Vanilla Cupcakes

Dear readers, Here's wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year... May all your wishes for 2013 come true.... And Happy Baking too!!

The urge to have a quick and easy cake made me try this one. I have started baking with eggs only recently and all the earlier ones were mostly eggless. A few eggs had remained from the batch I had bought for another cake or so, and so made these cupcakes using them.

A very simple recipe, from Champa’s blog. I have however not frosted them for obvious reason of not adding in more calories to an already high-calorie diet I have :D They tasted awesome especially warm out of the oven! Couldn’t resist popping a couple of them into my mouth, while photographing them :)

Here’s the recipe…

Vanilla cup cakes

Preparation time: 10 min

Baking time: 20-25 min

Makes - 24 regular sized cupcakes

Adapted from: Champa’s Versatile Kitchen

Ingredients: 
All purpose flour - 3 cups
Baking Soda - 1 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Sugar - 2 cups
Canola Oil - 1 cup
Eggs - 3 large
Buttermilk - 1 1/4 cups
Vanilla - 1 Tbsp

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line muffin cups with cupcake liners.
• In a bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking soda.
• In another bowl, beat oil with sugar. Add eggs one at a time beating till incorporated.
• Now, add flour mixture in thirds followed by buttermilk added in half. That is 1/3rd of flour mixture, 1/2 of buttermilk, 1/3rd of flour mixture, remaining buttermilk followed by remaining 1/3rd of flour mixture.
• Stir in vanilla. There should be no lumps in the batter.
• Divide the batter among 24 cups. Bake for 22 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
• And pop them into your mouth when still warm, to fulfil your sweet-craving :)

Notes:

• Can easily convert this to eggless version by replacing eggs with Yogurt.

This post is for the Bake-A-Thon event by Champa. These are the other co-bloggers baking with me... 
Champa, Srivalli Jetti, Priya Suresh, Veena Krishna Kumar, Preeti Deo and Jayasri.

Svenska Pepper Kakor / Swedish Spice Cookies

The other most common Christmas goodies here are these Pepper Kakor/ Pepper cookies. There are boxes and boxes of these in all the stores and super markets. And the stores are offering samples of these to customers, people are buying them or making them in bulk to eat and distribute among friends and relatives.

These cookies are paper thin, very crisp and almost melt in the mouth once you chew it. With significant flavors of spices like Cinnamon, Pepper, Ginger, Cloves and with tastes of sweetness, salt and heat from the pepper, they are quite interesting. And let me warn you – they fit into the 'can't stop eating, one after the other' category!! I halved the recipe below, and it was quite sufficient for us – half the dough still lies in the freezer, and there are still some more baked cookies left over too – in spite of eating them constantly!! So it makes quite a huge batch.

Svenska Pepper Kakor / Swedish Spice Cookies

Preparation time: ~10 min + ~20 min + resting time

Baking Time: ~10 min

Adapted from: Many sources on the net

Ingredients:

• Sugar – 1 ½ cups
• Shortening - 1 cup
• Egg - 1
• Molasses - 2 Tbsp [I omitted this – see notes]
• Vinegar - 2 Tbsp
• All Purpose Flour - 3 cups
• Baking soda - 2 tsp
• Salt – ½ tsp
• Finely ground Cinnamon - 1 tsp
• Finely ground Cloves - 1 tsp
• Finely ground Ginger - 1 tsp
• Finely ground pepper - 1 tsp [I also used a little chili flakes for extra heat!]
  
  
  
  

Preparation

• Mix sugar, shortening, egg, molasses, and vinegar together well.
• Sift together flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.
• Mix the two together.
• Cover in a cling wrap and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight
• Preheat the oven to 170°C and line two or three large baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Roll out the biscuit dough with a floured rolling pin on a lightly floured surface until it is roughly 2mm thick. [The thinner you roll it, the crisper the biscuits will be – but if the dough gets too thin, the biscuits will be tricky to transfer to a baking sheet – see notes for why mine are shaped so badly]
• Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.
• Allow to cool on a wire rack while you repeat the rolling, cutting and baking until all the dough is used up.
• If you find that the cooled biscuits are still a little soft, you can always pop them back in a 150°C oven to dry out.
• Cool completely and store in airtight containers – they stay fresh for several days – apparently even a couple of months.

Notes:

• This dough freezes well, so you can mix a batch and freeze half for later use.
• Since I didn't have molasses, I just omitted it. I should have substituted honey for it. Since the binding of the dough was thus less, rolling and cutting out shapes was quite difficult for me – as I wanted them real thin like in the stores. It took a lot of juggling to do it, so I simply pinched out marble sized balls of the dough and pressed them flat on the baking tray and with a rolling pin, rolled them thin. That explains the uneven circles!

Lussekatter / Lucia Cats / Sweet Saffron Buns

The whole city is glittering in the Christmas and New year spirit.... with the roads glittering with lights, malls with X-mas tree decorated so well, all the window panes of apartments shining with a star and candles, shops bustling with people... It is such a nice feeling in the cold month of December, that keeps the spirits up when the days are so short and hardly any trace of Sun and cold weather outside.

From the beginning of December the stores are selling a lot of Christmas goodies, most of them traditional, sold and eaten mostly in the month of X-mas. One of them is this Saffron Buns that the Swedes call Lussekatter or Lucia Cats.

These buns are traditionally served in Scandinavia on 13 December, St. Lucia Day. But people also have it on Christmas and also on other days of December.

They contain butter, milk and optionally a small amount of egg, sweet and loaded with a flavor of Saffron. The saffron also gives them a nice golden color. Seeing them all over the stores, I was tempted to make them too! And here they are...

Lussekatter / Lucia Cats / Sweet Saffron Buns

Preparation time: ~20 min + ~10 min + rising time

Baking Time: ~15 min

Adapted from: http://etherwork.net/ejmtph/recipes/luciacats_saffron.html

Ingredients:

• Milk – 1 ¼ Cup
• Butter - ½ c (100 g)
• Instant Yeast - 2½ tsp
• Sugar - ⅓ cup
• Saffron threads - ½ tsp (approx 1g)
• Salt - ½ tsp
• Egg - ½, beaten
• All-Purpose Flour - 3 c (450g)
• Cream or Milk (or the other half egg), for brushing
• Raisins, for decoration
  

Preparation:

• Heat milk till it is warm
• Cut butter into pieces into a mixing bowl large enough for the dough to double.
• Pour the warm milk over the butter and stir to let it melt. Mix in yeast (If using Active dry yeast, allow 5 minutes to froth, if using instant yeast, continue)
• Put saffron and a bit of the sugar into a mortar and use the pestle to grind the saffron finely.
• To the milk mixture, add the rest of the sugar, saffron, ½ an egg. Stir. Then mix in almost all of the flour and salt until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
• Sprinkle a little of the leftover flour onto a board. Turn the dough out onto the board.
• Knead the dough until smooth and shiny (about 10 minutes). Add a little more flour if the dough seems sticky (but try not to add too much - the dough should be soft).
• Put the dough into the bowl; cover and let rise in a warm part of the kitchen to double (approx 40 minutes to an hour).
• After the dough has doubled, scatter a little flour onto the board. Turn the dough out onto the board. Fold it in half, pat it down and fold in half again and pat it down (or knead it a couple of times).
• Divide into 16 equal pieces and form into ropes. Make an S shape with the ends curled inside (Lucia cats).
• Place the shaped buns well apart on parchment covered baking sheet. Decorate each bun with raisins. Cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rise in a warm part of the kitchen to double (20-40 minutes).
• Preheat oven to 180C. Just before putting them in the oven, brush the tops of the shaped buns with cream (or milk or use the other half of the egg).
• Place buns on upper shelf and bake for 10 - 15 minutes til hollow sounding on bottom. Mine were done in about 12 minutes.

Notes:

• Make the cats with a bit longer ropes. Once they rise again, the shapes would be better. Mine looks better before rising, but after rising, they got filled up losing some of the shape. Nevertheless, I hope they do look good! 
  
  
  
  

  This post is for the Bake-A-Thon event by Champa. These are the other co-bloggers baking with me... 

  Champa, Srivalli Jetti, Priya Suresh, Veena Krishna Kumar, Preeti Deo and Jayasri Ravi.

Apple Pie!!!

After I fell in love with the Baked Apple-Cinnamon combination with my Apple Streusel cake, it was time to experiment the ‘King of Apple-recipes’ - the Apple Pie! To be honest, I had not tried an apple pie, being from a South Indian city - Bangalore. Even though we get all sorts of international cuisine in the IT hub Bangalore from a few years now, somehow apple pie had not made to my list. May be I was apprehensive of my taste towards apple-cinnamon in a baked goodie.

After starting to blog, the apple pie featured in many blogs and caught my eye, but never made it to my kitchen for the huge amount of butter that goes in! But now, with a new pie plate and a bag full of farm-fresh apples, I had to make it. And a small get together during the week, was a great excuse to make it - and feel less guilty about the butter - the sin will be shared by many more people, you see!! :)

I have, however, been myself of being stingy with the butter - I did reduce it a bit - but the crust was still flaky and nice, in spite of it.

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Here’s the recipe…

Apple Pie

Preparation time: 40-50 min

Cooking time: 50-55 minutes

Makes: A 9” pie; enough for 8 generous servings

Adapted from: Joy of Baking; making lattice crust from other sources on net

Ingredients:

For the Pie Crust:

All-purpose flour - 2 1/2 cups (350 grams)

Salt - 1 tsp

Granulated white sugar - 2 tablespoon (30 grams)

Unsalted butter - 1 cup (226 grams), chilled, and cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces [i used about 3/4 cup]

Ice water - 1/4 to 1/2 cup (60 - 120 ml)

For apple filling:

Apples  - 1.1 kg (about 6 large or 10 small), peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4 inch thick (about 8 cups (2 l))

Granulated white sugar - 1/4 cup (50 grams)

Light brown sugar - 1/4 cup (55 grams)

Lemon juice - 1 tbsp

Ground cinnamon - 1 tsp

Salt - 1/4 tsp

Unsalted butter - 2 tbsp (28 grams) [I used salted butter and so skipped salt]

Cornstarch (corn flour) - 1 1/2 tbsp (15 grams)

Method:

Making the Pie Crust:

• In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, and sugar. Add chopped, cold butter and mix with a fork till the mixture resembles coarse meal (Or process in a food processor for about 15 seconds).
• Add about 1/4 cup water and continue mixing till the dough just holds together when pinched. If necessary, add more water. Do not over mix.
• Turn the dough onto your work surface and gather into a ball. Divide the dough in half, flattening each half into a disk, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about one hour before using. This will chill the butter and relax the gluten in the flour. 
• After the dough has chilled sufficiently, remove one portion of the dough from the fridge and place it on a lightly floured surface.
• Roll the pastry into a 12 inch (30 cm) circle. (To prevent the pastry from sticking to the counter and to ensure uniform thickness, keep lifting up and turning the pastry a quarter turn as you roll (always roll from the center of the pastry outwards).) 
• Fold the dough in half and gently transfer to a 9 inch (23 cm) pie pan. Brush off any excess flour and trim the edges of the pastry to fit the pie pan. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. 
• Then remove the second round of pastry and roll it into a 12 inch (30 cm) circle. Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator. 

Making the Filling:

•  In a large bowl combine the sliced apples with the sugars, lemon juice, ground cinnamon, and salt. Let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes or up to three hours. 
• Then, place the apples and their juices in a strainer that is placed over a large bowl (to capture the juices). 
• Let the apples drain for about 15-30 minutes or until you have about 1/2 cup (120 ml) of juice.
• Spray a 4 cup (960 ml) heatproof measuring cup with a nonstick vegetable spray, and then pour in the collected juices and the 2 tablespoons (28 grams) of unsalted butter. 
• Place in the microwave and boil the liquid, on high, about 5 to 7 minutes or until the liquid has reduced to about 1/3 cup (80 ml) and is syrupy and lightly caramelized.  (Alternatively, you could place the juices and butter in a small saucepan and boil over medium high heat on the stove.) 
• Transfer the drained apples slices to a large bowl and mix them with the cornstarch (corn flour). Then pour the reduced syrup over the apples and toss to combine.
• Pour the apples and their syrup into the chilled pie crust.

Making the lattice crust for the top:

• Remove the top pastry crust from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes so it has time to soften.
• Moisten the edges of the pie shell with a little water. 
• Using a pizza cutter or a sharp knife, cut the top pastry into long strips of about 3/4 - 1 inch width depending on how thick you want your lattice strips.
• Lift the middle two strips and place it on the pie in the middle, one each horizontally and vertically, forming a plus mark at the middle.
• Start lifting the strips next to the middle ones, one from each side and place them next to the first plus mark you made. While doing so, if placing the horizontal one, lift the already placed vertical one up and insert it below, so that the strips are interwoven.
• Repeat the same, vertically and horizontally making sure you lift up the alternating strips in the opposite orientation, leading to a complete inter-woven crust, till you reach the edges.
• Tuck any excess pastry of each strip under the bottom crust and then crimp the edges using your fingers or a fork.
• Cover the pie with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill the pastry while you preheat the oven.

Baking:

• Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Place the oven rack at the lowest level and place a baking stone or baking sheet on the rack before preheating the oven.
• Place a piece of aluminum foil on the stone (or pan) to catch any apple juices.
• Set the pie on the stone or pan and bake for about 45 to 55 minutes or until the juices start to bubble through the slits and the apples feel tender (not mushy) when a toothpick or sharp knife is inserted through one of the slits.
• Cover the edges of the pie with a foil ring to prevent over browning after about 30 minutes.
• Remove the pie from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for about 3-4 hours before cutting. Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or softly whipped cream.
• Store at room temperature for 2 to 3 days.

Notes:

• Use slightly toasted nuts. To toast walnuts, place them in microwave for a few seconds and crush them into pieces
• Fresh juicy and crisp apples work the best. If sour, it also adds a nice tang to the cake.
• Making the lattice top is quite easy - much easier than it appears to be - takes about 10 minutes, that’s it! So don’t deter from trying it, thinking it is too complex. You’ll be more than satisfied, once you try it :)

This post is for the Bake-A-Thon event by Champa. These are the other co-bloggers baking with me... 
Champa, Srivalli Jetti, Priya Suresh, Veena Krishna Kumar Preeti Deo and Jayasri.

Published - 3rd One!

Here's the third article by me in Vijaya Karnataka 23rd Dec 2012 - Gateau or pastries as we call in Namma Bengaluru :) Thank you again, VK!!

Veggie Calzone

We have started loving Italian and other Continental dishes for dinner. Mostly baked ones, they take time only for the preparation but the cooking does not ones active time as the oven takes care of it! You'll see a few dishes coming up on those lines. 

A calzone, meaning  "stocking" or "trouser" in Italian, is a turnover or folded pizza. It is shaped like a half-moon and made of bread dough. The calzone is folded over and filled with ingredients common to pizza. The typical calzone is stuffed with tomato and mozzarella, and may include other ingredients that are normally associated with pizza toppings. [Wikipedia]

We had had Calzone in Dominos in Bangalore and had liked it. The recipe being very flexible, one can come up with numerous varieties, based on likings of ingredients, spices/herbs, cheese, etc. I used a recipe with Whole wheat flour for the dough and the filling was my my choice of veggies – moslty what I had on hand; so was the cheese. When preparing for it, I felt it was almost like making chapathi + a subzi! The only difference is I had to roll out less than half of them, and instead of cooking them on tava, one by one and then serving hot, alongside the subzi, it was like stuffing the rolled dough and baking them all at once, so that we both could sit down and eat together, when they were still piping hot! Taste wise – well, there is no comparison! They tasted heavenly.

So do try out these to have variety in your dinner menu. All it takes is an hour or so of resting time, as compared to your chapathi-subzi dinner, that's it! And did I tell you they tasted very nice the next day as well – I just had to heat it in the microwave a few seconds to have piping hot, almost fresh Calzone!

Here's I made them...

Veggie Calzone

Preparation time: ~20 min + ~10 min + resting time

Baking Time: ~25 min

Source: Dough from US Masala

Ingredients:

Whole Wheat Flour – 1 ½ Cups

All Purpose Flour – ½ Cup

Lukewarm Milk – ¾ Cup 

Instant yeast - 1 1/4 tsp  

Olive oil – 1 Tbsp

Sugar – ½ tsp

Salt – ¾ tsp

For the filling: 

Chopped Bellpeppers/Capsicums – 2 cups (I used 3 colored, 1 medium each)

Onion – 1, sliced

Garlic – 2-3 pods, minced

Sweet corn kernels – ½ cup

Tomato – 1 small, ripe but firm

Olive oil – 2 Tbsp

Feta cheese – 3 Tbsp, crumbled (Optional – I used it as I had to finish off some) You may use paneer also

Green chilies – 1-2 chopped fine (Only if you want it spicy)

Pepper powder / Red chili powder – ½ tsp

Tomato ketchup / Marinara sauce – 1 Tbsp

Dried Italian herbs – Oregano/Thyme – 1 tsp

Salt to taste

Mozzarella cheese – ¼ cup, grated

Method:

• Dissolve salt, sugar and yeast in milk.
• Add oil and the flours and mix well
• Knead the dough for 4-5 minutes till soft and elastic
• Smear the dough with some oil, cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise till double – for an hr to hr and a half

Filling:

• Heat oil in a thick bottomed pan, add garlic, chilies and onions and saute
• Mix in the other veggies and saute till almost cooked – don't overcook as they will get baked again
• Add salt, sauce and sprinkle with pepper /chili powder, herbs and mix well
• Keep aside to cool slightly.

To make the calzone:

• Divide the doubled dough into 4 portions
• One by one, roll each part into a big circle – bigger and thicker than chapathi
• Spread the filling mixture on one half of the circles, leaving a gap of about an inch on the circumference
• Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the filling
• Fold the empty part over the filling, to form a semi circle and press the edges
• To make sure they are sealed well, using a fork, press all over the circumference of the semi circle
• Transfer them carefully to a large baking tray
• Brush the top with a little milk, if you want a good color
• Make a couple of slits on each of them to allow the steam to escape while baking
• Let them rest for 15 minutes while you preheat the oven at 200 deg C
• Once preheated, bake the prepared calzone for 12-14 minutes, till the top starts slightly browning
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes, as they will be really hot!
• Cut into half and serve with marinara sauce

Notes:

• Experiment with your favourite veggies and cheese combinations. 

This post is for the Bake-A-Thon event by Champa. These are the other co-bloggers baking with me... 
Champa, Srivalli Jetti, Priya Suresh, Veena Krishna Kumar, Preeti Deo and Jayasri.

Apple Cinnamon Buns/Rolls

With the recipe for perfect rolls from Pioneer woman, that I had earlier used for Rosemary rolls, there are an endless options that can be tried out. Since I wanted to use my left over dough that I had frozen, and the apples lying in the fridge, I made these apple- cinnamon rolls. May be walnuts would have added a nice nutty dimension to the rolls – next time!

The pictures are bad as the lighting was very bad – blame it on the lazy lazy Sun, who hardly shows up these days. The rolls tasted very nice, soft and full of flavors. Have started loving apples and cinnamon!

Here's how you make them...

Apple Cinnamon Rolls

Preparation time: ~30 min + ~15 min + resting time

Baking Time: ~25 min

Source: Dough from Pioneer woman

Ingredients:

Milk - 1 cup 

Sugar - 1/4 cup

Olive oil - 1/4 cup

Instant yeast - 1 tsp (or 1 1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast) 

All Purpose Flour - 2 cups plus 1/4 cup – I added a Tbsp more

Baking powder - 1/4 tsp

Baking soda - scant 1/4 tsp

Salt - 3/4 teaspoon

For the filling: 

Butter - 2 Tbsp

Apples – 2 small or 1 big, peeled, chopped

Brown sugar - 2 Tbsp

Cinnamon – ½ tsp

Method:

• Mix milk, sugar and oil in a pan and scald (heat until just before boiling) the mixture.
• Leave to cool for 45mins to an hour. The milk mixture must be lukewarm at the end of this period. In case you leave it for longer, just warm it till its lukewarm.
• When the mixture is lukewarm, add the instant yeast. (if using active dried yeast, leave it for about 5-10 minutes till frothy and then carry on)
• Then add 2 cups of flour to the mixture. Stir with a spatula, the batter will be quite sticky. Cover and let the batter sit for 1 hour or till double.
• After it doubles, mix the 1/4 cup flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this to the flour mixture in the pan.
• Mix till everything comes together. It was still very sticky, so i added a little more flour to make it easy to handle
• I divided the dough into two parts and froze one part for alter use and refrigerated the other in a large bowl/box allowing space for rising, overnight to make the rolls early in the morning.

Filling:

• Mix the ingredients for filling and keep aside till needed – Do this just before the dough is ready for rolling.

To bake the rolls:

• If using frozen dough, transfer them to the refrigerator the previous night.
• On the day of baking, take the dough out of the fridge, let it sit out for a few minutes till it is easy to handle.
• Meanwhile, line your baking tin with parchment and grease the sides. I used a 9'' round tin to make rolls - with half the dough.
• Roll the dough into a big rectangle of about ¼ inch thickness, the longer side horizontal to you
• Brush butter over the rolled dough and spread the apple-brown sugar mixture
• Start rolling the dough into a log, starting from your farthest end, towards you
• Seam the edges tightly
• Now with a sharp knife, cut the log into 1 ½ inch thick pieces
• Carefully transfer the pieces one by one into the prepared pan, spacing them slightly apart
• Cover loosely and let rise for another 45 minutes to an hour.
• Towards the end of the rising period, preheat the oven at 180 deg C or 350 F.
• Bake for 20 -25 minutes until golden brown.
• Brush the rolls with some more melted butter for a softer crust. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then completely on the rack.

Notes:

• Alter the quantities of sugar to suit your taste.

This post is for the Bake-A-Thon event by Champa. These are the other co-bloggers baking with me... 
Champa, Srivalli Jetti, Priya Suresh, Veena Krishna Kumar, Preeti Deo and Jayasri Ravi.