticky.

Notes: You can add little chopped walnuts if you need that extra bite. You can also omit seeds ans raisins.

Pani Poori/Gol Gappa (Crispy Semolina pancakes with Mint Sauce and Tamarind Chutney) & some Spring Colours

Finally everything is falling in place. Until last week everything was in a jumble with my son’s birthday party arrangements. It was chaotic and involved lot of organizing. When it comes to organizing, I believe I am not a great person so I had to do things much early ahead and leave plenty of space ahead if in case something comes up. In spite of me being really stressed out, everything went really smooth and in time. Thanks to dear hubby and our loving friends who were there to help out. Now for a while no parties or gatherings and I am enjoying the beautiful weather with lot of sunshine. 

It’s officially spring and it’s quite warm that we could finally go out without our jackets and jumpers. Everything around is so bright, so beautiful. Flowers started blooming and trees sprouting. Even though winter wasn’t as bitter as yesteryears, it was pretty long and I always look forward to spring even with the onset of winter. I went out and shot some random pictures and some beautiful flowers in the park this morning. I very much enjoyed strolling in the park all by myself with the gentle breeze to caress and sunshine to warm up. After quite a while, I also saw many elderly people dog-walking. It is going to be summer again. While shooting pictures I also spotted something that looks like crow or is it a crow? It was perched high up in the tree and wasn’t that clear. The thought of English crows being black made me laugh, for no reason at all! 

Today, I am sharing something that’s apt for a good summer treat – Pani Puri/ Paani Poori/Golgappas. I made these quite a few times now following different recipes. The best of the lot was the recipe of Manjula Jain and I blindly follow her recipes. It works very well and the outcome is just fab. Pani puri or Golgappa is a famous Indian street food and are served as chats or snacks on roadside carts and are delightful treats especially on hot summer noon. These are crisp semolina fried puris filled with sev, potatoes, chutney and mint water that is super tangy. I have never been a great fan of Golgappas until I made my version at home. The ones I had from restaurants were too tangy for my taste and I never enjoyed it. So, you might want to increase the lime in your ‘pani’ to keep it sharp, just the way you would have it from street-side pani poori vendor.

Paani Puri (Golgappas)

Makes about 50-55 puris

For puris:

Ingredients:

¾ cup sooji/semolina

¼ cup plain flour,

1/3 cup water

salt to taste

Vegetable oil – to deep fry

Paani (for paani puri)

Ingredients:

¼ cup seedless tamarind soaked in ½ cup boiling water for an hour

1 heaped cup mint leaves, loosely packed

3 cups of water

1 ½ teaspoon roasted and ground cumin seeds

¼ tsp ginger powder

¾ tsp salt

1-4 green chillies

1 tbsp sugar

1-3 tablespoon limejuice (Add depending on your taste)

1 tablespoon coriander leaves

salt to taste

Imly ka chutney (Tamarind Chutney)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup tamarind soaked in 2 cups water for an hour

1 tsp roated and ground cumin powder

¾ tsp chilli powder

¼ teaspoon ginger powder

½ -  2/3 cup brown sugar

a pinch garam masala

Other ingredients:

2 large Potatoes boiled with a touch of turmeric and salt-  either mashed or chopped into tiny cubes

1 onion finely chopped

1 cup boiled chickpeas

Fine sev

Preparations:

To make Pooris:

1. Mix all the ingredients and knead to a stiff dough using water. Leave it aside covered with a damp cloth for about ½ an hour (Don’t miss this step). Knead again and divide the dough into 50 portions.

2. Roll each portion into thin flat round disks of about 3 cm and place them on a floured surface.

3. Heat oil in a deep pan. When it is medium hot, slide few pooris at a time into the oil. Gently press the pooris with a serrated ladle to puff them up. Once puffed, flip them over and fry golden. Repeat it with all the pooris and drain them on kitchen towel.

To make Paani (Tangy Mint water):

1. Strain the soaked tamarind and squeeze out as much as pulp as possible. Discard the residue.

2. To a blender add this strained pulp, mint leaves, green chillies, cumin powder, ginger powder and blend till smooth. Strain it.

3. To the strained mix, add sugar, lime juice, and mix rest of water and stir. Chill for few hours prior to using for flavours to blend well.

To make Imly ka chutney (tamarind chutney):

1.Squeeze out tamarind in strainer. Reserve the strained liquid and discard the residue.

2. To the strained liquid, add spices and sugar and boil for ten minutes or until it thickens slightly. Refrigerate till required.

To assemble:

1. Crack a small hole in the centre of each puri.

2. Fill it with little boiled channa, chopped onion, sev, little tamarind chutney and then immerse it into pani and eat immediately. You can also use your own choice of fillings including cooked moong sprouts.

Notes:

Fried puris can be stored in a closed container for about a month. If your puris go soggy, just warm them up for about minutes in a moderate hot oven to crisp them up.

Celebration Time - Orange Macarons with Cream Cheese Frosting and Marmalade

 

Yet another year passes by and Shab's Cuisine turned four on March 11. This post comes tad late as I am caught up with my son’s upcoming birthday celebration. Apart from my family and friends, my blog is something thing that I love spending time with and look back for some leisure and to get rid of my boredom. It has become my adorable companion over the years. This blog has taught me many things including fine details of cooking, complicated techniques, baking and photography which without this blog would have been just impossible. I also created a small cyber empire of mine where I have loads of amazing people both bloggers and non bloggers alike.I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your continuous support, motivation and inspiration.

For me blogging is one of the simple pleasures of my life. It gives me lot of love, respect and inspiration. It is one of my ways to connect to the outside world, a way to learn and create new things and to document my favourite recipes. One may think food blogging as an easy task. But if you are serious about food blogging, lot of effort and passion goes into making each post. Cooking, Styling , choosing the right props, co-ordinating the colours of props, setting up the camera, shooting loads of pictures, sorting the pictures, resorting them again to blog, typing out recipes and extra washing up to add to it. But it’s all part of fun and if you are passionate about cooking, have plenty of time in hands and are bored at home. It really keeps you busy in a good way, brings out the creativity in you and you get to learn a lot in your leisure time at your own pace.

When I started blogging, I was fairly a new cook. As with many others, I used to live with my parents and my mom did all the cooking. She is an excellent cook; her foods are finger licking good. I think it is my sister who got that trait down from mom, she prepares great dishes too. I have always loved baking but regular cooking was not my cup of tea. But when I joined my husband back in 2007, I was obliged to cook with my meagre cooking skills. Thanks to the youtube videos, cookery books and blogs that help me throughout my cooking journey. They were and still are my main source of help and inspiration. I browsed day and night, watched lot of cookery shows, had many disasters in kitchen, but that’s where it all started. Slowly I started showing progress and started presenting better food. It improved by time and I started getting the knack of basic cooking. Initially I used to follow a recipe blindly without making any changes and the end result was not always great. It taught me that every recipe is just a guideline and it should be modified and tweaked to suit ones palette. It did take me a while to get the hang of adding right amount of ingredients in, but eventually I think I am almost there. Even now disasters strike, but it has become less often than not. Cooking and baking became delightful as more successful results evolved in the kitchen. And I believe, if there is a bit of patience and love for cooking anyone can conquer the kitchen.

Somewhere along the line I also developed an interest in photography and started learning more of it to take better pictures to make the food more appealing. Even though I dint know anything about photography, I have always enjoyed a well composed, well shot picture. I used to spend hours of late night browsing enjoying beautiful foodie pictures shot by great bloggers and probably that was when I thought I might need to improve my pictures too. I am a self taught photographer and I spend quite a bit of time shooting my food pictures until I am somewhat happy with the outcome. I shoot a minimum of 30-40 pictures for a dish, unless until I am really happy with the picture it might be 10-20. Even though it could be a bit frustrating at times with the amount of time I spend on shooting, it teaches a lot. I started off with a point and shoot camera and later on switched to a DSLR. We were awestruck with the quality of pictures our friend produced with his DSLR few years back, we simply had to get it. Point and shoot is a great little camera and you can create wonders with it. But nothing is like a SLR, it simply is awesome. A well composed, a well balanced picture is always an eye candy. There is still a lot more to learn and a lot more to discover. But as long my love for the blog and photography persist, I would provide you with hearty home-made goodies that I prepare for my loved ones.

To celebrate this milestone, I am sharing my favourite Macaron recipe with you. It is Orange flavoured macaron shells sandwiched using cream cheese frosting and orange marmalade to add more orangey flavour. I love macarons by all means. I love making them and make them just to see the feet. It’s one of the best desserts I have ever eaten. We love the hint of citrus fruits like lemon and orange in our desserts, whatever it may be. I add grated zest of orange and lemon to many of my baking and it pairs well with most cakes, cookies and desserts. It uplifts the flavour a notch higher and brings a well pronounced summery note of orangey goodness. Basic ingredients for these macarons are all the same being egg white, almond flour and icing sugar. By adding a little bit of flavouring and colour makes it all different. It gives birth to a new macaron with completely new flavour and look. Here I have used zest of clementines to flavour the shells. You can use zest of orange, Satsuma, mandarins etc instead. The zest of orange and lemon have very strong aroma and flavour. It’s quite strong and fragrant enough that a small amount can impart a well pronounced note of its flavour to any dish. I always have a little stock in freezer just in case. You can use them in simple sponge cakes, custard, cookies etc. Check out the step by step illustration an Orange macaron recipe here.

Orange Macarons with Cream Cheese Frosting and Marmalade 

Makes around 15 medium sandwiched cookies

Ingredients:

For shells:

65g Almond (slivers, blanched or powder)

100g Icing sugar

25g caster sugar

50g aged egg whites

1 tbsp (5g) grated zest of orange/Clementine, Satsuma etc (I used Clementine here)

Few drops of Orange food colouring (I mixed yellow and red to get orange)

Filling:

40g soft butter

75g icing sugar, sifted

100g cream cheese

¼ tsp vanilla essence

Preparation:

**For an elaborate macaron post with my tips and links to other helpful sources, check out my first macaron post here.

For the cream cheese filling:

Beat butter and sugar until soft and well combined. Gradually add in cream cheese and essence and beat again until soft and fluffy. Keep aside.

For shells:

1.  Powder almonds and icing sugar in a food processor or a grinder into very flour-like fine powder. Transfer them to a large bowl and sieve 2-3 times to break up the lumps. Discard the large grains of almonds if any. Transfer them to a large mixing bowl and keep aside while you work with meringue.

2. For making meringue, whisk aged egg whites in a squeaky clean bowl on high until it starts to form soft peaks using an electric blender. Add in caster sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. It should be like a smooth, glossy shaving cream like form. If adding any colour, add once stiff peaks are formed and then beat again to bring back to peaks. Make sure it is not over beaten and dry, which would result in dry shells

3. Add meringue to the dry mixture in 2-3 portions and start folding it until everything is just combined and no more of dry mixture could be seen. Use a flexible spatula for this and mix until you get a smooth, shiny batter that ruggedly drips down the spoon once you lift it. DO NOT over mix once you have reached that thick batter stage. For testing, place a teaspoon of batter in a plate and you see it spreading flat, then the batter should be ready. If it has a peak on top, give couple more folds and check again.

4. Line your baking sheet with baking paper or silpat. Fit your piping bag with a round tip nozzle and pipe small rounds of about 2 cm diameter on your baking paper leaving about 2 inch in between. The macaron batter will spread and then join hands with the next one if they are piped too close, so make sure leave atleast 2 inches. Rap the baking sheet few times on a table to remove any bubbles trapped in the batter. (To help you with the round shape, you can use this template).

5. Let the macarons sit to dry for as long as it forms a skin on top or is dry and leaves no indentation once touched. It depends from place to place depending on the weather and humidity. It can take anywhere from 15-20 minutes to 2-3 hours.

6. Preheat the oven to 140 degress Celcius. Bake the macaron for 11-13 minutes. Do not open the oven until they are completely done. Take them out and let them cool down for half an hour or so. Peel them out gently and pair the macarons according to their matching size.

7. Place a blob of cream cheese filling on to one shell and place a small amount of orange marmalade or jam on top cheese filling. Cover the filling with a similar sized shell. Let it sit in the fridge for 1-2 days for the flavours to combine and mature and enjoy. It is always best after a day or two and the flavour of the filling steep into the shells.

Note: If not filling immediately shells can be stored in air tight container for up to 1 week.

And Last, but not least this post also goes to MacAttack challenge 27 at Mactweets Blog.They are celebrating Macaron day on 20th, So make sure you have a peek there.

Chinese Spring Rolls

Here is a spring roll recipe that I started making several years ago. Spring rolls also known as egg rolls are slender and crispy morsels packed with oriental flavours. Easy to fry up and assemble, I make slightly a huge batch and freeze the uncooked rolls to munch later. Here is a link with step by tutorial and an elaborate description. 

Chinese Spring Rolls

Make about  20

Ingredients:

20 spring roll sheets

50g, ½ a small onion finely chopped

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sesame oil

2 cloves of garlic, grated

75 g, ¾ cup French beans finely chopped, or sliced at an angle

250g, 2 ¼ cup white cabbage shredded

60g, ½ a green capsicum, sliced thin and then chopped

130g, 1 large carrot, finely chopped

2 ½ - 3 tsp soy sauce

½ tsp sugar

½ tsp- ¾ tsp black pepper powder

salt as required

A mixture of plain flour and water to seal the spring roll.

Preparation:

1.Heat a large wok/skillet on medium and add vegetable oil and sesame oil. Once hot, add in chopped onion and garlic. Sauté until they are transparent.

2. Add in all other chopped vegetables and by keeping the lid open keep sautéing until cooked through, yet crisp.

3. Add in soya sauce, pepper and salt to taste and sauté for couple of minutes.

4. Sprinkle a generous pinch of sugar and mix well. Take the pan off the heat.

5. Thaw you pastry sheets before you start working and cover them with damp cloth to prevent it from drying.

6. Now place one pastry sheet on the work surface, add a heaped tablespoon of the mixture on one end of the pastry, leaving 1 inch from the sides to fold later on.

7. Start covering the stuffing by rolling the pastry; fold the sides and roll till the tip and seal the edge by using a concoction of plain flour and water. Repeat with all the pastry sheets.

8. Heat the oil to medium in a frying pan or kadai and deep fry them until golden. Serve with sweet chilli sauce or ketchup.

Notes:

1. Uncooked spring rolls can be frozen for later use. For freezing, Place a sheet of parchment paper on a plate and lay a single layer of uncooked spring rolls on parchment paper. Freeze till hard and once they are frozen, then can be taken off and put in a freezer bag. This way they won’t stick to each other and can’t be thawed and fried later too.

2. You can also add some cooked chicken or prawns into the mix if you want to make it non-vegetarian. For cooking chicken, add some salt and pepper and pan fry it until done. Shred it and add to the filing as needed. Similarly, you can cook prawns with salt and pepper too.