Eggless Santa Claus Challah

For the Home Baker's challenge, I made two recipes from the recipes suggested by Priya. One being the Snowmen Butter Cookies, the other one I chose was Challah. Challah is a Jewish braide bread relished on Sabbath. It consists of eggs and that gives a fluffy bread. I have made Eggless Challah in braided form before and I was searching for other options to shape the bread. Recently I came across the Santa Claus bread in one of the groups. I am sorry I forgot the blogger but I searched for a detailed post and came across one in Taste of Home. The shaping was so much fun and the end result was awesome. My daughter loved it. The bread itself turned out super soft and the texture was very nice. You can use this recipe and braid the dough for an authentic finish. 

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Snow Men Butter Cookies

This month's Home Baker's Challenge was hosted by Priya of Cook Like Priya. As December is the month of Christmas, she had suggested three cookies recipes, two cakes and two bread recipes. We were to choose any of the given recipes. I loved the look of this snow man cookie and so I tried it out. It was very colourful, crispy and very delicious. My daughter loved them. It was full of butter flavour and my house was so aromatic when these cute cookies were baking in the oven. It is a very easy dough but you need a lot of patience to make the figurines. The given recipe yields more than 20 cookies. 

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Eggless Blondies / Blonde Brownies

Who knows about blondies? I heard of blondies only two months back but never bothered to check the recipe. This month Sharanya of Just Not The Cakes hosted the challenge at Home Bakers and one of the recipes she chose was a Blondie. So I googled to know about it. IT is nothing but a Brownie minus cocoa powder and so it is light in colour while the brownie is darker because of the cocoa powder used. Blondies or Blonde Brownies are usually served as it is without frosting or glazing. The brown sugar gives the necessary sweetness. Blondies can be made plain or with nuts or chocochips to give the extra crunch.

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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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Eggless Oats Chocolate Biscotti

For this month's Home Baker's challenge, Priya is our host and she selected the theme Biscotti. Biscotti are double baked crunchy and light biscuits from Italy. Biscotti uses eggs for binding and when ever I make an eggless biscotti I face a problem. The top cracks and it is very difficult to get perfect oblong biscotti.  For this month Priya provided us four recipes and one among those was an eggless recipe. She had got perfectly shaped biscotti and so I wanted to try that recipe. But still I didn't get the shape but it tasted delicious. Super light and super crisp it was super hit at my house. Though it doesn't look beautiful, it tasted divine and in two days all the 22 pieces were gone. My daughter needs more but as I am out of chocolate I have postponed the preparation. So don't be fooled by the look of this biscotti. Try it and enjoy it as we did.

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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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