I’m always looking for easy homemade sweets for festivals like Diwali. This coconut laddu fits the bill perfectly. Diwali cleaning, shopping and other prep leaves me little time to make complicated sweets, so this recipe works beautifully for me. Also, people are up to their throats in sweets and rich snacks; and so I believe in keeping what I serve, light both in terms of sugar and fat (ghee in…
It’s apple pie season. It’s an American classic and arguably the most popular kind of dessert pie. I’ll never say no to a slice of apple pie. The pleasure I get from a forkful of flaky, buttery crust topped with soft and sweet cinnamon-scented, apples with a hint of lemon never gets old or tired. The rains finally paving the way for a tiny hint of winter and loads of…
This post should be titled, pudding in a pinch. My oven was on the blink for a few days and I had a craving for dessert and necessity (happily) drove me to throw together this pressure cooker pudding. It was so silky and airy in texture and yet so intense in flavour that I decided as an afterthought to write a post on it. My pressure cooker pudding takes all…
I was delighted by this pineapple coconut cake. It’s inspired by the Upside Down Pineapple Cake in Rose Bernbaum’s The Cake Bible with omissions, additions and some change in technique. My first attempt tasted delicious but had issues with the texture of the crumb. A couple of tweaks made all the difference and on the second attempt it tasted, looked and felt just right. Summer has segued to the monsoon…
In this post, I celebrate the season’s bounty of mangoes with a mango phirni – a coconut and mango rice pudding that’s 100% vegan. No dairy at all. If you’re familiar with kheer and phirni, you’ll know that they are Indian, milk-based rice puddings. Now purists may turn up their noses but this phirni is made without so much as a drop of milk. Neither does it use non-dairy milk…
Baking a simple lemon almond cake in the midst of a crippling pandemic gave me much needed joy and feeling of gratitude for the life that I have. Forced to be frugal, with shortages of ingredients, my choices had to be based on what was in my pantry and fridge. Craving a cake and having run out of all things chocolate, I had to make do with what I had.…
Holi is around the corner. And it’s time for thandai. It’s also time for kulfi. Spring is almost done and the door to summer has been opened. Daytime temperatures in many parts of the country are in their mid 30s (Celsius of course) and threaten every day to take off from the edge and soar into the sun. So thandai, kulfi and all other cooling concoctions are more than welcome.…
Bad weather had us boxed indoors last weekend. This apple French toast was an effort to lift our spirits in the sunless, foggy conditions. Apples are in abundance and a warm, cinnamon and vanilla-scented baked French toast topped with juicy fruit was just what the doctor ordered. Fresh, crisp apples and homemade whole wheat bread make this bake a hearty, homey dish ideal for family-style breakfasts or brunches. Choose the…
October brings the smell of apples and a hint of winter; all the reason I need to bake a whole wheat apple cinnamon bread. Just like banana bread, this one has apples – little cubes of juicy fruit, not applesauce, not grated apples and not dried apple either. This bread is a little rustic, not the prettiest to look at and I admit, a little challenging to slice when it’s…
My walnut crumble cake could well be titled ‘yoghurt cake’ because it has a generous quantity of yoghurt. This walnut and date topped cake is plumped up by full-fat yoghurt which yields a delightfully moist and tender crumb. So you have a wholesome, buttery, yoghurt-rich cake with crunchy, sweet-salty walnut crumble in the centre and on top. A double walnut crumble cake if you like. Curd, that’s Indian for yoghurt,…