Apple pie

Parita put up her recipe for apple pie recently. It made me root through my drafts and dig out mine. I had made this last winter (!) and dint post it for reasons unknown. Actually the reasons, or rather the reason is know and shall be revealed soon.

I made one serving of the pie and here is the recipe for it.

Ingredients:

For the crust

• 100 gms maida
• 50 gms cold butter
• A pinch of baking power
• A pinch of salt
• Ice cold water to bind

For the filling

• 1 ½ a apples, peeled ,cored and chopped into pieces
• 2 tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp cinnamon powder
• A few drops of lemon juice

Method:

• Mix together the maida, salt and baking powder in a bowl.
• Using your finger tips rub in the cold butter till it resembles bread crumbs. With ice cold water and bind it all together gently to make a dough. Cover with a wet cloth and refrigerate for half an hour or so.
• Remove dough from fridge, keeping aside about ¼ th of the dough,  roll the remaining on a well dusted working surface to an even thickness. Gently life and place it in the baking dish ensuring all side are properly covered. Roll a rolling pin lightly on the edge of your baking dish to cut away the superfluous dough.
• Prick the base of the pie case before putting it in the oven and baking it at 180 deg. C for about 15 minutes(till its light brown in colour). Remove from oven and cool.
• Sprinkle the cinnamon powder and sugar and lemon juice over the cut apple pieces. Using your finger tips mix well and ensure all pieces are well covered with sugar and cinnamon.
• Place the pieces in the pie case in two or three layers. Keep aside.
• Use the dough that had been kept  aside to make the top cover of the pie.  Roll it out and cut it into strips and place these in a criss cross manner over the apple-filled pie. Alternately cut interesting shapes from the dough and use these to cover the apples.
• To bake the top crust, place the pie in an oven and bake at 180 deg.C for about 15 mins.
• Serve hot or cold. I like it hot!

Notes: I had made the effort of preparing and blogging about the apple pie long back when I dint have this baking blog. I have used the same recipe this time around. The only difference  between then and now is that with all the baking practice, I am much faster at it than I used to be! I liked the end result of the pie but my mother wasnt very enthusiastic about it. As it turns out, she likes a lot of apple in her pie. Now if you chop your apples into pieces, they arent really going to fill your pie up with so much apples (no matter how well you pack them in) that you taste more apple than pie crust when you take a bite. So her verdict was that the pie was ok enough but didnt have the amount of apple she thought was necessary.  I think this is nature’s way of getting even with me. As a child I always complained to my mother that her aloo paranthas werent stuffed with enough aloos. I wanted there to be a burst of aloo in each morcel I ate. Friend who ate my tiffin at school considered the parathas just fine. That could be an explanation as to why they busied themselves in polish off my parathas while I cribbed and fussed and ate very little.  My mother tried to explain to me  on numerous occassions that there is only so much potato you can stuff in the paratha before it becomes un-rollable. I continued sulking nevertheless.

Now its my mother’s turn to say the “stuffing isnt enough.” She hinted  I might want to grate the apples and add them to the pie in that form. You can add more apple than way. But I wasnt too sure of thats a good idea. Wont the apples release juice and the pie get all soggy? It was on my agenda to try a tiny pie with grated apple so I could be a compare-n-contrast type of post. The grated apple pie never happened and thats why the apple pie post never got published. As things stand right now apples cost a bomb in the market. There is   no way I am going to buy a dozen to grate and cook them! Version -2 of the pie is just going to have to wait till winter. Meanwhile, if you have ever used grated apples in your pie, be  kind and share your experience with me- disasters, successes, whatever.

Lemon chiffon cake

I became an ardent fan of Anita’s blog, A Mad Tea Party after we tried her zamodod at home some time back. We’ve made the zamodod a hundred times since then.I tried her chiffon cake a few weekends back. She’s adapted her recipe from Bakign bites but I followed her recipe exactly, except for the fact that I halved it. A 6 egg cake seemed too big for my small family. You can read her original here.

Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ C sifted APF
• 1 ¼ Cpowdered sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ C milk
• 5 tbsp refined peanut oil
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla essence
• 6 eggs, separated

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160 deg.C.
• Keeping aside 2 tbsp of sugar, mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.
• In another bowl mix the yolks, oil, vanilla essence, lemon juice and zest and milk. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients mixture. Mix well till well mixed.
• In another dry bowl beat the egg whites till very fluffy. Add 2 tbsp of sugar kept aside of sugar and beat till stiff peaks form. Using a metal spoon, gently fold half of the egg whites into the cake batter. Make sure it is thoroughly mixed. Fold in the remaining egg whites.
• Pour into a prepared baking tin& bake for 45-60 minutes.

Notes: I like lemon flavour in general-in cakes, tarts, whatever. That was one reason for wanting to try out this cake. That and the fact that I had never made a chiffon cake before.  Beating the egg whites is not as hard as is often made out to be.  What I find hard is  folding it in the rest of the batter! Thats coz you have to be very gentle and patient while you are at it. I like cakes in which you can beat it all in! But really, if you put your mind to it, folding in is neither difficult nor very time consuming. The chiffon cake’s texture is very different from a pound cake. And if you are used to eating only pound cakes, you might say this cake tastes a bit strange. The first time I bit into a piece, I took a while to figure out how it tasted like the usual cake, yet tasted different. By bite 3 I was over the figuring-out phase and into the enjoying-the-munching phase. My colleauge however, never moved from one phase to the next. She kept saying “This is not your usual cake. Your usual cake is nice.. this is…umm…different…. is this kaccha?No? it tastes different.”  I guess when she said “tastes” she actaully meant “felt”.  Chiffon cakes do have a distinct texture thats hard to describe. You have to eat it to know for yourself. Based on my experience and that of my colleague, I think I should issue this warning- if you havent been exposed to chiffon cakes before, bite into one with an open, accepting mind. Its like trying out any other new food. You take some time to get used to the flavour and the texture but essentially it is a cake that looks and tastes just fine! Unlike angel cakes- I have tried those one and I think they just taste and feel so weird!:P

I made half the original quantity but it still took me about 50 mins to bake it completely. I served my cake plain but you could pair it up with ice cream as suggested by Anita or cover the cake with a layer of chocolate frosting like her.

Oh,by the way, I am so done with cakes for now. I have done so many cakes that they are no longer fun. So we arent going to do cakes for a while here. Unless you guys have some absolutely great recipe that you think I shouldnt miss…

Chocolate souffle

We dont do souffles very often here. Heres our effort to add another simple recipe of chocolate souffle to our very restricted repertoire.

Ingredients:

• 1T or 12 gms Butter
• 2T  12 gms APF
• 1/4Cor 60 ml milk
• 40 gms Castor sugar
• 1 ½ Egg yolk
• 1 ½ Egg white
• 30 gms unsweetened chocolate or 2T cocoa
• 30 ml milk

Method:

• Set oven at 180 deg.C
• Melt butter in a saucepan, stir in maida and cook for 1-2 mins.
• Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly and bring to a boil. Cool for 2-3 mins till thick. Remove from heat.
• Stir in the unsweetened chocolate or cocoa mixed with 30 ml milk. Add this to the maida-milk mixture.
• Allow this mixture to cool slightly and beat in the egg yolk.
• Whisk the egg white separately till stiff. Fold the egg white into the cocoa-egg yolk mixture gently.
• Spoon into a oven proof dish and bake at 180 deg.C for 20 mins.
• Serve immediately as the soufflé sinks when removed from the oven.

Source: Basic food preparation

Notes: Just like the last souffle, this too is a hot souffle that sinks really fast once its out of the oven. Other than that there isnt anything I have against this simple to make, no frills  souffle. I dont know if there is a way to keep the souffle from collapsing, besides serving it straight out of the oven! I used to think I do something wrong that makes my souffles sink but whatever little literature I have read on it (including referring to good old wikipedia), tells me all souffles sink a few minutes after they leave the oven. .. even if you do everything right. So it isnt me afterall!! If you have a pretty ramekin to bake and serve in, use it. I dont, so I spooned it out of the vessel and served it on a plate.

This recipe serves 1-2. Double or triple up as per your requirements.