Easy eggless brownies

Enjoy this Christmas with some homemade eggless brownies…  

I have used flax meal as an egg substitute. Flax meal(ground flax seed) is such a wonderful egg substitute, it has no odd taste, it is good for health, and texture of the brownie comes out soft and fluffy. 

This recipe is extremely easy. Mix everything and bake, as simple as that. Do try! 

Happy holidays!! Merry Christmas!! Happy New Year!!

Easy corn pakodas

Presenting extremely easy to make appetizer - corn pakodas. I got this recipe from a cooking show. It was prepared in under 5 min, or that’s what it was shown as.. It took me close to 15 - 20 minutes.  Fresh corn works best, I used frozen corn. Anyways, I added some mint and cilantro, which was not in the original, and because of that it tasted more like falafel. Perfect appetizer to take for potlucks and parties. Do try!

Masala Bread/ Palya bread

Presenting another appetizer which is easy to make, unbelievably tasty and kid friendly. Palya bread/ masala bread/ bread sandwich are some of the names it goes by in local bakeries in Bangalore. 

I found this recipe looooong time back in one of the first blogs I stumbled upon.. it had very basic and handy ingredients. Over the years I have seen many variations with more ingredients, but I find this recipe simple and good enough. Do try! 

Dates and Nuts Barfi

Recently my friend Veena had made this easy and healthy barfi, which I really liked. There is no added sugar and it is full of flavor. Almost like an energy bar. And so so easy to make. Do try and enjoy your holidays, guilt free!

Happy holidays!!

Happy New Year!!

Mini Apple Pie

Wow! my 100th post!! Never thought I would stay this long. For something that started out as a time pass thing, 100 is a long way to have come. 100 is a small number for 5 years, as compared to other food bloggers who have reached this number in a matter of months. But it’s still super special for me. It’s giving me a strange sense of accomplishment :) 

Thanks everybody for taking the time to read, like and comment your thoughts and suggestions, here and on FB. Thanks for motivating me to keep going.   

And it’s a pleasant surprise that my 100th post coincided with Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! 

I had tried this mini apple pie recipe(posted in ED group on FB), sometime back. I really liked the concept of making mini pies. It is perfect for individual servings, and looks cute. Work wise it is very tedious making each pie separately. Doing 1 whole pie is much more quicker, IMO. So if you are in a time crunch, make just 1 whole pie and later cut into slices. If not, make these mini versions and impress your friends and family this holiday season. 

For the pie dough, I followed Martha Stewarts’s recipe, stuffing is from the blog mentioned below.

Enjoy!

Easy Mango Custard

Aah.. Welcome Spring! Days are longer, weather is warming up, summer is almost right around the corner, mangoes are going to be there.. :) Not that this recipe needs any fresh mangoes, canned mangoes does the job and it is available all year round. But yeah, fresh mango pulp will definitely make a difference.

This is a super easy recipe, which tastes really good. Perfect for dinner parties and potlucks. Make this for your next party and impress your friends and family. Don’t count the calories :)

Do try!

Eggless Blueberry muffin

After success of using flax meal as an egg substitute in Chocolate cake, I’ve been following more of regular baking recipes(with eggs) and replacing eggs with flax meal, instead of searching for eggless version. I’ve grown out of baking powder+baking soda, which most of the eggless versions have as an egg substitute, as it leaves an after taste in your mouth. Flax meal doesn’t do that. 

I had a box of blueberries from Costco, which nobody wanted to eat. Hence I decided to bake this blueberry muffin to use it up. The muffin rose beautifully as seen in the picture. 

The recipe is fairly easy. This also makes a good item for your kid’s lunch box or snack. Make mini muffins and you can easily fit them in their tiny lunch boxes, or take them for a kid’s potluck. 

Do try!

Mango CheeseCake

Sometime back I saw this video on Euphoric Delights(a FB group) about this easy dessert made for a potluck. The picture and presentation was so enticing that I couldn’t wait to have one for myself. Then I started looking out for the ‘setting’ ingredient agar agar(as a substitute for Gelatin) in local stores, only to realize that it’s not easily available. After months of searching, I found one in an Indian store and finally got to making it..

This recipe is very easy once you get the hang of it. It is also a good potluck item. It looks very fancy and classy served in individual portions, in clear shot glasses. 

Do try!

Easy Coconut Laddoos

Okay.. again a long, unintended break! 

I wanted to try some “bookmarked” sweets for the upcoming festival season. But never got to them. Hence the delay. But then, couple of weeks back, while helping a friend make some sweets, I remembered I hadn’t put this super-easy, super-awesome sweet that I used to make and devour regularly long time ago. 

This would make a really quick sweet if you have all the ingredients on hand. Also it is great for potlucks!

Just 2 ingredients - coconut and condensed milk - mixed together, whats not to like?! 

They can make your heart melt, as they are melting in your mouth. Try it and float in dessert heaven!

My cousin Chethana gave me this recipe when I was still a newbie to cooking world :) It made me look like a pro!

Doodh Peda

Aah the Peda!!.... It brings back such not-so-sweet memories.... 

I was not even into 6 months of my marriage. Those days my husband was more than willing to try my cooking experiments. It used to give me a good boost to try out new recipes. 

My cousin C who taught me most of my cooking(kinda my cooking Guru), gave me this recipe. Even though I am not so keen on eating milk based sweets and barfis, I still wanted to try this one out and enhance my culinary skills to be able to make at least few variety of dishes whenever we had guests over.

I made it...... the whole mixture overcooked and became dark brown! It got stuck to the glassware like a big piece of concrete. I had to take a wooden spoon and pound on it to break it into pieces. 

But still it came out super tasty and chewy. It tasted like the base of kadlekayi chikki. So it was not all bad:) 

To clean it, I had to soak-scrub, soak-scrub, soak-scrub for many days. Well, my husband did most of the scrubbing. 

This time, my daughter N’s school required parents to bring food for a potluck party for a school function. I had signed up for dessert. Generally I prefer store bought stuff, but this time I wanted to take something homemade. So I searched my bookmarked folder for some easy recipes. I found this peda recipe(the picture in it is very inviting) which was more or less same as the one I had tried many years ago. 

This time it was different. I was confident. This recipe looked like a piece of cake! I knew what to watch out for. To be frank, I was little smug all the while making it, thinking this is nothing for an experienced cook like me!

So here is the recipe -