Our Flavours

Chocolate cake was the beginning of my baking journey. It was the first thing that I ever baked, as a birthday cake for hubby dear. At the time, I didn’t have an oven, so had gone in search of recipes that gave instructions to bake without oven. Later, after getting my oven, and some baking experience that didn’t involve disasters, ventured into trying other ingredients. Stumbled upon an eggless recipe and ended up tweaking it a bit. This is my all-time favourite and easy recipe for chocolate cake. The most important thing is that, it is made with whole-wheat flour! And, I don’t have to remember to keep eggs and butter out to bring them to room temperature, because this recipe doesn’t need eggs and butter either. Yup – there’s no egg, butter, or milk needed in this recipe. When baking, do remember to use good quality ingredients. Make sure your baking soda is not past its use-by date, get coco powder of a reputed brand, and whole wheat flour ground at home is truly the best

Avial is a combination of vegetables, with some coconut and other stuff thrown in. It is my favorite vegetable dish, best combined with rice, fish curry and pappadam (papad). Ah, mouth is watering at the thought. It is also a great way to get a lot of veggies into the little tummies at my house. In the mix-up, they forget that they’re eating a lot of vegetables :D. I love the Avial my mom makes. For me, she makes it slightly mushy, and it tastes oh-so-good! Mummy makes it in a very authentic way. She cooks each vegetable separately so that each is correctly cooked. And she also adds raw mangoes for the correct sourness, and takes it out if it gets too sour, etc etc. I’m too lazy to do all that, plus, not too fond of sour(tamarind-ish) taste, so my Avial preparation is very simple. The only time-consuming activity is cutting up all the vegetables. I usually use raw banana, carrot, potato, drumstick, and snake gourd. You can use the vegetables of your choice. Ingredients

A perfect snack for kiddos, and for you. This whole-wheat goodness is absolutely delicious and also healthy. This is yet another recipe from hubby dear, and I provide wholehearted support by eating ;). The cookies can be made even more special, by shaping the dough into anything that catches your kiddos eyes. We make stars, moons, and even alphabets that spell out their names (which were an awesome hit!) Without more rambling, here's the recipe. Ingredients: Whole wheat flour – 1 cup Sugar – ¼ cup          Cardamom – 1 or 2      Milk – As needed (I used almost half a cup)       Butter – 80 gms                           Method       Powder the sugar and cardamom.       Sieve together the whole-wheat flour, and powdered sugar and cardamom.        Add butter and mix well with hand or spoon. The mixture should be crumbly.        Now, add milk little by little to make the dough. The consistency must be same as that of chapathi do

Ice cream… The very thought makes my mouth water. I love ice cream, my kids love ice cream, and I don’t know anyone who would say no to a bowl of ice cream. Make it a home-made ice-cream, and the “Yes, please” would be really loud and clear! My hubby is the driving force behind this dish, and the rest of us (kids and I) helped out by finishing off the ice-cream in record time. In fact, younger one kept asking for more “I-keem”.  You’ll be surprised by how easy it is to prepare vanilla ice cream at home. You can even spice it up by adding choco-chips, fresh fruits, cashews, and what nots to it during preparation. Or, if you’re like me, you can add the extras while eating ;). Ingredients: Whipping Cream – 2 cups Sugar (powdered) – ¼ cup (you can omit this, or even add more, as per taste) Condensed Milk – 1 cup Vanilla Essence – ½ tsp Method: Keep whipping cream refrigerated for at least 12 hours. Ten minutes before starting preparation, keep your bowl

This recipe is from my MIL, and I just love it! Mushrooms are really healthy, though you need to be extra careful to use only fresh mushrooms. Until I tasted my MIL’s mushroom fry, I had only ambivalent feelings towards mushrooms. It used to be something I’d order from restaurants when I’m having vegetarian food. But now, mushroom fry features regularly in my house. One main thing that you need to remember about this recipe is that, the quantity of the dish gets reduced quite a bit, when frying. But, its worth the taste, so I don’t generally mind J . This recipe is really easy to prepare, and needs very less ingredients too. Ingredients: Button mushrooms – 2 packets Garlic – 2 pods Green chilly – 2 or 3 Curry leaves – 1 sprig Turmeric powder – ½ tsp Method: Wash and clean the mushrooms, drain off excess water. Slice the mushrooms. I usually cut the stem part first and slice the head part and stem part into 3-4 slices.  Note: The black colored gills

This is a delectably soft dish from Kerala, that is made from Rice and Coconut. The traditional look of Appam is that it is thick in the center, lacy and brown at the edges. I make it slightly differently, by keeping it even all over. The reason for this is – it stays softer for longer. There’s no crispy brown edge to go soggy after awhile, and cooking time per appam is less. Plus, this is how hubby dear prefers it J . My kids also love it, and that clinched the deal for me. Also, I use this same batter to make snacks like “Sweet Appam” and “Easy Vattayappam”. One batter – many uses. Initially, when I used the Appam Chatty, I ended up with different shapes. It took me awhile to get the hang of it and now they’re all round and good-looking. If you don’t have an Appam Chatty, you can also make it over a Dosa Pan, with a separate lid. I have done that also, when I had only an induction cooker on which Appam Chatty wouldn’t work. The trick to Appam making is to ge