Food Post #208: Bread Pudding- Hyderabadi Double ka Meetha

If you know me, you know that I am not too much into sweets. Gimme spice, gimme heat, and if you really want to give me something sweet, then I don't mind one of those Godiva dark chocolate bars. Well, and if you want to give me some ice cream, then make sure it has some chocolate, and some nuts, such as Baskin Robbins' Jamoca Almond Fudge. As far as Indian desserts go, I quite like rice kheer, and halwa. I also don't mind rasmalai, and perhaps hot gulab jamun. Oh, and hot jalebi. Oh, and obbattu. And shrikhand. And oh yeah, I like this Hyderabad specialty called double ka meetha- a delicious bread pudding made with deep fried bread, soaked in saffron milk, sugar syrup (or honey), spiced with cardamom, and topped off with some cream, nuts such as pistachio, and almonds, and some edible silver. Sometimes they also add figs to this pudding, and my oh my! It is rich, sweet, and delicious!!  Ahem, okay- so I just completely contradicted myself. Looks like I am not too much into sweets, but then I do like them, a lot of them, in fact, in small doses once in a while.

To start off the new year on a sweet note, I thought why not make some dessert for once? And so I made my own quick version of the regal, rich, sweet double ka meetha. It isn't as rich and decadent as the original recipe, but it sure is delicious. Bonus- it's way healthier.

Total time from start to finish: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 

White bread- 1 or 2 slices per person

Oil for shallow frying- 1-2 tbs per slice, adjust quantity according to number of slices of bread

Water- 1 cup

Sugar- 1/4 cup

*Adjust quantity of sugar according to preference

Cardamom- 2 pods

Saffron- a few strands

Nuts- a small handful. Cashews, almonds, pistachio all work well

Method:

1. Cut bread into desired shape, such as triangles, rectangles, or squares. Shallow fry until golden brown in color. Set aside on paper towel to blot off any excess oil.

2. Mix 1/4 cup of sugar into a cup of water, and bring to boil, stirring frequently. Add cardamom for flavor. Can also add saffron. Heat until the syrup thickens a little bit. It doesn't have to be as thick as honey. Turn off heat.

3. Take each fried piece of bread, dip into syrup, and place in serving dish. You can top each sweet fried bread piece with some nuts, and place another fried bread piece dipped in syrup on top, like a sandwich. Top with some more nuts. Drizzle syrup on top to finish off. Done!

Best to serve while it's still warm. The bread will still be crisp, and sweet, and yum!

Healthy and Delicious Quick Double Ka Meetha

Happy New Year!

   

   

Apple Halwa

My brother and sister-in-law were here last weekend and sure enough, the weekend went by very quickly. It is always fun to have them here and it is always fun to visit them in Spokane. My SIL and I had some heart-to-heart conversation this time on various interesting topics......OK, who am I kidding? Our conversations basically involved gossiping and we quite enjoyed it! Yeah, yeah, I know, "small people talk about other people;" but hey, it is OK to do it once in a while.......

My SIL got a bag of apples all the way from Spokane--- the plan was to make this dessert called halwa with those apples. Halwa is a dessert, that I think resembles fudge since it is so dense, that is traditionally made out of semolina/cream of wheat (sooji ka halwa). Then there is gajar ka halwa made with carrots (now available in Costco! Oh yeah!), potatoes, beet root, bottle gourd, apples.... you name it. And so, since I am not a very "dessert-person," she said she would make some.

Ingredients:

1. 6 medium sized apples (any red kind, not the granny smith kind)

2. A few almonds (blanched and powdered would be good)

3. 1-2 teaspoons of clarified butter/ghee- this is optional, apparently-- but I think it imparts a lovely aroma to the halwa.

4. Sugar (this is really per taste- I prefer not-very-sweet, some might like it sweeter, some might just prefer the sweetness from the apples themselves.......)

5. About a cup of milk (again, this is not needed, but I think it adds a better overall consistency to the halwa)

6. A pinch of cardamom powder for the mm-aroma!

Method: 

1. So she (my SIL) washed and peeled the apples and then cut them up into tiny pieces.

Peeling

Ready to go into the food processor

2. These pieces were then put into the food processor and err, I helped with this. So I ran the food processor to basically chop up the apple pieces into tinier pieces. We decided that the next time, it would be better to just mince everything up in the food processor.

Ready to be cooked

3. And then she took a pot, put in a couple teaspoons of ghee/clarified butter. She added some chopped up almonds to this and quickly fried them.

Almonds in

4. Then she added the finely chopped apples to this and started the cooking process.

Apples starting to cook

5. After about 15 minutes on medium flame, by which time the apples were looking nice and soft, she poured in a cup of milk (we used 2% reduced fat milk) and kept stirring everything up.

Milk added

6. She continued to stir for another 10-15 minutes until the liquid evaporated and the apple mixture was all nice and sticky. Towards the end, I added some sugar to it (just eyeballed it), while she continued to stir, so as to mix it all up. And that's it!

7. At the very end, she added a pinch of cardamom powder.

Apple Halwa ready to be served!

I tasted the apple halwa and oh, it was divine! It reminded me of "dumroot" that they make on special occasions back home-- you know, the halwa that is made out of bottle gourd. It is such a delicacy.

Apple Halwa- pretty close to dumroot!

The halwa was a perfect blend of sweet as well as a hint of tart (from the apples of course) and those almonds added a nice crunch to the dessert and of course, the cardamom powder made it smell heavenly. Delicious treat indeed!

Thanks, SIL, for making Apple Halwa for us-- it was excellent. Oh and I enjoyed our heart-to-heart conversations........ next time, we shall discuss ideas, like great people do! ;)

P.S.: This is not a dessert-of-sorts-- this is REAL dessert!

My 45-second Cake!

Last evening, right after dinner, I felt like some cake. Yep, that happens sometimes! Now if you remember, I am bad at baking cakes and the sort........so I told the husband to bake a cake. The kids got all excited too--- they love their dad's cakes. He is our Pastry Chef, you see. Well, since it was pretty late, he promised us some cake today. Then we called it a day and my kitchen was shut. I was watching some TV, when I suddenly got this brilliant idea. I dashed to the kitchen and started my experiment. Within 5 minutes, I had created a beautiful red velvet cake!! No way, you say? Here, keep reading and you'll know........

I took:

In a  microwave-safe bowl- 3 spoons of all purpose flour, a pinch of baking soda, a pinch of baking powder, a few drops of vanilla essence, some sugar, a few drops of red food color (for the red velvet part, of course), a couple spoons of olive oil, a tad bit of milk and water.

What I did: 

1. I took a m-wave safe bowl and put in all the dry ingredients first.

2. Followed by the wet ingredients.

3. Stirred all this up into a nice batter (cake batter-  you know, not too thin, not too thick.......). Tasted it to make sure it was sweet enough.

4. Then placed this bowl with the batter in the microwave.

5. Said a little prayer.

6. Punched in the cooking time for 30 seconds first and started the m-wave. Watched the batter rise up and by then the 30 seconds were up. I cooked it for an additional 15 seconds. At this point, it was smelling like real cake!

7. Took it out of the m-wave and by the mere look of it, I knew that it was a success. I nevertheless poked it to see if it was cooked all the way through and indeed it was!

WOW! I had created some real good red velvet cake (could have used more of the red food color to make it a nicer red). It took me 45 seconds to "bake" it in the microwave! I cut it into 4 parts and all of us loved it!

 Imagine my joy when I saw this!

 One slice for each of us

 Perfectly "baked!"

 Bowl licked clean!

From now on, whenever one of us feels like cake, voila! I can whip up my awesome 45-second Cake and satisfy that sweet tooth!

Egg-free and Butter-free Oatmeal-Raisin cookies

You remember how I bought all that hummus from Costco thinking that my kids would love it and actually eat it? And then of course, they never did and I kept using it as a sauce thickener in various dishes.........now one would have thought that I have learned my lesson.

No thanks to that one episode of Good Eats- the one about oats and how oats are excellent for the body, especially the heart etc, I yet again committed a blunder. I bought this box of oatmeal from Costco and placed it in the butler's pantry with a big smile on my face and imagining my kids thoroughly enjoying every bit of that healthy oatmeal every single morning for the next few weeks. I probably knew deep inside that this was a big mistake. Well, they say always listen to your inner voice...........wish I did that more often.

It snowed the whole of yesterday and on account of the 1.5 inches of snow, all schools were shut down today. You see, in this part of the world, we are not used to all this snow and we really can't handle it and hence we all just decide to stay put in our respective homes. Well, it is nice being cooped up in the house for a change and having the fireplace on and feeling nice and cozy, while outside is freezing. And so, around late afternoon I suddenly decided to please my kids by baking some cookies, some oatmeal raisin cookies, to be precise! Yes, the plan was to utilize that oatmeal lying in the pantry.

I think I have mentioned this before- I suck at baking cookies and cakes and the like. Cakes as I understand require a lot of precision. But I kind of figured that cookies should be easier. I mean I have "baked" those ready-to-bake kinds before and I have an idea about the consistency and the general ingredients.

Just as I started to gather up the ingredients, I realized that I was out of eggs and butter. The two most important ingredients! Uhh, what do I do? Well, thanks to the internet, I found this one butter-free and egg-free recipe and I decided to put my own twist to the recipe.

I took:

• 4 sachets of chocolate chip oatmeal and 2 packets of original oatmeal
• All purpose Flour (a few tablespoons)
• maple syrup
• brown sugar
• canola oil 
• vanilla essence
• raisins
• cinnamon powder (took a stick of cinnamon and powdered it in my nifty little coffee grinder)
• baking powder
• baking soda
• pinch of salt
• milk (a last moment addition to rectify the consistency)

Method:

• I took a mixing bowl and put in all the dry ingredients.
• I then added a teaspoon of vanilla essence followed by oil and maple syrup.
• I mixed up everything real well. 
• I decided to make a few first just to see how it turns out and so I made little balls and patted out little cookies between my palms and placed them on a greased baking sheet.
• I baked this first batch at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.
• After the timer went off, I took out that batch and placed the cookies on my little cooling rack. At that point they looked pretty good! I had to try one and indeed it was superb! Crunchy and delicious!

 The first batch (one already in my tummy)

Last moment addition to the cookie dough: I figured it was OK to go ahead and bake the second batch. The first batch was great, but a tad bit too crunchy for an oatmeal raisin cookie. And so I decided to add a little bit of milk to the cookie dough.

I baked the second batch again at 375 degrees, this time for only 10 minutes. Oh that second batch was excellent!! Chewy as well as fluffy!! Yummy!

 The second batch- chewy and delicious!

And fluffy inside!

My husband was bowled over (yes, he was at home today because of the snow......remember?) and could not believe that I made those cookies without eggs and butter! My kids were thrilled! And as ever, I was pretty pleased with myself!

A few more rounds of cookie-baking and I will succeed in finishing all that oatmeal. Yes, yes, I have promised myself not to buy huge boxes of oatmeal and hummus from Costco!!

Strawberries on Toast

This is another one of my jiffy (rare) desserts and lemme tell ya, it is high on the taste factor as well as the health factor! All I use are strawberries and some old bread. Yeah! Not kidding! That's it! (If you want to serve it at a party, some butter and sugar would be great........).

So this is what I do if I decide to make it for a party. The good thing is that this can be a dessert or a starter, that I think is pretty cool:

 I take: 

Strawberries, Vanilla Essence, sugar, mint leaves, unsalted butter.

Steps:

1. Wash the strawberries and then cut each into half. Put them into a bowl (or any desired container). 
2. Sprinkle sugar to bring out the fruity juices and well, I have found that there are always a few berries that are sour.......followed by a couple drops of vanilla essence. I usually do this a few hours before the party. That way the berries get all nice and sweet and juicy. 
3. Meanwhile I roughly chop up some mint leaves and throw it into some butter. I then m-wave the butter. The result is this lovely minty butter spread. If you want, you can add some sugar to this too........
4. I slice up some good old (or freshly bought- doesn't matter!) bread. Thickness depends on how you like it. I also like to quickly toast them in the broiler or just a regular toaster for some crunch. Again, not a must.

Serving: 

1. I take each slice and spread some of that minty butter on top.
2. I then place one beautiful red juicy strawberry atop that butter. 
3. And then serve!

 Beautiful strawberries on toast

Any fruit would probably work just as well. I just like the whole look of those gorgeous heart shaped red strawberries. You can't go wrong with this "dessert!" Wish I had a better name for it, though. Any suggestions?

Apple crumble of sorts

We don't usually eat dessert everyday-- in fact, my hubby and I barely eat any dessert at all. But just once in a while, one of us gets this crazy craving for something sweet. Last evening was one such crazy-sweet-tooth-moment (OK, I admit, it was me this time) and I had to whip up something quick. My eyes fell upon the apple lying in the fruit basket. One part of it was beginning to, err, rot and of course, my brilliant mind said to me that I must use that apple before it completely rots and ends up in trash. Soon enough, out came the bread, the condensed milk, the vanilla essence and a baking pan and another beautiful creation was on its way in my little kitchen!

I took:

5-6 slices of regular bread, condensed milk, regular 2% milk, vanilla essence & the apple sans the rotting part (a good apple will do just fine!).

What I did: 

1. Chopped up the apple into little cubes (don't worry, I discarded the bad part of the apple). 
2. Tore the bread into little pieces directly in the baking pan. 
3. Threw in the chopped apple into this torn bread and added just a tad bit of milk to sort of soak it all. 
4. Added a dash of vanilla essence followed by a good drizzle of the condensed milk (this depends on how sweet you like your dessert). Mixed it all up. 
5. Baked it at 350 degrees for about 20 to 25 minutes until the top part was sort of browned up. Done!

By the time I took the picture, 3/4th of it was gone!

It was stupendously yummy with a perfect balance of textures--- the browned part was caramelized and crisp and the apple bits added a nice fruity texture, while the rest of the pudding was soft. We had it with some whipped cream on top.

Mmm, the warm apple crumble (of sorts!)

Gorgeous!