Category Archives: Desserts

All Posts, Desserts, Easy Recipes

Gluten Free French Apple Cake

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Corner House used to have French Apple Cake with ice cream on its menu, my absolute favourite for years, and bizarrely enough a menu item that absolutely no one else I know has ever heard of or tried. It’s almost as if I access Corner House in some other parallel universe, haha.

Ever since I went gluten free, I miss good cakes. I have a friend that makes me lovely plum cakes and brownies, but you know, CAKES. I miss them, and I missed this one the most. And then I chanced upon Nutty Yogi Baking Flour and decided to make one and voila, it was soooooo good! (PS: I am NOT promoting them or being paid for this, come on, this website is not that popular hahaha).

French Apple Cake

Ingredients:

50gm butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a pinch cardamom pd
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1.5 cups flour whisked with 1 tbsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp baking soda
3 apples, peeled, cored (2 chopped, 1 sliced)
Milk, probably 1/2 cup

Procedure:

  • Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
  • Grease a 8-9 inch pan and layer the sliced apples on the bottom.
  • Mix butter and sugar together until creamy.
  • Add eggs, vanilla essence and beat until fluffy.
    It might seem to curdle, that’s ok, add a spoon of flour in that case and continue whisking.
  • Fold in the flour, mix milk until it is a batter consistency.
  • Toss in the chopped apples, pour into prepared pan.
  • Bake for 40 till an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Serving Suggestion:

I like to serve this hot with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

To make salted caramel sauce, melt 1/4 cup sugar until it starts turning light brown, add 2 tbsp butter, let it melt and combine, Add a heaped tablespoon of (room temperature) heavy cream while continuously stirring and boil for about a minute. Add 1/4 tsp salt and serve.

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Gluten-Free Divine Brownies

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A friend came over and brought a beautiful, ripe banana with him. I was supposed to make a banana-coconut pudding, because that’s his favouite, but not only was this the wrong banana (this one was the big, soft one), it was also perfectly ripe for making a baked banana item. Something like a bread. Or a brownie.

I wracked my brains and googled for the best gluten-free recipes, and finally just combined two recipes to come up with this. As you can see, it didn’t cut evenly – we were too impatient for it to cool down. And the beauty of banana breads/ cakes is that it gets better with time. So 2 days later, it was beyond divine. “Made in Heaven”, he said.. “I’m going to call them Divine Brownies. I could eat this all three times everyday for the rest of my life!”

I hope you love this one just as much as we did.
Skip the banana if you don’t have one, add 2 tbsp butter extra instead.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
¼ cup + 2 tsp cocoa powder
1 egg
¼ cup flax seed powder
1/3 cup buckwheat flour
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp nutmeg powder
¼ cup chocolate chips
¼ cup walnuts

Method:

  • Preheat oven to 180 C and grease an 8 inch square baking pan.
  • Mix buckwheat flour, flax seed powder, baking soda and nutmeg powder, and whisk together.
  • Mix butter, sugar and cocoa powder and warm over bain marie until melted and mixed.
  • Let cool and add egg and whip.
  • Mix in mashed banana
  • Stir in  flour
  • Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.
  • Bake for 30 min until the toothpick comes out almost clean. Cool and cut into squares.
All Posts, Desserts, Easy Recipes

Banana Bread

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Anyone who’s eaten banana breads knows how addictive these are. And as if they aren’t good enough already, try making a French toast out of them! This recipe is as easy as it gets, all you need to do is throw the ingredients together, mix and bake it. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

¾ cup jaggery  (or 2/3 cup brown sugar)
¼ cup refined oil (optional: makes the cake more moist)
1 egg
2 mashed bananas
2 tbsp milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup raisins, chopped walnuts or chocolate chips (optional)
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
A pinch of nutmeg powder
A pinch of salt

Method:
  • Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a 7’x3′ loaf tin with butter.
  • Whisk all ingredients together until smooth
  • Bake for 40-60 min until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
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Potato halwa (Aloo ka halwa)

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Once during our visit to my in-laws’ place many years back, my mother-in-law told that she was making potato halwa. I thought she must be joking. Coming from Kerala, I couldn’t imagine one can make halwa with potato. But I was in for a surprise, and with the first morsel I tasted, I was hooked! I fell in love with the mild flavour and the tongue tingling taste. She used water in her recipe, but today when I prepared it, I added a bit of milk just to get the special feeling of a sweet prepared on Holi festival day.

Ingredients

2 cups boiled, peeled, mashed potato
2 tbsps ghee
¾ cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 ½ cup water
½ tsp cardamom powder
1 tbsp broken cahews
1 tbsp raisins
4 badams slivered

Instruction

  • Heat a thick bottomed pan and add the mashed potato and on medium flame, keep stirring.

  • After about ten minutes, add the cashew peices.
  • When the potato becomes brown in color and the ghee starts separating from the sides, add the sugar , after three or four minutes, add the milk and water.

  • Add raisins, cardamom powder, mix well and cover the pan, reduce the flame to low. Open and stir in between.
  • When it becomes halwa consistency, remove from fire.

  • Garnish with badam slivers and serve.
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Carrot Halwa

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During winter time in the North of India, there will be red carrots available in the vegetable market, and in all sweet shops, one will see warm carrot halwa in big flat vessels. We used to enjoy the sweet in Lucknow. The red carrots are available in Belgaum during December/January. They are awesome for making halwa, though it can be prepared with orange colour carrots too. I always follow the typical north Indian recipe, which I learned from my husband’s mamiji three decades back.  Yesterday my husband spotted the red carrots; he promptly brought them home along with mawa (khoya or khawa). And I prepared his favourite dish, which took 50 minutes.

Ingredients:

700gms grated carrot

500 ml milk

250 gms sugar

250 gms grated  mawa

3 tbsps kismis

1 tsp cardamom powder

3 tbsps broken cashews fried in ghee

Method:

  • Put the milk and grated carrot in a thick bottomed pan and keep on medium fire. Keep stirring in between

  • When the milk is almost dried up, add the sugar and kismis. It becomes watery now. Keep stirring till it dries up again.

  • Now add mawa and reduce the flame to low and stir till it is halwa consistency. Add the cardamom powder and mix well. Remove from fire.

  • Add the cashews fried in ghee.
  • Serve hot, and enjoy the delicacy!
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Mung Dal Halwa

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I first ate this at a Marwari wedding, and I was bowled over. A big fan of rich, decadent desserts, I had to eventually learn how to make this as I couldn’t find it anywhere nearby. The traditional recipe involves soaking the dal and then grinding it using minimal water. This is a very painful process and I hesitated everytime. Until I figured a way out. Now, I grind the powder to the desired consistency and then soak it. The advantages are many – the grinding is more uniform, you don’t have to spend an hour removing all the sticky particles from the blender, and most importantly, it cuts down hugely on the soaking time.

If you eat this at a traditional halwai, it will almost be swimming in ghee, so if you’re underweight, you can pretty much use as much as you like. Always, always serve small portions because it is very heavy.

Serves 6-8
Time taken: 1 hour

Ingredients

1 cup mung dal (yellow)
½ cup milk
1 cup sugar
A generous pinch Saffron
1 cup ghee
½ cup dry fruits (cashew nuts, raisins, almonds, pistachio)

Method

  • Grind the mung dal into a coarse powder. Soak it in water and let it sit for about half an hour.
  • Soak saffron in hot milk.
  • Blanch almonds in boiling water for 5 min. Cool, peel and slice them. Set aside.
  • Heat ghee in a thick-bottomed pan and add the dry fruits. Once golden brown, add the mung dal paste.
  • Cook over a low flame with constant stirring, until the dal turns brown.
  • Add sugar and saffron milk
  • Stir well till they are thoroughly incorporated and the halwa is of dropping consistency.
  • Serve hot. For an extra dose of richness, cover the top with a layer of silver foil just before serving.
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Eggless Mango Cake

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This is a slightly textured, crumbly cake, and was suggested by someone on facebook and I found it interesting enough to give it a shot. Goes very well when paired with vanilla custard!

Ingredients

2 cups fine semolina (chiroti rava or sooji)
2 cups mango pulp
½ cup oil
1½ cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cardamom (elaichi)
½ cup chopped nuts for garnish (optional)

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
  • Combine semolina with sugar, cardamom and baking powder.
  • Add oil, mix, and then add mango pulp.
  • Let sit for 20 minutes.
  • Pour into a greased loaf pan and top with nuts.
  • Bake for 30-35 minutes, checking regularly after 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (Can also be microwaved for 10 min)
  • Let cool on a wire rack, slice and serve.
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Jackfruit Payasam / Chakka Pradhaman

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I absolutely love jaggery and coconut milk payasams. There’s something magical about them, and this one is no exception. In fact, the jackfruit only makes it better. And if you have chakka varati sitting in your fridge, this is something you can whip up in about 5 minutes!

Serves 4
Time taken: 5 min

Ingredients

½ cup chakka varati
1½ cups coconut milk (or 1 cup second & ½ cup first milk)
2 tbsp ghee
2 tbsp chopped nuts & raisins

Instructions

  • Heat ghee in a pan and add the chopped nuts.
  • When golden brown, add the chakka varati and coconut milk, mix thoroughly.
  • Simmer for 2-3 min and remove from heat.
  • Serve warm.

Variation

I like the taste of chana dal in the payasam and feel it really adds value. I usually pressure-cook chana dal for 10 min with 2.5 times water and add it along with the chakka varati in the second step of the recipe. The rest of the process remains the same. Cooked sago is another wonderful addition.

All Posts, Desserts, Easy Recipes

Chakka Varattiyathu / Jackfruit Jam

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In Bangalore, one is lucky – one can buy just a few pieces of ripe, juicy jackfruit from roadside fruit-stalls. This is not a luxury people have in many other places, where one has to settle for buying a whole jackfruit usually to the tune of 10-15kg. One ends up with like a 100 or so pods of jackfruit and to the uninitiated, this can seem like a nightmare. It did seem like one to me when due a twist in life I ended up with a 10 kilo jackfruit, and I was feeling fed up even before starting to eat it, just by thinking of all the days I’d have to spend eating jackfruit in various forms.

What saved me was this – also called chakka varati, jackfruit halva, jam or whatever you might want to call it. Such a flexible item, this can be used in a variety of dishes and extends the life of the jackfruit so that you’re not pressured to finish everything up within a couple of days. This is pretty amazing to eat even as it is, even more so when it is freshly cooked.

Ingredients

5 cups ripe jackfruit pods, deseeded
1 cup grated jaggery
4 tbsp ghee

Instructions

  • Grind the jackfruit into a coarse paste.
  • Heat ghee in a pan and when hot, add the ground jackfruit.
  • When the jackfruit is almost cooked, add the jaggery. Traditionally, the jaggery is heated with a tablespoon of water until it melts, and then strained and poured into the paste so that any impurities in the jaggery and filtered out. This can also be done.
  • Cook until a jam-like consistency is reached and it leaves the sides of the pan easily.
  • When refrigerated, It will keep easily for a month.

Note: You might want to vary the quantity of the jaggery depending on the sweetness of the jackfruit.

 

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Banana in Coconut & Rice

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One of my fondest memories in Vietnam is walking down a road, hungry and looking for a restaurant that served decent veg food (I do eat a bit of non veg, but then we entered a restaurant, saw glass cases with snakes, frogs and other creatures and just ran out, traumatized… this on a hungry stomach!) and then finding a cart full of something interesting-looking. We gingerly approached the seller, afraid of what we might suddenly find, only to stare in disbelief – this was vegetarian!

We tried a few things but one of them won our hearts – banana steamed in a coating of rice and coconut, subsequently grilled on charcoal. We were delighted to find that when we ordered it, the seller placed it in a bowl and topped it up with with sago pudding!

It was one of the most divine things we’d tasted, probably enhanced by the fact that we were starving. I still love making this, especially when I have to finish over-ripe bananas.

Time taken: 30 min
Serves 4

Ingredients

4 small bananas (or 2 big ones cut in half)
1 ½ cups cooked rice
½ cup rice flour
½ cup grated coconut
2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp sesame seeds
Banana leaves/ Pandan leaves or Turmeric leaves (optional)
Sesame oil for shallow/ deep frying

For the Sago Pudding:

½ cup sago (tapioca pearls), soaked in water overnight
250 ml coconut milk
⅓ cup sugar (brown or palm sugar can also be used)
a pinch of salt

Instructions

Grind the cooked rice in a bender until it is a bit pasty. You can add a little water if it is too sticky.

Mix in the coconut and enough rice flour to bring it to a consistency of a coarse dough.

Coat each banana with this rice dough, roll in sesame seeds, cover with a leaf if you have any, and place it in a steamer.

After 10 minutes, turn the bananas over and let cook for another 5 minutes or so or until they look done.

They can be served as it, or grilled, or shallow or deep fried in sesame oil before serving.

Sago Pudding

Boil the sago with coconut milk, sugar and salt, stirring continuously for a few minutes and then cooking covered until transparent, about 10 minutes. If you haven’t soaked the sago, it may take 15 min to cook.

To Serve

Slice the banana into 4-5 pieces, pour the sago pudding on top and serve warm

Note: The dish in the top-most picture is a quicker version. It isn’t roasted or fried, and is served with a very quick coconut sauce made by boiling coconut milk with a little sugar and a pinch of salt.