Myriad Musings

Mich's low fat carrot cake has been calling to me for days (since the day she posted it to be exact). I finally wound up making it yesterday. In muffin form. Now, the trouble with muffins is, unlike cakes, they look complete when you take them out of their tin. Especially when they come dressed in a paper liner. Lazy bones don't feel the need to exert more effort into making a frosting. So, I left out the frosting, making it even more low fat,and everyone still loved it! Ingredients for the Cake from Delia Smith's website 150 g dark brown soft sugar  (I found the previous cake I made too sweet, so used less than the recommended 175g) 2 large eggs at room temperature  120 ml sunflower oil  200 g wholemeal self-raising flour (I used chapathi flour+ 1 teaspoon baking powder) 1½ level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda  3 rounded teaspoons mixed spice (my hubby and my eldest son hate cinnamon and nutmeg, so I used 2 squares of grated  inji mittai, available ...

It is not just kids who get their heads turned by TV. My hubby recorded and watched half a dozen Seinfeld episodes and then started longing for the zillion cereal boxes he saw stalked on the fridge.  Probably harking back to student days at UT Austin or pre-baby working days in Dallas.  I am on a minimum Carbon Footprint endeavour, I decided to make Granola at home and keep bottles of it stashed away for the pre-breakfast, post-dinner hunger pangs. My younger son insists on a bowl everyday.  Older prefers Chocos which are a rare treat. The recipe is very simple: 1 cup oats, NOT the quick cooking kind 2 cups of Millet/Brown Rice Flakes(Aval)/Maize Flakes or combination 1 cup of popped Amaranth seeds (Optional) 1/2 cup Oat/Wheat Bran or 1/3 popped bengal gram ground to a fine powder 1/4 cup flax seeds ground to a powder 1/3 cup almonds/walnuts/pistachio or combinations 1/3 cup sunflower seeds/ melon seeds/ pumpkin seeds (Optional) 1/2 cup light honey 1/4 cup s...

I always want to make restaurant quality side dishes at home. The catch is I cannot bring myself to use the requisite amount of oil. But after making mediocre okra repeatedly, I decided to just surrender to the fat. I decided to go all out and make a North Indian Style Okra Potato Curry for  mooli parathas.  Aloo is the bacon of India, add it to anything to improve the desirability quotient; Frankly though, Okra is perfect, doesn't need any further gilding. 20 Okras, trimmed, halved and cut into about 2" pieces 4-5 smallish potatoes thinly sliced. 2 medium sized onions chopped 3 green chillies 6 pods garlic 3 tomatoes chopped 1 teaspoon poppy seeds 2 cloves 1 inch piece of cinnamon 1 teaspoon fennel 1 teaspoon cumin 2 teaspoon coriander seeds 3 tablespoons oil divided 1 teaspoon turmeric 1 teaspoon chili powder salt to taste coriander leaves for garnish Heat 1 tbspoon oil, fry the okra and transfer to a plate Add 1 tbspoon oil to the pan and fry the ...

Why do we always make cakes only for celebrations?  They are needed more when you are not exactly in the pink. Gau had his first Tamil finals yesterday.  Pretty bad as expected.  After I got over the irritation of the the brat never hitting his books or practicing his writing, I decided to bake a cake.  Inspired by Mich of Eat a piece of cake , I decided to explore Delia Smith's recipe . She had a lemon poppy seed cake in her website and I had 4 organic lemons waiting to be used for a whole week now.  Match made in heaven but for a minor issue. The cream-of-wheatish (in Appearance) Indian poppy seeds (Gasa-Gasa) look nothing like their American Counterparts which are bluish-black colored spheres.  They taste much better though, I don't know if it is the preparation or the poppy seeds themselves but I will take Gasagase Payasa or Kurma over Poppy seed muffins or sour cream cake.  In this instance, I decided to use the seeds in the batter and leav...

There is a distinct confusion about which keerai is ponnankanni - the fully green one or the red and green one. The blog world leans towards the mild green one while I lean towards the other; it's English name is dwarf copper leaf, need some red in the leaves to warrant such a name right?  Both my images are from Kamala's Corner                                                                        OR    Mufalatti apparently means Badly Made in Italian.  Since this rather rustic dish lacks the elegance of Gnocchi, the quick thinking cook preempts nasty comments by lowering expectations.  Smart!  One ...

I am torn between giving my PhD the single-minded seriousness it deserves and playing a dilettante at anything that catches my fancy - research, cooking, blogging etc... Today the dilettante won.  Not the scholar.  Not that the 2-3 months since my last post were spent immersed in research, just spent thinking about it, procrastinating on what could be done, chasing chimeras for better non-linear stiffness design etc... So today, I thought I should document my experiments in the kitchen at least weekly.  Forcing me to just sit down and write might help me write my papers and thesis. My son is a poor eater, but he gobbles up burgers and sandwiches a lot more willingly than rotis or rice.  With all the talk about gluten (arguably) being bad for your diet, concerns about quality of manufacturing, quality of ingredients, I am loathe to buy bread/bun more than once a week.  My compromise, even for the weekly once purchase, is to buy multigrain breads/buns. ...

I am a engineer. Working on my Phd to boot. Still, I have not posted my last 3 creations to Gayathri's  eggless breaking grou p because I didn't know how to transfer photos from my brand new iPhone to my blog without posting to g+! Sad isn't it? I made this cake with 1 tin of Amul Milkmaid - part of my buy Indian ethos  and I am mad at Nestle for some long forgotten reason (GMO in baby food?) - and just 100 g of butter.  I always taste my batter and tasting eggless batter is totally risk free , I felt the cake was a tad dry so I ground up some coconut and almonds and added it to the batter.  I threw in a handful of chocolate chips for good measure and Voila!  I use besan or ground popped bengal gram in all my baking of late, trying to up the protein factor. And I have started using rectangular trays of late, the height of the final cake may be lower, but so is the individual portion size. 1 Tin Amul Condensed Milk 100 g butter softened 1/2 cup hom...