Glazed Lime Syrup Cake

When we were kids growing up in a small township, we lived in a house with a HUGE garden. We grew our own vegetables, fruit, onions, potatoes. I think short of growing rice and wheat, practically everything else came from our garden. My dad would walk around the garden after lunch each day and ask for what he wanted made for lunch the next day. Walk around the fruit trees and pluck what was ripe. I learnt what different plants looked like only from those walks I took with him around the garden. Really fond memories those. 

Thanks to those childhood days, I simply love seeing fruit trees in the garden or using the vegetables grown in your garden. There is something very comforting about that. I always wanted to have this large garden and grow my own vegetables. But unfortunately I have zero gardening skills. ZERO. No green thumb at all. So I have accepted it and moved on. 

Now my sister in law in the US has a lemon tree that bears a lot of fruit. I am dying to go there only to use the lemons from her garden to make this bread. But till then I have to settle for using locally available limes. 

The limes here I find are much tarter than the lemons from there.. So when I made this recipe with the exact conversion of lemon juice quantity to lime juice, I felt it was too sour for my taste.So, though I am giving you the recipe as is, I leave it to your better judgement on the exact quantity of juice to be used. (This is my disclaimer just in case you find it too tart)

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup Butter

1 cup Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tablespoon Lime Rind (grated)

1 1/2 cups Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1/4 teaspoon Salt

1/2 cup Milk

For the syrup:

100 grams Icing Sugar

2 tablespoons Lime Juice

For the glaze:

1/2 cup Icing Sugar

2 tablespoons Lime Juice

METHOD:

Grease and line a 8 inch X 4 inch loaf pan. 

Preheat oven to 180 deg C.

Cream butter and sugar in a bowl till creamy. Add in the eggs and rind.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt.

Stir into the butter egg mixture alternately with milk.

Bake for about 40 mins or till a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean.

In the meantime, mix the ingredients for the syrup in a saucepan and heat till you have a clear liquid.

When the cake is done. poke holes and pour the syrup till it soaks completely.

In another bowl mix the glaze ingredients till well mixed and pour over the still warm cake and leave to set.

Slice and serve

ENJOY!!!!!!!!

Podi Vankai or Podi Katrikai - Andhra Food Series

I love brinjal in most forms.  Though my most favorite has to be Baingan Ka Bharta, I also love this method of making it. I don't think my kids have even tasted it once. For some reason they hate it and are not even willing to try it out. We have a rule in the house.  You cannot say you don't want something or you hate something without trying it out once. It is compulsory to try out a nice big sizable amount of it. Even then if you don't like it , then you are allowed not to eat it. But this is one vegetable that they have flatly refused to even try. So this veggie is only reserved for the rest of us in the house. And all of us love brinjal and particularly in this form.

Very delicious, it goes well with rice or rotis. It has a nice nutty taste from all the coarsely ground dals and the first bite is a little crispy and crunchy in the mouth ending with a soft vegetable inside.

INGREDIENTS:

About 10 small eggplants, quartered

For the Powder:

3 tablespoons Chana Dal

4 Red Chillies

1 1/2 teaspoon Coriander Seeds

1 tablespoon White Sesame Seeds

2 tablespoons Grated Coconut

2 tablespoons Oil

Marble sized ball of Tamarind (soaked in few tablespoons of water and juice extracted)

1/4 teaspoon Turmeric Powder

2 cups Water

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon Chilli Powder

1 teaspoon Mustard Seeds

12-15 Curry leaves

METHOD:

Roast the powder ingredients in one tablespoon of oil till golden brown. Cool and grind to a caorse powder.

Heat water and add the tamarind juice and turmeric.

Drop in the brinjal pieces and cook for about 5 minutes or till the brinjal starts getting tender then drain.

Heat the remaining oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds and curry leaves and fry till it starts spluttering.

Add the ground powder and fry for a few minutes.

Now add the brinjal bits and fry on a low flame. Add the salt and chilli powder.

Fry till done and the podi is well fried and a golden brown.

Serve hot with rice or rotis

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!

Punjabi Saag - On A Strict Diet

No excuses this time for why I have not posted, why its been almost 3 months since I blogged. Its not because I have not been making anything or taking pictures, I think it is just that when I make a half hearted attempt to blog, it just never seems to come out right. That's why I said at the outset - NO EXCUSES.

So now I am on this diet. A very strict one. And since I am very determined this time around, hopefully it should work. But this is a strange kind of a situation I find myself in. I eat so much of the healthy stuff that I am unable to finish my meal. The only compulsory thing I have to eat each day is 2 cups of greens in any form. Now its difficult to get too many recipes that I like featuring greens as its hero. But this saag has to be one of my absolute favorites. Tastes good with both rotis and rice. It is supposed to be eaten with Makki ki Roti (rotis made with maize flour) but tastes good anyway even by itself. The original recipe calls for mustard greens (sarson) but as that is not available in Chennai, we can make it with spinach.

To get the most authentic saag recipe, I had to call my Punjabi niece in law. Thanks Pri. Got the exact recipe and now this is a staple on our lunch table.

Now for the recipe... Don't get put off by the number of ingredients. It is very simple to make. The only pain is cleaning the greens.

INGREDIENTS:

2 bunches Delhi Palak
2 bunches Methi leaves
2 bunches Radish leaves with the radish
2 Onions chopped
2 Tomatoes chopped
1 Turnip (Shalgam)
1 tablespoon Ginger chopped
1 tablespoon Garlic chopped\
4 Green chillies chopped

1 tablespoon wheat flour (Atta)
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon White Butter
1 teaspoon Red Chilli Powder
1 onion finely chopped
1 teaspoon finely chopped Garlic
1 teaspoon finely chopped Ginger
1 tablespoon Ghee


METHOD:

Clean and chop all the greens, the radish, the turnip, tomatoes, onion, green chillies, ginger and garlic and pressure cook along with a cup of water for one whistle.

Grind it with a handheld blender or in the mixer till it is a coarse paste.

Mix in the wheat flour, white butter and salt. Heat for a while

Heat the ghee in a separate vessel. Fry the onion, ginger and garlic till lightly browned. At the end, add in the red chilli powder and pour the tadka over the greens.

Serve hot along with Makki ki roti.

ENJOY!!!!!!!!

Coconut Rice And An Orphaned Blog

My poor poor blog. Its really been orphaned. Left it for so long.. I wonder if it will allow me to blog in these pages again. I have realised one thing. Every time I say I am going to be more regular and post ever so often, I fall off the wagon  and end up not blogging at all. Unforgivable on my part. So from now on no promises of blogging once a day  week month or even year. Posts will appear when they do. And if they are seldom and only once in a way, then so be it. No feelings of guilt. And I hope The Bubbling Cauldron and you , my dear readers will forgive me.

Coconut rice has to be one of V's favorite foods. And so it makes its appearance on the table a little more often than posts do on this blog. Simple to make, it has a richness from its main ingredient, coconut. It takes next to no time. The only painful part is grating of the coconut. Fortunately you get ready freshly grated coconut in the vegetable shops these days. Makes life so simple.

Now on to the recipe..

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups Grated coconut
2 cups cooked rice

For tadka:
1 tablespoon Oil
1/2 teaspoon Mustard seeds
1 tablespoon Bengal Gram Dal
1 tablespoon Urad Dal
2 tablespoons  Cashew nuts broken
4 sprigs Curry Leaves
2 Green Chillis Chopped
4-5 Red Chillis

Salt to taste


METHOD:



Saute the coconut on medium heat till well roasted and starts getting golden brown.

Cool and mix well with the rice and the salt to taste.

Heat oil. Add all the tadka ingredients. Fry till cashews are golden brown.

Put in the coconut/rice mixture.

Stir till well mixed.

Serve hot or at room temperature.

ENJOY!!!!!!!

Rose Cake - Pretty Icing

I saw this cake one day while trawling the food blog sites and I HAD to try it out. It looked absolutely beautiful and the author of the blog  promised that it was the easiest thing to do. I have not iced a cake for the longest time. I have almost forgotten most of the techniques. But looking at this particular cake spurred me on to try my hand once more at it. Immediately requested sister in law to please locate and send me the Wilton 1M icing tip. Got it and then started planning on what flavor of cake I should make. The idea of the usual suspect chocolate was discarded much to the dismay of my chocoholic son. I wanted an icing that looked pretty and light coloured. So made a coffee cake recipe of which will follow.

Then decided I wanted to make cupcakes rather than a regular round cake. So went and bought a new muffin pan. Preheated the smaller oven as my bigger oven was out of action, made the batter, got the cupcake liners out and then poured it into the  muffin pan. Went to put the pan into the oven and.... THE DAMN THING WOULD NOT FIT. What an epic fail. Then very messily poured the batter back, got an older 6 muffin pan which would fit into the small oven. Baked the cupcakes and made a smaller cake.
Went ahead with the butter cream icing and iced both the cupcakes and the cake (few mishaps with the icing, but that is a story for another day). I guess I managed to get both done and was happy with the results (please note I did not say very or ecstatically happy - just happy).

Now you tell me what you think. Looks good?  You are not allowed to compare it to the original one. For precise instructions on exactly how to do this, check out the link above.


BUTTER CREAM ICING RECIPE:

INGREDIENTS:

100 grams Butter
3-4 cups of Icing Sugar
2 tablespoons Milk
Flavoring ( I used 2 teaspoons of instant coffee powder)


METHOD:

Soften the butter to room temperature.
Sieve the icing sugar along with the coffee powder and pour it into the the softened butter.
Mix well. Add the milk a little at a time till a soft consistency is obtained.
Now for icing the cake ( i.e covering ) you need a little softer icing.
For floral and other decorative icing, make sure it is a little stiffer so that the shape will hold.
Ice the cake.
Serve.
ENJOY!!!!!!