Myriad Musings

My mil gave me some old fashioned butter - actually churned from non-pasteurised milk.  I promptly made it into a pot of ghee when I got home to Chennai.  DH wanted Gulab Jamun made with this Ghee and I graciously obliged.  The Jamuns were gone in a blink, but I was left with a good litre of cardamom flavoured sugar syrup.  And a smaller quantity of heated ghee.  This was the starting point for this months eggless non-baking challenge suggested by Jayanthi of Sizzling Veggies . I had surrendered my cookie cutters to my son's play dough endeavours.  This would have to be donut holes rather than donuts. I had already made pseudo donuts with the olive oil dough, I wanted to try something totally different for the challenge.  Instead of maida, I decided to go with Urad flour for making the Donut Dough   (say that 10 times, fast! ;)  I was hoping for a Jangiri like feel actually, sadly I fell short.  Next time I will add 1/3 cup sugar to ...

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...

My PhD research, my cooking all seem to follow a similar pattern these days; I read something or come up with a solution for 1 problem then I realise this must be tried in another, existing problem and it would fix it beautifully. I spend hours trying to adapt the new idea or technique to the pre-existing problem and sometimes miss the obvious reasons why the solution was never tried in the first place;  But, I always learn something new in the process, whether it is in research or it is in cooking. I have fallen in love with the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day idea of late, baking breads everyday for the past week. This monday when I went over the generally cracked results of the eggless biscotti baking roundup, I realised I had never thought of making a yeasted version of biscotti.  All I had to do is make it thinner and bake it longer. except. Letting the sponge/yeast develop overnight would develop the gluten to an extent where it would be impossible to have a hard ...

I take part in Cooking Challenges more to feel part of the bigger blogging community than because I actually like the challenge of cooking to a specific theme.  Or within a specific time frame.  In fact, asking me to cook something within a deadline is usually a guaranteed way of stopping me from cooking it.  At least until past the deadline. But this month's eggless baking challenge has me hyper-excited!  Gayathri says Orange Blossom - Pistachio - Apricot biscotti, but I am favouring different flowers, something local: lemon, rose, hibiscus or jasmine even. Unfortunately the lemon tree in my balconey is a baby, not flowering yet. My hibiscus is miserly, giving me one beautiful blossom at a time. My jasmine is hibernating, it feels the reasonably cool weather (31 deg C) is fit for sleeping only. I don't grow roses on principle.  They demand a lot of pampering, I have 2 kids a father and a husband for that already. There are quite a few hibiscus plants i...