Showing posts with label lemon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lemon. Show all posts
Eggless Lemon Tea Pistachio Chocolate Cake
Sunday, May 11, 2014
I love challenges, especially food challenges, they will definitely pull you to bring out our creativity and obviously your creative mind will dish out many fabulous dishes. Here comes my one creative bake aka cake with lemon tea and pistachio for our this months Magic Mingle Challenge, when Kalyani announced this combo i never thought that my fellow bloggers who are all part of this challenge will bring out this much varieties foods with these combination. I can guess very much that even Kalyani might be astonished to see the foods they are dishing out.
Coming to this chocolate cake, i quickly prepared this cake for our evening snacks when it was snowing here, lemon tea gives a wonderful aroma to this usual chocolate cake and needless to say about the nuttiness by pistachios in this cake. This cake takes very less time to get ready and they also get vanished very much easily if you have chocolate lovers at home. Recently while doing an another challenge, i came to know that we can add boiling water to the chocolate cake batter to make them soft and moist, i used the same techinic here and replaced the boiling water with boiling lemon tea. If you love citrus bakes, this cake is for you.
1+3/4cup All purpose flour
2cups Sugar
1/2cup Vegetable oil
1cup Yoghurt
1cup Boiling lemon tea waer
2tbsp Flaxseed meal
3/4cup Dutch process cocoa powder
1+1/2tsp Baking soda
1+1/2tsp Baking powder
1tbsp Vanilla essence
1/4tsp Salt
1/2cup Chopped pistachios
Heat the oven to 350F, grease a round pan and keep aside.
Stir together the sugar,flour,cocao powder,baking powder,baking soda,flax seed meal and salt in a bowl.
Meanwhile take together the yoghurt,vegetabke oil an vanilla in an another bowl, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the wet ingredients,boiling lemon tea to the dry ingredients,mix it well.
Fold in gently the chopped pistachios.
Pour the batter to the prepared pan, sprinkle some nuts on the top and bake for 20-25minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Remove the pan from the oven and let them cool completely.
Cut the cake as you desire and serve with a chocolate sauce or dust the cake with confectioners sugar.
Coming to this chocolate cake, i quickly prepared this cake for our evening snacks when it was snowing here, lemon tea gives a wonderful aroma to this usual chocolate cake and needless to say about the nuttiness by pistachios in this cake. This cake takes very less time to get ready and they also get vanished very much easily if you have chocolate lovers at home. Recently while doing an another challenge, i came to know that we can add boiling water to the chocolate cake batter to make them soft and moist, i used the same techinic here and replaced the boiling water with boiling lemon tea. If you love citrus bakes, this cake is for you.
1+3/4cup All purpose flour
2cups Sugar
1/2cup Vegetable oil
1cup Yoghurt
1cup Boiling lemon tea waer
2tbsp Flaxseed meal
3/4cup Dutch process cocoa powder
1+1/2tsp Baking soda
1+1/2tsp Baking powder
1tbsp Vanilla essence
1/4tsp Salt
1/2cup Chopped pistachios
Heat the oven to 350F, grease a round pan and keep aside.
Stir together the sugar,flour,cocao powder,baking powder,baking soda,flax seed meal and salt in a bowl.
Meanwhile take together the yoghurt,vegetabke oil an vanilla in an another bowl, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the wet ingredients,boiling lemon tea to the dry ingredients,mix it well.
Fold in gently the chopped pistachios.
Pour the batter to the prepared pan, sprinkle some nuts on the top and bake for 20-25minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Remove the pan from the oven and let them cool completely.
Cut the cake as you desire and serve with a chocolate sauce or dust the cake with confectioners sugar.
Lemon Macarons With Lemon Curd
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Life was bit busy nowadays, almost a week of sickness made me super lazy and very much tired, obviously i had loads of stuffs left aside during those nasty days. Finally since yesterday,am having foods as before (yep i couldnt feed correctly during more than 3days coz of the nasty high fever and my tastebuds were completely dead) and trying to finish all the leftover stuffs.Dont talk about cooking now,am yet to cook different dishes and still didnt started really cooking as before,just having usual quick and easy foods. I really need someone to pull or kick me to cook with full spirit as before.
Coming to todays post, every 15th of the month we Baking Partners, a group of home bakers will be baking something specially and this months challenge is the famous French macarons. I dont have words to say how i love macarons and we never failed to get them from a famous shop here, thats a real advantage of living in Paris, you can get easily this fabulous devils in every pastry shops and Paris streets are filled with many bakery and pastry shops,so obviously macarons are one of our family favourites. I tried my hands in making macarons long back and my first Macarons turned out simply awesome. When i saw our this months challenge with french macarons as challenge, i was really happy to make them again. Vidhya of A Portion to Share and Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen,the brain child of this event, chosed this fabulous macarons.
Macarons may sounds really easily, but they are truly very hard to make and you have to be very caul while mixing the flour & sugar mixture to the beaten snow like egg whites, this part plays an important role in making macarons. Overmixing or undermixing will show their faces while your macarons starts baking. After many trials and many disasters,i seriously learned few important things highly recommanded while making macarons. Obviously my lemon macarons came out extremely pect.I went for lemon curd for the filling, this lemon curd balanced very much the sweetness of my macarons and we just loved it.
Recipe Source: Martha Stewart
2nos Large egg whites (keep in room temperature for 48hours/2days)
1cup Confectioners sugar
3/4cup Almond flour
1/4cup Superfine sugar
1tsp Lemon zest
pinch Salt/cream of tartar
1/4tsp Yellow food colour powder
Take the confectioners sugar and almond flour in a food processor and pulse it until well combined, sift the mixture twice with the food colour, finally add the lemon zest,keep aside.
Whisk the whites with salt with a beater on medium speed until soft peaks form, reduce the speed to low and add the superfine sugar gradually.
Increase the speed to high and whisk until stiff peaks form (approximately 8 minutes).
Add the flour-sugar mixture over the whites, fold until the mixture turns shiny and smooth (this is called macaronage, if you take the batter with a spatula, the batter of the macaron should fall like a ribbon)
Now transfer to a pastry bag filled with a plain round tip.
Meanwhile line baking sheets over two baking trays, now pipe out small rounds with enough spaces between them on the line baking sheets, until the batter gets finished.
Tap the bottom of the baking try to the release the air from the piped batter.
Let them sit in room temperature for 30minutes to allow the skins to form(if you touch the top of the piped macarons, you can feel the top is hard and no batter will stick your finger)
Preheat the oven to 300F,bake the macarons for 20minutes, rotate the baking sheet half way for even baking, remover from oven and transfer to a cooling rack.
Lemon Curd:
55grms Butter
225grms Sugar
2nos Lemons
2nos Eggs
Put a large bowl over a pan of water. Put this on the heat, and once the water has come to the boil,put the unsalted butter,sugar into the bowl.
Meanwhile, grate the rind of two lemons and squeeze their juice into another bowl.
Once the butter has fully melted, add the rind and juice to your large bowl over the pan.
Finally, beat two eggs and pour them into the mixture.
Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. Keep it moving slowly all the time so that it coats the edges of the bowl.
This will allow it to start cooking on the hot glass. Over the next 20 to 30 minutes it will thicken and you may start to see some white parts forming in the otherwise yellow mixture. This is perfectly normal.
Eventually you will see that the mix has become considerably thicker and you will be able to draw the spoon through it and see the bottom of the bowl.
Once you have reached this stage it is ready to be poured into the jar.
Remove the pan from the heat and very caully ladle the hot mixture into a sterilised jar using a funnel if necessary to help you get it in, without it running down the sides.
Seal the jar so that it is airtight and store the curd in the fridge. It should keep for around a month Assembling the macarons:
Take a macaron,fill it with half a teaspoon of lemon curd and close it with an another macaron. Arrange them in a box and conserve it in fridge atleast for a day.
Enjoy!
Notes:
Use always food colours in powder form or gel food colouring, dont use liquid food colouring, this will spoil the macaron batter.
Piped macaron should sit in room temperature for 30 minutes before baking.
I told you guys earlier that am leaving to London for a blogger meet, thats is going to happen on next weekend exactly the 23rd Feb, its really very near and am very excited. You know wat this bloggers buzz have a competition where we can won a bag of chocolates, who will say no to chocolates and i want to try my best to win that bag.
Bloggers buzz Competition goes for a dish with yellow or purple colour or else as a butterfly theme as per the logo goes for, my macarons suits pectly for the theme and am sending it to the competition,fingers crossed gals.
);Coming to todays post, every 15th of the month we Baking Partners, a group of home bakers will be baking something specially and this months challenge is the famous French macarons. I dont have words to say how i love macarons and we never failed to get them from a famous shop here, thats a real advantage of living in Paris, you can get easily this fabulous devils in every pastry shops and Paris streets are filled with many bakery and pastry shops,so obviously macarons are one of our family favourites. I tried my hands in making macarons long back and my first Macarons turned out simply awesome. When i saw our this months challenge with french macarons as challenge, i was really happy to make them again. Vidhya of A Portion to Share and Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen,the brain child of this event, chosed this fabulous macarons.
Macarons may sounds really easily, but they are truly very hard to make and you have to be very caul while mixing the flour & sugar mixture to the beaten snow like egg whites, this part plays an important role in making macarons. Overmixing or undermixing will show their faces while your macarons starts baking. After many trials and many disasters,i seriously learned few important things highly recommanded while making macarons. Obviously my lemon macarons came out extremely pect.I went for lemon curd for the filling, this lemon curd balanced very much the sweetness of my macarons and we just loved it.
Recipe Source: Martha Stewart
2nos Large egg whites (keep in room temperature for 48hours/2days)
1cup Confectioners sugar
3/4cup Almond flour
1/4cup Superfine sugar
1tsp Lemon zest
pinch Salt/cream of tartar
1/4tsp Yellow food colour powder
Take the confectioners sugar and almond flour in a food processor and pulse it until well combined, sift the mixture twice with the food colour, finally add the lemon zest,keep aside.
Whisk the whites with salt with a beater on medium speed until soft peaks form, reduce the speed to low and add the superfine sugar gradually.
Increase the speed to high and whisk until stiff peaks form (approximately 8 minutes).
Add the flour-sugar mixture over the whites, fold until the mixture turns shiny and smooth (this is called macaronage, if you take the batter with a spatula, the batter of the macaron should fall like a ribbon)
Now transfer to a pastry bag filled with a plain round tip.
Meanwhile line baking sheets over two baking trays, now pipe out small rounds with enough spaces between them on the line baking sheets, until the batter gets finished.
Tap the bottom of the baking try to the release the air from the piped batter.
Let them sit in room temperature for 30minutes to allow the skins to form(if you touch the top of the piped macarons, you can feel the top is hard and no batter will stick your finger)
Preheat the oven to 300F,bake the macarons for 20minutes, rotate the baking sheet half way for even baking, remover from oven and transfer to a cooling rack.
Lemon Curd:
55grms Butter
225grms Sugar
2nos Lemons
2nos Eggs
Put a large bowl over a pan of water. Put this on the heat, and once the water has come to the boil,put the unsalted butter,sugar into the bowl.
Meanwhile, grate the rind of two lemons and squeeze their juice into another bowl.
Once the butter has fully melted, add the rind and juice to your large bowl over the pan.
Finally, beat two eggs and pour them into the mixture.
Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. Keep it moving slowly all the time so that it coats the edges of the bowl.
This will allow it to start cooking on the hot glass. Over the next 20 to 30 minutes it will thicken and you may start to see some white parts forming in the otherwise yellow mixture. This is perfectly normal.
Eventually you will see that the mix has become considerably thicker and you will be able to draw the spoon through it and see the bottom of the bowl.
Once you have reached this stage it is ready to be poured into the jar.
Remove the pan from the heat and very caully ladle the hot mixture into a sterilised jar using a funnel if necessary to help you get it in, without it running down the sides.
Seal the jar so that it is airtight and store the curd in the fridge. It should keep for around a month
Take a macaron,fill it with half a teaspoon of lemon curd and close it with an another macaron. Arrange them in a box and conserve it in fridge atleast for a day.
Enjoy!
Notes:
Use always food colours in powder form or gel food colouring, dont use liquid food colouring, this will spoil the macaron batter.
Piped macaron should sit in room temperature for 30 minutes before baking.
Bloggers buzz Competition goes for a dish with yellow or purple colour or else as a butterfly theme as per the logo goes for, my macarons suits pectly for the theme and am sending it to the competition,fingers crossed gals.
Veggie Might Salad Confounds Dressing Rules Also Lemon Ginger Dressing
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Penned by the effervescent Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about the wide world of Vegetarianism.
You know the cliché about bachelors and cooking? Well, my boyfriend doesn’t have an operational stove in his apartment. Let me clarify: the stove works, but the gas isn’t turned on.
So. Here’s what we’ve been doing: eat food I cook at my apartment (Charming Dinner Guest ring a bell?); eat food I cook and schlep to his apartment; or eat take out at his place.
Of course, the latter is not so frugal and has been wearing on both our wallets. The middle (is there a word for the middle?) is okay once in a while, but it would be so much easier to just cook the food there.
The thing is he wants to cook at home—to save money, to eat healthier, and to save money. It’s what we all want, right? So the gas people are coming in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we have to eat, and sometimes at his place. Thank sweet Angela Lansbury and her angel above, Bea Arthur, for salad.
Or so I thought… For anyone out there who has struggled with salad, this is for you.
HOW SALAD CONFOUNDS
A short play in one act
Cast of Characters
Leigh, your lovable Veggie Might blogger
Charming Boyfriend, her gentleman caller
CB: So, I’ll go to the grocery after work. What can be cooked in the microwave for supper?
Leigh: (aside) Um…NOTHING! (to CB) Why don’t you grab some stuff for a salad?
CB: You know how much I love salad dressing. I could drink the stuff. But you may be overestimating my abilities to “grab some stuff for a salad.”
Leigh: Ha. I’ll bring my homemade dressing and chickpeas. I’ve also baked some tofu we could have on sandwiches.
CB: I’d don’t know if you’ve been to the produce aisle, but everything’s green and looks like it can go into a salad.
Leigh: Don’t panic. I’ll coach you on salad-stuff buying. Heres what I would get. Just pick a couple from each list. Simpler is always better.
The Basics
Greens (mixed field greens [aka mesclun], spinach, romaine, green or red leaf lettuce, or any combo thereof)
Onion
Carrot
Celery
Tomatoes (if the tomatoes are ripe)
Red pepper
Green pepper
Cucumber
The Extras
Avocado
Jicama
Broccoli or cauliflower
Turnip or radishes
Feta or goat cheese (optional)
CB: THANK YOU. You dont know how long Ive been howling at the Internet, wondering they mean by "salad greens.” Seriously, this has been an issue for years.
Leigh: That’s why I’m here.
Blackout
Once you have your salad fixin’s you’ll need dressing that people (CB) want to drink independently of the salad. No need to spend $5.00/bottle for something you can whip up in a few minutes for pennies.
This handy ratio will allow you to make just about any salad dressing your heart desires: 2 parts oil : 1 part acid. Mark Bittman recommends a shallot accompany the oil/acid base, and I faithfully adhere to that advice. After that you’re free to toss in any seasonings, herbs, or sweeteners you like.
Salad dressing is infinitely customizable. My favorite salad dressing oils are olive and sesame, but use whatever you like. You can use any acid: vinegar, citrus fruits, wine; plus any ingredients that tip your canoe: ginger, honey, garlic, mustard, dill.
Be creative. Taste as you go. If you over-season, just add more oil and acid. Don’t be afraid to throw stuff in and see what happens.
CB’s salad was a success. He bought spinach, romaine, carrots, onion, red pepper, and two avocadoes, which are still ripening on his counter. Combined with the chickpeas and lemon-ginger salad dressing I brought, we had the perfect midweek meal—no cooking required.
~~~
If you like this post, you very well may enjoy:
- Summer Squash Salad
- Relaxed Kale and Root Veg Salad
- Rainy Day Potato Salad
Lemon-Ginger Dressing
Makes about 3/4 cup, or 12 tablespoon-sized servings
1/4 cup lemon juice (2 lemons)
scant 1/2 cup olive oil
1 shallot
2-inch piece ginger, grated
1 tsp agave nectar
salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste
If you’re using a blender:
1) Juice the lemons, coarsely chop your shallot, and grate the ginger.
2) Pour the lemon juice and olive oil into the blender and zap it for a few second or until it’s thoroughly emulsified.
3) Add the shallots and ginger. Zap it again until the shallots are decimated (minced will do).
4) Add agave, salt, and pepper. Zap it once again. Give it a taste. Do you like it? Does it need more of some thing? It’s your dressing! Zap, taste, tweak, and repeat until you like it.
If you’re not using a blender:
1) Juice the lemons, finely mince your shallot, and grate the ginger.
2) Pour the lemon juice and olive oil into a large bowl and whisk it like mad for a couple of minutes or until it’s thoroughly emulsified.
3) Add the shallots and ginger. Whisk it like mad again.
4) Add agave, salt, and pepper. Whisk it once again. Give it a taste. Do you like it? Does it need more of some thing? It’s your dressing! Whisk, taste, tweak, and repeat until you like it.
Everybody
5) Drizzle over your favorite salad. It keeps up to a week in the fridge. Just let it come to room temp and give it a shake or stir when you’re ready to drink it. I mean, use it.
Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, and Price per Serving
87 calories, 9g fat, .08g fiber, $.11
Calculations
1/4 cup lemon juice (2 lemons): 24 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, $.40
scant 1/2 cup olive oil: 955 calories, 108g fat, 0g fiber, $.64
1 shallot: 20 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, $.10
2-inch piece ginger: 22 calories, 0g fat, 1g fiber, $.06
1 tsp agave nectar: 20 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, $.06
salt to taste: negligible calories, fat, fiber, $.02
freshly ground pepper: negligible calories, fat, fiber, $.02
Totals: 1041 calories, 112g fat, 1g fiber, $1.30
Per serving (totals/12): 87 calories, 9g fat, .08g fiber, $.11
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