Passion Fruit Mille-Feuille / Napoleon / Custard Slice for Daring Bakers’

This month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge is to make Mille-Feuille, the popular French patisserie treat. ‘Mille-feuille’ is French for ‘a thousand leaves’ (or ‘layers’), which is very apt, as it contains both layers of pastry (usually three) and layers within each pastry sheet..... Making puff pastry (or pâte feuilletée) basically involves a simple pastry dough, which is folded around sheet of butter (the beurrage). You then roll out your butter pastry package, fold it, roll it out, fold it, etc. – creating seams of butter that will puff up into distinct crispy layers when baked. The traditional mille-feuille is filled with a vanilla pastry cream (crème pâtissière) and is also known as a Napoleon, a custard slice or a vanilla slice. It’s often topped with royal icing and distinctive chocolate squiggles, and is popular the world over....

Read More »

Read more »

Passion Fruit Frozen Yogurt Recipe

When Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt was introduced in Kuwait a couple of years back there used to be a huge queue in front of the shop and we literally had to wait for at least an hour to get a scoop of frozen yogurt.... and it’s a very rare sight to see Kuwaitis wait patiently to get something :P.... Now Pinkberry has opened lot of outlets all over Kuwait and the novelty has worn off and so have the queues.....We love Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt and undoubtedly a die-hard fan of Passion Fruit, I tried to recreate this at home using the recipe from David Lebovitz's  The Perfect Scoop..... I have added some Passion fruit puree to his basic Vanilla frozen Yogurt recipe and it tasted awesome and very similar to Pinkberry’s Passion Fruit Yogurt....

Read More »

Read more »

Chocolate Banana Bread Recipe

If you like chocolates and bananas you will definitely like this chocolate banana bread :)...had some over ripe bananas in hand and I didn't want to make regular banana bread or cake..... I wanted something chocolaty that day and hence chose to make this chocolate banana bread..... basic recipe is from Joy of Baking and I did some alterations..... Original recipe calls for walnuts, I didn't add any as I don’t like walnuts but I doubled the chocolate chips instead, also reduced the amount of egg and butter than the original recipe… this cake bread turned out perfect...... 

Read More »

Read more »

Mango and Passion Fruit Mousse

As usual when I return from my annual vacation in Kerala, my father gives me frozen passion fruit pulp; this year I got 3 big bottles of passion fruit pulp :).... That means you guys will get to see more passion fruit recipes here ;).... this time I tried Mango and Passion fruit Mousse and the end result was awesome...... Alphonso mango pulp and passion fruit pulp mixed with whipped cream and egg whites you just can’t go wrong :).....  It is a very easy to make dessert with absolutely no cooking involved....  Ensure gelatin and puree are at equal temperature to prevent lumps when combining.... Mousse is best made day before serving..... Since this mousse contains raw egg whites I will not recommend this dessert for small kids or pregnant ladies...... 

Read More »

Read more »

Armenian Kabab Recipe

A great Appetizer / Snack for a cocktail party which can be made ahead of time and fried just before serving. I used minced chicken but you can use any minced meat. Try this with your choice of meat when you plan a party next time.....

Read More »

Read more »

Poached Pears in Homemade Grape Wine

I was thinking of making this for quite some time and now that pears are in season I decided to go ahead. It turned out to be one of the most elegant and perfect fruit dessert I have made in recent times!  Pears cooked in spiced wine will pair with anything you can come up with whether it’s served with a dollop of ice cream, whipped cream, marscapone, crèmefraiche, devonshire cream ,chocolate sauce, custard or as a topping for plain cake, crepes, waffles or simply as it is; truly amazing.... As this can be made and stored ahead it’s a perfect dessert for parties.... You can use either red wine or white wine, store bought or homemade.... Spices can be added according to taste.... I tailor-made this to suit our personal taste..... so you are free to + / - any ingredients..... colour of the poached pears depends upon the colour of wine you use and mine was homemade light red wine, so my pears didn't turn out deep red... try this lovely dessert this season and I am sure you will love it..... 

Read More »

Read more »

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 »