Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Caramel Pear Upside Down Cake


Again, I got a whole bunch of pears from Costco, and they started to brown really quickly. Next time if I have to buy pears, I will not buy from there. 

I was in a dilemma as to how to finish them off. I didn’t want to make pear crisp again. I remembered about this pear upside cake that I had bookmarked sometime back. But it was with egg. So I searched for eggless recipe and found this. But this was not exactly a caramel based upside down cake. So I thought I’ll make the caramel part from the first link and make the eggless batter from the second link. 

This batter does not use butter and so is healthy in a way. The cake came out moist and tasty. 



How to make Caramel?


Ingredients

Sugar - 1 cup
Water - 1/4 cup

Method

Put sugar and water in a pot and heat it on medium flame. DO NOT STIR. Stir only initially until all the sugar dissolves. After that, STOP. Stirring can crystallize the sugar. After sometime, the solution starts to change color. Once it starts to change color, it changes rather quickly. So keep an eye. It can burn really quickly. To check the color I take a white bowl/plate and start putting droplets of syrup on it. Once it reaches a deep amber color, it is done. 


After it is done, you should act fast, as it can solidify very quickly.


Saturday, December 15, 2012

Chole


There is really nothing I can write about Chole. It needs no introduction. Everybody makes it. Everybody likes it. 

Initially I used to make it with chole masala, but one of my cousins told me that garam masala works just fine. Since then I’ve been using only garam masala. Actually chole masala gives it some tartness, which I personally don’t like, so I prefer garam maslala.

This is one of my easy-to-make, delicious, can’t-go-wrong, feed-a-crowd type of dish.