Deepawali Sweets - Ukkarai or Paruppu Puttu

Deepawali Sweets - Ukkarai or Paruppu Puttu

With Deepawali around the corner, a whole lot of sweets are getting prepared at home. Here is a very simple and yummy sweet. The UKKARAI also called (paruppu puttu) is a traditional sweet, which has an integral place in festival cooking. It is a protein rich dish prepared with lentils. Since it is steam cooked it is an appropriate sweet dish to go with breakfast.

Ingredients
Bengal gram dal – ½ cup
Green gram dal – ½ cup
Powdered jaggery – 1 cup
Cardamom – 2
Ghee – 1 tbsp
Cashew nuts – a few
Raisins - a few.


Method
1. Dry roast the dals together till they turn red and give out a pleasant aroma.
2. Wash and soak the roasted dals for 45 minutes.









3. Drain and grind the soaked dals into a coarse paste sprinkling a little water if necessary.










4. Steam the paste in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes and cool.
5. Break the steamed lump into pieces.
6. Heat ghee in a pan and roast the cashew nuts and raisins.
7. Add the lentil pieces and cook them on low fire until they crumble into a fine sand like texture, stirring now and then with a spatula.


8. In a separate pan, dissolve jaggery in one cup of water and strain.
9. Heat the jaggery water in another pan until it starts foaming to get a one string consistency.






10. Pour the jaggery syrup into the prepared dal and blend well.
11. If the UKKARAI becomes soggy you can put it on low flame and stir until you get the required texture.
12. Mix in powdered cardamom.






Relish it either hot or cold.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s close to two months since I baked something. Last two months we had lot of festivals. And finally after Navarathri, I wanted to bake something, before the preparations for Diwali begin. There were many bananas to be used up. So baked Dates Banana muffin during the last weekend. I didn’t use any all purpose flour or maida. The reason being it not available in my pantry. So used whole wheat flour/atta and 1/2 cup of arrowroot powder. It came out very well - moist and light. I expected a denser muffin. I think the arrowroot

powder contributed to the texture. This was my first bake where in APF is not used at all.  And I was really happy with the result. So I decided to try my luck with whole wheat cookies. On browsing for a suitable recipe, I found one at AllRecipes.  I tweaked it to suit my pantry and made it eggless too. Now I have a whole wheat cookie recipe. I think with this as base, you can work on it for different flavor and combinations of nuts etc.

Yields: 20 Nos.
Temp: 190 C
Time - 18 minutes


Ingredients


Butter - 1/2 Cup

White sugar - 1 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Flax seeds powder - 2 tspn

Water - 1/4 cup

Whole wheat flour/Atta - 1 1/2 cups

Baking powder - 1/2 tspn

Salt- 1/2 tspn

Chocolate chips - 1/4 cup



Method

Cream butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add vanilla essence and flax seeds powder  mixed in water.

Sift together wheat flour, baking powder and salt. Gently combine the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Mix until it’s just combined. Fold in the chocolate chip cookies. Don't knead. Just gather the dough together. Pinch off a lemon sized dough and shape it. I didn’t shape it much. Just flattened it little with a fork to get a rustic look.

Bake in a preheated oven at 190 c for 18 minutes or till you can find brown specs on top. Leave it on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Don't try to remove them immediately. It will be very soft and will harden on cooling. The cookies were crunchy. It is a treat to have with tea or a cup of milk.

I am taking these healthy cookies to the High Tea  hosted by Aparna as part of Meeta's Monthly Mingle

Durian Cake

I've got few boxes of durian in the freezer. Other than thinking to make some cream puff or ice cream. I would like to try out some new stuffs which I've not tried before. I ate a durian cake weeks ago bought from my neighbour, it's very delicious!

So, thinking to make it myself. I made a simple swiss roll sponge cake and cut them into very thin round shape to layer the cake. For the cream, I mixed 270g of durian flesh with 135g custard and folded in 200ml whipped cream. This is truly a rich and creamy durian cake. I didn't add gelatin for the mixture so it's a bit runny, however it set after sitting in the fridge for few hours.

I would like to try out a next batch with gelatin one to find out the difference. Perhaps adding some gelatin would be easier to do the decoration. For the simple one, this batch is very yummy indeed! Must do it again for some celebration party.

How I made it:

Ingredients for a thin sponge 28 x 35cm: 4 eggs / 80g sugar / 67g plain flour:

Place the eggs and vanilla extract into a bowl. Gradually add in sugar and whisk until pale and thickened. Sift the flour into the bowl and fold together. Pour the sponge mixture into a baking tray with baking paper and bake for 10 minutes at 200'C preheated oven. Place the cooked sponge on a wire rack and place the sponge together with the wire rack into a plastic bag for cooling down.

Ingredients for custard: 2 egg yolks / 133ml milk / 40g sugar / 13g flour / 1 tsp vanilla extract / 6g butter / 2 tsp Rum (optional):

Mix the egg yolks with two teaspoon of milk in a bowl until well combined. Then, mix in the flour and make sure there is no lumps. Place the milk in a saucepan with vanilla extract and sugar, bring to the boil. Once the sugar dissolve in the milk, gradually pour onto the eggs mixture and stir then pour back into the pan. Return to the heat and using a whisk, lightly stir the mixture to thicken, do not boil. As the egg yolks warm, it will thicken to create custard. Keep stirring until it coats the back of the spoon. Remove from the heat and keep stirring and add in the butter. When the custard slightly warm add in rum. Pour the custard into a shallow bowl and cover with cling wrap. Place it into the fridge when it completely cool down and ready to use.

To assemble, blend 270g durian flesh (you could add more if you like) and 135 custard just combine. Don't over blend the mixture. Whip 200ml of fresh cream and fold it into the durian mixture. Put the durian cream into a piping bag and refrigerate for 1 hour. Use a 6cm cake rings or round mould to cut out 21 pieces of round sponge. Place a piece of transparent cake paper around each cake rings and fit in a sponge cake then generously pipe in the durian cream. Place another layer of sponge and pipe in the cream again. Finally add the remaining durian cream on the top and let it sit in the fridge for 3 hours.

Remove the cake rings and transparent paper. Ya, look around the see anyone around and now you could lick the transparent paper. Enjoy!