Myriad Musings

It is the 2nd week of April already, the Sun is beating down so hard I fear widespread spontaneous combustion. In May if not right away.  The worst is yet to come. But the one thing that makes this weather acceptable has not deigned to make an appearance yet, at least, not in an acceptable, enjoyable fashion. I am talking about mangoes of course.  I see Senthuram in the market place, occasional bounty of Alphonso more expensive than Gold at the moment and indifferent Banganapalli.  No Malgoa, no Organic varieties, nothing.  Our local mango mandi continues to sell handicrafts pretending it is still March. The Senthuram quality lurches wildly.  The first two were awesome, the third sour, the fourth was spat out my mangophile son. I decided to minimize the risk with the fifth, sixth and seventh. When life throws poor mangoes at you, make mango muffins!  Or if you have run out of cupcake linings and you are too lazy to butter the individual tins, make...

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 ...