Instant Chocolate cake

As I write this new post about the Instant Chocolate Cake..lot of good labels light up in my head-best out of waste, the jiffy cake, serendipity, the rescue cake..Gosh what not.
The fact is that it is an all that cake.Here below I explain.

This weekend, I had unannounced guests on my door screaming for cake.Normally am elated at such demands assuming this as a sign of people's faith in my fast developing baking skills but it was different this time. I knew I was short on sugar and had run out of baking powder. It was almost impossible to live up to the expectation. To make it worse, I discovered that the hide n seek biscuits which I was about to serve with tea, had become limp..thanks to the incessant rains which I have been raving about in my previous blogs...
And then somewhere deep in my mind a bulb of hope lit up.
Many years ago,when I must have been in my early teens, I recalled an auntie from the neighbourhood mentioning about making a cake with Eno, the digestive fruit salt and making use of limp biscuits.
But this moment,it was just this idea..I was clueless about quantity ,baking time and temperature and other details. I decided to get my hands dirty and leave the rest to God.
Sure enough,when you believe in miracles ,they do happen.
I landed up with a most beautiful yummy cake which vanished moments after serving(I could barely snatch a moment to click the snaps).

What I love about this cake is
1.Minimal ingredients-just three items
2. Minimal effort
2.Very versatile..you can make it in  innumerable flavours. (Whatever flavours of biscuits or cookies you have in hand)
3. Again you can add ingredients of your choice,any nuts ,berries available with you and serve it any way you like it..with frosting, ice cream, cream, plain. I was experimenting ,hence did not try too many additives and made it plain. I served it with chocolate sauce and it was pretty good that way.
4. Above all..it is eggless:)

The quantities  I give here are  in rough measures and not absolute in nature.You may like to change the quantities as per your taste.

Ingredients-

Biscuits-grind them fine and the resulting powder should roughly measure up to two and a half cup
Milk-1/4 cup
Eno salt-3/4 tsp (Plz use the plain eno and not flavoured one)

Preheat the oven to 180 centigrade and grease a cake mould. The cake will double in height on baking, so ensure that you use a cake mould which leaves more than half of space empty after putting the batter.
Add milk to the ground biscuits and mix well.The batter should be of dropping consistency.
Now add the eno salt and mix lightly.
Please note that you have to bake the cake immediately now and not leave it for later. Otherwise the salt will lose its effect.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or till the skewer comes out clean.

 

 

Almond cookie galore

Its cyclone Nilam today. Incessant rain, cold wind , dark clouds...consequently a chilly weather.One of those days when am thankful for not having a full time job so I can spend the day in the way that it ought to be spent. Curled up in the comforter with my favourite book, stare the garden outside and soak in nature, sip on a cup of steaming filter coffee and munch on cookies..Without any guilt , without any worry, without any work left incomplete..This is life...and this is how a rainy day ought to be celebrated..How many times in your life do you get to listen to your heart and do things the way the heart desires..not often I believe.That's why I feel thankful today to the Lord...To be able to do things the way the heart desires..surrender myself to the soul and let life take its own course...God thank you for this wonderful time, for this happiness in heart, for this beauty around.
The music of raindrops prancing on my rooftop stirs my soul and I am left mesmerised by the sights of  newly bathed greens outside..for once its difficult to focus on my favourite book too.I decide to warm my hands from the oven and spread some joy from my heart to the world. Its cookie time again.

I have to remind myself not to overindulge in this  happy state and stick to healthy stuff. (Yes worries of gestational diabetes still haunt me no matter how happy I am, especially with another blood test coming up next week). So I decide on some healthy ingredients that should satiate and delight and yet, not cause any stress.

Ingredients

Oats-1/2 cup (I used regular Quaker)
wholewheat flour- 1/2 cup
All purpose flour-1/2 cup
Sugar Powdered-3/4 cup
Almonds-3/4 cup
Baking powder-1 tsp
Salt-one generous pinch
Butter softened-1/4 cup
Oil-1/4 cup
Milk-1/4 cup

Powder the oats in the grinder and mix with wholewheat flour and AP flour.Also add the salt and baking powder to this mix and keep aside.
Whisk the sugar,butter and oil until creamy.
Toast the almonds lightly (for a wonderful aroma) and grind them.You can powder the almonds fine or if you like it chunky,keep the almonds to small bits or a coarse powder.
Sieve the flour mix into the butter and sugar mix.
Add the almond meal to this and mix gently.
Now use milk to bind this altogether to get a soft dough.

Now this where the fun begins. I have made three varieties of almond cookies from this dough and all of them have turned out a winner.

1.Standard almond cookie-Take small  balls from the prepared dough, flatten it on the greased cookie tray and bake for 15-20 min in a preheated oven at 180 centigrade. You can also decorate them with slivers of almonds if you want. These remained mostly white in colour with little specks of red brown which should be the clue that they are done and ready to be removed from the oven. Cool them on the wire rack for ten minutes to make them crunchy.

2.Choco chip Almond cookies- Press some chocolate chips on the cookies before baking-rest same as above.

3.Nutella stuffed melt in mouth almond cookies- .
Admittedly am new to Nutella. I picked it from the grocer for the first time last week and after I saw the appreciation for these heavenly gooey centred cookies, I feel I have missed a lot in life not using Nutella before.This turned out to be best and am surely going to try more with Nutella.Although it did take a little effort making these cookies but in the end it was worth it.

Make a walnut sized ball with the dough and flatten it. Scooping Nutella from the spoon was messy and difficult , so I piped some Nutella in my icing gun and from there it was a cakewalk.
For those who do not have a icing gun, make a plastic sheet cone like the ones they use for making henna decorations on the hand and fill it up with Nutella.
Put approximately 1/4 spoon Nutella in the flattened ball and enclose it. Reshape the ball and flatten it. Ensure that the filling does not ooze out.Bake for 15-20 minutes in a preheated oven at 180 centigrade.

Taste this piece of heaven and listen to your heart..Have a Happy day:)

 

Peanut cookies galore

The days are becoming shorter. The early setting sun comes as a harbinger of  'on the way' winters. It brings back a lot of memories from my childhood when winters really happened in the city I grew up in. Foggy mornings, basking on the charpoy in the sun,  peeling luscious oranges, the smell of naphthalene balls from pullovers in the trunk , smears of Charmis winter cream(brand is long dead now I believe),  the subtle fragrance of sweet pea flowers in the garden ,chikkis , ginger tea and peanuts. A childhood sans the cable TV made every movie on the idiot box a precious watch.
Huddled up with the family in  heavy quilts, cracking open the peanuts with eyes fixed on the telly..mum reminding to clean up the peanut skins..Those were the best days indeed.

I now realise the source of this flooding nostalgia...its the smell of roasting peanuts in the microwave which is pushing me down the memory lane and I don't feel like coming back..Gosh such a pull!
I don't have much to do today and I could happily wile away hours reminiscing about my good old days.I try not to give in to this pressure of idleness and figure out a middle path. I decide to bake peanut cookies. An unexpected treat for the family, munching on which I can go back to savouring my good old days...

 

To begin with I was actually roasting peanuts for a chutney to accompany my dosas for lunch ( recipe of which shall come some day soon on this blog ) but now I have saved a cupful of roasted skinned peanuts for my cookies. I am  beginning to feel kind of excited about the cookies and wish to deviate from the path most taken, the standard recipe. Another factor is I don't want to use egg..the smell still freaks me out and its Navratras too.  Okay so its going to be a variety of peanut cookies..Finally I decide to bake
1. Standard peanut butter cookies
2.Chocolate Peanut cookies
3. Coffee Peanut cookies

This recipe yields roughly forty mid sized cookies.

Ingredients

Roasted skinned peanuts -1 cup
Wholewheat flour-1/2 cup
Maida flour- 1/2 cup
Butter softened- 1/2 cup
Sugar powdered- 1/2 cup
Baking soda- 1/2 tsp
Milk-2 tsp

Optional
coco powder for 2) Chocolate peanut cookies
 2 tsp Coffee granules plus 2 tsp milk for 3) Coffee peanut cookies

 Preheat the oven at 200 centigrade. Grease the cookie baking tray and keep aside.
Grind the peanuts to a coarse powder.
Mix Sugar and softened butter vigorously.
In a separate bowl, mix the wholewheat flour, maida flour and baking soda.
Now combine this dry mix with the butter and sugar mixture and mix vigorously.
Whisk in the peanut powder.
Add milk if the mixture feels too dry and knead to obtain a soft dough.
Now divide the mixture in three  equal parts.

From one part,make small balls ,flatten and place it on the greased tray. Bake these peanut cookies at 200 centigrade for 15 minutes.Importantly cool before consuming.The cookies come out soft straight from the oven and get their crumbling hard texture on being cooled.

 

For the choco peanut cookies, add 3 heaped spoons of cocoa powder to the second part.Mix and knead again.Make small balls ,flatten and bake at 200 centigrade for fifteen minutes



For the coffee peanut cookies, heat two spoons of milk and add two spoons of strong coffee granules.
Cool this coffee liquid and mix it to the dough.Knead again. If the dough feels too wet to handle, use a sprinkling of flour and make small balls. Flatten and bake for fifteen minutes at 200 centigrade.

Enjoy the warm cookies with ginger tea and you can  almost taste the childhood days in the heart:)