Austrian Dumplings with Vanilla Sauce

I have joined another interesting group this year. International Food Challenge was started by Saraswathi and Shobana and it focuses on international dishes. We the members try out a recipe from a selected cuisine every month. I thought it was interesting to try out various recipes and so I joined the group. For this month, the cuisine selected was Austrian. Briju was the host this month and she selected four recipes from Austrian cuisine. 

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Koulouri/ Greek Politiko Simiti

The Baking Eggless group has completed two years and is entering the third successful year. For the last 24 months, in the group we have done so many experimenting and have prepared 24 dishes without eggs. We have done so many cakes and desserts. And for this year, we just want to stay away from cakes. To start it, this bread recipe suggested by Priya of Priya's Versatile Recipes is perfect. I have seen so many bread recipes which uses eggs for giving the softness. But according to the group, we can make soft bread without eggs. And here is the result to prove us right. Sesame covered ring shaped bread is a famous street food in Turkey and Greece. In turkey it is called as Simit ( I have already posted the recipe here) and in Greece it is called as Simiti/ Koulouri. The traditional Simiti is like simit, a ring shaped bread covered with sesame seeds but Politiko Simiti is a braided version of the simiti.  

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Labongo latika

You know that I am part of South Vs North Challenges started by Divya. For this month, Sanoli of Sanoli's Kitchen is the host for the Southern team. She challenged the southern team with a Bengali sweet Labongo Latika. It is a sweet pastry filled with mawa and nuts and finally coated with sugar syrup. It is a delicious sweet and I have prepared it before. So I was so confused whether to take part in the challenge or not. But then I didn't want to miss the challenge. So I tweaked the filling and made it once again. I used paneer instead of mawa and the sweet turned so tasty. The clove gives a nice flavour to the sweet. Labongo means clove in Bengali and thus the sweet is named so. 

Recipe Adapted From Sanoli

Makes 20 Labongo Latikas

Ingredients:

For The Filling:

Paneer-200 gm

Sugar - 4 tbs

Cashew nuts-2 tbs

Sliced Almonds-2 tbs

Raisins-2 tbs

Milk-1 tbs

Almond Essence-1/4 tsp

For The Dough:

Flour/ Maida- 2 cups

Ghee-3 tbs

Salt-a pinch

Powdered Sugar-2 tbs

Baking Powder-1/4 tsp

Saffron - a few strands

Oil- For Deep Frying

Cloves-20

For The Syrup:

Sugar-1 cup

Water-1/2 cup

Rose Essence-1/4 tsp

Procedure:

For The Dough:

1. In a bowl mix together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, ghee and saffron.

2. Mix to form a crumbly dough.

3. Add enough water to make a soft dough.

4. Cover and keep it aside for 30 minutes.

For The Filling:

1. Grind paneer to a smooth paste adding milk.

2. In a heavy bottomed pan add together the ground paneer, sugar and essence.

3. Cook until the paneer starts leaving sides but still wet.

4. Remove from flame and add the nuts. Allow it to cool completely.

Preparing the Labongo Latikas:

1. Divide the dough into 20 equal pieces.

2. Roll them into balls.

3. Roll each ball into a 10 cm disc.

4. Place a tbs of filling and fold all the four sides to form a pocket.

5. Secure it in place using a clove.

6. Heat oil in a pan and deep fry all the pockets on medium flame until golden.

7. Transfer to a plate.

Sugar Syrup:

1. Mix together sugar and water and bring it to boil.

2. When it reaches 2 thread consistency, remove from heat and add the essence.

3. Dip the labongo latikas in batches. Once coated with the syrup, place on a wire rack and allow it to dry for at least 2 hours.

4. Store in airtight jar.

5. Serve as a snack.

Mix together ground paneer, sugar and essence.

Once cooked add the nuts.

Mix flour, sugar, saffron, ghee baking powder and salt.

Add enough water to make a soft dough.

Divide into 20 pieces.

Roll each piece into a 10 cm circle, place a tbs of filling in the centre.

Fold the two sides as shown.

Now fold the remaining two sides to form a pocket.

Secure it with a clove.

Finish all the 20 pieces.

Deep fry them in batches until golden brown.

Prepare a syrup of two string consistency.

Dip the labongo latikas in the syrup.

Let them dry on a wire rack.

Enjoy!!

And here is the previous version with Mawa Filling:

Eggless German Tree Cake / Baumkuchen / Schichttorte

What is more challenging? Taking part in a Daring Baker's Challenge or twisting the given recipe to get a replica of the original bake? I think the latter is the most challenging as far as I am concerned. I joined the Daring Bakers as soon as I started the blog and it has been three years. There are only few challenges I have missed and I can proudly say that I have been quite successful in changing the recipes into eggless ones. In that list I can add this tree cake / Baumkuchen - a special cake from Germany. The cake consists of nearly 20 layers of sponge finally covered with chocolate glaze and decorated with almonds. Doesn't it sound rich and delicious. I have been eyeing this cake for long but never got the courage to try it as it has a huge number of eggs. But when I am given a challenge, I usually don't run from it. So I made this cake one fine day replacing all the 10 eggs in the original recipe. I am not completely satisfied with the result as the layers are not plainly visible. But still the cake tasted wonderful.

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Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Whenever I see Cherry tomatoes in cookery shows, I would be tempted to taste it but unfortunately we don't get them in Madurai. So it has been in my to do list for long. Last month, when I went to Nilgiris, I saw a basket full of cherry tomatoes in the vegetable section. I din't even think again. I just grabbed the basket and asked the worker to weigh it out at once. I was so happy to have got it. 

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Baked Medhu Vada - Guilt Free Version of Medhu Vada and Thayir Vada

I love medhu vadas aka ulundha vadai, but I make it only twice or thrice a year fearing the oil in the vadas. Even hubby dear loves them so much and never forgets to eat one while visiting a tea stall. But even it is so tempting, I stay away from vadas available in hotels as they are so oily. For Pongal I made them at home nearly after a year and after just making limited vadas, I refrigerated the batter. I was longing for thayir vadai but still didn't want to use oil. Yesterday while I was thinking about the dish I need to do for the blog, a thought struck. Why not bake the vadas instead of frying. 

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Dhokar Dalna

For this month's Indian Cooking Challenge, Srivalli chose a Bengali delicacy from Sandeepa's Bong Mom Blog. I have made dhokar dalna previously for another monthly challenge. So I was in two minds to prepare it again. But still I went through Sandeepas's recipe. She has also listed some of the variations of dhokar dalna in the blogosphere. I read all the recipe links she has given and chose one which was very different. The recipe is from One Hot Stove. I liked the recipe as it had coconut, one of our favourite ingredients, in it. And it also didn't have potatoes. I though this would be perfect for my DH. I prepared it in the morning, had it for breakfast along with dosa and also had it for lunch with rice. Both combinations were tasty and I think it would taste good with roti too.The preparation of the lentil cakes/ dhokas is quite elaborate but the result was very good. Try it once and you will surely love it. 

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Eggless Koffiebroodjes - Dutch Coffee Buns

Koffiebroodjes are sweet pastry rolls with a pudding filling and a jam glaze. These are famous dutch pastries which the Dutch love having with their coffee. So they are also called as coffee buns. There are so many variations of koffiebroodjes. One has a pecan filling and sugar glaze, one had jam filling and sugar glaze and the recipe I tried out from Dutch Table had a pastry cream and raisin filling and jam glaze. I used orange marmalade instead and it tasted amazing. The pastry cream is eggless and I have used it previously in my Fraisier recipe. Ads I know that it tastes great, I made it again for this recipe and the result was great. Even though the dutch have it warm, I prefer mine at room temperature. Kaveri suggested this recipe for this month's Baking Partners Challenge. I followed her recipe and got 16 rolls. Linking this to yeastspotting

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Glaze Icing on Sugar Cookies (with liquid glucose)

Happy Pongal To All My Readers

Hope you all are celebrating Pongal today. Though it is Pongal, I am writing a post on cookies. I am that crazy. Last week, I wanted to try my hand at glaze icing the cookies. I have already posted my adventures with Buttercream icing and plain icing sugar glaze icing. Today I will be sharing with you my experiment with Glaze Icing using liquid glucose. The actual recipe uses corn syrup but in India as corn syrup is not available, we usually substitute it with liquid glucose. This substitution works best and my cookies turned out beautiful, though I had wrist pain for two days.

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Eggless Christmas Bakes

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Faluche Du Nord

Faluche is the traditional bread from Nord - Northern region of France. It is usually flat in shape and soft and slightly dense and mostly had as breakfast with bread and jam. It is also used to make sandwiches. The procedure is quite easy and the recipe is vegan too. Madurai is very cool nowadays which is very nice but as for as bread baking is concerned , it is not that good. When I made the dough, it took nearly 4 hours for the first rise which usually happens in 45 minutes. So if you are baking bread in winter, please be patient and do not blame the yeast. And when I arranged the cut out bread dough in the tray, there was a power shut down and it never came back until 4 pm. I placed the tray in refrigerator until 4 (even though there was no power, it is better to keep it in a cooler place so that it doesn't over rise) Then I placed the tray in a warm oven for 1 hour before baking. So for a simple bread I needed a whole day. The final result was amazing. The bread needs to be white but mine were slightly brown. The crust was crispy and the crumb was so soft and when paired with a chocolate spread, it tasted wonderful. Sruti and myself finished off half the batch when it came out of oven. It was that good!!! For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, our host Priya Suresh gave us three French recipes and this was one among them. I loved  baking these cute little breads and loved eating them too... Linking this to Yeastspotting.

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Decorating a Cake With Sugar Paste

Whenever I see a video on cake decorating, I will be tempted to try it out. That is how I tried so many buttercream decorated cakes. The next thing on my wish list was working with fondant. Fondant may not taste great but they make beautiful cake decorations. And the problem with fondant is it has egg  and gelatin in it. So it was always a dream for me to get a vegetarian and eggless fondant to try it on my cakes. One day I was going through an online store and came across a box of sugar paste. When I checked it was egg free and vegetarian. So I ordered for it immediately. When the box arrived I was so happy and so many crazy ideas started running through my head. But I wanted to make a simple cake as it will be my first trial. As I have gone through so many videos and cookery shows previously, the procedure was etched in my mind. 

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Walk Through Memory Lane - January Announcement

I know I am a little late in announcing this month's WTML. Walk Through Memory Lane has been going on since 2012 and we have completed two years successfully. As we are entering the third year of compiling all our childhood favourite recipes, I would like to make this month special. As you all know, every month there has been a book giveaway for the past two years and there are 24 lucky bloggers who have got their gifts. I would like to continue the same this year also. To know more about WTML and the recipes collected over these two years please visit WTML Page.

This is the start of 2014 and I hope this year brings all of you joy and happiness. And to mark the celebration, this time I would like to giveaway Silico 16 heart shape chocolate mould to three lucky winners.  To win this cute silicon mould, you need to blog about a childhood favourite recipe and link it to this post. You can also link archived posts but limit it to only two. And don't worry if you are a non blogger. Send me your recipe along with a photo and I will add it to the list and you are also eligible to win this chocolate mould.

Some of the rules to be followed to be eligible for the giveaway:

1. While posting the recipe please give a link to this page.

2. Usage of logo is mandatory. This will be useful to spread the word. 

3. There are no restrictions for the number of new entries.

4. If you are linking an archived entry, please update it with the link to this page. 

5. Two entries from the archives are accepted. 

6. Only Vegetarian recipes accepted. Eggs not allowed.

7. Non-Bloggers can also send in their entries by sending the recipe to my mail ID gayathriraani@gmail.com . I will include it in the round up.
8. Only Indian Regional recipes accepted. They should be the ones your mom  or your granny made for you. It may also from MIL as it would be your hubby's childhood favourite.

I will select three entries through random selection on February 1st and give away the moulds for the selected entries. I request all my readers to help me in making this event a huge success.
Note that the gifts I gives are not sponsored and it is my own contribution to the event.

Celebrating New Year With Nei Puttu

Wish You All A Very Happy and Prosperous New Year

This is the start of the year 2014 and I hope this year brings joy and success to all my readers. Hope you like the new look of my blog. Last month I have been baking like crazy and from this year on I would like to include more of regional recipes along with the bakes. I love baking but I also need to concentrate on guilt free recipes. For this New Year I have so many resolutions and one among them is to eat healthy. Though baking is interesting, it is loaded with sugar and butter which has to be avoided for a healthy living. So along with my posts on calorie loaded cakes and bakes, I will also be featuring recipes using millet. I need to stay healthy and I am planning to reduce the extra weight I added during the holidays. 

Nei Puttu is a delicious rice based dish. To make it extra delicious ghee is added to it while serving it piping hot. My hubby used to buy this puttu during his visits to Dindigul during our early stages of our marriage. The hotel near the bus stand was famous for Nei Puttu and it used to taste absolutely divine. This may seem weird after all those talks about dieting resolution but starting the new year with this regional dish would not do any harm. And also it was in my drafts and it was prepared a long time ago. This is for you to enjoy as a visual treat. Do try it to know how yummy it tastes.

Ingredients:

Puttu Flour-1 cup ( I used white raw rice to make the puttu flour)

Cardamom Powder-1 tsp

Sugar-1/2 cup or to taste

Ghee-2 tbs

Coconut-1/2 cup

Procedure:

1. In a large plate take the flour and sprinkle water.

2. Rub the flour between palms to get a soft and fluffy flour. It should be wet to touch but should not be soggy.

3. Sift it through a sieve.

4. Place it in a white cloth and steam cook for 15 minutes.

5. Transfer it on to a plate and add sugar, cardamom powder, coconut and ghee.

6. Mix well and serve the fluffy puttu immediately.