Anniversary cake ( Devils food cake with coffee liqueur flavoured chocolate buttercream ) with few step by step progress and some holiday pictures

It was our anniversary yesterday and this time I decided to surprise S with a anniversary dinner and a cake. Its 8 years now, so we have passed that stage of suprise gifts and  all but once in a while I do like to surprise him and rarely I do get surpise too :) Luckily for us our anniversary falls during may end which is long bank holiday here so last few years we have been going on holidays to celebrate anniversary making use of the long bank holiday ! This time we set off to Lake district which is a beautiful place, a perfect place for a person who enjoys scenery , all the places were beautiful like a painting and we couldn't stop clicking pictures :)

Anyway after getting back I had only one day to plan something for dinner, so I kept it  simple and  only made some ghee rice and chicken curry . Before going to trip I did try my modelling skills with a trial attempt of a  face as I have never done faces before, since it came out o.k, I decided to go ahead and make a personalised cake with me and S on top, sitting on a couch watching TV with remote in his hands, but lil A got so upset when he found out that he was not on cake and started crying , so I had make a small lil boy and find a room for   him on that small couch too. He was not quite happy with the way I mdae him first time as his face was not quite smiley as he wanted so I had to re do his face again.

Here is few step by step clicks of face which i clicked during my trial attempt, I didnt use this face on the cake as it was too big for my cake :)

Make an oval shape with flesh coloured fondant which I made by adding a pinch of red and yellow to white fondant. I added a bit of cmc to make fondant a bot sturdy, the tools in the picture are quite handy, I made pattern on the hair by scoring it with the first tool , the eyes ,eyebrows and moustache is drawn using and edible pen.

Here is how I made the body of the man :)

I made the sofa with a rice krispy treats and spread some buttercream and covered it in red coloured fondant. I made the sofa first and then made the figurines and made them sit on it. I made the other figurines in a similar way.

Before going to the recipe just want to remind you all that there is a Give away going on here. Please do check it out :)

Recipe source - Nigella

Devils food cake

Ingredients 

Maida / All pupose  flour - 225 gm /  roughly 2 cups

Baking powder - 1/2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

Salt - 1/4 tsp

Cocoa powder - 1/2 cup

Boiling water 250 ml

Unsalted butter ( softened )- 125 gm 

Vanilla extract - 2 tsp

Dark muscuvado sugar - 100 gm ( tighly packed 1/2 cup) 

Caster sugar - 150 gm ( 1 1/2 cup )

Eggs - 2 large ( at room temperature )

Method

• Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and keep it aside.
• In a bowl measure cocoa powder, dark brown muscuvado sugar, boiling water and whisk. Keep it aside.
• Cream butter and sugar until soft and creamy.
• Beat one egg at a time and beat well ,add a  tbs of  sifted flour and beat for few seconds, break the second egg  and beat well.
• Add vanilla extract and  beat.
• Add  the rest of the sifted flour and beat.
• Finally add the cocoa mixture and fold in.
• Pour the batter into two 8 inch greased cake tins and bake them in a preheated oven at 180 degree celcius for 30 minutes.

Please find the recipe for coffee liqueur flavoured chocolate  butter cream here.

Notes
The cake has a  dark chocolate flavour and is  not a vert  sweet cake, so it might not a be the kind of of cake if want if you are going to make it without icing but with icing its sweet and perfect and soo soo delcious. If you are not a dark chocolate fan and want to make the cake without icing replace a small amount cocoa powder with plain flour according to your liking and add more sugar if you like. 

Dal Makhani

I hate the fact that I have to scratch my head every single day for coming up with what to cook for dinner. If I ask my other half he never gives an answer really, or maybe I should say I only cook something if I am also upto eating it /cooking it  :) Every single day when I enter the kitchen I declare to my hubby that I hate cooking and washing up and its a fact that  I hate my daily cooking if its usual things, so blogging has kind of helped me to enjoy  cooking and whip up  something interesting / different. 

Back home when we used to live in Pune I never used to have this dilema as the veggies available were endless and there was a fish market nearby so most of the time the question is which fish curry to make rather than which curry to make. But here things have changed, we dont like  fish curry that much, mainly because the english fish doesnt give that authentic  taste when they are curried, so we prefer to fry it so curry options are limited.

 I miss Pune very badly when thinking about all those fishes and fresh vegetables and most of all the eating out. If I ever go back to Pune again first thing I will do is go and eat out in all my favourite restaurants and cook some nice fish curry ! Anyway Dal makhani is something I got introduced from Pune and there was this Punjabi dabba, a kind of take away place and all I had  to do on lazy day is to just pick up the phone and order our favourite tandoori chicken or dal makhani   etc etc..I never cared to make dal makhani back then, who will when you get such great food outside ! I love Dal makhani , I have been trying to  recreate the one which I used to have from the Punjabi dabba in Pune and after few attempts  I am very  happy the way they turned out this time. So this recipe is for my own future use aswell :)

Ingrediets

Sabut Urad / Whole urad / Uzhunnu - 1 cup

Rajma/ Red kidney beans  - 1/4 cup

Onion - 4 ( chopped )

Tomato - 3(chopped )

Ginger - garlic paste - 2 tbs

Coriander powder - 1 tbs

Garam masala - 1 1/2 tsp

Redchillly powder - 1 tbsp

Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp

Ginger (Julienned) - 1 tbs

Fresh cream- few tablespoon

Coriander leaves 

Salt 

Water as required 

Method

• Soak whole urad and rajma overnight or atleast 10-12 hours.
• Pressure cook the dals adding enough water until cooked very well. Mash the dals lightly.
• In a saucepan add oil and add chopped onions and saute until light brown.
• Add ginger garlic paste and fry for 1-2 minutes.
• Add chopped tomatoes, redchilly powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, salt and cook tomatoes until mushy.
• Add cooked and mashed dal and boil for 5- 10 minutes.
• Finally add garam masala, fresh cream  and cook for 1-2 minutes.
• Remove from fire and add finely chopped corainder leaves.
• Meanwhile in small pan add juliened  ginger and fry until brown. Add this to the dal.
• Serve with rice / roti with a dollop of fresh cream on Dal !

Banana bread with fruits and nuts and some hiking pictures

Yesterday morning when we woke up the weather outside looked so gloomy and grey, so with much disappointement  we all slowed down our routine pace and was planning to spend the weekend in a shopping mall which is very unusual for us during this time of the year, but the unpredictable weather took a twist and all of sudden the sun came out. Within minutes we ditched our shopping plans and  decided to explore a hills nearby instead. When we set off the journey least did I know that we were going to have our first hike ! We choose the medium hike covering in 2 hours and oh boy we are glad we did it. The satisfaction of doing something like that is really priceless.

Thats the hill we hiked !

Look who is leading us :)

Waiting for  our turn to cross the river

Coming back to  topic, todays post is a banana bread which I baked few days before and I can  authoritatively say this is one of the best banana bread ever, well this  verdict is not just from  my family but also from my friends who came for a tea to my place and my  blogger friend Manjiri who tasted this insisted that I should post the recipe the same day, I guess that says it all :)

Recipe adapted form here

Ingredients

Plain flour / Maida - 175 gm /1 1/4 cup

Baking powder - 2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

Salt - 1/2 tsp

Unsalted butter - 125 gm ( melted )

Sugar - 150 gm ( 3/4 cup )

Eggs - 2 large

Vanilla extract- 1 tsp

Very ripe bananas - 4 medium (mashed )

Raisins - 100 gm

Walnuts -  60 gm ( chopped )

Rum / Orange juice - 75 ml

Method

• In a saucepan put the rasins and add 75 ml of rum and bring it to boil.Turn off the flame and leave it covered for 1 hour for raisins to absorb the rum.
• Drain and keep aside.
• In a mixing bowl add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Give it a mix with a wooden spoon and combine the ingredients.
• Meanwhile melt butter in microwave or in a saucepan and keep aside.
• In  a mixing bowl add melted butter and sugar and beat until combined.
• Best in one eggs at a time and beat well after each addition.
• Add mashed banana to it and fold in.
• Add chopped walnut, drained raisins, vanilla extract and fold in with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula.
• Add 1/3 rd of the flour mixture to it and fold in add remaining flour in 2 additions and repeat the same.
• Transfer the batter into a greased loaf tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree celcius for 1 hour 10 minute to 1 hour 15 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.
• Cool the cake in wire rack until cool.

Announcing my first Give away

Ever since I completed 5 years of blogging last january, I have been thinking of doing a give away here but for some reason I kept postponing it. So after lots of thinking finally the right  time has come !

Thanks to all my wonderful readers and friends who supported me  through out to reach this milestone. Just to say thank you I have decided to give this Bambo steamer for my first give away.

All you need to do is just help me improve my blog with your valuable  suggestion by answering any of the 3 questions below and you are good to go. Unfortunately this give away is only for readers in U.K and India, but if you can provide an address in U.K or India you can  participate as well . So here are  the 3 questions.

1.Have you got any tips or suggestions to improve my blog, please give your  honest opinion.

2.Have you tried any recipe from my blog and how did you find it  ?

3.What kind of recipes would you like to see more on my blog ?

So thats it, please answer any of the questions or if you have time you can answer all of it :) And the optional thing is if you really like my blog and would like to see more updates ( no pressure ) you can join my FB page here.

How to enter

Please comment below this post with 

• Your name
• Your mail id
• Answer of the question with the question number.

The give away is open till July 9 th and winner will be picked based on a lucky draw. If the winner doesnt respond within 1 week another winner will be picked.

Achari Gobi / Cauliflower in pickling masala

When it comes to veggies cauliflower is something I like to experiment a lot with. I m surprised by the way my eating habits have changed as I used to hate it before and the only cauliflower thing I used to like  was gobi manjurian. But now every week when I go for grocery shopping I pick cauliflower and think of every new way to prepare it. So when I came across this Achari gobi recipe in Playful cooking I  knew what I was going to do with cauliflower next time. And I did make it, not  just once but twice already. The first time when I made it, it was dark so we straight way digged in but second time I planned it ahead and made this a bit early before getting dark.

These days taking food pictures is not that easy especially when  my lil one is a tad bit hungry he gets frustrated and keep on nagging so I  pack my photo session right away, and when is not hungry he wants to help me  in taking pictures, so either way its not easy !!

Recipe source - Playful cooking

Ingredients

Cauliflower - 1 small

For roasting 

Whole redchilly / vattal mulaku - 2 

Fenugreek / Uluva - 1/2 tsp

Nigella / kalonji - 1/2 tsp

Cumin seeds / jeerakam / jeera  - 1 tsp

Mustard seeds / kaduku  - 1/2 tsp

Lime juice - 2 tbs

For sauce

Cinnamon stick/ Patta  - 1 inch stick 

Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp

Nigella seeds - 1/2 tsp 

Onion   - 1 medium(chopped )

Tomato -2 ( blanched and pureed )

Ginger garlic paste ( inji - veluthulli paste ) - 1 tbs

Kashmiri chilly powder( piriyan mulaku podi )- 1 tbsp

Yogurt / curd/ thayyir  - 2 tbs

Sugar - 1 tsp

Oil 

Salt 

Coriander leaves/ malli ila 

Method

•  In a pan dry roast( without oil ) the ingredients mentioned under roasting to a fine powder.
• Transfer the pickling powder into a bowl and add lime juice to it give it a mix and keep it aside.
• In a wok or a pan add some oil and add cauliflower florets and saute it for 10 minutes on a medium flame adding a pinch of salt until they turn light brown in colour.Transfer into a paper towel and keep it aside.
• In the same pan add some more oil and sputter mustard seeds, thrown in cumin, nigella and fry for a minute or so until  they  leave aroma .
• Add chopped onions and saute until soft and light brown in colour.
• Add ginger garlic paste and fry till raw smell goes off.
• Add tomato puree, roasted pickling  powder, chilly powder, salt, sugar and cook for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the cauliflower florets kept aside to the sauce and cook for another 5 minutes.
• Finally add beaten yogurt and cook on a low flame stirring continously for 2-3 minutes.Check the salt and turn off the flame.
• Garnish with some finely chopped coriander leaves.

Serve hot with rice/ roti/chapathi !

New york style Pizza

I have been making pizza  on and off since a long time and they tasted great all the time but look wise I was always disappointed. I wanted a pizza that looked like dominos pizza or pizza hut's pizza, but  they always come out of the oven as a bummer but that doesnt mean that it didn't taste good.We always enjoy homemade ones to the core  but  the picture wont be good enough to post.

It has been a while since I made  pizza at home, so this time when the Baking partners choose pizza I was  very much looking forward to take picture and post it. Unlike the usual pizza dough which I have tried before, this one wanted the dough to rise for 24 hours so I kept postponing making this till last minute. I did follow the recipe to the dot and the pizza tasted really yummy but still  look wise I was not happy this time too. I think now after making several pizza's  I have come to the conclusion that I should make my pizza bigger which might give a better look than making two smaller ones.

Recipe source - Serious eats

Recipe suggested by - Archana of Tangy minds

Ingredients (serves 3 )

For pizza dough ( for  1 very large pizza or 2 small ones )

Bread flour - 2 1/4 cup

Sugar - 3/4 tsp

Salt - 1 1/ 2 tsp

Instant yeast - 1 tsp

Olive oil - 2 tbs

Lukewarm water - 1 cup

For new york style pizza sauce

Peeled plum tomatoes - 1 can

Extra virgin olive oil - 1 tbs

Unsalted butter - 1 tbs

Garlic cloves - 2 medium (grated )

Dried oregano - 1tsp

Red pepper flakes - pinch 

Salt

Basil leaves - 2 sprigs

Onion - 1  medium (chopped )

Sugar - 1 tsp

salt - as required 

Ingredients for topping

Mozzarella cheese - 150 gm ( kept in freezer for 15 mins)

Parmesan cheese -50 gm ( kept in freezer for 15 mins)

Vegetables or meat of your choice( I used pepperoni )

Method

Making the Dough

• In a bowl combine bread flour, salt, olive oil, sugar and yeast and add lukewarm water to it and knead well for about 10 -15 minutes until smooth . At this point  the dough should strech very thinly and ideally it should  pass the window pane test. You can read more about window pane test here.
• Place the dough in the fridge and allow it to rise for minimum 24 hours or upto 5 days and remember to take it out of the fridge atleast 2 hours before baking to  bring the dough to room temperature.

Making of Sauce

• Puree the canned tomatoes in a blender ( not a  completely smooth kind of puree ) and keep it aside.
• In a pan add butter and olive oil and when butter melts add grated garlic, oregano, pepper flakes , pinch of salt and cook for about 3 minutes.
• Add tomato puree, basil sprigs, chopped onions and sugar and bring it to simmer and cook for about 1 hour stirring in between until the sauce thickens a bit and has reduced to half. Add salt.

Assembling

• Take the dough and press it into a roughly 8 inch circle leaving outer edge a little higher than the rest.
• Strech the circle with knuckle until you get a 14-15 inch circle.
• Transfer the pizza into a baking pan /baking tray.
• Spread the  pizza sauce evenly on the pizza leaving the outer edge.
• Take the cheese out of the freezer and spread the cheese on top of the sauce.
• Place the toppings of your choice on top.
• Bake the pizza in a preheated oven at 260 or full blast for 10-15 minutes until cheese has melted and is bubbly and the crust has browned and puffed.

Parippu Vada /Chana dal fritters

Back home Parippu vada is a very popular tea time snack and people who love it go crazy for it, but I was never a parippu vada fan but once in while I too enjoy this with a cup of tea.

When I got hold of some banana leafs recently  I went crazy making use of it, I made  ela ada first, then I made fish pollichathu as well and still there was one more left and since it was stored in fridge it was going a bit yellow after few days, so just before chucking it into the bin I wanted to use it one more last time thats how I decided to make something and shoot it in banana leaf .Yes you read it right, I made this parippu vada just to take picture in banan leaf ! S who goes crazy for parippu thought that I made this especially for him without knowing my intention, anyway he was one happy boy that day and ate almost 3/4 th of the parippu vada :)

Ingredients (makes about 10 parippu vada )

Chana dal / Kadala parippu  - 1 cup

Onion - small ( finely chopped )

Green chillies/  -1 -2 (I didnt use it )

Curry leaves/ kariveppila( torn into pieces )  - few

Fennel / Perum jeerakam - 1/2 tsp

Ginger - 1 tbs (finely chopped )

Asafoetida - pinch

salt

Oil for deep frying

Method

• Soak Chana dal in hot water for 3 hours.
• Drain the chana dal and make a coarse paste of it in a food processor or mixie.
• Transfer it into a bowl and add finely chopped onion, green chillies, curry leaves , fennel and asafoetida, salt and mix well.
• Make equal sized ball out of it and flaten the balls a little bit by pressing them in between the palms.
• Heat oil in a pan on a medium flame and deep fry the parippu vada until golden brown.