Eggless Chocolate Almond Butter cookies : - I did it !!!!!!!!

Baking cookies was on my mind for quite some (very long!!!!) time. but when I visited Divya's Easycooking , i was mesmerised with her eggless cookies. Though I am non-vegetarian and loves eggs to the core , i do not prefer cookies with egg in it. I have to confess here that eventhough all along I have a good luck with baking cakes, but my cookies experiments were total disaster with burnt cookies, melted cookies etc etc....

Finally inspired by Divya, i chose her Eggless butter cookies recipe which was very simple. With all my enthusiasm, passion for baking and obviously with crossed fingers , i started doing preparations....... Recipe as it is from Diya is as follows:-

Eggless Butter Cookies

Ingredients:-

Maida - 1 cup

Cornflour - 1/2 cup

Icing Sugar - 3/4 cup

Butter - 3/4 cup(in room temperature)

Chopped nuts - 1/2 cup(optional)

Vanilla essence - 1 tsps

Method:-

Preheat oven to 150*C.

Sift together maida,cornflour and icing sugar.

Cream the butter with a fork and add the nuts and vanilla.

Mix the flour mix to the butter mix 1 tbsp at a time.

Mix well,add 1 tbsp milk if the mix is too dry.

Make small balls of the mix and flatten a bit with hands or using a fork.

Place on a greased baking tray and bake for 20 minutes or till golden brown.

My variation :-

1. Instead of sifting icing sugar with flours, I creamed it with butter.
2. Added a pinch of Baking powder in flour.
3. My cookie batter was sticky, so I adventurously added one tablespoon of Cocoa powder. The batter was still little bit sticky. So i further added a teaspoon of almond meal which was ready in my refrigerator. Put the batter in fridge for 10 mins and it was hardened a bit.
4. Shaped it in round and designed with fork as suggested by Divya.

Once I put the cookie tray in oven, my countdown began !!!!!!!! Impatiently waiting for cookies to get ready. Once they started spreading their wings on cookie sheet as per my expectations, my joy had no bounds. But 15th mins onward they were still soft to touch but there was a little smell of burning. So with little disappointment i removed them from oven and put it on the rack for cooling , thinking about their future( whether to airtight container ot to dustbin) , praying strongly for their future to be good.... With little hesitation, i tasted one and OMG, they were so good... all buttery, bittery, chocolatey, crunchy,... Finally I won...

Now I am confident that I can bake good cookies also without any eggs in it... Hurray !!!!!!Thanks Divya for wonderful recipe.

A TIGER CAKE - A BIG ROAR TO ENJOY

Many eyebrows might have raised after reading the name of the cake . But it is the same cake as zebra Cake which was a great hit in my house . My nephew , Pratham is a great fan of Spiderman. There are spiderman all over the house .( even he has a small spiderman with a Indian sword. )Other favourite of him is a TIGER. Sometimes he dons the avatar of a Tiger and wander roaring around the house. My father is a victim of this TIGER . He keeps pouncing on him , scratch him like a tiger and try to scare him with a tagline "Ata me tula khanar."(Now i ll eat you) . So i decided to prepare this cake keeping him in mind.This recipe is the same as of zebra cake. As in case of Zebra Cake, i divided the batter in 2 equal portions. To one part I added the Cocoa powder and to other one I added yellow food colour.Pour the batter in tin in the same manner and this tigerish looking cake was born. Pratham was delighted to see it and eat it. Nowadays he is bit puzzled about my baking fever. Whenever I take a cake for him , he has a straight question "What happened to you ? Why do you always bake a cake? "

ZEBRA CAKE - IT'S BLACK & WHITE

When I first had a look at this beautiful cake at Passionate About Baking by Deeba , I was smitten by the same and decided to try the same. I followed the recipe as mentioned on her blog. And everyone was surprised to see the results. I melted some chocolate with cream and poured it over the hot cake.
The taste was amazing. It was moist and beautiful looking. Looking at it , everyone was amazed at the zebra stripes.I am actually taking baby steps in the field of baking cakes.But, indeed , in this cake , I was a clear winner. All thanks to Deeba!!!! She has explained the procedure in such details with photographs , no one can ever go wrong. I could not click the photographs at that time.My nephew , Pratham was very excited about the zebra stripes. Again I prepared this cake in loaf tin to gift it somebody. I used half the quanities for this cake. May be since it was a loaf tin , i did not get the zebra stripes , but it was more like a Marble design. Anyways the taste was good and to whom we were sending the same were amazed at the designs. This cake is actually a good treat for kids . Definitely deserve a try.

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Chocolate Coffee Cake - Ultimate Combination

I wanted to gift something special to my hubby darling on his birthday. And what is better than a cake prepared by myself. I was toying with lot of ideas . Was planning month before his bday on May 31st . Finally decided on the chocolate cake. After a lot of googling , i stayed on at Deeba's Passionate About Baking .I just admire her for her creation. She has such beautiful hand and vision when it comes to decorating the cakes and taking the photographs and arranging them in such a way that u just want to try that. This cake is actually a combination of 2 cakes from her collections...Chocolate Mocha Gateau and Espresso Cake. The sponge was inspired by her Coffee sponge of Coffee Mocha Gateau .It was spongy and had the good coffee flavour. I baked it a on saturday and refrigerated the sponge overnight. The Coffee Cream was inspired by her Espresso Cake filling. And the result was amazing. I used Chocolate ganache for frosting.Recipe for Ganache is Here .Further decorated with grated chocolate and chocolate curls and shavings. It was completely chocolicious. Tasted amazing.Perfect blend of coffe and Chocolate. Birthday boy liked it very much.

But those with not so affectionate towards the chocolate and coffee , this cake may be too srong to gulp down. We enjoyed since we both like the chocolate and coffee. I used the nescafe .I dont remember the name but it's mixture of coffee and chicory and has that very strong aroma.

PIZZA - Tryst with yeast and Baked Pepper & Potato Fuseli Pasta

On Hubby's birthday , he wanted to have everything special right from breakfast .Sometimes he is very demanding. I toyed with several ideas what to do for him. He actually not person to go for English Junk food. He is very desi at heart when it comes to having Junk food like Samosas , Vada Pav , Bhajji's etc. But still i decided to take a chance and decided to prepare a Pizza and Pasta all by me. This was actually a great risk. Since in past I had never been lucky with Mr. Yeast who always enjoyed to give me nightmares. But i have said earlier , failures inspires me to try. I did the same. I followed Shilpa's Pizza base recipe. I kept the dough overnight . I had become such a yestophobic that i was getting up every 2 hrs to check up the dough. And to my utter surprise , the dough had started raising right one & half hrs. I had to replace the dough in bigger box. I was so happy to myself. It is said , If there is a will , there is a way. Morning I just rolled the dough and the pizza base was ready.

TOPPINGS :-

• Red & Yellow & Green Bell Paper
• Cheddar Chese
• Corn nibblets
• Baby Corns
• Pizza Sauce
• Mozarella Chese

I prepared 2 Pizzas following Shilpa's directions. I used the store brought pizza sauce. Applied the sauce in Pizza base followed by grated cheddar chese , peppers , corns and baby corns. Spread some diced mozarella and fresh chopped basil leaves over the topping. I prepared one with Pizza sauce and one without it. Hubby liked the one without sauce the most. One thing is for sure that my husband will not be entering the Pizza Hut or Domino's or any other Pizza Parlour anymore. He was happy and that made my day.

I decided to have the accompaniment to Pizza and decided to prepare baked pasta. During our training sessions , we had planned for this executive lunches which comprised of Baked pasta with vegetables, noodles , sandwiches , salads etc. That was the first time, I had tasted the Baked pasta and liked that taste. That taste was always at the back of mind. So I set on mission to prepare the pasta.Just started the work on intuition. Since i did not have time to surf the net at the moment , started recollecting the things seen on blogs , sites , books etc.

RECIPE :-

• Boiled the potatoes with salt and cut it in round. Boiled the fuseli as per the instruction on the packet.
• Buttered the oven proof dish and arranged the potatoes,Grated some cheese over them
• Spread a layer of remaining diced peppers from Pizza and corn nibblets and baby corn.Spread the cheese slices. Spread the boiled Fuseli over it. Spread the Pasta sauce over it. Grated some cheese over it.
• Spread the dices of Mozarella cheese and baked at pre heated oven at 180 C for 20 mins.

The hot and savoury Baked Pasta is ready to be devoured. Hubby liked the same. But he was more in praise for Pizza. May be next time i ll try the same with more vegetable and homemade Indianised sauce to give it a real desi and rustic taste.

Eggless Black Forest Cake - Getting bolder with baking

It was my nephew , Aaditya's birthday who was visiting us from Malvan in his summer vacation . When he got to know that I had prepared Amogh's birthday cake , he was quite excited about his birthday cake which was obviously I had to prepare. I remember when we were kid , my mother used to prepare cake in pressure cooker. We used to be amazed about the same. And without caring much about the sponginess, cream on it , we used to finish it. My brother was and still is great fan of cakes. Papa used to get small cup cakes from local bakery . We used to call them "Waati cakes", may be they resemble like small stainless steel bowl which is called "waati" in marathi.

So I was thinking which cake to prepare and finally decided on Black Forest. It was quite a challenge since I had to prepare an eggless cake again. I do prepapre eggless cake but my personal favourite is cake with egg in it. Anyways , The chocolate sponge recipe is Here . I prepared the 2 sponge , one round in 9" spring form tin and one small hexagonal.(In this case i just reduced the ingredients to half).

FILLING :

500 ml Heavy whipping cream

1 tsp Vanilla extract

5 tsp Confectioners sugar (You can check for sweetness)

Mix all the ingredients till soft peaks are form.

SUGAR SYRUP :

Actually I had read somewhere that the cherry syrup is used in Black Forest Cake. The same was not available at my place . In such case whats better than googling your way out.I did the same and found alternative in sugar syrup @ Shilpa's aayi's recipe.

DECORATION :

I used bottled cherries and dark grated chocolate for decorations.

ASSEMBLING :-

• Refrigerate the sponge at least for 2-3 hrs . It will help cutting the sponge. I have cut both the sponges in 2 layers each.
• Put upper part of cake on plate and spread the sugar syrup on it followed by cream.Spred few chopped cherries. Place the other layer on it and repeat the procedure for all layers.
• Press the cake slightly and spread the cream on top and frost the sides as well.
• Decorate with cherries and chocolate shavings.
• Refrigerate the same to mature the flaours.Keep the cake outside of the fridge an hour before cutting.

Your Eggless black forest cake is ready to be devoured . The cake was bit dense this time but tasted good. May be because we cut it right out of fridge.

One funny incident had happened , Pratham ,my other 5 yrs old nephew who is also a fan of chocolate and cream cake was fascinated by the cream and cherries on top. He was getting impatient to cut the same and since we were getting little late to cut the cake , he was bit irritated too. He was closely guarding the cake. At one point of time , he got so tempted that he actually licked the cream on top. Me and my SIL were literally aghast for a moment . Since all the cream was finished , we had none to put at the patch. The poor little champ was looking at us with fear in his eyes. But we just the scrapped a little little cream from sides and pasted it at the patch and no one was aware untill we told everyone after cake cutting. That's the innocence !!! We have to appreciate it ..

Chocolate Strawberry Cake - Amu's Birthday present & Its Eggless

After going through so many food blogs and especially, blogs dedicated to baking , I was truly inspired to dive in to the sea of baked items. To start with I had to purchase an OTG or a microwave. And my struggle to find the right option started thereon. The journey was a complete mixture of online research , literally interviewing the people who already had both musts in bakers world. The final verdict was not surprising but expected..... 50- 50..... In such cases , you just have to trust your conscience... I did the same and purchased an OTG. I am really happy that I made this choice. Results are amazing.. even though my first eggless chocholate cake was a total disaster in taste...but it rose very well and had that good crumb, moist and spongy. It had everything but the TASTE..... But it is said and proved "Failure is the first step towards success " . I literally believed in the same and dared to prepare my sons' First Birthday Cake... Risk factor was very high.. But that's my gift to my son.. He is too small to understand the same.. But one day he ll realise that... The cake was really good in taste . Eventhough it was eggless, it was spongy. I frosted it with chocolate ganache. Design and the flaovur were inspired by Deeba's Strawberry and Chocolate Cake at Passionate About Baking . We all enjoyed the cake and the dinner which was followed after cake cutting.

I wanted to try Madhuram’s Eggless Chocolate Cake Recipes recipe which had silken tofu. But i could not found the silken tofu here in pune. After a bit on googling, I zeroed in on one with condensed milk.

Here is the recipe :

INGREDIENTS:-

STRAWBERRY SPONGE :-

Condensed Milk :- 200gm (I used half tin of Milkmaid)

2 Cups :- All purpose flour ( + 3 tsp)

1 tablespoon :- Baking Powder

1/2 tablespoon :- Soda Bi Carb

2 tablespoon :- Castor Sugar

Melted butter :- 60 gm

1/2 tablespoon Strawberry essence

Milk :- 100 ml

Soda :- 100 ml

METHOD :-

1. Pre - heat the oven at 200 C.
2. Sift all dry ingredients.
3. Pour condensed milk in mixing bowl and add melted butter and essence to it. Beat well till smooth. Add half milk and mix well.
4. Add flour 1 spoon at a time and beat well. Add milk as required.Check for consistency. ( Beat the batter in once direction only to incorporate the more air.) Beat the batter for 5 mins.
5. Add soda and mix gently. Plz ensure that the air shall not escape. This will make the cake lighter and spongy.
6. Pour into a prepared 8" spring form tin. Bake for 30 mins or the skewer inserted in the center Bake at 200 C for first 10 mins and reduce the temp to 170C till done.
7. Cool a little and invert on a wire rack.

CHOCOLATE SPONGE :-

The recipe is same as for strawberry sponge. Only u have to replace the 3 tsp Flour with Cocoa powder and use Coke/ Pepsi/ Thums up instead of Soda.

I made the sponge one day prior , wrapped in plastic zip lock bag and refrigerated for one day.This helps in cutting the sponge in 2 layers. Divided both the sponge in 2 layers each.

GANACHE :-
Dark Chocolate :- 150 gm

Cream :- 100 - 150 ml. (It has to be of spreading consistency)

Melt the chocolate and cream in double boiler to avoid burning of chocolate. Take it off heat and mix it vigorously . Mixing will add shine to the ganache.

STRAWBERRY CREAM FILLING :-

Cream :- 250 ml

Fresh Strawberries :- 250 gm (Chopped finely. Keep aside 5-6 strawberries for decoration)

Whipp the cream till it become stiff. Reserve the little cream for web decoration on top.Mix the finley chopped strawberries in cream

ASSEMBLING :-

I followed the directions of Deeba while frosting it. Detailed picrures on her blog helped me to design the web on cake which was actually a centre of attention for everyone present.

I had read at Joy of Baking that once the cake are cut in 2 layers , while creaming it had to be put upside down. But this tip I read only after decorating my son's birthday cake. Hence u can see the dome shape in picture. That actually gave me tough time in spreading the ganache on top. My ganache was little watery that was also a one of the reason , it was running down the edges. But it was my first attempt and I was satisfied with the result. Now I feel a bit confident about baking cakes.