Apple clafouti

I learnt this from Arundathi ’s food blog and tried it out some weekends ago. I loved the results so I am sharing it with you here.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chopped apple
• 3 tbsp maida
• 1/4 cup Caster Sugar + more for dusting
• 3 tbsp Whole Milk + 3 tbsp Fresh Cream
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 1 Egg

Method:

• Butter for greasing the  baking dish
• Butter the baking dish and sprinkle a little  sugar. Place the cut apple over the sugar. Keep aside.
• Beat the egg till light and fluffy. Add the cream, milk, sugar and vanilla to  it. Add the flour and mix well.
• Pour the mixture over the fruit.
• Bake in a pre heated over at 200 deg.C for 20 mins. Serve plain or with ice cream.

Notes:While Arundathi used pear, I used an apple.Dint have any pears at home you see. I think you can use any hard food , the kind that wont turn into a puree when subjected to heat waves in the oven. What I loved about this recipe is that its so quick to put together!!This is probably the fastest baked dish I ever made!! The top of my clafouti got a tad overdone (try refraining from saying “AGAIN!!??”)  thats why it doesnt look as nice as it should. See Arundathi’s post to get an idea of how the clafouti should really look like. I admit the Thar desert like look  does act as a deterrent  but all you have to do it take a bite and they you dont care about how it looks. We ate it without ice cream but you could serve it with any flavour you like.

Thanks for the recipe Arundathi!:D

PS: you can look at another version of the clafouti here at Bakingobsession. Quite an expert at work there!! 

Bread and butter pudding

Bread and butter pudding is quick, healthy and very filling.

Ingredients:

• 10 gms butter
• 1 bread slice
• 10 gms currants
• 22gms sugar
• 175 ml milk
• 1 egg
• A pinch of nutmeg

 Method:

• Grease a baking dish.
• Butter the slice and cut in into neat slices about 2″ thick. Lay them on the dish with the buttered side up.
• Sprinkle currants and sugar.
• Beat egg. Warm the milk and pour it into the beaten egg. Beat till well mixed.
• Pour egg-milk mixture gently into the baking dish over the bread slice.
• Bake at 180 deg. C for half an hour or till well set.

Source: Basic Food Preparation.

Mandira’s notes: This is an easy to put together pudding. In fact its one of the easiest I  have ever made. Plus it has the distinct advantage of using ingredients that are almost always available at home. I used a few pieces of apricot along with the raisins. You could add any chopped dry fruits that you have at hand. The nutmeg adds a pleasant flavour to the pudding. Make sure to have it evenly spread out all over the top of the pudding.. eating bites of concentrated nutmeg is not nice!!

Bebinca

I ate Bebinca at a restaurant ages ago and I loved it. I am not mad about coconut- I like it in limited amounts.. but for reasons unknown bebinca, as coconuty as it is, make a speacial place for itself in my heart. So its not surprising then that I tried out the first bebinca recipe that I stumbled upon after embarking on my baking journey.

 Ingredients:

•  2 cups coconut milk
• 2 cups sugar
• 12 egg yolks
• 1 cup refined flour,sifted
• ¾ cup melted ghee
• ½ tsp salt
• Salt to taste

Method:

• In a bowl combine coconut milk and sugar stir till sugar dissolves.
• Add egg yolk one at a time beating continuously.
• Add flour,1 tbsp ghee,nutmeg powder and salt. Mix well till you get a smooth batter.
• Preheat oven at 180 deg.C
• Grease a 7” baking tin with  2tbsp ghee. Pour ½ C batter. Bake for 10 minutes.
• Spread 1 tbsp ghee on the baked layer. Pour another ½ C batter over the baked layer and bake for 15 mins.
• Continue greasing and pouring ½ C batter and baking till all the batter is used up.
• Spread 1 tbsp layer over the last layer.
• Remove from oven,cool and turn upside down.
• Cut into slices and serve.

Source: mE magazine bought along withthe morning DNA paper.

Mandira’s note: My experiment with bebinca was set to flop right from the beginning. I made a quarter of the original recipe and in my hurry( I made this after I returned home after work. Thats how desperate I was to give it a try) to measure ingredients(or shud I blame that on my mathematical inabilities?:) ) I measured the coconut milk wrong. I ended up using double the amount of coconut milk. But guess what? The wrong measurement gave me decently good results! I think had I used the exact proportions given I would have had a  very thick batter that would have been difficult to pour.Though the recipe says “pour” I am not sure if the batter is supposed to be spooned in or literally poured in. My batter was obviously thin enough to pour.  I skipped the ghee on the final layer. I decided skipping it wouldnt really matter. Plus the amount of calories this pudding has is not a joke. Reducing a few wouldnt hurt! I

I liked the end result of my disaster-turned-success pudding. But I liked the one at the restaurant better .  I plan on trying this one again- with absolutely exact measurement to see if that turns out better . If you’ve ever made bebinca or have a tried & tested recipe for it, please let me know how I can improve the recipe I worked with( it obviously needs some correction/improvement. If incorrect measurements give you good results then something is wrong for sure!) Or better still, share your recipe with us!;)

Meringue Rice Pudding

Here’s presenting the first official pudding of this blog!!

Ingredients:

For pudding

• Rice 20 gms
• Milk 300 ml
• Egg 1
• Castor sugar 22gm/11/2 tbsp
• Jam 10 gms/2 tbsp

For meringue

• Egg white 2
• Castor sugar 15gm/1 tbsp

Method:

• Preheat over at180 deg.C.
• Cook rice and milk together till thick and creamy in a saucepan over slow heat. Add water if needed.
• Cool slightly and beat in the egg and sugar.
• In a over proof dish, spread the jam at the base. Pour the rice-milk mixture over it.
• Bake at 180deg.C for 15 min or till set.
• For the meringue, whisk the egg whites with gradual addition of sugar till stiff peaks are formed.
• Spoon this egg white-sugar mixture over the baked rice covering it completely.
• Bake at 180 deg.C till the meringue topping is slightly coloured and crisp.

Source: Basic Food Preparation

Mandira’s notes:  This is the first time I attempted a pudding that has meringue and was pleasantly surprised to discover it wasnt that difficult. I think my meringue got a tad too brown, all because of my mortal fear of serving partially cooked food. It would probably taste better if it were a lighter brown. The rice-milk mixture(minus the egg) reminded me of kheer. The egg only seems to thicken the pudding at the time of baking. Vegetarians may leave that out and cook the rice and milk for longer to get a thicker consistency.(thats my guess but I am no expert). A added a few drops of vanilla essence to the rice-milk mixture when I incorporated the egg mainly to avoid the eggy smell.

 

Note to Lakshmi- do the pictures inspire you to undertake the “painful beating egg whites” process?