Eggless Slovak Paska Bread and Paska Peeps

Slovak Paska is an Eastern European Easter Bread made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour and yeast. It has so much decorative details on the top. For the Baking Eggless Challenge this month, everyone wanted anything other than sweets and so I selected this decorative bread. This is not loaded with sugar. And the technique used in the decorations was quite interesting. There is also peeps made out of paska flour. These are cute bird figurines made with the dough and then baked. So this became this month's challenge. We had to avoid eggs in the original recipe and come up with our own recipe without compromising on the texture of the bread. Here is my experiment with the dough....

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Eggless Crème Brûlée

Crème Brûlée is an egg based custard topped with a crunchy caramel layer. The crunchy caramel layer is usually formed with sprinkling sugar and heating it with a blow torch to caramelize it. A caramel disc may also be prepared and the custard can be topped with this disc while serving. For Baking Eggless Group Challenge, Vimala Lakshmi of Cooking Club suggested this from Sanjeev Kapoor's website. The egg in the custard makes it a creamy pudding. And the caramel layer needed a blow torch. These were the challenges we had to face during the preparation. I successfully replaced the eggs with china grass and used a heated spoon instead of a blow torch ( the idea is not my own. I adapted it from here) and the custard turned out fabulous. Though the caramel layer was uneven, it's crunchiness was a perfect combination to the creamy pudding. The quantity made 6 small ramekins of crème brûlée and we both enjoyed them to the core. The Baking Eggless Group has completed two years successfully and we really had a great time converting twenty four egg based recipes into eggless ones. And I hope to continue it for this year also and you will see more interesting recipes in future...

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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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Eggless Pinacolada Cake

Pina Colada is the official beverage of Puerto Rico since 1978 according to WIKI. It is a drink made with pine apple juice and cream of coconut. There are so many variations of this drink and there are also so many cake and cupcake recipes based on this drink. I didn't know about the ingredients in Pina Colada until Meena suggested the Pinacolada cake for the monthly Baking Eggless challenge for this month. The recipe she suggested was in Polish and I translated it using Google Translate. The rewcipe had so many ingredients including cream of coconut which is not available at Madurai. So I googled Pina Colada cake and came upon so many variations. So I made my own version incorporating both pineapple and coconut which resulted in this rich cake. To my surprise this cake was liked by all the adult members of my family and kids didn't like it very much. Though Sruti ate a whole slice, she didn't come for a second serving. 

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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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