Baked Apples with Ice Cream

We had some Friends home for the weekend, So lot of Fruits. Jus using them all in all forms i could. Had Squeezed some fresh Orange Juice yesterday. HomeMade is always Heavenly!!!!

Got some Apples too, I was going thru Kids Health Website Got this recipe there.

It was easy and less time consuming, so, i got to work immediately

Ingredients
1 apple, cored

2 tbsp. raisins
½ c. light vanilla ice cream
pinch of cinnamon

Method

Take a cored apple and cut it in half. Sprinkle raisins over the apple. Place on a baking sheet and bake it in the oven for 15 minutes at 350° Fahrenheit (176° Celsius).

Remove the sheet from the oven and put a pinch of cinnamon over each apple half.Place the ice cream over the apple halves and serve.

The original recipe is for one apple, i tried with two and increased the time to 30 minutes. Came out good.

Try sprinkling some brown sugar over the apples before baking. It tastes great.

For a Kids Version of the recipe, Peel and cut it into thin slices add cinnamon and brown sugar, raisins and bake for the given time.

Will post pictures for the kids version soon.

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