I have been baking a lot these days. Usually I bake cakes for my husband’s evening snacks. He simply loves these cakes and I get to experiment a lot. I can say my baking skills have improved in last few days :D.
We have a library near our apartment. I go there to study(??) sometimes. Instead of getting bored at home, last week I thought to spend some 4-5hrs in library. I went there with my technical book and after sometime I could not resist reading the recipe books there. I picked few books, one on cookies, one on pie and the other on cakes. So when going through “ The good cookie by Tish Boyle â€, I saw these cute tea cakes. I had bought a muffin pan few days back, so tried these. This turned out to be one of the best cakes I have ever prepared. I did few modifications to it. Here is the recipe that I followed.
Ingredients: 1 cup almonds ¾ cup sugar 3/4 tea spn baking powder 2 eggs 5 tbl spn unsalted butter 3 tbl spn all purpose flour or maida 12 raspberries
Method: Place the almonds and sugar in blender/mixer and grind till they form a coarse powder. Transfer to a mixing bowl and add egg, melted butter, flour, baking powder and blend till it firms a uniform batter. Grease a muffin pan. Pour the batter in muffin cups till 2/3rd full. Keep one raspberry in each cup.
Bake in preheated oven at 350 F for around 20mins or till a knife inserted comes out clean.
When they are cooled, remove them from the pan carefully.
Makes 12 muffins preparation time : 40mins
PS: I want to send this to Nandita’s Christmas special WBB , though these are not related to Christmas. Let me see if she accepts these.
Kosambir or kosambari or koshimbir are no-cooking, mix and match recipes with raw vegetables/lentils, are healthy and easy to make. I love to eat these occasionally when I become all health conscious and also when I don’t want to cook any complicated dishes.
When I was doing my bachelors in Belgaum, I used to go to my friend’s house to study. There I used to have one of the most amazing meals. My friend’s grandmom, Mrs Diwan , is a great cook. I absolutely loved her cooking. Though I liked all her dishes, her festival food was the best. I wish I had so much interest in cooking that time, I would have written down all her recipes. She used to prepare a moong daal kosambir which I absolutely loved. I don’t have her recipe with me, but I prepared this last week and it came out too good. This is my Aayi’s recipe.
See Vaishali’s version of this .
Ingredients: ½ cup yellow moong daal 1 tea spn grated coconut(optional) ½ cup grated carrot(optional) ½ cup grated cucumber(optional) 1 tbl spn lemon juice 3-4 green chilies 2-3 coriander leaves A pinch asafoetida(optional) ½ tea spn oil 1 red chili 4-5 curry leaves Salt
Method: Soak daal for around 1hr. Discard the water and add carrot, cucumber, coconut, slitted green chilies to it. Add salt, lemon juice, chopped coriander leaves and mix well. Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add curry leaves, asafoetida and red chili broken into pieces. Mix well.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 10mins
