Chocolate Nut Bread

To add to the flavorful bread recipes so far in this blog, here is my version of the Chocolate Nut Bread. I found this recipe on the back cover of Nestle chocolate Morsels which I customized. To my surprise this recipe doesn’t use butter except for greasing.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large eggs
• 1 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla syrup
• 1/3 cup or 4-5 tsp of canola oil or vegetable oil
• 1 cups NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
• 1 cups chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease one 9 x 5-inch loaf pans with butter.

COMBINE flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla syrup and salt in large bowl. Combine eggs, milk and vegetable oil in medium bowl. Add to flour mixture; mix just until moistened. Stir in morsels and nuts. Spoon into prepared loaf pans.

BAKE for 50 to 60 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes; remove from pans.

TIP: If you are looking for even more chocolate flavor, try drizzling the cooled loaves with chocolate! Microwave 1/2 cup semi-sweet morsels in heavy-duty plastic bag on HIGH (100%) power for 45 seconds; knead bag to mix. Microwave at additional 10- to 20-second intervals, kneading until smooth. Cut a small hole in corner of bag; squeeze to drizzle over bread.

Next time I plan to add more chocolate :)

A few recipes

I did two things over the weekend -

One, tried my hand at baking a healthy cake ; made maple walnut and I was glad it turned out yum; glad because i had followed my instincts for the measurement and was a little apprehensive!

Secondly, I had the most awesome crepe at AppleSeed. I will definitely recommend the spinach crepe there.

So here is my Healthy Maple Walnut cake recipe.

Ingredients -

* 1 and half cup all purpose flour

* 1 cup buttermilk

* 2 Tbsp butter melted

* 2 eggs

* 1/3 cup light brown sugar

* 1/4 cup maple syrup

* 1 tsp vanilla essence

* 1/4 cup broken walnut

* 1 tsp baking powder

Procedure -

Beat eggs, butter milk, sugar, maple syrup and vanilla essence. Wisk it with all purpose flour and bking powder. Plop in the walnuts. Bake in a greased vessel for about 50 minutes at 350F. Makes a great companion for strawberry icecream.

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Before I forget, Wish everyone a happy Ugadi! And today was ugadi potluck at work and we had an assortment of rice varieties ( Mango rice, Pulihora, Lemon rice, curd rice, pudina rice) I was the contributor of pudina rice (mint rice) and this is one recipe I have never gone wrong with (touch wood) and here you go; Thats how I make it!  :)

Ingredients -

To grind -

* Generous fistful bunch of mint stalk with leaves

* cup of grated coconut

* 1 inch cube of ginger

* 3 large garlic pods

* 7 to 10 green chillies ( according to spice level tolerance)

Spices -

4 cardamom pods

2 cloves

1 star anise

bay leaves

One 3 inch cinnamon stick

3 cups Basmati Rice

Beat the above mentioned ingredients under 'To grind' in a food processor until it is a smooth paste. Add as little water as possible. It should not be smooth like chutney, but slightly granulated to touch.

In a large pan, add about 2 tsps of ghee. Add the 'Spices'. Once they sizzle, add the ground paste. Keep it on a low flame, so that the pudina paste doesnot darken, but cooks evenly. 

While the paste is getting done, get the 3 cups of rice cooked. I usually soak the rice for about an hour. Then allow sufficient water to boil in a heavy bottom vessel. To the boiling water I pop in broken cardamom, 1 cm long cinnamon stick and sufficient salt. Once the water boils, I add the rice and let it cook for about 15 minutes or until it is separate grained but well cooked. Drain the rice.

Now slowly mix the rice with the pudina paste. Garnish with brown fried onions cut long and cashews.

Enjoy! Happy cooking everyone!

That's the way the cookie crumbles :) !

I already made it pretty clear that I am a big time chocoholic.. Anything that has chocolate in it, it becomes my instant favourite :) Infact I have turned my husband into a choco-addict as well.. Muuuhahaha (u know.. the devilish laugh).  He literally begs me to make chocolate treats/desserts now.. Life is bliss :D. Today while I was drinking green tea, I had this craving for a cookie with warm melting chocolate inside.,the next thing I know, I was on a search for some recipe with the ingredients from my baking shelf and preferrably a heathier version  and I found this.. It boasts of 21% fewer calories, 42% less saturated fat and 14% less fat than the original recipe but I personally felt there was nothing major under the healthy category except for the whole wheat flour and the amount of butter used.. that's good enough for me.. all the mind game I say! It also fits in  the bake-a-thon month thingie we have going here (I am under the impression that month = till there are enough contributions or till somebody comes up with a different concept :D). Also following suggestions of Divya and inspirations of other blog sites, I decided to venture into a new hobby.. photographing food! This is my debut, using Sandeep's SLR.. I am pretty excited about the whole deal.. So please comment/suggest on any pictures and recipes..will be happy and humble to accept them. I guess I have listed all my excuses and buried my guilt for indulging in chocolate pleasures so lets get started with the recipe..

Ingredients

3/4    cup granulated sugar

3/4    cup packed brown sugar

1/2    cup butter, softened

1/2    cup canola oil

1       teaspoon vanilla

1       egg

2       cups whole wheat flour

1       teaspoon baking soda

1/4    teaspoon salt

3/4    cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Procedure

1.    Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, beat sugars, butter, oil, vanilla and egg with electric mixer on low speed until blended. Beat in flour, baking soda and salt until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips.

2.    On ungreased cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, drop dough by rounded measuring tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart.

3.    Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until very light golden brown (centers will be soft). Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack.

This recipe yields 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

Source:Eat Better America

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Looks like someone has been patient enough to teach novices about food photography. Thought I should share the link. It looked really useful.

http://www.cookingandme.com/2006/07/food-photography-for-food-bloggers.html

Banana Bread with a chocolate twist

I am totally aware that there have been 2-3 recipes of Banana nut bread that have already been posted on green tea....Nevertheless I am posting the one I use very very often for a couple of reasons :

a. My cousin Divu told me to....since every recipe has something different in it and it is true.You will see why!!
b. It is a Banana bread with choco chips rather than nuts recipe!! See I told you its different.

Well I will cut the crap here and get to the main point of the blog. Here is the recipe:

* 3 ripe bananas, mashed
* 1 egg, well beaten
* 4 ounces (1 stick) butter, melted, cooled
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup granulated sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 cup chopped nuts : I like to use a lot (as much as you want) of semi-sweet chocolate morsels in place of nuts....tastes WAAAAYYYY better. Nuts are ubiquitous and get pretty monotonous!!

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the mashed bananas, beaten egg, and melted butter. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and soda and stir into banana mixture until well blended. Stir in semi-sweet chocolate morsels (more the merrier)

Pour banana nut bread batter into a 9x5-inch loaf pan and bake at 350° for 55 to 60 minutes, until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

Have fun baking!!

Bagara Baingan,Bakes,BlockOfLard

When it comes to cooking, I am more of a follower. I prefer the recipes scribbled on the diary, with words of wisdom doled out by my mother in law and mother, to experiments. I also love the colorful cookery books, exact proportions and a few culinary websites I frequent; so like I term it, I am a bookish-cook. Going by the norm, I found the perfect bagara baingan recipe suiting our taste buds and N and I slurped it clean with home-made parathas yesterday for lunch. You can find the recipe here. I vouch it is foolproof! =)

A few other websites I love and frequent are -

Priya's Akshayapatram

Solai chidambaram for chettinad cooking (especially chicken varieties)

Mahanandi for the andhra veggie fix

Most evidently, my second favorite cuisine (first being kerala, of course!) is the andhra bone, hyderabadi to be specific!

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So, I make my entry to the bake-a-thon by following sush's simple recipe of vanilla flavor cake. For my first ever bake it turned out pretty yum and believe it or not, there is just one-eighth of the loaf (as seen in the picture) left. Saiz and sandhya were also party to the cake-eating.

The whole nuts peeping out is N's doing! He plopped them into the batter before I could break them! So as we let the soft cake melt in the mouth, we were rudely awakened by a huge almond to crunch into, from time to time.

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Before you wonder if this section is about a 'block of lard', let me clarify that it is about me feeling like one!

I am a deep-fry-hater. Other than the waist-watch perspective, it is the oil clinging to the carpets rendering the house into a greasy rancor that is a put off. Hence, I stick to the frying bit only on special occasions like N's birthday when I cannot veto the idea. This year, it seems I have become more lenient and ventured for the second time deep frying bajjis and paruppu vadais last evening. Company for the evening coffee made up for the incentive. Knowing fried items are a delicacy; N often makes the best of the deep-fry-occasions to fry anything he can lay hands on, until the oil turns a savage red and retching slick.

I bet two molaga bajjis (green waxy chilly bajjis), few handfuls onion pakodas, couple of paruppu vadais were more than unwelcome to the stomach that hadn't feasted to oil in a long time. Gone are the days when in the name of group-studies, I would wolf down desi french-fries and onion bajjis, which my mother would make for the "hard-working" students.

I was an acidic mess by the time I retired to bed feeling like a completely useless piece of  lard swearing to never deep fry ever again! Until next time….

Hope everyone else had a healthy weekend! =)

Questions – 

How do you balance deep frying and healthy eating? 

What are the options for making deep frying healthy?(now that's an oxymoron! :D )

Mithra bakes!

Our trip to BJs last week left us with a 2 dozen bag of bananas which were slowly consumed for fear of unnecessary wastage. We got down to the final two today and their skins had started turning black. Not wanting to waste them, and in light of Divya's baking suggestion I turned them into a cake here using this recipe. I did add a handful of walnuts though, and used Sush's suggestion to use a blender to beat the eggs.

Here are the results (we nibbled a little)



I was quite pleased, and albeit a bit on the sweeter side, it was quite tasty. Planning to bake a bit more tonight, will post with pictures if attempt succeeds!

This week is NYC's restaurant week, so me & S went to get dinner last night here. We were simply amazed by the yumminess of the food, and have vowed to keep ourselves off of cheaper restaurant fare & indulge in NY C's goodness at least once every quarter! The tab was a little high (The Prix frie restaurant week dinners include a starter, main course and dessert for each person for $35) but totally worth it, since it pleased both our vegetarian & meaty tastes. So if you folks visit next time, we know where we are taking you!

Bake-a-thon!

It is great to see the enthusiasm for soups, salads and workouts exploding all over the blog! I am aware of a few sleeping/snoring members and I am hoping to wake them up this week!! And while the momentum lasts for the rest of us, I thought lets indulge in some common goal for each month.

What about baking something before the end of Feb? Not confined to cakes alone, but anything invented, borrowed, inherited, internet-searched; but straight off the oven! Let it be something you have never tried before! And let’s post the recipe however it turns out! Or simply post thoughts on a baked dish you ordered at a restaurant!

Let’s welcome Fabulous Feb and enjoy the wait for spring… I am definitely waiting for spring to be able to run outside! I am tired of exercising in recycled air!!

Hope everyone participates!