Moist Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:

Cake
300g of all purpose flour
100g of cocoa powder
400g of castor sugar (I have used 300g only)
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of vanilla extract
250ml of hot water
250ml of vegetable oil
250ml of low fat milk
3 large eggs

Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda and keep aside for later use.

In a mixing bowl beat eggs with sugar and vanilla extract then add water, vegetable oil and milk. Now add in the sifted dry ingredients gradually without over mixing the batter.

Pour this batter on a baking pan which have been applied with butter and flour (I have used bundt pan), dust off excess flour and bake this cake for 30-45 minutes at 150 to 170 degrees depending on your oven requirement. The cake is done when you insert a skewer and it comes out clean, let the cake cool overnight or at least few hours before pouring the ganache.

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

50ml of cream

200g of dark chocolate

1 tbsp of butter

Melt all dark chocolate and cream over double boiling method, once chocolate is perfectly melted add in butter for a glossy look. Let the ganache cool before pouring over the cake and decorate upon your creativity.

See how glossy is the ganache 

Do try and let me know how it turned out for you!

Walnut Chocolate Chunks Brownies

Every-time I go shopping for pantry items, I have always wanted to try Pillsbury's ready made brownies mix. Its super easy to make and awesome, fudgy delicious brownies. I have added some chopped walnuts to give perfect brownies, finally my dream came true....hehehe...

Ingredients:

1 pack of brownies mix
1 cup of chopped walnut
75 ml of water
30 ml of oil
1 egg

In a bowl, mix everything together, pour into a 9x9 greased square tin and baked for 20 minutes on a preheated oven at 150 degrees. Once baked let it cool before cutting and serving the brownies. Now our Hazelnut Chocolate Chunks Brownies is ready to be served!

Yummy yummy brownies

Moong Dal Kozhukattai

Ingredients:
2 cups of raw rice (soaked and drained)
1/2 cup of whole moong dal
1/4 cup of shredded coconut
1/2 cup of sugar (reduce or add to your preference)
A pinch of salt

Dry blend the soaked raw rice and steam for 15 minutes, remove to a bowl and break all the lumps so that you will have lump free flour, let it cool down. Now dry roast whole moong dal until a nice aroma is released from the dal, let it cool down for a while then pulse it the blender once (we are looking for coarse grains not fine nor whole).

Boil the dal with salt and some water to soften it do not add so much of water as we will be using the water for the dough preparation later. Let the dal cool so that easier to work with it, slowly add the cooked dal to the rice flour we have prepared earlier, add sugar and coconut. Mix well and shape it into kozhukattai, steam for 10 minutes or until its completely cooked.

Let the kozhukattai cooled before serving, now our Mong Dal Kozhukattai is ready to be served. Do try and let me know how was it!

Spicy Tuna Cutlets

Ingredients:

1 can of tuna flakes in water
4 potatoes (boiled and mashed)
1 large onion (chopped fine)
5 bird eye chilli (chopped fine)
1/2 tsp of turmeric powder
1/2 tsp of garam masala powder
1 large egg (beaten and add 2 tbsp of water)
1 tbsp of lemon/lime juice
Salt to taste
Oil to fry

In a bowl add potatoes, tuna flakes (drain out the water), lemon/lime juice, onions, chilli, turmeric powder, garam masala powder, salt and mix everything  until it does not stick to your hands. Leave the mixture to set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Heat oil and maintain on medium flame, roll the tuna mixture into small balls and flatten slightly, keep aside. Dip the prepared cutlets in the egg mixture then fry to golden brown and drain on a kitchen towel. Now our Spicy Tuna Cutlets are ready to be served,best eaten with plain rice and kaara kuzhambu or as snacks dipped in ketchup.

Mouth-watering cutlets they are, aren't they?

Do try and let me know how it turned out for you!

Upperi/ Kerala Banana Chips

Upperi/ Banana Chips are very synonym to Keralites, this serves as snacks which are very popular among all especially during Kerala Sadhya (during festive feasts). In Malaysia, these chips are commercialized and sold by Malays and its widely available even in the shopping complexes. Now let us see how to make these chips my family's style;

Ingredients:
5 raw plantain (peeled and sliced thinly)
2 tsp of turmeric powder
1 cup of water
Salt to taste
Oil to fry

In a bowl mix water, salt and turmeric powder and keep aside.

Heat oil in a pan and maintain medium flame, fry sliced plantain until 3/4th cooked (do not over crowd the frying pan as these plantains will stick together), sprinkle the salt and turmeric water on the frying plantain. You do not have to sprinkle turmeric and salt water every time you fry the plantain as the oil will be salty, every third or fourth time will do. Once the chips perfectly fried, drain and let it cool down before transferring into an air-tight container.

This chips can be stored up to a month if handles properly. Our Upperi/Banana Chips are ready to be served. 

Do try and let me know how it turned out for you!

Coconut Candy

It's something special, but is it love? Its hard for some people to call it love because of pride and some, perhaps, even reject the feelings. What ever it is , love is in the air when he gives you butterflies in your tummy by just being in your thoughts or makes your heart thump as if you've just run a 100 m dash when he's near you. Some don't even feel love at first, until an argument or risk of break-up comes into picture and 'hate' soon blooms into romance. Others misunderstand friendship, lust or even infatuation as 'love' but love is so pure and honest and it doesn't need material assurance to ignite it. Don't rush into anything and take it slow and steady so that love will last till the end.

You must be thinking what am I blabbering here, hey but its Valentines Day and I'm so in love, no matter its V-Day or not. It has been 13 years, I have been swimming in the sea of love, for some one who have been very strict and fierce, love has changed me to who I am today. I thank God for sending me the guardian angel to care and love me my whole life, okay I better stop here. I can talk and talk and talk non-stop when it comes to love, let me bring you to the recipe today.

Today's special recipe is Coconut Candy, I have made this for the first time in my life for my beloved husband to celebrate V-Day. This candy is one of his favorite, but knowing me, I'm someone who don't fancy sweet stuffs and always very health conscious he never asked me to make for him. But it's not fair isn't it, once in a while its okay to have. Now let us see how to make this;

Ingredients:
2 2/3 cup of shredded coconut (only white part)
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of evaporated milk
1/2 cup of condensed milk
2 tbsp ghee/butter
2 tsp of rose extract
Few drops of red/pink food coloring
A pinch of salt

In a non-stick pan, melt ghee/butter and add coconut fry for a couple of minutes over medium flame, now add sugar, evaporated milk, condensed milk, rose extract, red coloring and salt. Stir everything continuously, do not leave the mixture without stirring constantly because it will be easily burnt. Stir until the mixture clumps together and almost dry.

Pour the mixture on a square cake mould and let it cool down, now cut into small squares and place it in the fridge overnight. The next day, remove from fridge and place the squares in air-tight containers in the fridge, it can be kept up to a month (if you don't finished it immediately :) ) Now our Coconut Candy is ready to be served.

Do try and let me know how it turned out!

Cekodok/ Banana Balls/Fritters

Ingredients:

3 bananas (large and ripe)

1 cup of all purpose flour

1/4 tsp of baking soda

1/2 cup of coarse sugar

A pinch of salt

Oil to fry

Mash bananas with sugar, baking soda and salt, this preparation doesn't need any water for mixing as bananas with sugar, salt and baking soda will be watery. Finally, add all purpose flour and mix well with the banana mixture. This batter will be slightly watery but do not worry that is the right consistency needed, let the batter rise for about 10 minutes before frying.

Now heat enough oil for frying over medium flame, add in small portion of banana mixture and fry until it's brown. Do not stir the mixture immediately, let one side cook first before flipping to another side.

Orange Flavored Chocolate Moist Cake

I have been planning to bake a cake for my colleagues today as I couldn't bring any of Diwali cookies, not because I don't want t share with them but I had only empty containers. We had given out cookies for relatives and neighbors who came to visit us. So for my colleagues I have baked an Orange flavored Chocolate Moist Cake, this is a very moist cake and it just melts in your mouth.

I have got this recipe from sis Love2Cook's blog, actually I planned to bake moist chocolate cake but while mixing the batter I saw Oranges in my fridge I thought of adding it to my cake, Orange and chocolate is a very good combo to go together. Now let us take a look at how to bake this cake;

Ingredients:

100 g of all purpose flour

50 g of dark cocoa powder

200 ml evaporated milk

50 ml of freshly squeezed orange juice

180 g of granulated sugar (I have used brown sugar)

1 tbsp of orange zest

1 tsp of vanilla extract

1/2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

180 g of butter

2 eggs

In a bowl sift all purpose flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and baking powder and set aside.

In another bowl, whisk butter and sugar until fluffy then add egg one by one and mix everything well. Then add vanilla extract, orange juice, evaporated milk and orange zest, mix everything thoroughly.

Finally add the dry ingredients that have been sifted little by little and mix well without any lumps. Grease a baking pan and pour the cake mixture into the pan and bake at 170 degrees for 45 minutes  (My oven calls for 150 degrees 30 minutes only).

Once baked cool the cake completely before applying any toppings to the cake. 

For Chocolate Ganache topping:

100 g of cooking chocolate
5o ml condensed milk

2 tbsp of butter

Double boil the cooking chocolate once melted add the butter for a glossy shine.

Malaysian Style Pineapple Tart

This s very famous cookie in Malaysia, almost everyone would have tasted at least once. I have got order for this cookie also, it's delicious Pineapple Tart. Let me introduce star of the show;

Let us check how I made this cookie, its quite tedious but fun making it...

Ingredients:

Crust (150pieces)
2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 1/2 tbsp of custard flour
2 tbsp of corn flour
1 tsp of vanila extract
1 tbsp of sugar
1 cup of butter
1 tbsp of ghee
1 egg yolk (beaten for egg wash)

Pineapple Jam
1 whole pineapple grated
2 cups of sugar (reduce if pineapple is sweet)
1 screw-pine leaf

Cook over low heat all the ingredients for jam, it takes about 3- 4 hours to get thick jam. Cool it while making the dough for crust.

This is a very simple crust making method, mix all the dry ingredients 

to the wet ingredients and knead well until soft, leave aside

Using a cookie press, squeeze out dough like above

Roll out small amount of pineapple jam and place it on one side of the dough, you 

may ask why I have two jam rolls, I just wanted to make everything fast because 

it do take a long time to complete the whole process

Roll out the end of dough where we have placed the jam and roll to a complete cylinder

See how to roll it?

Arrange the tarts on a baking tray 

Apply egg wash on one side of the cookie and bake at 150 degree for 15- 20 minutes, 

make sure you heat the oven 5 minutes earlier before baking

Our Pineapple Tart now is ready to be served

Do try and let me know how it was!

I'm sending this recipe to Love2Cook Malaysia's Event Deepavali Delights 2012

Sabudana Vada Guest Post by Vimitha

Ever since I have started blogging, I have got so many blogger friends who support me by faithfully visiting my blog every time I post a new recipe. One of the dearest blogger is Vimitha from My Culinary Trial Room, I love her blog because she has wonderful pictures with different varieties of delicious recipes. When I have requested her to do a guest post for my blog, she whole heartedly said yes and told me will message to me the recipe very soon.

I was so happy when I received her recipe today and told her will post this recipe as soon as possible. It's a wonderful recipe and I would love to try the recipe very soon, I looks so delicious and mouth watering. Now let's read what she has to say about this guest post and recipe in her own words. Thank you so much dear for this recipe, I'm loving it.

Vimitha@ My Culinary Trial Room

To those who do not know me, I am Vimitha and I blog @My Culinary Trial Room. A software engineer by profession, I never knew that even I would have cooking genes in me and I didn't even think about giving it a go until I got married and moved in with my in-laws. Even then I dared to take up the job of my MIL's sous-chef only. When we moved out and I got my very own kitchen, cooking became a chore rather than a hobby and I starting taking baby steps in the art of culinary with the advise from my MIL and amma. I started trying different recipes to impress my huss. Recipes scattered around the house instigated me to make a journal out of them but then writing is my weakness and I didn't have the patience to jot down every ingredients in a diary. Then I got introduced to the world of blogging and I got hooked to it. Inspired by many, I started my own blog and here I am doing my very first guest post in a lovely space.

When Sumanarthy asked me to do a guest blog at her space, I did not have any reason to tell no. And when she said that the theme was navratri special, I was super excited since I had wanted to try the sabudana vada that is traditionally made for navrathri vrat / fasting season and what better time than this. The recipe is simple to put together but be sure to use good and fresh sago pearls or else the vada tends to burst when put in hot oil.

This makes a super crunchy snack for your tea-time. Crispy outside and soft inside, you can never say no to this. I would suggest eating this fresh out off the kadai as they tend to lose their crunchiness after some time.

~*What U Need*~ Sabudana / Javvarisi / Sago / Tapioca pearls - 1/2 cup Potato - 1, medium Roasted peanuts - 1/4 cup Rice flour - 1 tbsp Green chillies - 2 nos, finely chopped Chopped coriander leaves - 1 tbsp Curry leaves - 1 sprig Cumin seeds - 1/4 teaspoon Salt - to taste Oil - to deep fry

How I Made it:

Wash sago pearls and soak in water for 4 to 6 hours. Drain and set aside. Pressure cook the potato for 2 whistles. Cool, peel the skin and mash well. Peel the skin off the peanuts and blend to a coarse powder. 

Take the soaked sago pearls in a mixing bowl along with mashed potato and peanuts. Add rice flour, green chillies, curry leaves, coriander leaves, cumin seeds and salt. Mix well. Make small round patties from the mixture and arrange them in a plate. 

Heat oil in a kadai and fry the vadas till golden brown. Drain the excess oil using paper towel.

Serve hot with tea / coffee.

** My Notes:
If the mixture is not binding together, add extra rice flour and mix.

So thats it Folks...
With Love,

Signs off!!!