Many of you requested me to post Christmas special food here, but I am a person who has neither celebrated it at my home nor did I meet anyone who has celebrated it. Christmas to me was always confined to the beautiful arrangements made in every corner of my native town. When I went to do my bachelors, all my cooking was confined to easy-to-do mix and match food, so no special christmas food there. Then while working in Bangalore, I used to be so tired after coming home from work that, I never celebrated any festivals – not even the festivals I was used to. It is after coming to US, through all other food blogs and through the celebrations going around, I have started to take interest in western festival food. But unfortunately, with so many things going on in my life at this moment, I cannot spend any time to read and understand about it. I am sure I will do it by next year’s Christmas.
One of you asked me for the recipe of plum cake. I got few recipes online or in library, but could not try them yet and I don’t post anything here unless I try it myself. When I was searching for it sometime back, I got this plum-streusel cake recipe . I changed it so that I could make this cake with whatever ingredients I had at home. This cake is not very sweet and the streusel gives it a crunchy topping.
Ingredients: Struesel: ¾ cup sugar (I used pure cane sugar) 3 tbl spn all purpose flour or maida 2 tea spn cinnamon powder ¼ tea spn salt 2 tbl spn softened butter ½ cup chopped walnuts
Cake: 8 halved and pitted pulms ¼ cup sugar(for coating plums) 1 tea spn baking powder 1 cup all purpose flour or maida ¾ cup sugar 3 tbl spn softened butter 1 egg ½ cup milk
Method: Mix all the ingredients of streusel to get a consistency shown below.
Mix ¼ cup sugar with plums till they are well coated with sugar.
Blend sugar and butter. When it is well mixed, add egg and blend again. Now add milk and mix well. Mix sifted all purpose flour or maida, baking powder slowly by mixing continuously. Grease a oven proof baking pan. (I used medium loaf pan for this). Spread half of the cake batter in the pan.
Spread half the streusel on it.
Spread 8 plum halves on top.
Spread remaining cake batter on top.
Spread remaining streusel and then plums.
Bake in the middle rack of the preheated oven(300F) for 30-40mins or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Wrap remaining cake with a silver foil before refrigerating them.
Makes 8 big pieces Preparation time : 1hr.
Lesson learnt: The plum halves are bit hard to cut after baking. So chop them finely or make slices lengthwise and use.
I don’t cook sweets very frequently. But when I cook, I have few favorites. This khichdi is one of them. There are many ways of making this dish, this is my Aayi’s recipe for khichdi .
At my home, sweet was prepared only during festivals and other special occasions. So this khichdi was a festival food for me. I think this is served in semi solid form in some places, but Aayi would cut them into square pieces and serve with ghee. They tasted simply amazing. I love eating this with ghee and little bit of mango pickle (I don’t have sweet tooth and to eat any sweet I need some spice with it :)). Ingredients: 1 cup yellow moong daal 1 cup cooked rice 1 cup grated coconut(fresh or frozen) 1 cup jaggery 2 tbl spn ghee ½ tea spn cardamom powder 1 tbl spn cashews(optional) Method: Heat ghee and add moong daal , cashews. Fry for around 2-3mins. Add ½ cup water and cook till moong daal is completely done.
Now add cooked rice, coconut and jaggery. Cook till jaggery is completely melted and mixed with all other ingredients – takes around 5-6 mins if powdered jaggery is used, if the jaggery pieces are used,they take a bit more time to melt.
Now remove from heat, add cardamom powder and mix well. Grease a plate with ghee.
Pour the mixture on it and spread evenly. When it is cooled to room temperature, cut into desired shape and serve with ghee.
Serves : 4-5 Preparation time : 20mins
PS: Instead of cooked rice, raw rice can be used and it is cooked along with daal . But that method takes a long time for rice to cook. Do not add jaggery before daal is completely cooked.
