Rice and Coconut payasa/Pudding-Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to every one

I hope you all are having a great time I really miss all the fun we had during diwali back in India. Had made big plans this year to make diwali sweets but unfortunately couldn't make anything. I thought, the least I could do to keep up my spirits was to post a sweet dish on my blog. I made this sweet dish during navrathri but never posted it. So here it goes for diwali.

This is one of the traditional dishes my mom makes often. I like this kheer (payasa in kannada) more than the semiya kheer, so mom often made this on my request. I thought it's too much work and never dared to make it. I was surprised that it was so simple to make. Mom makes it with rice, coconut and poppy seeds. I wanted to add some twist so I ground up some dry nuts instead of frying them and using for garnish.

This has poppy seeds in it so it aids you get better sleep, that's the reason I like it more :).

What you need:

1/4 cup White raw rice (you can use any variety)

1/2 cup grated coconut fresh / frozen  

2 table spoon brown sugar/ sugar/ jaggery

1 teaspoon poppy seeds

1 tablespoon ghee

5 almonds

5 whole cashewnuts

20 raisins

3 cardamom pods

How I made it:

Soak rice, almonds and cashews for 30 min in warm water.  Once well soaked grind it coursely along with coconut. Crush the poppy seeds seperately with little water. In a thick bottomed pot, add the ground rice and coconut mixture along with 1.5 cups of water. Add sugar and cook until it thickens and the raw taste is gone. Keep stirring it often or else it tends to thicken at the bottom. Add powdered cardamom. Garnish with raisins fried in ghee. You can make the thicknesss according to your liking.
Serve warm with ghee over it or serve it chilled.
I like to make it thick and eat it chilled.......just love all the flavors of poppy seed, coconut and cardamom, reminds me of home and mom ... :(

Tips:
You can use milk to get the right consistency.
You can also add brown and polson custard powder to it to get a different flavor

Wawa Melon aka Water Melon Granita

Let's kick start the summer with some refreshing water melon granita. Remember your childhood days licking ice ka gola, this is just a similar version of it.  I am sure kids would love it and the elders too. Its so refreshing and easy to make, All you do is blend, freeze, rake and eat .......it's fun and you need few basic ingredients.

Wondering about the new name for a common water melon, well that's my little one's version and I got used to calling it by that name now. Water in her baby language is 'wawa'.

This is my entry to serve it- chilled, hosted by Oh Taste n See.

What you Need:
3 cups seedless watermelon cubes
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoon sugar ( add according to the sweetness of the water melon)

How its Made:
Blend all the ingredients in a blender. Pour into a shallow freezer safe bowl and freeze for about 30 minutes, uncovered. Using a fork rake the crystals that are formed and refreeze for another 30 minutes. Rake the crystals again and freeze overnight or for 3- 4 hours. I left it in the freezer overnight and next day just used a fork to mix it and got beautiful crystals. For serving, use pre-chilled glasses, layer water melon balls and top it with watermelon granita, or just go the natural way use watermelon rind as bowls. The darker the color of the watermelon the prettier your granita would look. The water melon I used was pale red which makes the crystals look whiter, but it was very sweet.

Quick Pear Tart

It was saturday afternoon and my little missy was taking a nap. I was bored and didn't want to watch TV or read. So I thought of baking something. I prefer baking while she is not around as she loves to peep into the oven every time I open it. I had some pear wanted to try to make something out of it. I had seen Ina Garten on her show, 'Barefoot Contessa'. demonstrate french apple tart , a few weeks back. I basically adapted this recipe from her, but made changes to my convenience. She made her own pastry, but i didn't have so much time in hand. By the way I wasn't intending to blog about this recipe after the incident I had baking this :),  but than I thought its worth sharing some mishaps at time. Read the entire blog to know............

What You need:
Half Puff pastry sheet
1 Pear
2 tablespoon Apricot spread
2 tablespoon Apple juice
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoon cold butter cubed


How it's made:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the pear into half length wise and core. You can peel the pear, but I left the peel on. Cut into thin slices(about 1/4inch).Thaw and cut the pastry sheet to desired size. I used half of pastry sheet. Line a cookie tray with baking parchment paper. Place the pastry sheet over it. make some some slits in between with as sharp knife to avoid the pastry sheet from puffing up. Place the cut pear slices overlapping each other on the pastry sheet, You can place it straight like I did or diagonally for a better look. Sprinkle it with sugar and cold butter cubes. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the edges turn brown.

Meanwhile heat the apricot spread in a saucepan along with apple juice until it forms a nice smooth mixture. Take the baked pastry sheet out of the oven and apply the apricot spread onto the top of the pear and pastry with a pastry brush.

Cut into pieces and serve the tart warm or cool.

It tastes good and I shared a slice of it with my friend, who liked it too. How couldn't it taste good with butter n sugar baked with pear.

Blunders I made - I used wax paper instead of parchment to line the baking sheet, and guess what would have happened, It started smoking and all the smoke alarms went off in the house. It took 30 minutes to silence the alarm with neighbor's help, since I wasn't tall enough to reach the ceiling (even with a ladder ) to silence it. So please any out there who loves experimenting like me never ever use wax paper for baking. Lesson well learned............

Strawberry Sheera

I was walking down to pick up my daughter from daycare, it was drizzling and very cold. I was feeling like eating something warm and sweet. I remembered my Mom and than her banana sheera. Hmm, I thought that would be easy to make. I got home and started off immediately to make sheera, than a thought struck, how about trying strawberry instead of banana's and here is my experimental version.
While blogging this I tried to google this recipe and there were many others who have tried this already :).

What you need:
1 cup sooji (semolina)
2 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter)
1/4 cup Sugar
3 strawberry, cut into small pieces
2 pods of green cardamom, powdered
2 cloves

How it's Made:
Heat 2 teaspoon ghee in a pan add semolina and roast it until it turns golden brown and gives off a nice aroma. Set the roasted semolina aside. Heat about 1 1/2 cup of water and sugar together. Once the water starts to boil, Add  2 cut strawberry and cook for 1 min. Than slowly add the roasted semolina and stir continuously so that no lumps are formed. Add the ghee, cardamom and cloves powder. Stir it well until it thickens and leaves the edges of the pan.When almost done garnish with 1 cut strawberry. Serve hot or chilled.

Simple Banana Icecream

It's been raining crazily here and I was feeling very gloomy. I turned on the TV and was flipping through the channels, when I came across this banana icecream being shown by Claire Robinson on Food network. The simplicity of this preparation caught my attention and I had to give it a try ASAP. All that it contains is banana and some peanut butter. But the experimentor in me never lets me do things straight. Here is the recipe with my little modifications. If you like bananas, you sure should give it a try.

What you need :
2 Bananas
2 table spoon creamy peanut butter
2 teaspoon honey
Few drops of vanilla essence
chocolate syrup

How it's Made :
Cut banana's into 1 inch pieces and freeze it (1-2 hrs). Once frozen blend the banana's in a blender. Keep scrapping the sides in between and bland until you gt a smooth texture. Add honey, peanut butter, vanilla essence, little chocolate syrup and blend it well. Scoop out into cups and drizzle som chocolate syrup over it and serve.

Right now as I am blogging about it, my mind is racing about the endless possibilties I can try out. What about some peaches, strawberries, apples, cookies or fudge along with bananas. Got to try...... You guys can try out and let me know the best possible combinations.

Tips:
-Use ripe but firm bananas
-If the frozen banana are very hard, thaw them a little bit, this way you won't have trouble blending.
-It's possible the icecream could turn out more like a custard because of the heat of the blender (mine gets heated very quickly), put it back in the freezer and scoop it out when set.

Chocolate dipped Strawberry

My hubby loves strawberry dipped in chocolates (dark chocolate in particular), that's the only way he would eat strawberry. So I often end up making this for him during the strawberry season. This are quick and easy to make and you can top the chocolate according to your taste. This time I started with the idea that I would decorate them with white chocolate swirls, only to find out that I didn't have any white chocolate left at home. So ended up with this. Looks so holiday like, may be it will be a nice idea as a holiday gift for this year :).

What you need :
Chocolate chips
Fresh strawberry
Tooth picks

for garnishing I used :
butterscotch chips
crushed cashews
white chocolate

How it's made :
Melt the chocolate chips in microwave or double boiler. Insert toothpicks into the strawberry and dip it in th melted chocolate. Swirl the strawberry as you pull it out of the chocolate to remove excess chocolate. garnish with toppings of your choice ( crushed nuts, white chocolate, sweetened coconut flakes etc). Stick it in styrofoam and let it dry.

Well now to my garnishing story, as I said earlier I didnt have white chocolate at home, so thought of using butternut chips for the design. But they didn't melt soon and I didn't have patience to wait for long. So I ended up picking the slightly melted chips and sticking them to the strawberry, I thought they looked pretty. I had one small white chocolate covered cookie, so I melted it and used the white chocolate from it and applied with a tooth pick, not very clean lines :(.
I also dipped some blueberries in the chocolate, I ate most of them by the time I put them in the basket, so only few were left.

Coconut and Dry Fruits Poli

My Mom makes awesome coconut hobbatu / poli. They are so thin and remain soft for longer period. I never tried making poli so far, always thought it's best to leave it to the expert. Last month my sister went to visit my parents and mom made coconut poli with dates for her. My sister and dad kept mentioning how tasty they were, that made me crave for it. I kept thinking about it but didn't like the idea of making it. I thought it's not 'my cup of tea' to make it. But the urge to eat poli finally got over me and I decided to give it a try. Mine didn't turn out to be as good as my mom's but surely tasted delicious.

I made some changes to the recipe as per my own convenience and availability of ingredients. Here is my version.

How I made it :
For the dough:
2 cups Maida /All purpose flour
2 table spoon fine sooji / semolina
pinch of salt
1/4 cup oil ( I use canola oil)

Filling:
2 cups shredded dry coconut
8 pitted dates
2 tablespoon broken cashew nuts
10 almonds
1/4 cup brown sugar
5 pods of green cardamom
1 teaspoon poppy seeds

How I made it:
Dough- Mix the Maida, sooji and salt with sufficient water  to make a soft dough. Add the oil and knead the dough a little more. Let the dough soak in oil for about 4 hours in a cool place.

Filling- Dry roast separately the nuts and the poppy seeds. Peel and crush the cardamom. Grind the nuts along with coconut and cardamom. In a thick bottomed pan add 1 cup water and brown sugar and boil till the sugar completely dissolves. Add the ground powder and keep stirring until it starts to separate off the pan. It should form a thick dough like consistency, if you overdo it will be hard as a rock and if removed early it will still be runny.Mix the poppy seeds into this mixture and let it cool.

To make the poli- Take a small ball of the dough. Pat it flat with your finger tips to make small circle of about 4 inches on Plastic sheet / parchment paper ( I normally use the packets that we get daals from Indian store for this). Take a smaller size ball of the filling and keep in the center of the flattened dough and cover the filling completely. Since the dough is elastic it will stretch easily. Place inbetween two sheets of plastic/ parchment paper and roll it with the help of a rolling pin as thin as you can. Take care not to pop out the filling too much out of the dough.
Heat a flat pan. Transfer the rolled poli onto the skillet and peel off the plastic quickly. Cook until brown spots appear on both the sides. Serve warm with ghee.

These poli's remain fresh and soft for atleast a week.

chocolate cups with berries

Why eat chocolate off a bowl, when you can eat a chocolate bowl !!!.

Who doesn't love chocolates, each one loves it for different reasons and yes, chocolate is scientifically proven to be beneficial for health. Science!!, lets keep it out of our delightful chocolate cups and check how it's made. This is my trial version of the cups, not so perfect as I expected.

What You need:
semi sweet chocolate bar / chips
mixed berries ( raspberries, blue berries, strawberries)
whipped cream
cup cake liners


How it's made:
Line cupcake tray with cupcake liner. Melt chocolate in microwave. Using a pastry brush coat the inside of the cupcake liner with chocolate. Refrigerate the tray for 10 min, apply another layer of chocolate and let it set in the refrigerator for 10  min or until use.
For serving the chocolate cups, keep the cups outside for few minutes to thaw, this makes removing the liner easy. Fill in the mixed berries, top it with whip cream and serve.

Chocolaty Note :
- You can use any container of your liking to make the mold for chocolate cups (small cups, shot glasses, cookie molds etc).
- you can use any chocolate or combination of white n dark to give a artistic look
- Make in large quantities and store in the refrigerator ahead of time for a nice quick dessert or for  large parties.
- you can go creative with your fillings from ice-creams, cold custard. peanut butter or fruits. After all its a cup, what you want to eat in it depends on you.

Strawberry Parfait

This sunday the weather was unusually warm for spring. But the warm weather tempted me to work in our garden. After 2 hours of work I was tired and hungry. Ready to eat something, but wasn't in mood for my regular breakfast. Wanted something cool, so made this yummy strawberry parfait. Its simple, delicious and best of all nutritious.

 

 

What You need:

Fresh Strawberries - cut to desired size

Yougurt/ icecream of you choice

cereals / granola 

honey

Whipped cream for topping

How it's made:

Slice strawberries and place them in a bowl. Stir in a bit of honey, making the strawberry filling as sweet as you like and set it aside.
Place a spoonful of strawberry mixture into the bottom of a tall glass. On top of that layer with cereals or granola.  Add a big spoonful of your favorite yogurt or if preferred, a scoop of vanilla ice cream,. Add more strawberries, cereals and more ice cream or yogurt, continuing the layers until you fill the glass. Add a dollop of whip cream to the top of the strawberry parfait, garnish with strawberry and enjoy.

Baklava

We were invited for New year's party last year at an elderly couples house. After a nice karnatakan food we were offered dessert. Our stomach was so full with the delicious homemade food I didn't feel like eating desserts. They packed it for us. Uncle, told me he had got it baked from a Greek baker who specializes in Greek baking. Next day we tried it out and instantly fell in love with it. I had to try it out and the best part was that my husband who is not found of sweets liked it. I had no clue what this dessert was except that it was from Greek baker. I browsed the internet and figured it out that it was called Baklava. I tried it the very next day and it was an instant hit with my hubby and friends. We have baked it several times for parties, to take to India and just to eat at home.  It's one of those delicious desserts I love baking often. 
It's nutty delicious, yummyyyyy..........you can't stop at one. 

What you need:

1 (16 ounce) package phyllo dough (I used half of it)
1 pound chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoon sugar

sauce:
3/4 cup water
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup honey

How it's Made:
Sauce : Make sauce earlier and cool it . I normally put it in the refrigerator once it gets cooled.
Boil sugar and water until sugar is melted. Add vanilla and honey. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Until its thick and viscous.
Chop nuts and toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Apply butter to the bottoms and sides of a 9x13 inch baking pan.
Assembly : Start it with lots of patience. The phyllo dough sheets are very thin , you need to be very gentle and patient while handling them. Unroll phyllo dough. Cover phyllo with a dampened cloth to keep from drying out as you work. Place one sheet of dough in baking pan, spread it gently and apply butter with a pastry brush. Repeat until you have 8 sheets layered,while applying butter at every single layer. Sprinkle 2 - 3 tablespoons of nut mixture on top. Top with two sheets of dough, apply butter, sprinkle nuts, than two sheets of phyllo dough, repeat again, layering as you go. The top layer should be about 6 - 8 sheets thick.



The sheet is thin and very fragile

  
Using a sharp knife cut into square shapes all the way to the bottom of the pan. You can than cut it diagonally to get triangle shaped pieces. Bake for about 40-50 minutes until the top crust is golden and crisp. 

Remove baklava from oven and immediately spoon sauce over it. Let it cool. Leave it uncovered as it gets soggy if it is wrapped up.
Store in cool place. It tastes better the next day as the layers will absorb the sauce better.

Braided puff pastry dessert

Happy Holi!!!
Got an invitation for dinner to one of my Indian friends here.
Thought of making Baklava but did not have sufficient time to do with Adwi around me. I had just 2 hours let before I would go there didn't know what to make. I was flipping through Better Homes and Garden magazine and trying to get Adwi to nap. Saw this braided dessert recipe with puff pastry, looked pretty.Thought I should try it out, since it was holi wanted to make something with Indian touch, so here is my version of it. Let your imagination wild and try whatever filling you like.

What you need :Frozen Puff Pastry sheet - 1
butter- 1 tablespoon

For the filling:
butter scotch chips- 2 Table spoon
raisins- 2 Table spoon
walnut - 2 table spoon finely chopped
almond-2 table spoon finely chopped
dates - 5 finely chopped
cinnamon powder- 1 teaspoon
cardamom- 2 pods, finely powdered
sugar- 2 teaspoon

How its made:
Line a large baking tray with parchment paper. Unfold a puff pastry sheet and place in the tray. Mix all the ingredients in the filling list  and place the filling in the centre portion. Using a sharp knife, make 3- inch long cuts at 1 inch intervals right upto the filling in pastry on each side of the filling.starting at one end alternately fold opposite strips of dough at an angle over the filling, overlapping ends  of strips in the middle. Press down gently on strips to seal. Cover with a plastic wrap and keep it aside for 20 min. Discard the wrap, brush a little melted butter over the braid and sprinkle sugar and cinnamom powder mixture over it.

Preheat oven 375 F, bake the braid for 30 min or until tops and bottoms are golden brown. Cool braid and cut into slices and serve.