Eggless Granola cookies

Try out these yummy eggless granola cookies – lots of nuts / dry fruits / oats packed into these cookies which almost gives it a taste of granola and hence the name Granola cookies. I stumbled on a recipe for lactation cookies for a friend : https://www.bellybelly.com.au/breastfeeding/lactation-cookies/. But I wanted to make an eggless cookies and I don’t get brewer’s yeast easily here – so I decided to adapt this recipe and pack it more dry fruits to make a granola cookie

Ingredients

• 1 & 1/4 cup self raising flour
  • Note: If you don’t get self raising flour, you can easily make your own – https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/homemade-self-rising-flour-recipe
• 1/2 cup butter (115 g butter – do not measure butter after it has melted )
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal  or powdered flaxseed
• 1/2 cup thick yogurt
• 2-3 tablespoons of water
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional, for flavour)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, for flavour)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 & 3/4 cups oats – organic, steel cut oats are best for you, but rolled oats are fine
  • Note: Steel cut oats should still look like rolled oats – do not use the powdered version of steel cut oats – the cookies will not turn out good. Steel cut oats should look like this
  •  
• 3/4 cup of your favourite mixins ( chocolate chips, finely chopped almonds, cherries)
  • Note: Try to avoid raisins as they might turn very dark when baked

Method:

• Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees Fahrenheit
• Mix 2 tbsp of flaxseed with 3 tbsp water and keep aside for at least 15-20 minutes
• In a large mixing bowl or stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until they are blended really well. You can use a stand mixer at medium speed, a hand blender or a spatula for the same. The end result should be a nice and fluffy mixture of butter and sugar
• Add the curd and vanilla and mix well
• Add the dry ingredients (apart from the oats and your additional ingredients) – self raising flour, cinnamon, salt and mix well
• Stir in the oats and your additional ingredients. At this stage use a folding in movement – i.e. mix well in one direction so that there are no air bubbles formed. Do not beat or stir at this stage. The cookie dough will be a little sticky but you should be able to drop it with a spoon or scoop onto a cookie sheet. If you find the cookie dough to be very sticky that it spreads itself when dropped on the cookie sheet, add an additional tbsp of flour or oats
• Use a dessert spoon or a cookie scoop and drop the cookies on a lined or greased baking tray. Flatten them a little with your fingers or a spatula. Don’t squash them down too much
• Bake one side for around 15-20 minutes at 160 degrees Celsius. If you like crispy cookies, you can turn them over and bake for an additional 5 minutes after one side of the cookie browns. Based on your oven settings, the cookies might get done in 10-12 minutes as well

Enjoy the cookies 🙂

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Eggless Cupcake Pull-apart Cake

My son’s favorite pastime after coming from school is to sit with me and watch food videos by So Yummy and Tasty food group. They have very cool cupcake and cake shaped. One such video that caught his eye was a cupcake cake made using cupcakes. “Mamma, can we make it for my birthday” he asked and that’s when we decided to make the cupcake cake. The cupcake recipe is a very simple one and inspired by Chandri Bhatt’s recipe for eggless orange cake.  This the cupcake video from SoYummy : https://soyummy.co/recipe/6-creative-pull-apart-cake/

Recipe for the orange cupcakes :

Makes: 15 regular sized cupcakes or 24 small sized cupcakes

Note: I used cupcake paper that is sized in between mini and regular – so I got 24 cupcakes in one batch

Ingredients:

• Maida or All purpose Flour – 2 1/2 cup
• Baking powder – 1 1/2 tsp
• Baking soda – 3/4 tsp
• Butter – 1 cup
• Powdered sugar – 1 cup
• Freshly squeezed orange juice – 6 tbsp
• Orange rind from one orange
• 1-2 tbsp sugar to grind with the orange rind
• Milk – 1 cup
• 2 different icing of your choice for the base and the top of the cupcake
• Sprinkles and cherries for decoration

Method:

• Basic Preparation
  • Place the butter outside for 5-10 minutes so that it reaches a room temperature. The butter should not melt, we just want it to reach a room temperature so that it blends well with the batter
  • Line the cup cake tray with greased cup cake moulds
  • Sieve the flour, baking powder and baking soda and keep aside
  • Squeeze juice from the orange and keep aside
  • Peel the orange to get the rind without the white part, grind it with 1-2 tbsp sugar and keep aside
  • To make the batter
    • Cream butter and sugar until frothy
    • Add the milk, orange squash and mix well
    • Mix in spoonfuls of flour. At this stage, use a folding in movement, i.e. mix well in one direction so that there are no air bubbles formed
  • Baking
    • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes
    • Pour the batter into the cup cake moulds. Fill in 2/3 of the cup cake, giving enough room to rise
    • Sprinkle the raisins and nuts on top
    • Bake for about 20-25 minutes until the cup cakes are slightly browned from the top
• Cool the cup cakes on a cooling rack for a sufficient amount of time

Making the pull apart cupcake cake :

• Make 2 batches of icing ready. I used blueberry icing for the base and lemon icing for the top of the cupcake
• Have the decorating gear ready : a spatula to spread the icing
• Make 2 batches of the above cupcake recipe. You will need at least 30 cupcakes to make the cupcake shape
• Line a cookie sheet or a large cake board with parchment paper. Assemble the cupcakes as shown below, stick each cupcake to the sheet or board using some icing. If this step is not followed, the cupcakes will not stay in place ! This is a sample image from SoYummy – the orange cupcakes will be pale yellow in color 
• Using a cookie scoop or ice-cream scoop, scoop out icing on each cupcake and then spread with a spatula. Finish off with sprinkles / cherries
• The final result will look like this

Walnut Cookies

Try out these melt in your mouth walnut cookies ! Made with whole wheat flour and very little maida, these cookies tastes yum and are super easy to make !

Ingredients

• Finely chopped walnuts – 1/2 cup
• Maida – 1/4 cup
• Whole wheat flour – 1 1/2 cup
• Butter – 200 g
• Whole cardamom – 2 to 3
• Salt – 1/4 tsp
• Confectionary sugar – 3/4 cup

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
• Power 1 tsp of sugar with cardamom and keep aside
• Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or using a spatula until it is light and fluffy
• Add the other ingredients – flour, walnuts and salt and mix well until the dough starts to come together
• Wrap the dough in a plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 15-20 minutes
• Roll out into one inch balls and lightly flatten the top of the cookie. Place the balls 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet
• Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes or until browned from both sides

Enjoy 😊

Dry fruit and gondh ladoo

Whenever I visited my North Indian friends’ home I was always fascinated by the gondh ladoo. I wanted to try out gondh ladoo and narrowed down to 2 recipes – NDTV Food : https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/gondh-ka-laddoo-why-indian-mothers-are-served-this-high-calorie-ladoo-post-pregnancy-1731813 and Nisha Madhulika : https://nishamadhulika.com/en/490-gond-ke-laddu-recipe.html

I have tried this recipe two times: once I used a combination of regular jaggery and pana kalkand or palm sugar, the second time – I just used regular jaggery. The first combination gives a more crispy ladoo and the second combination gives a soft ladoo. Both versions taste yummy 🙂

Let’s get to the recipe :

Ingredients :

• Gondh – 100 g
• Almonds – 125 g
• Dates – 200 g
• Poppy seeds – 50 g
• Jaggery powdered – 250 g
• Pana kalkand or palm sugar – 225 g
• Ghee as needed for binding and frying gondh
• Handful of cardamom
• Wheat flour – 100 g

Method :

• Heat 2-3 tbsp of ghee in a pan and fry the gondh in small batches. The gondh will puff up like popcorn. Once it puffs up, check if the puffed gondh breaks easiy. If so it is done. Keep the puffed gondh aside
• Roast the wheat flour, almonds, poppy seeds and cardamom one after the other in a little ghee. Keep aside

• Coarsely powder the gondh and keep aside. Powder the almonds and keep aside. Powder the poppy seeds and keep aside

• Chop the dates into fine pieces or grind it in pulse mode in a mixer

• Powder the cardamom and keep aside

• Melt the jaggery and pana kalkand adding little water as needed. Once the jaggery water is a little thick, add the powdered gondh, almonds, wheat flour, poppy seeds, dates and cardamom and mix well. Add ghee as needed until all the ingredients are blended well

• Take a little amount of the mixture in your hand and roll it into a round ladoo

• Allow the ladoo to cool for 1-2 hours. Store in air right container

Enjoy 🙂

 

 

 

Colorful Parathas

Looking for ideas to pack in veggies in your kids diet – Try this colorful mixed vegetable paratha for your kids lunch box – an easy to make dish which is delicious and nutritious !

Ingredients

• 2 cups wheat flour
• 1/2 cup spinach or methi leaves
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cabbage
• 1 carrot finely chopped
• 1/4 cup mashed green peas
• 1 finely chopped spring onion with greens also chopped
• 1/2 tsp white sesame seeds
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1 tsp sugar
• A handful of coriander leaves finely chopped
• Fresh curd to bind the dough instead of water
• Salt to taste
• 1 tbsp ghee to bind the dough

Method

• Knead all the ingredients together to form a dough
• Roll out the dough into parathas if desired size
• Cook the parathas on both sides on a pan using ghee for greasing the parathas

Serve hot with green chutney or your kid’s favorite tomato ketchup too !

Whole wheat cherry cookies

Here is the recipe for whole wheat cherry cookies. This recipe is inspired by Wegman’s recipe for whole wheat cherry cookies. My version is eggless and uses broken cashew too. Check it out!

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup wheat flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup powdered almonds
• 1/4 cup water
•  1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup powdered flaxseed
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 cup dried cherries
• 1 cup toasted cashew nuts
  Method:
• Mix the almonds with water to make a paste
• Add the butter and sugar to the almond paste and mix well
• Add the yogurt and vanilla essence to the mixture and blend well
• Combine 1 cup flaxseed, flour, baking soda and baking powder and mix well
• Add the dry ingredients – the flaxseed-flour mixture to the almond-butter-sugar-yogurt mixture gradually
• Dry roast the cashew nuts and add them to the dough mixture
• Fold in the dried cherries into the dough mixture
• All the ingredients should be well combined to form a dough that has a pasty consistency
• Drop one tbsp of dough onto un greased baking sheets
• Bake for around 15 minutes until done – the centers will be soft and the edges very light brown

Oatmeal Barley Cookies

Oatmeal and barley turn out to be a surprising delicious combo for these cookies. These cookies are very healthy – no butter in these cookies, and maple syrup is used as the sweetener. Do try out this recipe and let me know your feedback.

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

• To powder finely:
• • 1 cup oatmeal
• To powder coarsely :
• 1 cup almonds
• 3/4 cup barley flour – you can powder whole barley to make this flour
• 1/4 cup wheat flour
• A pinch of cardamom powder
• A pinch of nutmeg powder
• A pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients

• 1/2 cup almond oil or olive oil (I used olive oil in this recipe)
• 1/2 cup maple syrup or dates syrup ( I used maple syrup in this recipe)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence (Note: If you use vanilla extract, then only use a few drops as it is a more concentrated form)

Method

Preparing the cookie plate

• Grease the cookie plate with butter at the bottom and sides. Cut out parchment paper to fit the base of the plate, and grease it after putting it in the tin. Lightly dredge the plate with flour, turning the plate so that a light film of flour coats the entire inside of the plate. Turn the plate upside down, tap gently to remove excess flour.
• Note: If you do not have parchment paper, then you can dust the plate with the flour until a light film of flour coats the inside of the tin
• Greasing and dusting with flour is an important step, as it prevents the cake batter from sticking to the plate

Preparing the batter

• Dry grind almonds to a coarse powder
• Dry grind oats to a fine powder
• Mix all the dry ingredients together and keep aside
• Mix all the wet ingredients together and keep aside
• Mix the wet and dry ingredients together using a food processor or stand mixer. Use fold in movements i.e. mix well in one direction so that there are no air bubbles formed and the wet and dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed. (The batter should be as thick as cake batter)

Baking Instructions

I baked 2-3 batches of cookies and found that they turn out best when baked a low temperature for at least 15-20 minutes

• Preheat the oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes
• Scoop out  the batter on the cookie plate using a cookie scoop or ice cream scoop. Each scoop of batter only needs to be as wide as a coin. The biscuit will spread out well while baking and get the desired shape. Also give sufficient space between each biscuit mould so that they don’t stick to one another
• Bake at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on both sides. Halfway through the process, remember to invert the biscuit so that the other side is also baked well
• Before you attempt to take the biscuits out, give it sufficient cooling time

Enjoy the cookie or biscuit 😀 with some tea 🙂