Carrot cake

Who can control the temptation of a beautifully coloured moist carrot cake with a tinge of cinnamon, topped with a contrastingly sweet layer of cream cheese? So I wasn’t to be blamed on the day before we left Qatar for good, when nearly half of the carrot cake that our family friend, Zareenammai, had brought for dessert disappeared even before the ladies had finished their dinner.

After coming to India, the taste of that perfect carrot cake still lingered in my mouth. When I could no more control the urge, I emailed Zareenammai for the recipe, and she sent it to me. And when I read it, I was shocked to read that 1 ½ cups of oil in it. It dampened my spirits...but for just a couple of months. After that, I was like, chalo, it is not like I eat it every day. And so I prepared it, and no, I was not disappointed at all. It was simply perfect. Extremely moist, very spicy(I added more cinnamon than what was called for in the recipe) and the cream cheese couldn’t have been better. Mmmm....I don’t need to type any more words!

Carrot cake
Ingredients:
2 cups of flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups oil
3 cups carrot shredded
2 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Combine all the dry ingredients and mix properly with a whisk. Keep aside.
In a blender beat eggs. Add oil and beat again ,then add vanilla and carrot and mix well.
Then slowly fold in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Bake in a preheated oven in 170 degree for around 40 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Topping:

Ingredients:
6 cube or triangle cheese
4 tsp sugar
4 tsp butter
4 tsp milk
2 dream whip sachet
1/2 cup water

Method:
Beat thoroughly the above ingredients and spread it over the cooled cake.
Sprinkle mixed chopped nuts on top.
Let it set for 2 or 3 hrs.

I'd planned to sprinkle the nuts just before serving, but when I returned from college, the cake had already been attacked.

Chocolate pistachio fudge

I love Nigella Lawson's recipes. They can be described in two words: "easy to prepare" and "sinfully delicious". Okay that was more than two words, but well....you got the idea.

This is just the second recipe of her's that I have tried, next to her chocolate mousse, but I'm already crazy about her and have nearly all her recipes bookmarked.

As I've already hinted, this fudge is super-easy. Nada stumbled upon this recipe about half a year back, when she had come down to India for her vacations. She kept asking me to prepare it, and I would always be like "What's the rush? I'll prepare it someday". Then, about two day before her departure, I woke up about half an hur early, tiptoed into the kitchen, put all the ingredients into a saucepan, heated it and then poured it into dispsable container and refrigerated it and went to get ready for college.

When I returned from college, as usual, Nada began to ask me for the fudge and I was like "Go and get it from the fridge". My friend had come home that evening and we finished the fudge then and there.

After a few weeks, after Nada had left, this friend of mine began to ask me for this fudge. The lazy girl that I am, I kept telling her that I'd prepare it later. Then when Nada came down during her christmas vacations, my friend informed Nada of how she used to keep asking me for the fudge but I never prepared it. Immediately, Nada asked me to prepare the fudge for her. Now Nada's wish is my command. So I quickly went into the kitchen and my friend left my home in 15 minutes happily with a box of warm fudge in her hands.

This fudge is perfect for midnight snacking too. Somehow, unlocking the various doors that leads to kitchen and getting the fudge out of the refrigerator at midnight, trying to make as little noise as possible, seems like an adventure. And the pleasure you get when you return to your bedroom with the box in your arms..Lol! I am drooling over the keyboard.

I am sending this as an entry for Delicious Desserts. on What's cooking today!



Ingredients:

• 350g dark chocolate(chopped)
• 1 x 395g condensed milk
• 30g butter
• a pinch of salt
• 75g pistachios

Method

1. Put the chopped chocolate, condensed milk, butter and salt in a heavy-based pan on a low heat, and stir to melt.
2. Put the nuts into a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin, until broken up into both big and little pieces.
3. Add the nuts to the melted chocolate and condensed milk and stir well to mix.
4. Pour and spatch this mixture into a foil tray 23cm square, smoothing the top.
5. Let the fudge cool, and refrigerate until set. You can then cut it into small pieces approx. 3 x 2.25cm. Cutting 8 x 10 lines in the tin to give 64 pieces best achieves this.
6. Once cut, it can be kept in the freezer - no need to thaw just eat straight away.

Serves: Makes 64 pieces of rich fudge

Trip to Sakaleshpur

Wow!! It's been so long since I blogged. I'd really wanted to post on how I spent my christmas holidays, but as soon as the holidays were over, I became busy with never-ending assignments, projects and so on.
Anyway, better late than never. I enjoyed myself these Christmas holidays. Nada came down for a week. Most of my days were spent travelling, cooking, swimming, hanging out with cousins and simply lolling around. After many years, I got a chance to visit our family estate in Sakaleshpur, which is about 4 hours drive from Mangalore, including 1 hour on the Western Ghats. The ghats is a must-have experience. It is a series of sharp curves and turns, and the government makes the ride seem even more like a roller coaster by not repairing the roads.

It was fun on the estate, exploring the area. It was a sunday, so they were no workers around. Dad went on his own excursion, finding out which crop is yielding how much and all those business matters, and I and Umma went walking, looking at the plants, clicking snaps and trying to guess which fruit they yield. It is mainly a coffee and pepper estate, so we got to see a lot of pepper vines(oh, did you know they are actually climbers and not trees?) and coffee plants, both the arabica and robusta variety.

It is easy to differentiate the two. Coffee arabica looks bare with just a few leaves while Coffee robusta looks pretty with a lot of leaves.

Umma told me how she and her sisters used to eat the skin of the ripe seed and throw away the seed when they were small.

The coffee seeds are hand plucked,....

and dried under the sun.....

The husk(dried skin) is then removed,....

and sent to the factory for curing, that is for removing a very thin layer of skin and then roasting and grinding it.

Pepper was also a very interesting plant. First when I saw it I thought they were growing on trees.

But on looking closer, I realized that the pepper vines had actually coiled around the tall trees.

Man, they are really tall...

Dried pepper looks very pretty.

Then there were bananas, though they were still unripe.

Coconut palms...

papayas...

jack fruits...

The pumpkins were still in its flowering stage..

Wanna take a look at the traditional water heaters? Wood is heated under the pot in this pit...

and the upper region of the pot can be seen in the bathroom:

Let the pictures do rest of the talking..

Huh...turned out to be a very tiring day. We brought a couple of pumpkins home. And just in case you are wondering what the last pic is about, it is a butterfly sitting on a dried leaf...well camoflagued..the works of God are always perfect...:)

Jammie Bodgers

Yesterday, as I was struggling to keep my eyes open in the 2 hour math class, it suddenly began to rain. I say suddenly, 'coz it was totally unexpected at this time of the year.The sound of the pouring rain, alongside the lecturer's lecture sounded like  a lullaby to our ears- as a matter of fact, our lecturer mentioned this too. I had read that in India, the first shower always leaves the smell of fresh sweet mud.Well, this was not the first shower, probably it was the last shower of the year, but the smell of mud was overpowering. So much so that, I found myself taking deep breaths, enjoying the smell of mud, pure mud. It was one of the few days, when I was glad to be in India.

Rain has this power to refresh our mind. The water clears our mind and we feel energized.At the same time, it makes us lazy, and I could already see myself enjoying my coffee on my sofa, reading a book and enjoying the sound of the rain. And then I began to wonder, what should I prepare to go with my coffee? First I thought of preparing some tea cake, something spicy and flavourful. But then, that would be too typical. Then I decided to prepare some sizzling brownies(brownie a la mode). I felt that would be the perfect combination for a dark rainy evening(did someone say my mind works in a strange manner?). So the sizzling brownie was settled and I went back to solving my math problems and occasionally glancing at my watch.
When I came home, I realized we didn't have any ice-cream in the freezer and there was no way I could buy one at that time. So the brownie was forgotten and I got myself occupied with some other work. But now when I look back, I think these Jammie Bodgers would have been a lovely treat. I had prepared these about a week back. They are super easy, really quick and taste better than the store brought ones.

Jammie Bodgers
Makes about 15 large cookies
Ingredients:
Refined flour (maida): 2 cups
Frozen butter, chopped: 125 grams(I used refrigerated ones)
Caster sugar: ¼ cup + 1 tablespoon
Egg, lightly beaten: 1
Vanilla essence: 1 teaspoon

Filling:
Strawberry jam: 4-5 tablespoons(I used Kissan mixed fruit jam)
Unsalted butter, softened: 50 grams
Icing sugar: ½ cup

Method :
Sift the flour into a bowl and rub the butter with your fingertips. Add the
sugar, egg and vanilla essence and mix into a soft dough. Knead the dough
gently on a lightly floured surface until smooth.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease two baking trays.
Roll out the dough thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut into rounds with a two-and-a-half inch cutter. Re-roll the trimmings and cut into more rounds. You should get around thirty rounds.
Place fifteen rounds on a baking tray. With a small three-fourth inch heart-shaped cookie cutter cut out the centres of the remaining rounds. Place the cut-out rounds on the second baking tray. Bake in the preheated oven for about twelve minutes or until pale golden. Remove from the oven and transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool completely.
For the filling, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Spread the butter cream evenly on the whole cookies. Spoon a little jam over the butter cream, place the cut-out cookies on top, pressing gently so that the jam fills the heart-shaped space.

Note:
I used a doughnut cutter for fifteen rounds and a cookie cutter of the same diameter for the remaining fifteen rounds. Also, I found it difficult to roll out the whole dough, so I took lemon-sized balls of the dough and rolled them out.Buttercream is used as an adhesive, so don't omit it.