Homemade Silky Chocolate Pudding

All these days I never thought of making chocolate pudding at home until I saw my kids fighting for one. I don’t know when my boy started liking them because he used to hate it, kids likes and dislikes keep on changing, its hard to know. I promised them to make one at home and luckily I had a chocolate bar in my pantry which I got it to make homemade almond chocolate.
When I told my boy I am making chocolate pudding, he said, “ Make it different than usual like topping it with ice cream” since I didn’t have a vanilla flavored ice cream in my freezer I gave him topped with whip cream and some sprinkler and my kids really loved it. There is nothing like home made chocolate pudding with its silky smooth texture and a wonderful chocolate flavor.

Ingredients
Semi-Sweet chocolate bar – 4oz
Sugar – 1 cup
Whole milk – 2 and ½ cup
Cornstarch – ¼ cup
Salt – 1/8 tsp
Vanilla extract – 1 tsp
Whip cream and some sprinkler for topping (optional)

Method
Mix cornstarch, sugar and salt in a pan and add milk to it slowly and whisk it until its lump free. Place it over a boiling water(double boiler method) and stirring occasionally.
After 15 mins, when the mixture starts thickening add the chocolate and continue stirring for 3 to 4 mins and remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract.
Pour the pudding in the serving cup and cover the pudding by placing the plastic wrap directly inside the cup over the pudding; this prevents from developing a pudding skin on the top.
Refrigerate for an hour and serve it topped with whip cream and sprinklers. Enjoy!! 

Gooey Chocolate Cookie and Merry Christmas

This is the recipe of food network chef Paula Deen and I followed the exact way it says and this one is really wonderful dessert. My boy is not a frosting lover but he loves chocolate cake and this one is for him the way he likes the chocolate cake and to add more, its gooey which also he likes. When I first said just the name of the recipe to him, he was full of excitement and he could not wait and he wanted me to make it immediately. The recipe goes like we got mix all the ingredients and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hrs for make it little harder and in that 3 hrs my boy would have opened the fridge and checked on the dough for nearly 20 times, telling me its harden enough to bake …hmmm he loves chocolate soo much. For me nothing can make me happier than watching my kids enjoying the food what I prepare and I got that happiness in this recipe. Just two days it’s all finished not a single speck is left and now he wants more and started asking me to bake again.

Ingredients
Chocolate cake mix – 1 packet (use any kind of chocolate cake)
Cream Cheese – 1 packet / 8 oz
Butter – 1 stick (room temperature)
Vanilla essence – 1tsp
Egg – 1
Powdered sugar – 1 cup

Method
Mix cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl using a hand mixer or power mixer.
Add the egg and vanilla essence and mix.
Add the whole packet of chocolate cake mix and mix and this will hard dough and don’t add any of water or milk to it.
Refrigerate this mixture for 2 to 3 hrs.
Pre-heat oven to 350*F
Once the dough is harden enough, roll them to small balls and coat them with the powdered sugar and place in the cookie sheet and bake them for 10 mins in the oven.
That’s it the tasty and yummy gooey chocolate cookie is ready. It will be harder outside and gooey inside. Enjoy!!

                                       Happy Holiday to all !!!

Priya from http://recipes-priya.blogspot.com/ has passed on this award to me and I would like to share this with all my fellow bloggers, please everyone collect it.

Streusel Topped Pumpkin pie

I made this pumpkin pie for our thanksgiving feast, first of all I had no intension of celebrating thanksgiving but my son said we should have a special meal on thanksgiving day but I tried to convince him that its not our tradition but he replied once we are here in US, we got to follow their tradition too and I had nothing to say rather than agreeing with him and that’s how I ended up making a special feast on thanksgiving day but I refused to make turkey and substituted with smaller bird chicken and made it the Indian tandoor way and I also made mashed potato, gravy, baked an Italian bun and steam cooked plain sweet peas and one food that really stood out is the pumpkin pie.
This the best pumpkin pie I have ever tasted (I haven’t tasted any before), I made this for the first time and I got the recipe from the ehow.com website and once again I say baking is always easy and comes out good if follow the exact measurement and it that case this recipe was a great success. My hubby loved it and he almost licked his spoon. Streusel is a kind of crumb topping made with some nuts that goes on top of the pumpkin pie, which gives a wonderful twist to the taste.

Ingredients
Pumpkin Puree – 1 can
Sweetened condensed milk – 1 can
Pie Crust – 1
Egg – 2
Ground Cinnamon – 1 tsp
Ground Nutmeg – 1 tsp
Salt – ½ tsp

For streusel topping
Brown Sugar – ¼ Cup
All purpose flour – 2 tsp
Walnut or pecan – ½ Cup chopped
Butter – 2 tbsp
Ground Cinnamon – 1tsp

Method
Pre-heat Oven to 425*F
Separate yolk and white.
In a large mixing bowl, combine pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, eggs yolk, spices, and salt and blend well.
In a separate bowl, beat well the egg white until you get a stiff peak and fold the egg white into the pumpkin mixture. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and place the crust on the cookie pan and bake in the oven for 15 mins.
For streusel topping, combine brown sugar, flour, walnut or pecan, cinnamon and butter, note that butter should be used directly from fridge not melted, use your hands to mash the butter and mix with all ingredients.
After pie is baked for 15 mins, reduce the oven temp to 350*F .
Top the pie with the streusel and bake in the oven again for 40 mins.
Cool for 1 hour and refrigerate for 3 hours before serving, serve with whipped cream.

Lemon Soufflé

Soufflé is a light and fluffy French cake made basically with combining egg yolk and beaten egg whites with other ingredients.
I can't believe I making a dish from a food network channel, usually I think they make only fancy foods, which is very far from my reach, but this one I felt very interesting and quite easy for a amateur baker like me and not to my surprise this dish also came out really good. I used lemon juice and lemon zest (grated lemon skin) hoping it would give a nice fresh taste and it did actually but only disappointment is that my boy didn’t like the lemon flavor and said its very lemony, promised him will do chocolate version next time.

Ingredients
Freshly squeezed Lemon juice – ¼ Cup
Lemon Zest – 1 tsp (Grated outer lemon skin)
Eggs – 2 (Separated)
Milk – 2/3 Cup
Flour – ¼ Cup
Sugar – 2/3 Cup
Salt – ¼ tsp
For Baking You’ll Need
Ramekin or Soufflé bowl or I used small cake pan - 3 or 4
Big rectangular Cake pan just in a size to fit the small cake pans

Method

•  Pre-heat oven to 350*F. Boil 3 Cups of water.
•  Separate egg yolk from egg white and make sure not even a single drop of yolk falls in the white, if  so  repeat the process again.
•  Combine egg yolk, milk, juice, zest, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add the flour and mix well.
•  In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until you get a stiff peak, better to use a power mixer.
•  Add the egg white to the yolk mixer and fold slowly, don’t mix it as it would loose all the aeration in the white.
•  Butter the soufflé bowl and add the sugar and coat evenly by rotating the bowl slowly and repeat this for all the bowls.
•  Pour the mixture evenly on all the bowls and this is not gonna raise.
•  Fill half way of the big cake pan with hot water and place the soufflé bowl in the water.
•  Bake for 30 mins or until the top turns light golden brown.
•  When done, allow to cool down and gently invert into a plate and enjoy..

 

Pumpkin Muffins and My First Award

After visiting the pumpkin patch last week, we came home with three big pumpkins, a pumpkin for a ticket, thank God no ticket for my girl. Pumpkin is not much liked dish at home so kept without using it for a week, not even jack-o-lantern this time as we went after the halloween no one was interested in it, but this week end my boy suggested to do pumpkin muffins and he was soooo excited to help me out. It took lot of time to prepare the puree first, better way is to use the store bought one if you don't have the pumpkin. I didn't have any pumpkin muffin recipe handy so I had to google and it gave lots of recipes as usual and I had difficulty in choosing one and at last I adapted to the recipe from  thepioneerwoman.com site. My pumpkin puree which I made at home was not too thick so my muffins didn't puffed up as it is should be, never mind the taste was excellent, thanks to the pioneerwoman. 

  

Ingredients

All Purpose Flour - 1 Cup

Sugar - 1/2 Cup

Baking Powder - 2 tsp

Cinnamon Powder - 1 tsp

Ginger Powder - 1/4 tsp

Nutmeg Powder - 1/4 tsp

Salt - 1/2 tsp

Butter - 4 tbsp

Pumpkin Puree - 1 Cup

Egg - 1

Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Milk - 1/2 Cup

Method
Combine all the dry ingredients flour, Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, sugar and salt together along with melted butter in a mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl mix together pumpkin puree, egg, vanilla essence and milk.
Pour the pumkin mixture into the flour mixture and combine both well.
Pre-heat oven to 400*F and grease the muffin pan.
Fill the muffin pan to 1/2 to 3/4 with the batter. 
Sprinkle  sugar or cinnamon or mix sugar and cinnamon on each muffin.

Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 mins.

Serve with some whip cream or just plain taste very good.

Babli from http://khanamasala.blogspot.com/ has hourned me by passing on my these awards , thanks Babli for that.

Ada Pradhaman

This is my hubby's favorite and this is one of the few dishes he asked me to prepare and unfortunately I couldn't make it immediately when he asked, actually I planned to prepare this on the special occasion "diwali" but some how got delayed and I made him at last yesterday. We usually prepare this dish with sugar but my friend who is a keralite suggested  me to do with jaggery and as this is a typical kerala dish I took her advice and prepared with jaggery, the it tasted excellent with jaggery, my hubby loved it. I don't prepare this dish often and even on special occasions I have being avoiding this dish just because this dish takes lot of coconut milk but can't avoid when hubby dear ask for it. 

Ingredients
Rice Ada - 1cup
Jaggery - 2 cups
Coconut - 1 and 1/2 cup shredded  
Extract the milk from coconut
First extract /thick milk - 2 cups
Second extract/thin milk - 3 cups
Cardamom Powder - 1/2 tsp
Raisins - 1 tsp
Cashew - 1 tsp
Coconut pieces - 1 tsp
Ghee - 2 tsp

Method
Boil 2 cups of water and add the ada pieces and cook until soft and drain and keep aside.
Boil 1/2 cup of water in a separate bowl and add the jaggery and stir well until its melt.
Add the cooked ada pieces to the jaggery and mix well and then add the second extract milk and cook in low flame until it becomes thick. 
Now add the first extract milk and mix well, don't boil it just heat it and add cardamom powder and remove from the stove. 
Fry cashew, raisins and coconut pieces in ghee and add to it. 
Enjoy this delicious ada pradhaman!!!

Rasmalai and Happy Diwali

Diwali greetings to Everyone !!!
In India, its festival time, everyone would be busy shopping for the diwali. A total celebration time and its the only time of the year you forget about the weighing scale, don't bother about calorie, after all its only once a year you can enjoy these religious food without guilt. Visiting relatives house,  you would be greeted with a plate full of sweets and savories which you can't avoid, so this is the time you should almost delete the word "calorie" from your mind. The total atmosphere in India is full of joy and happiness as you see people wearing new clothes, distributing sweets, bursting firecrackers are always fun and you have to be in India to feel that. Unfortunately we could not visit India for diwali and this is fifth concecutive year we are missing diwali in India. 
Here in US, even on diwali day some one has to remind us its diwali, no fireworks, no relatives, no different variety of sweets, no diwali special shopping, no new movies ....endless list. There could be fireworks at temple where you can only watch them. During these times I feel really guilty about my kids missing all these diwali funs.   
I am not good at making sweets but to bring some diwali atmosphere at home I made the kaju katli- a one easy sweet recipe but that didn't come out the way it should, so I made my all time only favorite sweet Rasmalai. I made the easy way, bought the rasagulla tin from indian store and made the rasmalai from it.

Ingredients
Rasagulla - 1 tin
Milk - 3 cups
Sugar to taste
Saffron - 1tsp
Cardamom Powder - 1/2 tsp
Pistachio chopped - 3 tsp

Method
Bring the milk to boil in a non-stick pan and add sugar and half of saffron and reduce the flame and cook till the milk reduces to half. Squeeze all the syrub from the rasagullas and add to the milk and cook for few more mins. Remove from flame and add the remaining saffron and pistachio. Serve chilled.