Cottage cheese mango eggless no bake cheese cake

Well the season of mango is back and this is the first recipe I am trying with the king of fruits. It might be difficult to believe but I am not a huge fan of mango and I know if you are you might as well give me 'what's wrong with you' look but nevertheless I do enjoy making different recipes with them while the season is in. So they just started coming to market and I still didn't get the best and sweetest one till now but just couldn't wait any longer to make the mango cheesecake. I was left with only one mango just right for the recipe before anyone could lay their hands  on it. The conventional cheesecake as the name speaks for itself calls for mascarpone or cream cheese but that really puts me off .  So Instead I'm using hung curd and cottage cheese . Make sure its full fat curd and I just let it hang over a cup tied  in a cotton cloth in refrigerator for 4 hours but overnight will just do fine.

Ingredients:

puree from 1 medium size mango

50 grams cottage cheese 

100 grams hung curd

1/2 cup powdered sugar 

1 tablespoon gelatine 

1 tablespoon vanilla extract 

6 marie biscuits 

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 tablespoon water

Recipe:

For crust:

Grind the biscuits to fine powder and add melted butter

Pour a tablespoon of mixture into each of  shot glasses. Press firmly using finger or back of a small spoon. I used the cast steel pestle which I use to crush ginger for tea and it worked best! You can use what you get. Keep them in refrigerator.

I had bought these very attractive looking shot glasses last year online but couldn't find a single occasion to use them no matter how much I wanted too as they were either too small or too deep for most of the things but not this time. Well this could be another ready why I rushed into making this mango cheese cake ! You can use any other small glasses or even a spring foam pan would do but that calls for a little more effort and time. 

Cheesecake:

Blend cottage cheese, 3/4 sugar, curf and vanilla extract in a bowl . Make sure there are no grits or lumps and it's smooth and silky. Heat water and pour gelatin to it. Stir well. Cook 3/4 of mango puree in a bowl over gas and add the gelatin mixture while stirring. Turn off the gas stove. Pour this over curd mixture and blend together.

Pour this in the glasses over the crust till little space is left on top for glaze. Tap lightly on counter to remove any bubbles and spread evenly. Put back into refrigerator. 

For glaze:

Take remaining mango puree, sugar and cook on gas stove till it comes to boil . Keep stirring so it doesn't get burnt. Cook for 5 minutes and remove from stove. Pour over cheesecake in glasses . Make sure you pour the glaze after cheesecake has rested in refrigerator for couple of hpurs otherwise the layering will be disturbed. Let it cool and set overnight before serving.

Zucchini oats brownie

While I have been waiting for avocados for a long time now, I still continue with other recipes.
I have something special with brownies, their dense, rich and dark flavor just lifts my mood, maybe that has to do with a lot of chocolate effect! And what to say about the brownie topped with sizzling hot chocolate sauce and Vanilla scoop. But you can't really have one very often right. Not unless you reduce the guilt a bit and give it a twist without taking away from its texture and taste. I have attempted the healthier version of chocolate brownie earlier too, but as I had some zucchini left over from cake roll done last week, I was still weighing over if to make zucchini bread or cake. But then I just had to make the brownies to get this extra shot of chocolate. Recipe is really quite simple, and only baddie here would be white sugar but I won't mind much as I got away sneaking oats, zucchini and coconut oil into the recipe!

1/2 cup coconut oil

3/4 oats

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3/4 cup white sugar

1/3 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 tablespoon vanilla extract 

1 egg

2 cup shredded zucchini 

Recipe:

Prepare a square baking pan with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 180C .

In a bowl whisk egg, oil and sugar together. Add vanilla extract and zucchini and combine well. In another bowl take oats, baking powder and cocoa powder. Mix all dry ingredients together. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Pour the batter in pan and bake for 40 minutes. 

Let it cool completely before cutting into squares.

Malai kesar kulfi

You don't need to wait for summer to have kulfi. For me this by far is the most delicious frozen dessert and no gourmet ice cream can even come close to it . As summers are at peak and giving one more reason to indulge into the earthy flavor of kesar kulfi I made sure to make a large batch this time hoping it would last over the week to give relief from scorching heat whenever I wish. This is the first time I have used milk powder in the recipe but you may skip it if not available. It gived a slightly better rabro like texture but not a very big difference in taste. I also substituted white sugar with cane sugar , didn't substitute completely as I wasn't too sure how much it will change the taste . But you can use either of it . Using cane sugar did turn the color little dark so it's up to you.

Well there's not much with the recipe and you can't go wrong here. Just keep an eye on milk so it doesn't burn at bottom or boils over the top. I used a heavy base broad kadhai just perfect for the recipe. 

It takes around 1 hour to thicken the milk so start this while you begin cooking in kitchen and do this one in parallel.

Ingredients:

1.5 litres full fat milk

50 grams milk powder 

1 cup cane sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup chopped almonds and pistachios 

Few strands of kesar

Recipe:

Take milk in heavy bottom vessel and let it boil at high flame. Keep churning with a ladle so it doesn't stick to bottom and get burnt. After 20 minutes when it starts thickening and volume is reduced, add sugar , milk powder and kesar. Keep churning and let it cook so volume is further reduced. Now add chopped dry fruits and cook for another 10 minutes. By this time it should have reduced to 1/3 of quantity. Let it cool completely before pouring in kulfi moulds. Freeze for 8 hours and serve chilled!

Wholewheat cheese buns

Well this recipe is actually a trail from my recipe for cinnamon rolls. So I am not sharing ingredients list again , as I did not actually plan to make these and have no measure for ingredients, it just happened to be so that I ended up making them while dough was left from cinnamon rolls recipe and below steps are only the next ones :

Other Ingredients :
1 tablespoon garlic bread seasoning
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 block cheddar cheese block - cut into 4 pieces

Take the dough and add salt , seasoning to it. Make 4 balls of same size and stuff with the piece of cheese block. Make a ball and leave all of them to rise for 20 minutes. Bake in preheated oven at 180 C for 25 minutes. Enjoy warm !

Wholewheat healthy cinnamon rolls

If you were looking for a healthy and hassle free cinnamon rolls recipe you have hit the right spot and if you have never had cinnamon roll ever you can imagine them something like cake but closer to a bread. One thing that makes them stand apart from both is that they smell heavenly with cinnamon and are soft, chewy . I had tried them once earlier almost a year back but back then I was not so confident with breads and used white flour. They turned out fine but was lacking something I couldn't figure out somehow . So now when I thought of trying my hands again I wasn't too sure if it would be a success. But baking is something where you can only get better with time and trials . I have turned so obsessed with wholewheat flour that I skipped processed counterpart completely this time . I also replaced the butter for the dough with coconut oil. You might think why in the world would I use coconut oil for making cinnamon rolls so to kill your curiosity I just bought cold pressed coconut oil for baking last week and this was my chance to give it a try in baking. Another substitute was cane sugar replacing white sugar. So what put me off from trying this second time was the bunch of recipes I found which called for a lot of do's, don'ts and ways to get the rolls in right shape and size. And that was way too expecting to me. So I removed all those complex steps and made the process clean and simple. I am glad I did so as now I can make them more often and not wait for a day when I have a lot of time. Not to forget they are way much healthier than the traditional recipes .

Well there was some dough leftover from getting right size and shape of rolls and as nothing goes wasted in my kitchen I just went ahead and made quick cheese buns from same. I could make 4 small buns and bakes them with rolls for same time, find the recipe here.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoon coconut oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoon cane sugar 

1.5 cups wholewheat flour

1 cup milk
2 tablespoon cinnamon powder

1 tablespoon active dry yeast 

1 tablespoon unsalted butter at room temperature

For the cream cheese icing:
1 table spoon cream cheese(unsalted)
little bit vanilla extract
1 tablespoon icing sugar


Recipe:

Take warm milk in a bowl and add 1 tablespoon brown sugar too it. Sprinkle the yeast on top and leave for 5 minutes to proof. Meanwhile take 1 cup of flour in another bowl, add 2 tablespoon of coconut oil to it. Once yeast is proved, pour it over the flour and mix together, it will be wet and that is fine. Now gradually add the flour to the batter and keep mixing either with a hand blender(kneading blades) or a spatula. Once it starts forming a dough stop adding flour and knead for 5 minutes . Grease a glass bowl with keep the dough in it. Let it rest at a warm place (inside preheated oven - switched off) for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile take unsalted butter,add cane sugar and cinnamon powder to it. You can keep it at same warm place so butter melts by itself.
After 20 minutes it will rise. Transfer the dough to clean work surface and roll it out in a rectangle with around  2 cm thickness. Using a knife cut it into a rectangle. At this point we would not need the remaining dough leftover from cutting the rectangular shape and I used it to make cheese buns, you can find the recipe here . Spread the butter-sugar mixture evenly over the rolled dough and start rolling it width wise from one side. Be careful at this step and try to roll it tightly but not doing too fast. Once it is shaped in a log, pinch and seal and ends lightly . Using a sharp knife cut the equal sized rolls and start placing then on a greased round pan. The size of pan should be big enough to hold all rolls.
Once done again leave it at a warm place to rise for another 20 minutes.
After the rolls have risen preheat oven to 180 C and bake for 20-25 minutes. They will turn little golden brown on top. Let it cool for sometime and prepare the icing mixing the cream cheese, vanilla and sugar. Spread on the roll while serving and enjoy warm.