Urad dal Ladoos ~ Blog hop 28th December 2011

This is my entry for Blog Hop Wednesday started by Radhika of Tickling Palates. Its a beautiful concept where not only do you get to make new  blogger friends, cook from their blogs but in return they visit your blog and try out your recipes too.

This recipe is  from Nisha's Kitchen. Looking through her post, there was a huge variety, but finally I decided to try this ladoo recipe. The recipe was simple to follow. The only changes I made were that halved the quantity and  I added mixed nuts  instead of just cashew .I also added some saffron strands into the mixture  to add colour the ladoos.
The original recipe can be found here.

Delicious and delectable ladoos that tasted wonderful and nutty.

Ingredients:

 8oz Urad (Black Gram) Dal husked
4oz  Powdered sugar
4oz Coarsely chopped mixed nuts, pistachio, almonds and cashew
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1/2 teaspoon saffron strands soaked in 2 tablespoons milk.
1/2 cup clarified butter (ghee)
Method:
1.In  a large pan dry roast the urad  dal until golden and grind to a coarse powder.
2. Transfer the ground dal to a large bowl and add the powdered sugar, followed by the cardamom powder and saffron soaked in milk.
3. Dry roast the nuts for 2-3 minutes then add them to the bowl with the dal. Mix well
4. Melt the clarified butter and add it gradually to the mixture until it forms a sand like texture that will come together when pinched into a ball in your fist.
5. Form small walnut sized balls on the mixture and place on a serving plate.
Ladoos are ready for serving.

You may like:
Semolina ladoos

Submitting to;
Lets cook for christmas red/ green event.

Christmas Pudding Cake Pops.

Delectable little Christmas pudding shaped cakes on sticks, coated in chocolate and edible decorations.

Preparation time – 2 hours
Cooking time- 30 minutes
Chilling time – 45 minutes
Makes 18

Ingredients:

For Cake
420 grams / 14 oz Plain flour
240 grams / 8 oz Sugar
60 grams / 2oz Cocoa
½ teaspoon Salt
½ teaspoon Baking powder
½ teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
75 ml Sunflower oil
1 tablespoon Apple cider vinegar
250 ml Water
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence

For Butter cream
60 grams / 2oz   Unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 teaspoon Vanilla essence
240 grams / 8oz Icing sugar

For Decoration
Cake pop sticks
Ready to roll fondant icing in white, red and green
240 grams / 8 oz Milk chocolate  candy melts
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 º C / 350 º F.
2. Grease a 10 inch x 15 inch baking tray and keep aside
3. In a large mixing bowl sieve together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Add the sugar to the flour.
4. In jug add the oil, water, vinegar and vanilla and mix together.
5. Make a well in the flour and gradually add the wet ingredients.
6. Gently fold the mixture taking care not to over mix.
7. Pour the batter in to greased baking tray and bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes. Check if cake is done by inserting a skewer in the cake, if it comes out clean the cake is ready.
8. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool.
9. Remove the cake from baking tray and cut off the crusts from all four sides. Cut the cake into  small pieces and put it  into a food processor and whizz to form crumbs. Transfer the cake crumbs to a large mixing bowl.
10. In a mixer add the butter, vanilla and icing sugar and whip the butter cream till smooth and creamy.
11. Add half the butter cream to the cake crumb mixture and mix well to form dough like consistency. (Reserve remaining butter cream for future use)
12. Divide the mixture into 18 parts and roll each part into a ball. Place the cake balls onto a baking tray.
13. Melt a small handful of the chocolate candy melts in the microwave. Dip approximately 1 cm of each of the lolly stick into the melted chocolate and push it into the ball of rolled cake, repeat for remaining balls to form lollipops.
14. Place the cake pops into the freezer for 30 minutes to set.

To make decoration:
15. On a flat surface dust with icing sugar and roll out the white fondant to approximately 2mm thickness. Using a 1 inch flower shaped cookie cutter cut out 18 flowers.
16. Roll out the green Icing and using a holly leaf cutter cut out 36 holly leaves.
17. Pinch the red fondant icing into small red balls the size of peppercorns and keep aside
18. Melt the remaining chocolate melts in the microwave.
19. Remove the frozen cake pops from the freezer and in turn dip each pop into the melted chocolate. Tap the cake pops gently to remove any access chocolate and leave to set up right. (Push the chocolate dipped cake pops into a block of polystyrene to keep them up right whilst chocolate is setting.) Repeat for all cake pops and once they are all coated place in refrigerator for chocolate to set for 5 minutes.
20.  Once chocolate is set, decorate the cake pops. Wet the back surface of the white fondant flower and place it on top of the cake pop. Wet the back surface of the holy leaves and place two opposite each other on top of the white flower, finally wet the centre of the two holly leaves and place three red fondant berries. Repeat for remaining cake pops.
21. Leave the decoration to set before eating.

Submitting to:

 Lets cook for christmas red/ green event 

Oat and Apple muffins- Secret recipe club 19th December 2011

This is my 5th assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select  a recipe and try  it and blog about it.

My assigned blog was Adventures in Dinner. The blog  is very interesting with snippets of the writers daily life incorporated into the recipe posts.I chose to bake  the healthy muffins from the blog .The Original recipe can be found here. The only changes I made were I replaced the egg with apple sauce and the berries with some chopped apples. I also increased the sugar as original recipe said 1/4 cup, when I made the 1st batch they were not sweet enough for our palate so cut them up and made a trifle with them.  I remade them again this time adding 3/4 cup sugar.They were very healthy, a little dense and didn't rise as much as a normal muffin , texture was more like a scone ,still they were thoroughly delicious and delectable.

This recipe yeilded 18 mini muffins.

Delicious, soft and delectable muffins that are perfect for a healthy treat.

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup of buttermilk
1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder,
1/2 tsp baking soda, dash salt,
3/4 cup brown sugar,
2 tablespoons apple sauce
4 tablespoons  melted butter 
1 cup chopped apples

Method:

1. Soak the oats in buttermilk and keep aside.
2. Sieve together the flour salt and baking soda.
3. In another bowl add the melted butter, apple sauce, sugar and mix well.
4. Add the soaked oats and chopped apples to the flour mixture and fold in the wet ingredients.
5. Spoon mixture in to muffin cases and bake in a pre heated oven at 350 degrees F / 175 degrees C for 20 minutes until  golden brown.
6. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

You may like:
Chocolate chip muffins.

Submitting to :
Lets Cook for Christmas red and green event by simply.food.

Chocolate dipped Strawberries

Luscious, juicy and succlent  strawberries dipped in mouthwatering and delectable white and milk chocolate.

Ingredients:

24 ripe strawberries
200 grams while chocolate
200 grams milk chocolate
sweets/sprinkles of choice

Wooden skewers

Method:

1. In a double boiler melt the white chocolate and milk chocolate separately in separate bowls.
2. Wash and air dry the strawberries. Keep the green stalk on.
3. Push the pointed end of each skewer in to the base of the strawberry .Repeat for all strawberries.
4. Dip each strawberry into the chocolate anda sprinkle the chocolate dipped end with the sprinkles.
5. Leave to set. Repeat for all strawberries , decoarting them using different sprinkles.
Serve strawberries with Ice cream or as they are on skewers as strawberry pops.

Submitting to :

Christmas Delicacy event

Jingle all the way event by Kavi of Edible Entertainment

Lets cook for Christmas red/ green event.
Pranatis lovely dessets for new year event.

Announcing event ~ Lets Cook For Christmas Red and Green

With the month of December upon us, the Christmas festivities are fast approaching. It's a time for sharing and caring, eating and drinking and having lots of fun.
As the colours red and green are generally associated with Christmas, the theme for this event is to cook anything for the christmas festivities but you must feature the colour red or green or both  in your dish in some form.
You can do this by either using green or red ingredients in your dish or use them as a garnish, or alternatively you can present your food in a red/green serving dish, or use red /green accessories to compliment your dish and presentation.

To Participate:

1.Prepare a dish vegetarian only (eggs allowed) please link your dish using the linky below by entering your Dish Name and Post URL
2.Please link this event announcement with your entry, this is mandatory.
3.Use of logo is  not mandatory but it helps to spread the word if you can post it..
4. Multiple entries are allowed, archived are only allowed if reposted and updated with this event link.
4. In the event of problem using linky you can email me the entry at simplysensationalfood@gmail.com

Please use this format
Your Name:
Recipe Name
Recipe URL
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