Wholewheat jaggery teddy biscuits

I have used many white sugar substitutes in baking like dates, date syrup, brown sugar, banana but never really tries using jaggery. But I use jaggery all the time in my kheer, halwa and even tea. We do not take sugar in our tea at all! It adds this very rustic and earthly flavor to food and goes so well with ghee. So I though why not try a cookie with jaggery and ghee. So here is  one for the rich and aromatic pleasant flavor of ghee together with jaggery. And not to mention the pleasant aroma you can enjoy while it bakes. I had the teddy bear cookie cutter so I just used that for shaping the cookie but that's absolutely optional and you can cut in any shape and size but just make sure they are of same thickness so they cook evenly. Also skip flaxseeds  if you do not have them handy. I have started added them in small amounts to lot of foods just to add the omega 3 fatty acids as it is little difficult to eat them otherwise. So make these for your little ones but I am sure you would love them too!

Ingredients:
1 cup wholewheat flour
1/2 cup jaggery powder
4 crushed cardamoms
4 tablespoon ghee
4 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoon almonds (halved)
1 tablespoons ground flaxseeds

Recipe:

Mix the flour. jaggery, cardamom powder, flaxseeds in a bowl, add ghee and rub together hands till it resembles breadcrumbs. Add milk gradually and knead dough. Keep aside for 10 minutes, covered with towel.
Meanwhile slice almonds into halves and prepare a baking tray with parchment paper.
Roll out the dough and using cookie cutter could and cut the teddy shapes. Remove excess dough and continue the process till all cookies are done. Place all cookies on tray. Put the sliced almond on top and press lightly.
Bake in preheated oven on 180C for 12 minutes. Keep an eye so they do not turn brown.

Baked Methi oats mathri

Well if you are a tea lover like me if you would know we need something to snack on with steaming hot cup of tea. But what to munch on with all these ready to eat snacks loaded with calories and what not. Not to mention high price they fetch for being tagged as healthy and baked ones.
As a kid I always relished the homemade mathri (fritters) my mom used to make.  I could smell them frying right from my room. They were all time snack for us. But as I am not a great fan of white flour and fried foods, I make the baked version of same using wholewheat flour, I also added methi leaves 

and flax seeds powder. I have made these a couple of times but only sharing the recipe now, they are very much similar to multigrain lavash, for which you can get the recipe here.
I like them so much that I almost make them every fortnight so go ahead and try these to enjoy with your cuppa guilt free.

Ingredients:

1 cup ground oats

1 cup wholewheat flour

1/2 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoon dried methi leaves- kasoori methi

2 tablespoon ground flaxseed 

2 tablespoon oil

Water

Recipe:

Take the flours in a bowl. Add salt, kasoori methi, flaxseed powder , oil and mix together. Gradually add water to knead a firm dough. Cover and keep aside for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 200C . Roll the dough and cut into thin strips. Spread on greased baking tray and lighty brush with oil. Bake for 15 minutes and turn over to bake for another 15 minutes till they become crisp. Keep an eye so they don't over bake and turn brown . Thickness of strips  will decide the time. 

French Macaron shells

Well let me confess two things before we even get into the recipe. I have never tasted french macrons and with my first attempt I failed at getting my egg whites whipped , nevertheless  ending up making cupcake for which you can find the recipe here. There can not be a complete failure with any recipe if you backout at the correct step and take another route to make something else .

Well though I have never tasted any macrons I am always intrigued by them every time I see them over a counter in a bakery shop. They look too pretty and colorful to me to be eaten-up! Well why would you take a bite into those pretty looking delicacies when the look at them can take you to the world of fantasy.  Anyways, coming the second confession, I have never had any chance of whipping an egg earlier and when I started for making the meringue little did I know there is so much of science involved in getting that perfect glossy whipped eggs. There not complicated though to get if you can take care of a few things like do not let even a strand of egg yolks left in egg whites, they will not like it and just refuse to whip . And make sure your glass bowl and whipping blades are super clean without a trace of oil and grease. I did not follow these two basics and failed at my first attempt, but second time it came out so easy that in 5 minutes I got the best meringue .

Now this is first time I tried these little wonderful cookies and though they might not be perfect ones but I fell proud that I could get them close enough and this has boosted my confidence to try them again sooner with all lessons learnt.

Coming the list of ingredients, it is a handful of simple ingredients but its more of the technique which make the entire process a little time consuming. while most of the recipes call for almond meal
which is hard to get in India and even if you get one its priced at 1400 bucks for 500 grams, I chose to ground my almonds fine. I strained them with a sieve to get rid of all granules left .

Ingredients:

2 egg whites
3/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoons vanilla essence
2 tablespoon sugar

Recipe:

Egg whites should be at room temperature so make sure you take eggs out from refrigerator a couple of hours earlier, or just leave them in warm water for 10 minutes. Grind 3/4 cup almonds in a food processor to fine powder. Add the powdered sugar and strain them using a sieve, take the remaining mixture and grind again, sieve. At last there would be a tablespoon of coarse almond bits left, discard them. Take the egg whites a clean glass bowl. Start whisking at low speed using a hand blender. Once its starts get foamy add 1/2 table spoon of sugar. It will start to get creamy, start some more sugar and whip at a higher speed, at this time it will become light and start forming peaks like whipping cream. Add remaining sugar. Whip it till it make peaks. This would take around 5 minutes. You will know when to stop when it starts getting firms non dropping peaks. At this point add vanilla essence, I do not recommend using essence and prefers pure extract but I had pure vanilla paste which a little grainy and will not blend well here, but try to use pure vanilla extract if you can. At this time the whipped egg would turn glossy and smooth, this is called as Meringue and is the base of macrons.
Gently fold in half of dry ingredient mix into egg white and mix using a spatula without punching the air too much. Add remaining almond flour sugar mixture too and fold in together.
Consistency should be that of molten lava but to too runny.
Take a piping bag or a plastic cover and fill the batter, seal the top and make a small cut at bottom.
I did not have parchment paper but that works best for these cookies as they tend to stick. I used greased aluminium foil. Pour through the icing bag in a shape of coin, try to make all of same size and keep a distance of 1 inch as they expand. After all are done, hold the tray and pat it on counter top so cookies settle down, going a little flat. Leave them to dry up for around 15-20 minutes till they dry up on top and stop sticking.

Preheat oven to 180 C and bake for 150C for 10 minutes. I baked mine at 180 C so they turned a little brown. They will be very fragile when hot so leave them to cool down completely before you try to remove them.

A couple of things learnt from the first attempt are to put the batter a little high as they become too thin after being baked and too bake at lower temperature. I did not make the filling as they were too thin and tasted awesome as it is but next time I would make with filling.

Stay tuned for the recipe.

Banana cup cakes

This is the first time I made cup cakes, I make muffins all the time but have never really put any icing on them. Moreover I do not make muffins very often as I enjoy making bread and cakes more, muffins need some more effort and time. But they look so much appealing than the otherwise boring bread. They are loved by kids and relished by adults. There is just so much you can do with frosting that I would just love to give a unique twist to each one of them, if time permits of course.

This recipe is quite basic one and needs very little time and ingredients . You need not restrict yourself with the icing done here and just go ahead and give wings to your imagination, as you can not go wrong with frosting these. Basic cup cake recipe calls for white flour and butter we can do much better those devils ! So who misses them anyways.

Ingredients:

1 very ripe banana 

1/4 tablespoon baking powder 

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/4 tablespoon vanilla extract 

2 tablespoon canola oil

3/4 cup oats

Icing :
Whipping cream - 2 tablespoon
cocoa powder - 1 table spoon
chocolate sprinkles - 1/2 tablespoon

Recipe :

Blend the wet ingredients - oil, sugar  and banana , stir in oats, baking powder and vanilla extract.
Pour in greased muffin pan/moulds and bake in preheated oven at 180C for 15-20 minutes.

For frosting, whip the cream and add cocoa powder. Set the icing using piping bag over cooled muffins and top with sprinkles.