Saturday, April 21, 2012

Flapjack

Our second Saturday baking club is today!

We made flapjack
Super easy and great for the kids
Twin one said when it was ready to go in the oven, 'Is that it?'


Flapjack


8oz butter
4oz dried fruit
1 tbsp syrup
8oz oats
6oz soft brown sugar
4oz plain flour


Melt the butter in a large pan
add all the other ingredients and mix well
put into a greased baking tin and press in
bake in a 170C oven for 30 minutes.


Voila!

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Raspberry Chocolate Brownies

I like magazine subscriptions, often they are cheaper and i don't forget to but it so never miss one. My favourite food magazine is Good Food. Here I will share some of my favourite recipes from Good Food magazine.

Raspberry Chocolate Brownies 

7oz dark chocolate
4oz milk chocolate
9oz butter
14oz soft light brown sugar
4 eggs
5oz plain flour
2oz cocoa powder
7oz raspberries


Preheat oven to 170C fan
Line a baking tray with baking parchment
Melt butter chocolate and sugar in a pan


Remove from heat and allow to cool
Stir in the eggs


Sieve in the flour and cocoa and stir in


Stir in half the raspberries
Pour into prepared tray and scatter over remaining raspberries


Bake for 30-35 minutes.
Cool and cut into squares



Its's all about Pressure Cooking!!

We are all familiar about how important pressure cookers are in Indian cooking. It is one of the very important things in our kitchen on which we are completely dependent. In India, the leading pressure cooker brands are Prestige and Hawkins.


This blog post is just a brief review on both the pressure cookers. Prestige pressure cookers have been one of the leading brands in South India. They are outer lid pressure cookers. Recently,they have also introduced inner lid pressure cookers. They have introduced many lines of cookers based on different materials they are manufactured from. The most used model is the prestige popular pressure cooker. A new line called prestige deluxe is equally good. Ideally stainless steel pressure cookers are the best. Hard anodized pressure cookers are in demand today due to its excellent non stick properties and minimal to no wear and tear. One more successful model of prestige pressure cookers is the handi model. It is very useful model and we can use it like the regular handi's to make main gravy dishes. All the models look very nice and are very safe to use.


For all living outside India, make sure you buy enough spare parts of the models you have at home. The important spare parts are the safety valve, weights, steam vent (whole assembly) and gaskets. Handles are also available as spare parts and are very handy to keep.


Hawkins Pressure cookers are also one of the leading brand. Many find it useful but some find that the inner lid locking is a little tricky and cumbersome. They are long lasting and have a very good safety locking mechanism. The hawkins company have quite good models like the classic model, contura and futura model. They also have hard anodized and stainless steel versions. I personally like the contura model a lot. I own one too. Futura model is classy and looks very sleek.

Pressure cooking is very energy efficient and time-saving. It is advisable to invest in a good pressure cooker of your choice. Pressure cooking with separators makes cooking faster and multiple things can be cooked simultaneously. Separator cooking is supposed to be one of the healthier ways to cook food. 


Pressure cooking is a method of cooking in a sealed vessel that does not permit air or liquids to escape below a preset pressure. Since the boiling point of water increases as the pressure rises, the pressure built up inside the vessel allows the liquid to rise to a higher temperature before boiling (wikipedia).
So this was a short write up about pressure cookers. We can have a discussion on which pressure cooker models you all use and which one did you find the best. Please do leave all your comments or you can even e-mail me at gayu.kitchen@gmail.com.


Hope to see you all again with a new blog post. Till then, bye and take care..