I made this ganache for yummy eggless chocolate cake. This is the easiest way to create this sophisticating and professional looking ganache.


Ingredients
2 Cup Semisweet Chocochips
1 Cup Cream
1 Spoon Butter

Method

• In a bowl add in 1 cup semisweet chocochips and butter. Microwave for 1 minute.
• Add in remaining 1 cup chocochips and 1/2 cup cream. Mix well.
• Microwave for another 30 seconds
• Add in remaining 1/2 cup cream and stir till mixed thoroughly and is glossy and shiny.

Notes
Instead of microwaving, one can always use double boiler to melt chocolate and butter but microwave is easiest and clean way to melt chocolate.

I have started liking the taste of cream cheese. I have used it in past with carrot cake and mixed indian spices to create floral taste for the icing. This time I decided to use the chocolate flavour given that i was making Red Velvet Cup Cakes which use the tinge of coco powder for chocolaty taste.


Ingredients
225gm Cream Cheese
225gm White Chocolate
1 Cup Butter
2 Cup Icing Sugar

Method

• In a bowl microwave half of the white chocolate for 1 minute.
• Add in remaining white chocolate and mix well. Microwave for 15 seconds
• Stir the chocolate well till it is smooth and completely melted. Keep aside
• In another bowl beat the cream cheese till soft and smooth.
• Add in the melted chocolate and beat again till smooth
• Add in butter and beat again
• Add in icing sugar and beat till soft, smooth and fluffy

Notes
When adding the chocolate, it should have cooled off, if not wait till it cools down. Don't pour warm chocolate in the cheese.

I made this for taking with us to trip tomorrow for memorial day weekend. Perfect snacks for travel. Its inspired by the short bread Ajoy got from Costco couple of times.


Ingredients
3 Cup Maida
2 Cup Butter
1.25 Cup Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
2 Spoon Vanilla Essence
1/2 Cup Cashews
1/2 Cup Pistachios
1 Cup Semi-sweet Choco Chips
1/4 Cup White Choco Chips
5 Spoon Shortening

Method

• In a bowl cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
• Add in egg yolk and vanilla essence and cream again
• Grind the cashews to fine powder and add it to the above mixture
• Sift in maida and mix together till nice stiff dough is formed.
• Form the lemon sized balls and store them in fridge for around 1 hour
• Preheat oven to 375F/190C
• Chop the pistachios
• Press each dough ball using palms to thick discs. Sprinkle the pistachios on half portion of each cookie disc and press lightly to secure the pistachios in the cookie
• Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and grease it. Transfer the discs on to the baking pan keeping an inch of distance between each of them
• Bake at 375F/190C for 12 minutes
• Let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes.
• In a bowl mix in semi sweet chocochips and 4 spoon of shortening and microwave for 1 minutes stirring once after 30 minutes. Mix till nice glossy.
• Line the baking sheet with fresh parchment paper. Dip each cookie's part which isn't covered by pistachios in the chocolate and set it on parchment paper.
• Mix white choco chips and remaining 1 spoon of shortening for 30 seconds and stir in till smooth and glossy. Fill it in a piping bag and make zig zag lines over the semi sweet chocolate on the cookie. Let the chocolate set for an hour.

Notes
If you dont have microwave you can heat chocolate and shortening in a bowl set over the boiling water. Stir till the mixture is smooth and dont let the chocolate burn. Microwave is really easy method and one doesnt need to worry much except to check it every 30 seconds so I prefer to temper the chocolate in microwave.

Yesterday I was looking for cake recipe so that I can bake a cake to take into my cake decoration class. First I thought I will bake some simple quick cake and get done with it, but as I approached kitchen I couldn't resist but look into my recipe book for some instant reference to cook something different. I liked a peanut butter recipe in there but because I didn't have peanut butter I decided to give it twist and make my own version of cake. It was delicious and even smelling so good that it was huge hit in my decoration class as well.


Ingredients
4 Cup Maida
2.5 Cup Butter
1 Cup Hazelnuts
1 Cup Almonds
1.5 Cup Sugar
3 Eggs
1 Cup Milk
2 Cup Butterscotch Chocochips
2 Spoon Baking Powder

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Grind hazelnuts and almonds to fine powder and keep it aside.
• Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
• Add in hazelnut-almonds powder and whisk again.
• Add in each egg one at a time and beat well after each addition
• Sieve maida and baking powder couple of times. Add salt to taste.
• Add maida-baking powder mixture alternating with milk slowly into the egg-butter-sugar mixture and fold in carefully.
• Microwave chocochips for 1 minutes and stir well to get molten chocolate. Fold it in the batter lightly
• Grease the pan and line it with parchment paper. Grease the paper as well. Pour the batter in the cake till half full.
• Bake the cake in oven on 350F/180C for 40 minutes
• Decorate with icing or serve as it is.

Notes
I used two 8 inch round tins to bake the cake but after baking I thought I should have used one 8 inch and one 6 inch instead to get perfect rise in both the cakes.
I iced one cake with butter icing as part of my cake decorating classes and we ate another cake as it is. Both taste awesome, but I would use dark chocolate or less sugar if I am going to ice the cake next time.
Recently I came to know that preheating oven at least 15 minutes in advance helps to get oven to heat uniformly even hot so I tried this time and results were superb, the cake rose from all sides and there was literally no bump.

One day while watching Foodnetwork channel I saw this recipe and liked it at that very moment, for it is so simple yet so elegant. Dont remember exact measures and all but here is my own version of the same.


Ingredients
350g White chocolate
120g Dark Chocolate
1 Cup Walnuts
1/2 Cup Apricot
1/2 Cup Cranberries

Method

• Heat oven to 350F/180C and bake walnuts in it for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool down.
• In a bowl microwave white chocolate for 1.5 minutes stirring it every 30 sec. It should be smooth soft molten chocolate.
• In another bowl microwave dark chocolate for 1.5 minute stirring it every 30sec.
• Line a plate/tray with parchment paper and pour the white chocolate in the center. Spread it over the plate to get smooth layer
• Pour dark chocolate on four corners and with a fork mix it in with white chocolate creating patterns
• Dice apricots and walnuts, sprinkle them along with cranberries on top of the chocolate.
• Let mixture come down to room temperature and then transfer it to fridge to set it hard.

Notes
The recipe that I had watched only used white chocolate, but I didnt use white chocolate completely as it would make it very sweet. So instead used dark chocolate to balance out the sweetness. Earlier once I had used semi sweet chocochips instead but that too was sweet to my tooth so this time i used dark chocolate. One can use mix of dark and semi sweet chocochips as well.

Its been a while since I learnt about this cake and was so much facinated by the concept.. I also researched that this is the easiest and quickest dessert to make.. The only issue I had was I didnt have Ramekins to bake this in and neither did I have the paper cups to go in cup cake pan. Finally today I made up my mind to buy ramekins and make this. I am glad I did.. Totally worth it..


Ingredients
1 Cup Maida
1.25 Cup Semi Sweet Choco-chips
1 Cup Butter
5 Spoon Coco Powder
3 Eggs
3 Egg Yolks
2 Cup Sugar

Method

• Grease the ramekins liberally and keep aside.
• Preheat oven to 450F/230C
• Microwave butter and chocochips together for one minute.
• Stir well to get nicely blended choco-butter mixture. Keep aside
• Whisk eggs, egg yolks together till blended well within
• Add in sugar and whisk till creamy, fluffy and thick mixture forms.
• Add in the melted chocolate-butter mixture to it and whisk.
• Sieve in maida and coco-powder. Fold lightly till everything accomodates.
• Divide the mixture into 6 ramekins
• Put ramekins in a baking tray and bake in oven at 450F/230C for 13 minutes so that the sides are cooked.
• Immediately after taking out from oven flip the cakes into plate and serve.

Notes
Alternate method is to use the paper cups inside the cup cake pan - little extra in height so that you can pull it out and flip it in the plate.
To flip the cake into the plate put the ramekin on a plate. Flip another plate on top of it. Holding both the plates flip the ramekin into the just placed plate. This helps since ramekins would be really hot when you take out the cakes into the plates.

These days its been raining so much that I had to drive to and from work. Most of the days I end up getting stuck in traffic and by the time I reach home I dont feel like adventuring into anything other than meals.. Yesterday I decided to beat the traffic by leaving early instead and glad it did almost work (got stuck in traffic for just 5 minutes that's an achievement :)). When I reached home I realized that my laptop had succumbed to death just last night and I had to revive it before I can continue my work from home. So while my laptop was getting its life I decided to bake these ones especially with almonds because these days I have become little forgetful. They say almonds help improve memory :D now is the time to see if they can :) Thankfully my laptop has become as good as new and working even better than what it was like when it was new. I give credit to win7 and also to the fact that I kept it light unlike those whole bunch of installs that came from Dell. Now I am looking forward to see if my memory can come back after this almond's dose :) So here I am sharing this extremely simple recipe of these delicious cakes I made.


Ingredients
1 Cup Butter
2 Cup Sugar
4 Cup Maida
2 Cup Choco-chips
3/4 Cup Almonds
1 Cup Milk
4 Spoon Brown Sugar
2 Spoon Vanilla Essence
1 Spoon Baking Soda
1/2 Spoon Baking Powder
2 Eggs
Salt to taste

Method

• In a bowl beat sugar and butter till its fluffy.
• Add in eggs and beat again.
• Add in vanilla essence, milk and beat till creamy, fluffy mixture is formed.
• Add in maida, baking soda, baking powder and salt to taste and mix in with light hands till everything is nicely accommodated in the egg-butter-sugar mixture.
• Add in 1.5 cups of choco-chips and mix lightly. Keep aside
• Chop almonds to coarse pieces and mix them with brown sugar and remaining 1/2 cup choco-chips. Keep aside
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
• Grease muffin pans and fill them in with the batter to 2/3rd level each.
• Sprinkle the almond-chocochip-sugar mixture on all these muffins equally.
• Bake the muffins at 350F/180C for 25 minutes.

Notes
I used raw almonds and sprinkled them on top instead of mixing it in the batter. The almonds were roasted amazingly while the cake baked.
I also mixed in brown sugar and chocochips with the almonds because I thought it would give nice sweetness to the cake while taking a bite. And guess what it really worked :)

Just few weeks back I had got lots of choco-chips and Peacans from the costco. Thinking I could bake some cakes, muffins. So today when payesh that I made last week was getting over, I thought it would be nice to make these brownies for dessert hoping they would last for week.. But frankly, they have turned out so well, I wonder if they are going to last even till monday :) We already have had 2 pieces each :)


Ingredients
80g Dark Chocolate bar
1.5 Cup semi sweet choco-chips
3 Cup Powdered Sugar
1.5 Cup Maida
1 Cup Butter
1 Cup Dates
1 Cup Peacans
3 Eggs
1 Spoon Vanilla Essence
Salt to taste

Method

• In a glass bowl, add dark chocolate, 1/2 cup semi sweet choco-chips and butter and microwave for 1 minute. Stir well.
• Microwave for 30 more seconds and stir well. Keep aside.
• Sieve maida couple of times and set aside.
• Preheat oven to 375F/190C
• In a big bowl add eggs, powdered sugar, vanilla essence. Beat for 5 minutes.
• Add in above made chocolate paste, maida and salt to taste. Mix lightly, just enough to make it consistent paste.
• Add in remaining 1 cup of chocochips, dates and peacans chopped. Again mix it lightly.
• Grease a pan and pour in batter into it. Bake the brownies at 375F/190C for 35 minutes.
• Serve with ice-cream, topped with chocolate sauce and some nuts chopped finely.

Notes
I normally microwave chocolate to melt it - works wonders :D, but if you don't have microwave, you can boil water in a pan and keep a bigger bowl on top of it with chocolate and melt it over low heat. Be careful not to over heat the chocolate or it would spoil the taste and feel of the chocolate.

I had been making pan cakes for quite some time. One of the easiest and tasty breakfast. I had made it with cranberries, mangoes, blue berries earlier. Today I didn't have any of the fruits that would go in it. So I decided to make it with what I had plenty - Dates and Chocochips. The pan cakes came out really nice and we had hearty breakfast on such a lovely bright day.


Ingredients
1/2 Cup Dates
1/4 Cup Choco Chips
1/2 Cup Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup Maida
3/4 Cup Curd
1 Egg
3/4 Spoon Sugar
1/2 Spoon Vanilla Essense
1/4 Spoon Baking Powder
1/4 Spoon Baking Soda
2.5 Spoon Melted Butter
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Deseed the Dates and chop them into small pieces. Keep aside.
• Sieve together wheat flour and maida
• Add Sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda and mix well
• Add egg, curd, melted butter and vanilla essence. Mix well.
• Add 1/2 cup warm water and mix well to flowing consistency.
• Heat a nonstick pan over medium flame.
• Pour the pan cake batter 1/2 cup at a time on the non stick pan and top it with some choco-chips and dates
• Over medium-low heat, cook the pan cakes till golden brown in color and bubbles up the top side. Flip and golden the other side too. Serve with honey and or maple syrup

Notes
The batter is so non sticky that I didnt have to grease the pan at all.
Ajoy felt that the sweetness from Dates was little too much, I guess using Dark choco chips might be good idea to balance the sweetness. I didnt have dark choco chips sot used semi sweet chips.

Well this time around in Cosco I found fresh cranberries and since I love cranberry juice I thought of buying that packet and trying it out.. The first bite of cranberry and I was sure that I cant have it as it is and have to make something out of it. And then after searching for lot many recipes, none were appealing enough to try out. That is when I decided to try my own one from the few ones I read.


Ingredients
2 Cup Maida
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Cranberries
1 Cup Choco Chips
1 Cup Mixed Nuts
1 Cup Grapes
1/2 Cup Melted Butter
1.5 Spoon Baking Powder
1/2 Spoon Baking Soda
1 Egg
4 Spoon Chocolate Sauce
Salt to taste

Method

• Chop the mixed nuts, cranberries and mix them with choco chips and keep aside.
• Sift through Maida, Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Salt couple of times.
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Grease the loaf pan/any other baking pan with butter
• In a large bowl, take this sift through mixture, add in sugar and mix well
• Add in melted butter and mix with hands to form a crumbly mixture
• Grind grapes in the mixie to get its juice. Add in the mixture in bowl
• Add egg and nuts-berry=chocochip mixture. Mix well.
• Pour the batter in the previously greased pan and bake it in the oven over 350F/180C for 45 minutes.
• Let the cake cool down and then sprinkle the chocolate sauce over its top and serve.

Notes
Dont worry if the batter isn't of flowing consistency, its normal. The batter in this case is more of a moist thick mixture.
I already had the mixed nuts bottle at home so I used that one, but you can combine any kind of nuts like cashews, almonds, walnuts, peanuts.

I was always fascinated by chocolate icings these bakers have. I always fancied to become as good with it as they are.. And my impression about this was its some art. But actually if you have little patience and know a knack it can be very easy too :) and that's what I found out when I tried this cake. Check this out.

PS: Now I had written this in January when I baked this for my mom but due to busy schedule with moving etc I just couldn't post it. So here it comes.. More on their way :)


Ingredients
7 Spoon Butter
1 Cup Castor Sugar
3 Eggs
Salt to taste
1/2 Cup Maida
300g Chocolate
8 Spoon Coco Powder

Method

• Boil water in a small pot and keep a glass bowl over it. Add 100g of chocolate and melt it completely. Add 4 Spoon coco powder and keep aside
• In another bowl mix 6 spoon butter and 1/2 cup of castor sugar till its fluffy
• Add the melted chocolate and beat.
• Separate the egg whites and egg yolks
• Add egg yolks one at a time into the choco-butter mixture and beat well.
• Sieve Maida and keep aside
• Beat the egg whites with salt to taste separately till it is stiff
• In earlier choco mixture add a spoonful for egg white and spoonful of maida, fold in well. Repeat till all maida and egg whites are accommodated in the choco mixture.
• Preheat oven at 180C/350F
• Grease the cake tin and pour the above mixture into it
• Bake the cake at 180C/350F for 45 min
• Keep aside for cooling overnight
• Next day, Heat water in a pot and keep a glass bowl over it. Melt remaining butter and chocolate together in it and keep aside.
• In a pan, add remaining sugar and 1/2 cup of water and bring it to boil.
• Bring the heat to lowest possible and mix in the chocolate-butter mixture as well as remaining coco powder and cook.
• Take out a drop of mixture and test if it thickens after cooling. If so icing is ready
• Pour the chocolate icing in the center of the cake and spread it across the cake to cover it fully.
• Decorate with white butter icing and choco chips/flakes

Notes
Yes you read it right this doesn't need baking soda or powder :)
I had my mom by my side when I tried this so with her patience and suggestions I needed 4 spoon of coca for 200gm chocolate so I guess that should help but if you still seem to run into issues like the mixture isn't thickening then add some more coca or if it thickens too fast and is too hard add little more warm water. The mixture after cooling should be of icing consistency and should not flow or thicken more than that.

Ajoy has got muffin tray this time from US and so I was in search of nice muffin recipe. I had peanut butter at home which I had kept it for some experiment. I thought lets try this out on muffin. So instead of using normal butter I used peanut butter and got nice peanut flavoured muffins with choco chips :)


Ingredients
1 Cup Peanut Butter
1 Cup Choco-chips
2 Cup Maida
1 Spoon Vanilla
1.5 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1.5 Spoon Baking Powder
1/2 Spoon Eating Soda
1/2 Cup Milk

Method

• Mix peanut butter, eggs, suagar and vanilla in a bowl
• Sieve Maida, baking powder, eating soda together around 3-4 times
• Add maida and milk slowly to the butter-egg mixture with constant stirring
• Stir in the Choco Chips
• Preheat oven at 200C
• Grease the muffin tray and add the muffin mixture to it to full the cups 2/3rd.
• Bake at 200C in oven for 15 minutes

Notes
Here I donot get the choco chips and hence I buy cadboury dairy milk and cut it into medium sized pieces.
Also I thought that if I would have used the half and half of butter and peanut butter the peanutty flavour would have been milder. So I am going to try that out next time. Will post update after the trial

Earlier when I had tried preparing cookies it had turned out great but then instead of 10 small cookies it turned out into 1 large pizza size cookie. So today when I got it right, I am posting it here.


Ingredients
1 cup Butter
3/4 cup Sugar
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg
2.5 Cup Maida
3/4 spoon Baking Powder
1/4 Spoon Salt
200gm Cadboury

Method

• Mix butter, sugar, brown sugar and egg well
• Sieve Maida, Baking powder and salt couple of times to get uniformly mixed flour
• Add this flour couple of spoons at a time in the butter-egg mixture to form stiff batter
• Chop the cadboury into small pieces and mix it in the batter
• Preheat oven to 250C.
• Grease the tawa with butter and put the round shaped cookies from the batter onto it. Spread them around 2 inches apart
• Bake for 10 minutes at 250C
• Let the cookies cool down and then store in air tight container

Notes
The cookies spread little while baking so maintaining 2 inches distance between them is must. Otherwise, they will get mixed into each other.
Brown sugar gives the cookie light brown colour.

Last sunday i desperately wanted to prepare black forest at home. But we didn't have proper glassware for baking cake and i wanted to prepare it in the nice new glassware. So at around 12noon we started with the search for the glassware. It was 10pm when we actually got the stuff after going to every other shop. Weekdays had been little busy so i couldn't try my hands on the cake during week.. So today the first thing i did after the breakfast was preparing the cake.. Now comes the flop part, when i was ready with two cakes, I had put the cream on them and cream was so thin that it just slipped from the cake. So it was ajoy who kept on adding the cream in the dish on the cake and we came up with this delicious cake :)


Ingredients
3/4 cup Maida
2 spoon Coca powder
1 spoon Baking powder
1/4 spoon Eating Soda
1/2 cup + 4 spoon powdered Sugar
1/4 cup Milk
1 spoon butter
2 Eggs
1/4 spoon Vanilla Essence
1/2 cup Fresh Cream
1 medium sized Cadbury bar
1/4 cup tinned cherries
2 spoon cherry syrup
A pinch of Salt

Method

• Sieve maida, coca powder, baking powder eating soda and salt together around 8-10 times to form properly mixed flour
• Heat milk in a pot, when it boils mix butter with it and keep aside
• Prepare the pan for baking the cake by coating it with butter and puting a butter paper on it
• Heat the oven to 200C
• Now separate the egg white and yellows
• Beat the egg white till it thickens
• In a egg yolk, mix 1/2 cup powdered sugar a spoon at a time till sugar is completely mixed with the yolk
• Now mix the maida flour sieved earlier with this, spoon by spoon and then vanilla essence.
• Add egg white and mix well
• Add milk and butter mixture to this and mix well
• Add this mixture to the pan that was earlier prepared for baking
• Bake the cake in microwave + convection mode at 180W and 180C for 15 minutes
• Keep aside for cooling
• Mix the cream and 4 spoon sugar well
• Grate the Cadbury bar and keep aside
• Cut the cake into half
• Spread the syrup on both the halves
• Spread half of the cream, half of cherries and half of grated chocolate on one portion of the cake
• Keep the other portion of the cake on top of it and spread remaining cream, grated chocolate and cherries on top of it
• Cream might flow down into the dish, put it back on the cake till cake is completely sinked in the cream

Notes
I had prepared oval shape cake so the final version looked like sinking boat.
Also While mixing the egg white and milk, mix it slowly and with care.

Two days back when I had brownie in office i deciced that this is the item that i want to try at home.. Then i searched a lot on net for perfect (or so it sounded to me) and then combined all my results and made up mine one.. Here it is..


Ingredients
80 gm Dark Chocolate bar
40 gm Milk Chocolate bar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1.5 cups maida
3 spoon coca powder
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 spoon baking powder
Salt to taste

Method

• Put a pot with little water on heat
• Put another pot in it such that it does not touch the bottom of the pot with water.
• Add butter, dark chocolate bar and half of milk chocolate bar to the pot
• Let the butter and chocolate melt compeltely and then mix them well to form chocolate syrup. Keep aside to cool down a bit
• Beat eggs in a pot and mix the castor sugar in it. Mix well
• Add prepared chocolate syrup to this mixture and again mix well
• Sieve maida, baking powder and coca powder together around 8-10 times to form properly mixed flour
• Add this flour to the mixture prepared earlier spoon by spoon with stirring and mixing it well
• Cut remaining milk chocolate pieces into small pieces and add them to the mixture
• Preheat the oven at 180C
• Grease the baking tray with butter and put a butter paper
• Add the mixture to this baking tray and level out the surface
• Bake for around 30-35 minutes in oven (convection mode) at 180C
• While serving reheat the brownie in microwave and serve with ice-cream and chocolate sauce if you like

Notes
Maida and coca mixing together took longer time.. i had to sieve it 10 times to get the properly mixed flour.
You can add walnut pieces to the same mixture and get walnut brownie