Prunes Brownie (Eggless)

My recipe is totally inspired from Jeena's recipe of Prune's pudding and I give her full credit for letting this idea pop in my mind. Few days back I read Jeena's Recipe of Prune Pudding where she mentioned benefits of prunes and I was totally ignorant with what all can we do with prune, This was the first time I brought prunes and kept in my fridge for long time as I didn't know what to do.

Then I read her recipe and I wanted to try that but I was running short of all ingredients reason being as am leaving for India soon so am trying to empty my kitchen and didn't want to buy new things. She used Couscous, Dark Molasses Sugar , Honey, Cocoa Powder, Light Brown Sugar, Tin Prunes , White Danish Bread, Almonds and dusting sugar and funny thing is I didn't have any of these things except prunes :D not even bread, though bread is one thing which is always in my fridge and as it was already dark so couldn't go out and get bread
But I wanted to try prunes so badly that came up with idea of brownies and believe me it turned out so well.
I bet Jeena's recipe would be great to try and I will definitly try that one when I reach India but here I would like to share recipe for brownies

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup semolina (suji/rava) - roasted
1/2 tin condensed milk (milkmade will do)
2-3 bars of dark chocolate (melted)
10 -12 prunes ready to eat ones
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup roughly chopped almonds and cashews
1/4 cup Butter - melted

Method:
Take roasted semolina in bowl and add condensed milk, melted chocolate, butter, baking powder and mix well. If you feel mixture is too tight you can add little bit of milk to soften it. Add prunes to it and mix well. Grease a baking tray and add this mixture to it. Now put the roughly chopped nuts on it. It will look like this.

Now pre-heat oven on 180 degree and then put the tray for baking. Bake on 180 degree for 10 mins and then on 150 degree for other 25 mins. You can test it with knife and if knife comes out clean it is done.
Cool it for 5 mins and take out
it's ready to relish :)

I already had my bite :D
P.S : You can read the health benefits of prunes on her blog

Cookies this time

Ingredients:

1. All purpose flour (maida) - 1 cup
2. Baking Powder - 1/2 teaspoon
3. Butter (melted and unsweetened) - 1/3 cup
4. Sugar (powdered) - 1/2 cup
5. Vanilla essence - 1/2 spoon
6. Egg - 1
7. Crushed walnuts, almonds and cashews - 1/4 cup

Method:

1. Take all purpose flour in bowl and add baking powder, Mix well
2. Add butter to it and crumble with hands
3. Add Sugar to this, along with vanilla essence, nuts and egg
4. Mix well and form a firm dough
5. put in fridge for 15- 20 mins
6. Take out the dough and roll in shape of cookie (round)
7. press in center with thumb and place an almond (half slit) or a teaspoon of jam
8. Greese baking tray and arrange cookies over them
9. do leave some space in them as they tend to rise
10. Bake it at 180 degree for 10 -15 mins

p.s. I didn't pressed with thumb but it looks awesome

Cake Anyone????

It's been a long time I have updated my foodie blog.

So thought why not today. I always loved cakes since childhood and my mom used to happily bake for me. She even kept a seperate container of cake exlusively for me, which I never used to share with anyone :)

But as now it's long time I haven't had a cake from her, although had cakes from market but they didn't had the love she put in. So yesterday I thought why not I try my hand in baking a cake. I called up mom to know her recipe.

It was my first chance to bake cake and to be very frank I was bit nervous, don't know how it will turn out, but luckily it came out very well and is worth sharing with you guys.

So here goes the recipe as told to me by my mother:

Plain Sponge Cake:

Ingredients:

1. Maida (Self raising flour) --- 1 cup
2. Sugar --- 1 cup
3. Eggs --- 4 nos
4. Pure Ghee/Butter --- 1/2 cup
5. Milk --- 1/2 cup
6. Vanilla essence --- few drops
7. Baking Powder --- 1 level teaspoon

Method:

1. First of all take sugar and eggs in mixer and mix well.
2. Once it becomes creamy and smooth add ghee to it
3. Mix well
4. Add Milk and churn the mixer again. Mix it well
5. Now add maida or self raising flour gradually and keep mixing
6. Then finally add vanilla essence and baking powder
7. Mix it well for last time
8. Now pre-heat oven at 180 degree for 5 mins
9. Take a baking bowl and grease it with butter
10. Add the cake mixture to it, level it
11. Put in oven for 25 mins at the same temperature
12. Take out and do the knife test. Put a clean knife inside the baked cake if it comes out clean as entered cake is ready, if it has some cake particles stick to it, then it means it requires further baking for 5 mins or more. Once the cake passes knife test it is ready to be turned upside down in some serving tray

Voila cake is ready , enjoy your cake

P.s: I used ghee for baking.