Empanada Gallega ~ September 2012 Daring Bakers’ Challenge

Patri of the blog, Asi SonLos Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!

Empanada (or empada, in Portuguese) is a stuffed bread or pastry baked or fried in many countries in Western Europe, Latin America, and parts of Southeast Asia. The name comes from the Galician, Portuguese and Spanish verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread.The filling for empanada can vary, meat, chicken, cheese, fruit and vegetables. It is really up to your taste and preference and there is plenty of room for creativity. It can be served warm or cold. I chose to make individual sized empanadas instead of one big one and I used ground meat filling with some slight differences.

Read More »

Read more »

One Bowl Eggless Chocolate Cake Recipe

How about making a quick and easy, moist and crumbly and tasty chocolate cake, that requires only one bowl to mix everything and is eggless too??? Not impressed by my description ;) ;)... Believe me it’s as easy to make as spinning a magic wand and you will get the awesome cake in front of you without much effort.... Once you have baked & cooled the cake you can frost it with chocolate ganache by pouring it on top of the cake in the pan.....this cake is not very sweet, if you are not frosting it, it is excellent with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream.... Get ready and bake this cake as soon as possible....

Read More »

Read more »

Pan Roasted Baby Potatoes

During a casual talk with my cousin cum neighbor Saira, she told me to try this pan roasted baby potatoes and gave me the recipe for the same.... These potatoes are a great choiceas a vegetarian appetizer along with other non-veg appetizers for cocktail parties..... This is a very basic recipe and you can add any spices according to your personal taste, eg. if you wish you can add coriander powder or cumin powder or garam masala.... Addition of fresh cream gives a unique and rich taste to the potatoes.... This goes well with Indian flatbreads or Pulav too..... 

Read More »

Read more »

Eggless No Bake Fresh Cherry Cheesecake

It was our Wedding Anniversary yesterday and I made this quick, no bake, eggless cheese cake to celebrate this special day of our’s :)..... I have been making this cheesecake for the last several years with different toppings..... Already posted a Peach and Mango Cheesecake some time back.... This time I used fresh cherry as I wanted to consume as much cherry as possible before the Cherry season ends..... I have even stored some cherries in the freezer for later use..... The topping recipe is from Deepa’s blog… its really good and my hubby likes to eat the topping by itself… Pitting the cherries without a cherry pitter was a serious task for me earlier....  but found out an interesting idea using a pastry tip on this site; also check out Magpie’s blog on how she used a small mouthed bottle to pit cherries :).... In place of cherries you can use strawberries or a mixture of cherry and strawberry with the same topping recipe....

Read More »

Read more »

Watermelon Soda

Tried this refreshing summer drink after seeing the recipe on a local TV show. Thanks to my friend Purnima for bringing it to my attention.

Read More »

Read more »

Doraemon Cake / Black and White Layer Cake with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

After two months of vacation I am trying hard to come back to blogging...... School re-opened for my little one and I hope everything will be back to routine from now on… that means I will get some free time for blogging;)…. Our little one celebrated his 8^th birthday while we were in Phuket…. His only demand was that I have to bake him a birthday cake as soon as we got back… so within a couple of days of getting back I made this cake for him… this time he wanted a Doraemon cake as this is his favorite cartoon now a days…. Though it’s easy to frost a Doraemon face, somehow I didn’t get it perfect…..I was too tired and exhausted from travelling and crossing time zones.… But Aaryan was very happy to get his favorite Doraemon cake ;)…. I made a black and white layer cake with vanilla buttercream frosting…. So here we go to the recipe…

Read More »

Read more »

Happy Onam!

image courtesy: fun munch

Hi everybody….I am back after a 2 months vacation… First we went to Kerala and spent time with family and later to Bangkok and Phuket for some quality R&R... we  enjoyed the quiet time resting and relaxing on the beaches of Phuket with various cocktails and beer and of course the awesome Thai food!  We had a wonderful time over there and will post photos of our trip soon….

Even though I had scheduled some posts I have been away from my blog most of the time… and could not respond to your comments or queries on time…. After coming back I tried my best to reply to all of you and if I have missed any please let me know…. And thanks a lot to all my readers who have visited this space and to those who liked my FB page too… 

Since Onam is around the corner I know all Malayalies will be busy preparing for the Sadhya and I too had big plans to post Onam specials this time but I couldn’t as I am trying hard to settle down here at home after a 2 month vacation and on top I have to assist my son to finish off his holiday homework! So I am not posting any sadhya items here :D….. Meanwhile you can browse some of the very few Onam special recipes I have posted earlier here ;)…. 

Wishing all my readers a Very Happy Onam!

Here are some of the Payasam recipes I have posted earlier….  

Paal Payasam

Gothambu Payasam

Palada Prathaman

Read More »

Shahi Paneer Recipe

Read More »

Read more »

Masala Chicken Fry

This chicken curry recipe I got from Mother in law and is a good side dish for Palappam, Vellaappam or even with some boiled rice and moru curry. Instead of chicken you can make this curry with beef or mutton too…

Read More »

Read more »

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

I made these cupcakes sometime back but did not like the way I frosted it… at that time I didn’t have those jumbo size icing tips and I tried to frost it aiming for a nice swirl design and failed terribly …. so don’t judge by this picture….These are rich and incredibly moist cupcakes with a light and fluffy texture. These are made by the same method used for making brownies – melted chocolate is added to a whisked mixture of eggs and sugar, and then flour is stirred in. The resulting batter almost resembled a mousse; both thick and light. And this is my attempt on trying Peanut Butter frosting; I think you will like this frosting only if you like peanut butter… otherwise I doubt… we loved these chocolate cupcakes more than the frosting

Read More »

Read more »