Cream cheese Brownies / Cheesecake Brownies

Hello chocoholics, how are you all doing today? Here is a very decadent rich, fudgy and gooey brownie to treat yourself; to add an extra pound to your waistline while you find yourself in solace on this bank holiday weekend. I have already made these brownies thrice now, and surely have helped others gain some weight too as I gave most of them away! The first time I baked, I dint get time to shoot pictures and the second time I baked, the cream cheese part got too runny due to over mixing, so I dint get a swirl effect. Each time I baked, I tried it by modifying the ingredients slightly to see the change. The recipe given below is so far my favourite. I baked it once by adding baking powder, but that was kind of cakey for my taste and I don’t like brownies that are not fudgy.

 

We have a set of friends, dear hubby’s college mates who reside in Birmingham and whom we meet on every other occasion or just for a get together. And I have the habit of carrying some baked goodies every time I go as there are few of them who love baked stuff, and I get a chance to bake too. They too are my loyal guinea pigs and give me their valuable comments or criticism. Last time I made these, the chocoholics in the crowd loved the stuff and non-chocoholics, didn’t like it a bit, which includes my hubby. They found it too chocolaty. Hello, this is brownie!

I don’t usually bake anything repetitively unless until I like it really well, or does my family. Or I bake them to share or giveaway to friends. Some of the things that keep appearing in my kitchen are the biscotti and brownies. Cheesecake brownie is nothing but a regular brownie mixture topped with a cream cheese mixture and swirled to a get a marbled look. These look so pretty and taste as good as they look. As with any brownie, if you like it dense and moist, as I like it, undercook it until you see few moist crumbs sticking to the skewer inserted into the cake. Else if you like it slightly cakey, bake it until your skewer comes off clean.

It’s the queens diamond Jubilee, 60 years into the reign and it’s officially off for most of us here if not all. I have been watching the star studded Jubilee concert in front of the Buckingham palace on the telly and it was just fabulous. The palace was used as the backdrop for the show and it was spectacular.Check out some of jubilee day celebrations here, here,  and here.

Cream cheese Brownie/Cheesecake Brownie

Adapted from www.Joyofbaking.com

Preparation:10 minutes

Baking time: 40-50 minutes

Ingredients:

110 unsalted butter

125g dark chocolate (70 % cocoa solids) *

1 ¼ cup caster sugar

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

½ cup plain flour

1 tsp instant coffee powder (Optional)

¼ tsp baking powder **(optional – check notes)

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 large eggs

¼ tsp salt

200g full fat cream cheese at room temperature

1/3 cup caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1 medium egg at room temperature

Preparations:

1.Preheat the oven to 180 ºC 10 minutes before baking. Line an 8 inch square pan with baking paper all the way above the pan, so that you can lift off the brownie easily.

2. In a bowl, sift in salt, cocoa powder and flour. Reserve.

3. In another large heat proof pan, combine chocolate, coffee and diced butter. Heat them in a microwave, stirring them in between until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth and velvety. Make sure you keep checking the mixture in between, every ½  a minute or so, so that the chocolate is not burnt. You may also melt the mixture by placing it over a pan of gently simmering water, making sure the water beneath doesn’t touch the bowl with chocolate.

4. Whisk in sugar and vanilla and allow the mixture to cool down slightly before adding eggs.

5. Add in eggs one by one, incorporating each fully before adding the next one.

6. Add in the flour mixture and fold until no dry mixture is seen. Pour it in the prepared pan.

For the cream cheese mixture:

1.In a bowl, beat cream until smooth using a wire whisk.

2. Add in sugar, egg and vanilla and gently mix until incorporated. Do not beat well here as the mixture can get very runny. You just want a smooth chunky mix. Put dollops of this cream cheese mixture all over the chocolate mix and using a blunt knife, swirl the mixture to get a marbled effect.

3. Bake it in the centre of the oven for about 40 minutes or until the centre is set and when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out with few moist crumbs. Let the brownie cool in the pan. Chill it for 2 hours and then cut into 16 squares.

Notes:

1.Adding cocoa and coffee is optional, omit if you want to make the brownie less intense.

* If you are using chocolate with 50 % cocoa solids, just use 1 cup of sugar as 70 % chocolates are bitter than 50% percent ones.

** This cake is very moist, fudgy, gooey and really rich. If you want it slightly cakey, add ¼ teaspoon of baking powder into the mixture and increase the flour to 2/3 cups keeping all other ingredients with the same ratio.

Banana Cake with Cinnamon and Walnuts

Bananas are something that we always end up having excess that goes over-ripened, isn’t it? They ripen quite fast that I have to add them to smoothies, pancakes etc to finish them up. This time, I decided to bake yet another banana cake. 

I adapted this recipe from one of my cake books Breads & Baking by Gina Steer. It is a straight forward recipe, but requires a bit of time and the method is different from the usual cakes which is why I wanted to give it a shot. Result was a nice cake, with beautiful aroma of banana and cinnamon throughout. The cake is also a bit high for my liking as I baked in 7 inch pan as mentioned in the recipe. You could also bake this cake in an 8 inch pan, by compromising a bit on the height.

The cinnamon in the cake marries very well with the banana flavour. The flavour of cinnamon doesn’t really come through, but the flavour of banana gets intense with the addition of cinnamon. It’s a soft cake with pleasant whiff of banana and cinnamon and not overly sweet. I haven’t added nuts as my son hates nuts in anything. But he loved this cake which comes as a surprise for me as he dislikes most cakes and bakes apart from anything that’s chocolaty.

 

About photography, here, I was playing around with the shadows to darken the certain areas of the picture to create a different style and make the food more prominent. I have chosen dark background for my pictures here to create a dark tone. You can see noticeable difference in the incident light on first and second picture. In both the pictures (1^st and 2nd) I placed the food on a table next to a large glass door and the light is falling on the subject from the right. In both the pictures, I have also placed a reflector (I use a white cardboard box) on the left side of the picture to bounce some light that comes from the right, back into the subject. This reduces the heavy shadow caused by the food itself. In the second picture, I also blocked a bit of the light in the right corner by placing another cardboard on the right side, so that it blocks the light and creates heavy shadow. It was Soma who gave me this interesting bit of information and I would like to thank her a ton for that.

Banana Cake

serves 8

preparation time 10 minutes

Baking time 55 minutes

Ingredients:

4 medium-sized ripe bananas, 400g

1 tsp lime juice

150g – 180g soft brown sugar

75g soft butter or margarine

1 ½ cups (250g) Self-raising flour

1tsp cinnamon powder

3 medium eggs

50g walnuts, chopped (Optional)

1 tsp each ground cinnamon and caster sugar to decorate

Fresh cream to serve

Preparations:

1. Preheat the oven to 190ºC 10 minutes before baking. Lightly oil and line the base of an 18cm/7inch deep round cake tin with baking paper.

2. Mash about 2 ½ bananas in a small bowl, sprinkle with lemon juice and a heaped tablespoon of sugar. Mix together lightly and reserve.

3. Gently heat the remaining sugar and butter or margarine in a small bowl until the butter has just melted. Mix well and leave it aside to cool slightly.

4. Sift the flour and cinnamon into a large bowl and make a well in the centre.

5. Beat eggs into the cooled butter-sugar mixture until well incorporated. Pour this mixture into the well of flour, and mix thoroughly.

6. Gently stir in the mashed banana mixture.

7. Pour half of the mixture into the prepared pan. Thinly slice the remaining bananas and arrange over the cake mixture. sprinkle over the chopped walnuts, then cover with the remaining batter.

8. Bake in the oven for about 50-55 minutes or until risen and golden brown. Allow to cool completely in the tin, turn out and then sprinkle with ground cinnamon and sugar.

Serve hot or cold with cream for pouring.

Notes:

1.Towards the end of baking, if the cake starts to brown too much, cover it loosely with aluminium foil so that it prevents further browning.

Njandu Curry (Crab curry - Malabar Style)

Crab is something that I adore, but haven’t really got a great deal of knowledge about apart from relishing its intense and unique flavour. Iam not aware of the kind of crabs and never knew how to do the cleaning until I prepared it last time. It is a bit tricky to clean and prepare, I should say and it takes a while to prepare a crab.

I had prepared crab before this, but while preparing it this time, I watched couple of videos to make sure that I do things right. I then realized that I din’t do proper cleaning and I even dumped the large back shell into the gravy when I prepared the first time!! Check out this video here if you are not sure how to clean a crab. 

Now here is the kind of crab curry that my mom makes back home. It’s slightly dry or rather crabs smeared in spicy masala paste. I got the recipe from her the other day when I got hold of some fresh crabs from the fisheries. I bought three large crabs which weighed 1.5 kilos, and after I was done with the cleaning, it just weighed half the original weight!!Most of it had to be thrown away. Feel free to increase the amount of spices per taste. You can also add coconut milk towards the end if you wish.

Njandu Curry (Crab Curry)

serves 3 - 4

Ingredients:

750g Cleaned crabs

3 Tbsp coconut oil

3 medium onions, 380g sliced thin – 3 cups

3 twigs curry leaves

2-3 green chillies, slit

2 medium tomatoes chopped, ~200g, 1 cup

salt – as required

3-4 teaspoons Kashmiri chilli powder

2-3 teaspoons coriander powder

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

1 ¼ - 1 ½ cups of water

¼ teaspoon garam masala

Preparation:

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan.

2. When hot, add sliced onion, 1 twig curry leaves, green chillies, salt and tomatoes. Cover and cook on medium heat until onions go soft and tomatoes are mushy and soft.

3. Add chilli powder, coriander powder and turmeric powder and stir well.

4. Add cleaned crabs, stir well, cover and ook on medium heat until steam comes through.

5. Add water and keep cooking on medium heat until the crabs are smeared in thick gravy.

6. Add garam masala and remaining curry leaves and stir.

7. Serve along with plain rice or chappathi, porotta etc.

Notes:

1.You can add more spices if you want. I add a mixture of paprika and kashmiri chilli powder to balance the heat.

2. Also you may add coconut milk towards the end of cooking.

This post also goes to Kerala Kitchen event hosted by Jehanne who blogs at the cookingdoctor.

Nan Khatai (Cardamom Flavoured Indian Biscuits) & Exercises in Food Photography 1 - Aperture and DoF.

Nan Khatai is a popular delicate and melt-in-mouth Indian cookie, similar version of the shortbreads. This is my mother’s recipe that she’s been baking ever since I remember. Instead of butter or the regular ghee, my mother’s recipe uses pure vegetable Ghee, which comes in the famous brand label – Dalda in India. Here we get brands like Aseel, etc which you may substitute with. You may also real ghee like RKG, but it would give a different taste as ghee is one key ingredient that contributes to most of the flavour. So, the kind of shortening you use, decides the flavour and taste of your Nan khatai. The unique and distinct flavour of my mom’s nan khatai comes from the vegetable ghee that she uses. 

Every food blogger would want to present his/her food beautifully to make the food more appealing. So, if anyone of you wants to improve your photography skills or learn something extra, Aparna of Mydiversekitchen is doing little exercises on food photography every month. Apart from the great tutorials she has written on photogrphy, this is one great idea that could be useful for anyone who wishes to learn more on food photography or improve their photography skills. Check out the link here.

Her first exercise is based on Aperture and depth of field(DoF). In the exercise, she asks to shoot two pictures with same composition and setting but at different aperture settings to show the depth of field (DoF).

I don’t own a 50mm lens, but a wide angle lens. I use 18-200mm lens for photos and the maximum aperture it provides is f/3.5-f/6.3. I shoot my pictures in manual mode, and usually at 50mm focal length and above else I would have lot of cropping to do to avoid the unwanted bits.

Below is a diptych of one set of pictures that I shot for this project. The picture on the left is shot at f/5, shutter speed 1/15 sec, ISO 100 and picture on the right is shot at f/8, shutter speed 1/8 sec, ISO 100. Unlike 50mm, f/1.2 lens, the depth of field is not as shallow when you shoot in 18-200mm f/3.5 – f/6.3 lens, which means you will not get the background as blurry as you would get with f/1.2 lens. The photo is shot next to a large French door, with light coming from the right and a reflector placed on the left to reflect the light back to the food and to mellow down the shadow.

Left Image: f/5, shutter speed 1/15 sec, ISO 100.   Right Image: f/8, shutter speed 1/8 sec, ISO 100

But still, when you shoot the pictures at a significantly different aperture, you will be able to make out the amount of blurriness in both the pictures. You could see that the background is more blurred in the first one than the second one. The greater the aperture, blurrier the pictures will be. The aperture used in the first picture is 5 and the aperture used in the second picture is 8. Shutter speeds is adjusted accordingly to get the correct exposure – brightness.

When I asked my mom for the recipe, she told me the amount of ghee and sugar that she use, and then she told me to add enough flour to get a nice soft dough and nuts as per my wish! Typical of her when she gives me the recipes. She gives me just rough measures for her recipes and I can't believe she din't even have proper measurement for her regular cookie as well!! So I added flour little by little until I got a nice, soft dough. 

Nan Khatai (Cardamom Flavoured Indian Biscuits)

Makes around 20-22 small cookies

Recipe Courtesy: My mom

Ingredients:

½ cup Vegetable ghee like Dalda, Aseel etc

½ cup sugar

a pinch od salt

2 tbsp Cashew nuts

1 cup plain flour

¼ tsp powdered cardamom

Preparation:

1. Powder sugar in a grinder to fine. Chop cashew nuts. Mix cardamom powder and salt with flour and sift once.

2. Cream ghee and powdered sugar until creamy.

3. Add flour in three parts and mix with a spoon.

4. Add chopped nuts and mix well using hands to bring the mixture together.

5. Make around 20 small balls of the dough and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper spaced apart. Gently press the balls.

6. Bake them for 15 minutes at 180ºC. It doesn’t have to colour.

Notes:

1. Regular ghee can be used instead of vegetable ghee.

2. You can omit nuts or use any kind of nuts.

3. You can double the amount easily and use little bit of extra flour to avoid sticking.

     This post also goes to Kerala Kitchen event hosted by Jehanne who blogs at the cookingdoctor.