Bay Area deal on FarmFreshToYou!

I recently signed up for home delivery of organic fruits and vegetables box from Farm Fresh To You. Got the first box delivered this week and I am so excited. Received such fresh organic Non-GMO fruits and vegetables that I am totally floored.

You can decide from the various size options (Small, Regular, More) and categories (veggies only, fruits & vegetables or fruits only).The most amazing part is that you get to customize your box and decide what items you want delivered.

Along with the choice of fresh produce you get to choose from organic milk, eggs, jams, pickles, cheese and other goodies from locally made businesses. I haven't tried these yet but will do so soon.

The service is available in & around San Francisco bay area. If any bay area residents are interested in signing-up, use the code SUPR5488 to get $15 OFF your first box.

Apple Pancake - Comfort food the healthy way..

Rain is pounding down on the bay area the last few days. The windstorm is so strong it feels like a constant companion. After catching a wonderful movie late last night, waking up to the wonderful rain makes me want a comforting warm filling breakfast, even though it is 2PM now. Hey, don't judge me. It's a perfect day to feel super lazy!

Watching the stars walk down on the red carpet of Golden Globes Awards, I start whipping up a quick batch of pancake, albeit cautiously since my last trial was a minor disaster. It shows how a good recipe is crucial for a wonderful end result. I used Vitamix recipe the first time and then referred to the following recipe today.

Without further ado, let's get right down to it. The pancakes turned out perfect and having enjoyed my very late brunch I am ready to pen down the recipe for y'all.

Ingredients:
Whole wheat flour - 1 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Yogurt (curd) - 1 cup
Egg - 1
Vanilla extract - 1tsp
Olive Oil (or vegetable oil) - 1tbsp
Apple (peeled, cored and grated) - 1

Method:
Mix whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder together in a bowl. Add yogurt, egg, vanilla extract and oil and whisk well. Add grated apple and mix until combined.

The batter needs to be thick but should spread on its own when poured onto the pan. Hence, I added 4-5 tsp of liquid that separates from the yogurt tub and mixed it to make a spreadable batter.

Heat a skillet or a non stick pan on medium heat. Once the pan is hot, spread some butter on the pan and ladle a spoonful of batter and cover the pan for a minute until bubbles form at the top and one side is cooked. Flip it over so the other side cooks well, for about a minute.

Serve the pancakes while hot. Pour maple syrup, a small blob of butter and fresh fruits and enjoy the fluffy pancakes.


The above batter batch yields about 6-7 medium sized pancakes.

Crunchy Salad - Tickle your tastebuds

This recipe has been tried and tested and is a phenomenal success with family and friends. My husband came up with this truly delicious recipe and we have been enjoying this crunchy goodness with almost every meal..

The secret of this recipe is that it consists of simple ingredients that come together beautifully and makes you feel you are part of something special. Truly! Every time I make this salad I feel like a gourmet chef! No kidding!

Recipe:
1 medium onion
2-3 cucumbers, peeled
1 Bartlett pear, cored
1 apple, cored

Vinaigrette:
5 pitted dates
1 Serrano pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Lime Juice
Himalayan Salt (or normal salt)
Oregano (optional)
cilantro, finely chopped (optional)

Chop all vegetables and fruits and toss them together.
Be sure to add only crunchy vegetables and fruits to this salad. You may add raw mango, raw papaya, green/yellow/red pepper. You can roughly chop all the veggies/fruits, or slice them, or cube them.

Thinly slice the dates and serrano pepper and add to the mix. You can leave the jalapeno pepper out, but it provides the aroma and balances the acidity from lime juice and sweetness from the dates.
Drizzle generous amount of olive oil and squeeze a lime into the mix and sprinkle salt to taste.
Sprinkle some dry oregano and cilantro for flavor.
Toss everything together and the lovely crunchy salad is ready.

The vinaigrette gives a beautiful depth of flavors to the salad. And the healthy content leaves you feeling full. Hope this recipe becomes your go-to and has a place in your table like it is in mine.

Chocolate Fantasy | Chocolate Sponge Cake

One more long weekend thanks to festival and I got started with baking. Guests visiting was an added bonus. That meant I needed to beautify the cake so that the kids would want to eat it...

Anyway, the end product looked decent. At least to me. What do you think?

Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Not bad, eh? I thought so too.. Le Cordon Bleau, I am coming soon! :-)

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup Flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder together twice.

Beat eggs till light and frothy to about 3 times the original volume.

Add the vanilla, sugar and beat again for about 2 minutes.

Pour in the oil continuously in a stream while continuing the beating.

Fold the flour mixture gently into the wet ingredients.

Pour into the greased tin, dusted with flour.

Tap the tin couple of times so that the bubbles settle down.

Bake at 180C for about 25-30 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

For the ganache:
225gm dark chocolate
140ml heavy cream
Chocolate sprinkles

Method:
Chop the chocolate into small pieces
pour cream into it and melt it either on a double boiler or in the microwave
Whisk it well until it blends well.
Cool it a little. Apply it on the cake and smooth it. The ganache will thicken as it cools down completely.
Decorate the cake with sprinkles.

Notes:

1. Pour the sugar and oil into the mixture slowly and continuously.

2. Move the mixer in one direction only lest you let the air out from the batter.

3. Don't mix the flour in frantically. Gently cut and fold in circular motion.

4. Gluten will start forming if you over mix.

Happy Baking!

Daring Baker Challenge | Challah Y'all!

In a "celebration" of past Daring Baker and Daring Cook challenges, Lisa challenged all of us to search through the Daring Kitchen archives and pick any one we'd like! The REAL challenge was picking which delicious recipe(s) to try!

And guess what  I tried making...

This beauty called Challah!

Challah is a bread of celebration in Jewish tradition. At a time when white flour was considered a luxury, its use was reserved for either the wealthy or for festive events. In Judaism, the Sabbath is a weekly holiday and therefore is a festive occasion. It was around the 15th century when Jews in parts of Austria and Germany adopted an oval braided loaf from their neighbors to make the Sabbath special. These fancy shaped loaves made with white flour were seen as a fitting way to honor the Shabbat (Sabbath), symbolized in Jewish culture as a queen, therefore deserving of the finest one can achieve. In honoring the Sabbath as a day of rest, two loaves are traditionally put on the table. This is generally seen as a representation of the double portion of manna provided to the Children of Israel on Fridays during their wandering in the desert after fleeing from Egypt. This double portion allowed them to maintain the commandment to not do “work” on the Sabbath.

Ok, enough history and general knowledge. When the daring baker challenge was revealed I was so excited with the choice available for this month. I then quickly picked this bread challenge because I was planning to bake bread for a long time and somehow wasn't finding time to do that. I decided to take half the measurements in the recipe given. Didn't want to churn out huge loaves of Challah that no one wanted to eat you know! So decided to play safe and started the process just to find out that the yeast had expired. After 3 iterations, I just chucked it (almost half kg :-( ) and bought new yeast from the nearest supermarket and got cracking.

Before Proofing

After Proofing

Yummy crusty Challah

Easy Challah Recipe

(from templedavid.org)

Ingredients

4 cups (360 gm) all-purpose (plain) flour

1 cup (240 ml) warm water

1 package (2¼ teaspoons) package rapid rise yeast

½ (115 gm) cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. (6 gm) salt

1 egg beaten with 1 tsp. water

Directions:

1. Measure flour, sugar, and salt into a large mixing bowl.

2. In a separate bowl (or in the bowl of your stand mixer) combine water and yeast, allow to sit 5 minutes until foamy.

3. Add 1 ½ cups of the flour mixture to the water and yeast mixture, beat until well combined. Cover with a dishtowel, let stand 30 min.

4. Add two eggs to the dough, beat again.

5. By hand or with your dough hook knead in the remaining flour mixture. Knead approximately 10 minutes.

6. Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover, let rise one hour.

7. Punch down dough, knead approximately 3 minutes.

8. Divide dough in two. Shape each half as desired (3, 4, or 6 strand braid).

9. Place loaves on parchment covered or greased cookie sheets, cover with a towel, allow to rise one hour.

10. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

11. Brush loaves with egg wash.

12. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees, bake until golden crust forms (about 25-30 minutes).

13. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. 

Whole Wheat Plum Mini Cakes

I bought some plums the other day. Looked like they weren't ripe yet. The one I bit into was tart. I waited for 4 days to bake with it. I wanted to make something delicious but healthy at the same time. So imagine my pleasure when I came across a whole wheat plum cake recipe. Well, in no time, the plums were pitted, chopped and I was ready to bake my first plum cake.

I have made cakes with plain white sugar so far. I have used demerrera sugar in cookies but not in cakes. So, it was interesting that whole wheat coupled with demerrera came out surprisingly tasty. I hadn't expected the punch of flavour and texture from a wheat cake.. what's more, the plums were so tart that it it hits you when you bite into the rich flavoured cake. Maybe it is a good idea to chop them into smaller pieces next time.

While serving it is a good idea to heat the cake and serve it with vanilla ice cream. Yum combination!

Whole Wheat Plum Mini Cakes Recipe

Ingredients:

• 100g butter, room temperature,
• 100g brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 4-5 drops almond extract
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 50g almond meal
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 50ml buttermilk
• 5-6 plums, halved
• Low fat cream or ice cream to serve

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C. Lightly grease  10-12 individual muffin tins, or ramekins.
2. Beat butter and brown sugar until light and mousse like.
3. Add eggs, vanilla extract and almond extract and beat again.
4. On low-speed add both flours and baking soda and mix.
5. Fold in the buttermilk.
6. Divide batter between prepared tins. Top each with half a pitted plum, cut side up.
7. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 190C for about 35 minutes / until done.
8. Leave to cool in tins.
9. Loosen edges with a butter knife and turn out on serving platter. Serve with a drizzle of low at cream or vanilla ice cream.

Daring Bakers Challenge | Life of Pie - Classic Apple Pie

 Rachael from pizzarossa was our lovely June 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she had us whipping up delicious pies in our kitchens! Cream pies, fruit pies, chocolate pies, even crack pies! There’s nothing like pie! :)

Ingredients   
3 to 4 medium cooking apples
110 grams Cooking margarine /butter   
220 grams Plain flour
90 grams Normal sugar (amount depends on how sweet the apples are)   

Cooking Method

First, you need to make the pastry which will form the base and the top of the apple pie. 

Put the margarine/butter in a mixing bowl and pour in the flour.

Mix it all together with your hands until you have a crumbly texture.
This stage should only take a minute or so but it's one of the joys of making apple pie.   

Add 3 tablespoons of cold  water to the pastry and mix it. Then use your hands to mould the pastry mix into a ball (see picture). You can tell the mix is correct because the pastry ball will collect all the bits of pastry from the edge of the bowl leaving it almost clean!
Wrap the pastry ball in cling film and put it in the fridge to 'rest' for half an hour.
 
After half an hour, take the pastry from the fridge, and separate roughly two thirds of it. Roll the pastry out with a rolling pin so that it is large enough to line the base and sides of the pie dish. Use several sprinklings of flour on the rolling pin and the surface used for rolling the pastry.
Put the dish over the rolled pastry to make sure it is about the correct size (see picture).   

Now for a slightly complicated bit,
The idea is to pick up the rolled out pastry and put it in the dish to form the base of the apple pie.
First, lightly roll 50% or so of the flattened pastry over the rolling pin. Then support the rest with your hand and transfer it to top of the  dish.
Gently ease into the base of the  dish and firm it round the sides.   

If the pastry does break at all, it's not a disaster, just do your best to cover the base and sides. 
Then trim off the excess pastry from the top. Do this with the 'blunt' side of a knife - the blunt side is far less likely to tear the pastry.  
Turn your oven on now so that it's pre-heated ready to cook later on. Heat settings are 220°C / 425°F.
 
Now is the time to peel the cooking apples, cut them into quarters and then slice them. See the picture on the right for how fine to slice the apples.
Each quarter should produce roughly 8 to 10 slices. Accuracy is not so important. The thicker the slices, the more firm the apple mixture will be when it has been cooked.   

Place the apple slices into the pie bowl on top of the base pastry. 
Do this in three layers, scattering a one third of the sugar on each layer.
Using water and a pastry brush (or your wet fingers) dampen the top edge of the pastry. This will help the top pastry to attach firmly to it better.      

Take the remaining third of the pastry and roll it out with the rolling pin into a circle that is a little bit bigger than the top of the dish.

Transfer the rolled out pastry to the top of the pie using the rolling pin in the same way described for the base pastry.
Tuck the pastry down at the edge and remove the excess pastry using the blunt edge of a knife (see first picture which can be enlarged by clicking on it).
Using both hands, 'crimp' the pastry round the edge of the pie to obtain an attractive finish - enlarge photos 2 and 3 to see more clearly how we did it. 
Finally make 2 holes in the top of the pastry (see picture 3) to allow the steam to come out during cooking and prevent the top going soggy.
Lightly brush the top with a little milk to give it a light brown colour when cooked.
 
Put the apple pie in the pre-heated oven (220°C / 425°F) and leave it cooking at that temperature for 10 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 190C / 375F and cook for a further 40 minutes.
When it is cooked, leave to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving
Beware, apple pie can stay really hot for an hour or so.
Serve hot or cold with ice cream, cream or custard.