Showing posts with label ALMONDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ALMONDS. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2014

Polvorones - Spanish Almond Cookies

All my last month's pending challenges will be posted this month. Last month's International Food Challenge started by Saraswathi and Shobana, was hosted by Sharanya. Every month a region's cuisine is explored and for the month of February it was Andalusia, the southern part of Spain. She gave us four recipes and we were to choose any one from them. At first I wanted to try out a savoury dish but at the last moment I changed my mind and made these cookies. Polvorones are famous throughout Spain during Christmas. On the day of preparation, I had some guests and I was happy that I could serve these with coffee. The preparation was quite easy and the cookies turned out crispy and flaky and so delicious. Making the almond flour was the only lengthy task needed for these cookies, but if you can get it in stores then it is fine. While grinding the blanched almonds, pulse it in a mixer along with 2-3 tbs of flour to get a nice non clumpy flour. 



Recipe Source: Sea Salt With Food
Makes 16 Cookies
Ingredients:
Flour/ Maida-110 gm
Icing Sugar-40 gm
Almond Flour- 50 gm
Unsalted Butter-100 gm

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 150C.
2. In a bowl cream together butter and icing sugar.
3. Add the almond flour and flour to the butter mixture and mix to form a soft dough.
4. Roll it on a lightly floured counter and cut out cookies with your favourite cutter.
5. Arrange on a greased baking tray.
6. Bake the cookies for 20 minutes or until slightly brown.
7. Allow them to cool on wire rack.
8. Dust with icing sugar and serve.




Take butter and sugar.



Mix flour and almond flour.



Cream butter sugar using a wooden spatula.



Add the flour mixture.



Knead dough and roll into a thick disc.



Cut the cookies using a cutter.


Arrange on a greased baking tray and bake.



Dust with icing sugar and serve.


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Monday, January 27, 2014

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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Friday, November 15, 2013

Chatti Pathiri

For this month's Indian Cooking Challenge, Srivalli chose a multi layered sweet from Kerala. Chatti Pathiri - sweet version is from Anita of Slice Of My Life. Usually chatti pathiri is made as a savory dish with layers of pathiri sandwiched between meat fillings. It is like the Indian version of Lasagna. The fillings differ in the sweet version. Lots of nuts and coconut are added to make this delicious and rich treat. Both hubby and daughter liked it but we couldn't have more than a small portion as it is very heavy because of the nuts, coconut, coconut milk and poppy seeds. Refrigerate the remaining chatti pathiri. If you have many guests, then it would be the perfect treat for them.


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Monday, November 4, 2013

Nutty Pear and Carrot Salad

For today's Blogging Marathon with the theme Cooking with Fruits - I made this simple yet satisfying sald pairing the pears with carrot and nuts. When you crave for some snacks in the evening but do not want to stack up calories, this salad would be a wonderful choice. It takes just 5 minutes to make this salad and is very light on your tummy. If you want you can also chill it and serve it with a scoop of ice cream for a rich dessert. The addition of honey gives the sweetness and the black pepper and cumin powder give the punch. My hubby liked it very much and I was happy to have served it...

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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Eggless Spooky Witches' Fingers

When October arrives, Haloween craze sets among the bloggers around the world. There will be pumpkin recipes, spooky finger recipes, mummy cup cake recipes and so on going around the blogosphere. We are not different. In the Home Baker's Group started by Priya, this month's host Nalini suggested four Halloween recipes. One among those was this spooky witches' fingers. When I first saw the snaps of these cookies, I was so afraid to try. They were scary and really spooky. I have never tried these type of recipes. So I kept postponing the making of this recipe. One fine day gathering up my courage, I made these finger cookies. 


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Monday, September 30, 2013

Eggless Ferrero Rocher Tart

Last month I skipped the challenge due to my mom's sudden demise. This month I didn't want to miss the challenge. Priya Srinivasan of Enveetu Kitchen suggested this tart recipe from Trissalious. This tart is inspired by the famous Ferrero Rocher. My daughter loves Ferrero Rocher and I was sure that she would love this tart. This tart has so many elemnts combined together. The tart base is a chocolate based crust. The filling is hazelnut mousse. The topping is caramelized hazelnut and chocolate combined together and the whole assembly is topped with a caramelized hazelnut. As hazelnut is not available at Madurai, I substituted it with almonds. The hazelnut mousse is actually made with nutella spread and so I didn't have any problems with that. The mousse had eggs in it and I just substituted it with whipped cream and gelatin was replaced by china grass. I halved the recipe and got 12 delicious tarts. As I was doing so many works together, I didn't note down the cup measurements. I just weighed all the ingredients as given in the original recpie and used it.


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