Strawberry Griddle Cakes for a Fancy Breakfast

Yes, I know it’s another recipe with strawberries back to back. But I have so many in my fridge that I need to use them and use them in innovative ways! (lest the co-resident realize my evil plan of ‘waste to wealth’). I have a supermarket weakness. If something looks fresh, is in season and the store has a buy one get one free offer – I’m hooked. Rest assured, I will be carting loads of it back home! Come on now, who doesn’t like a good bargain? Thankfully Strawberries are such accommodating fruit that you can pair them with almost anything and achieve success. Now coming to Griddle cakes. First of all, don’t let the name take you on a wild goose chase. Another name for a frying pan is a griddle and griddle cakes are nothing but pancakes that are just a little firmer. So you can call them Strawberry pancakes if you please… but I much prefer the fancier sounding name. (Fools the co-resident into thinking he’s getting something radical to chew on!) I served the Griddle cakes with some strawberries in wine instead of the routine ‘drizzle the pancake syrup on’. And since that means I’m having wine for breakfast, it automatically becomes a fancy brekkie! (Ok, so I have low expectations…Sue me!)

Strawberry Griddle Cakes with Strawberries steeped in Wine

Prep time: 30 mins + cooling time

Serves: 4

What you need:

125 gms self raising Flour

1 pinch Cinnamon and Salt

½ tsp Baking Powder

30 gms Castor Sugar

1 Egg

1 Lemon, juice of

125 ml Milk

150 gms fresh Strawberries, diced

Salted Butter

For the Strawberries in Wine:

200ml Rose Wine

1 tsp Vanilla essence

50 gms Castor Sugar

200 gms fresh Strawberries, sliced

What to do:

To make the Strawberries in Wine: Heat the wine and sugar in a large pan until the sugar dissolves. Bring the liquid to a boil toss in the strawberries, take off the heat. Add the vanilla essence, cover the pan and set aside for the fruit to steep in the liquid until cool.

To make the griddle cakes: Sift the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar. Make a well in the center and tip in the egg, milk and lemon juice to make a batter. Add the diced strawberries to the mix. Mix well till small bubbles appear on the surface of the batter.

Heat a non stick frying pan and add a little salted butter. Add spoonfuls of the batter to the pan to make small thick pancakes. Cook on medium heat until bubbles start to appear on the surface of the griddle cakes – about 2 or 3 mins. Flip and continue to cook for another 2-3 mins. Repeat with the rest. Serve warm with the wine steeped strawberries.

Note: If cooking in batches, keep the cooked ones warm in a low oven while you finish the rest.

Strawberry Milkshake and My 100th Post

It’s my 100^th post today. I can’t believe I had enough material to go this far (apparently I do!) Bloggers say that lasting the 2 years is the biggest challenge. You need to be interested in what you blog about and let’s face it, people need to be interested in what you write about. You might say that you give a rat’s ass about what people think…but that’s not true. You need an audience to appreciate art. (Ok, in my case … the art of blabbering!) If nothing else, I have at least 100 failsafe recipes that I can always fall back on! I’ve also come to realize that I care as much,  (if not more) about my pictures that accompany each blog post. So the journey for me has been about taking baby steps to produce pics that I am proud of. (Here’s the link to my first post and picture. (Click Here) No, am not ashamed, it’s a learning curve right?) :P

Talking of learning curves, was I going to put up some insurmountable culinary challenge as my 100^th post? Hell No! Most of the inspiring recipes for me are ones that you look at and decide instantly, “I can make that …tonight or right now”. It’s recipes that look simple and delicious and goad you into thinking that you can create them with a flourish of your hand. So here’s the Strawberry Smoothie recipe. No fuss, all Love!

P.S. Thanks for stopping by…

Strawberry Smoothie

Prep time: 10 mins

Serves: 2

What you need:

200 gms fresh Strawberries

400 ml of Milk, cold

2 scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream

2 Tbsp of Sugar

What to do:

Take the green tops off the strawberries (he he he!), Wash them under running water. Toss them in a blender with the Sugar and whir around for 3 mins till you get a lovely red puree. Now Add the ice cream in and blend for 1 min. Finish by adding the milk in and run the blender for 2 more mins till you get a nice and frothy mix. Check for sweetness. (you can add more sugar if you want at this point – what are you like carzy??)

Pour into a tall glass and enjoy making a milk mustache!

I love this pic below... Something about it makes me feel like I'm floating on a cloud :)

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Once you get the basics right then everything else is a breeze. My first cupcake was a vanilla cupcake. Somehow adding the chocolate as an additional step made it feel like advanced baking! Now here’s the best part. I made my first cupcake (in my whole life) in March last year! After which I've been stuck with the cupcake bug and been driven to try all kinds of mini joys. So now you know that I wasn’t born with a ladle in my hand nor did I have supreme baking talent. The key to success is the 3P’s - Practice, Practice, Practice! (Like the joke - Rumor is that a pedestrian on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz (the greatest violinist of our time) and inquired, "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" "Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice, Practice, Practice!" So there you go … if I can bake, so can you. And starting you off is this Basic Vanilla Cupcake Recipe. And just to add some pizzazz, we have a nice and easy Nutella frosting. Have fun!

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

Prep time: 10 mins

Baking time: 20 mins

Makes: 10-12 cupcakes

What you need:

½ cup unsalted Butter, room temperature

2/3 cup granulated Sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1½ cups Maida or cake flour

1½ tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp Salt

¼ cup Milk, room temperature

For the frosting:

5 Tbsp Nutella

2 Tbsp Milk

What to do:

For best results,  follow the method in the given sequence as is. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degree C. Grease or line your muffin tin with paper cups. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. This ensures that all the three dry ingredients mix evenly and removes lumps.

With an electric mixer or hand mixer, beat the butter for 1-2 minutes. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Start with a low speed and increase to high speed. This process incorporates maximum air bubbles, making the cupcakes, soft and airy.

Add the room temperature eggs, one at a time. Beat the mixture until smooth after each egg, about 30 seconds. If the mixture curdles, stop adding the eggs, beat until smooth before adding the remaining eggs. If you do not add room temperature eggs, the volume of the baked cupcakes will reduce. Add the vanilla extract. Beat for 2 minutes.

Now slowly beat the sifted dry ingredients into the mixture in three batches, adding the room temperature milk between each flour batch. Start and end with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as required, and ensure that the batter is evenly mixed. Do not over beat.

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Fill ½ to 2/3 of the cups in the first muffin tin. Bake for 17-20 minutes. Insert a toothpick into one of the cupcakes in the oven and ensure it comes out clean. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

Now beat the Nutella with the milk until you have the consistency of hot fudge. Pipe or spread the frosting on the cupcakes once they have cooled completely. Simple and delish!

P.S. Click here for another version of the vanilla cupcakes. This current recipe makes a lighter, fluffier cupcake, whereas the older one is more moist. Take your pick J

Ham, Bacon and Green Apple Quiche

So today has been a frustrating day. I made a cheese cake which did not set and made a Mexican Chicken Mole which had too much cinnamon! And on a hot day tempers can flare everywhere! Clearly some days are not for culinary adventure or rather just any culinary venture. Every woman who rushes home from work and still wants to whip up a fancy meal a la Nigella, is living in a dream world if she doesn’t have failsafe recipes to fall back on! It’s times like these that I have even more reverence for a good recipe, a blogger who tests the recipe and finally a book that publishes only tried and tested recipes. That is why you can be rest assured I am not putting up dubious recipes on my blog. I don’t want to inflict the pain of failure on anyone. (No, seriously, that’s how it feels when a recipe screws up!) So it’s with supreme confidence that I am posting the Ham, Bacon and Green Apple recipe. It worked liked a charm, tasted supremely good and was a breeze to make. Now who doesn’t want that in their repertoire?

Ham, Bacon and Green Apple Quiche

(Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food India, Jan 2012)

Prep time: 20 mins

Baking time: 25 mins

Serves: 4

What you need:

8 Ham slices

8 Bacon slices

½ Green Apple, halved and sliced

2 Eggs

200ml Cream (I used Amul)

1 large Onion, sliced

A pinch of Nutmeg

1 cup dried Breadcrumbs

50 gms Butter, salted

6 Sage leaves, chopped finely

Handful of grated parmesan

Salt and Pepper to taste

What to do:

Put the breadcrumbs and softened butter in a food processor and mix till you get wet pasty crumbs. Now empty the contents into a 8 or 9 inch flan/pie dish and press the mixture to coat the bottom and sides. Pat down with your fingers to get an even layer and use your knuckles to push the mixture into the sides. Cover with cling film and toss into the refrigerator to chill while you make the quiche mixture.

Stack the ham slices up and cut into large squares. Chop the Bacon into strips and cut the apple and onion into slices. Add the bacon to a large skillet and sauté over low heat to render the fat. Cook until the bacon just begins to crisp. Now add the onions and sauté in the bacon fat, then add the apple slices and sauté till both turn translucent.

Add the cream and bring to a simmer, season with salt and pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Remove the skillet from the fire and let it cool for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. In the meantime, beat the eggs. Now add the eggs to the skillet and mix well into the sauce. Take the pie dish out of the fridge. It should look dry. Pour the contents of the skillet into the baking dish and sprinkle sage leaves on top. Bake at 180°C for 20 mins in the center rack of the oven. Now remove from the oven, sprinkle grated parmesan on top and return to bake for another 5 mins till the crust looks golden brown.

Serve hot immediately or chill overnight, cut into neat wedges and serve at room temperature or warm. I served mine with a nice green salad with balsamic dressing for a fantastic mid week meal!

Cafe Frappe with Bailey's

I am not a coffee drinker. (Phew! That was almost as difficult as admitting that you have an alcohol problem!) Coming from the state of coffee growers - Karnataka, (my brother-in-law even owns a coffee plantation), I am quite an anomaly. When I go to visit my relatives or friends and they offer me a cup of coffee, I’d rather say I just had a meal, than admit I don’t drink coffee. On the rare occasion that I do tell someone, they look at me like I am some sort of space alien and repeat the question till I give in. There… now their world is sane again! So why don’t I drink coffee? I like to believe that I already have so much energy, that I don’t need the buzz from coffee. I also never appreciated the bitter taste of coffee and sweetened it till it started to taste like sugar syrup! Now coming to the big question, If I don’t like coffee, why do I have a recipe for Café Frappe on my blog?? I like to think of Café Frappe as a non-coffee… more like a little chilled dessert. I get all nostalgic thinking about the first Cyber Café’s that opened in Bangalore in 1997. They used to serve Café Frappe – a foam covered iced coffee drink. It was all the rage then. Every single teenager worth their salt would hang out in a Cyber Café and sip Café Frappe! It was tres cool. And obviously I wanted to fit in, so I would order in anyway and sip it so slowly that no one would realize I hadn’t finished it by the time we left the place. Replicating this at home was quite simple; the nostalgic feeling came sweeping back! And then to get back to the present, I added a shot of baileys to my second glass… Isn’t it fun being an adult? :P

Café Frappe with Baileys

Prep time: 10 mins

Serves: 2

What you need:

1 ¾ cup Cold Milk

½ cup Ice Cubes

2 Tbsp Instant Coffee Powder (I used Nescafe Classic)

½  cup water

4 Tbsp Sugar

60 ml Bailey’s Irish cream Liqueur

To Serve:

1 cup fresh whipped cream or canned whipped cream

½ tsp Instant coffee powder

1 Tbsp Chocolate sauce

What to do:

Brew 2 Tbsp coffee powder with 1/2 cup boiling water. Set aside to cool/ refrigerate.

Blend milk, brewed coffee and sugar in a blender till you get a foamy, creamy texture. Pour in the baileys and whip for 5 seconds.

To serve: Divide the ice cubes between two glasses. Now hold the serving glass in your hand, take half a tbsp of chocolate sauce (I used Hersheys) and let it dribble onto the inner walls of the glass. Slowly fill the glass with the cold coffee leaving about an inch on top. Top this with whipped cream and sprinkle some coffee powder onto it. Serve with a straw and spoon to eat up the whipped cream. Restaurant style Cafe Frappe with a bailey hit!

P.S. For an U18 version you can just skip the baileys, it still tastes good!

Note: I used ready whipping cream (Toplite)  but you can make fresh whipped cream at home by beating a cup of heavy whipping cream and 1/4 cup of sugar using an electric mixer until a stiff creamy texture is formed. Add this to your icing cone and top your cold coffee. Feel free to adjust the sugar level and black coffee according to your taste.