Nut Laden Vegan Date Rolls

I love Indian sweets. So Much. Especially Rasgullas and Rasmalais. Or should I say Roshgullas and Roshmolois? Hearing a Bengali pronounce these names gives me a silly, juvenile pleasure. The way they say it conjures up delicious images of perfectly round, soft, juice little roshgolla babies in my head. Aaaaaaaah :)

The thing about Indian sweets- They're so hard to veganize! They're unabashedly rich, and ooze with oceans of milk and ghee. And they're meant to. Sugar free sweets for diabetics are pretty common now, (however terrible they may taste) but suggest dairy free sweets to a sweet loving Indian and be prepared to be met with horrified  looks.

I am newly vegan, and I decided that this Janmashtami, I would make at least one vegan sweet and it would taste good.

I started with the impossible. Rasgulla. I tried a small batch of Rasgullas using soymilk.  (I know, I know, what was I thinking?) But the balls eventually cracked when I was cooking them and yes, they tasted chalky and beany. 

Then I found this PeTA recipe here. It's a recipe raining with nuts. One of those Burfis that your local sweet shop will sell for Rs 1000 a kilo.

I didn't want to use quite so many nuts, and I didn't want to rely solely on dates for the sweetness so I did modify it a fair bit.

Here's what you need.

500 grams dates, deseeded

100 grams blanched chopped almonds

a handful of chopped cashew nuts

two handfuls of chopped walnuts

6 tablespoons of sugar

1 teaspoon Cardamom powder

flour (to dust)

To prepare the date roll mixture:

1. Soak the dates in a little water for about an hour so that it becomes soft.
2. Blend the dates into a nice puree.
3. Pour the puree onto a pan and cook for about 5 to ten minutes, stirring regularly, till the puree dries. At this point the dates will begin to get that 'cooked' smell and will be of the consistency of a very sticky dough. 
4. Put the paste into a bowl.  Add the almonds, cashew nuts and cardamom powder and mix well with a spoon. The paste will be too sticky to handle with your fingers.
5. Refrigerate till cool. I refrigerated mine overnight.

To prepare the candied walnuts:

1. Put the sugar in a pan on medium heat. Once the sugar begins to met, stir continuously.
2. Once it all becomes a golden liquid, add in the chopped walnuts and keep stirring till the walnuts become brown. Be very careful not to let it burn.
3. Once done, immediately take off the heat and pour the mixture onto a flat plate. Don't make a towering mess of the candy, try and spread it out as much as possible and let it be as flat as possible.
4. Once cool, break into bits. For small pieces, place the back of a spoon on the candy and press hard on top.

To make the rolls:

1. Dust some all purpose flour on a tray. 
2. Take a small ball of the chilled dough and spread it out with your fingers on the flour as evenly as possible. The flour is just to help you knead the mixture. Try and get it into a rectangle shape, as thin as you can without it cracking.
3. Place some of the candied walnuts on the rectangle and roll it into a cylinder. (Don't place the walnuts too close to the edge, place them slightly away for easy rolling.)
4. Similarly roll out the rest of the dough. For each little cylinder that you make, use some flour to dust.

                        How do they taste? Strongly of dates. They are very sweet, and yes, load up on the candied walnuts because the sweet crunch in the middle is such a treat. If you have a sweet tooth, this sweet will leave you pretty satisfied, vegan or not. Date lovers, rejoice!

A very low fat eggless banana cake

Ever since I got hooked onto baking, I've always been on the lookout for eggless sponge cake recipes, especially ones without lots of butter, condensed milk and guilt. I have tried a few butterless sponges that I found online, but they're always very disappointing.

Another seemingly impossible recipe on my wishlist - An eggless, low fat, banana sponge. I have tried and failed many times to create that perfect banana sponge, but yesterday, I did manage to put together a guilt free banana cake that I was reasonably satisfied with. By no means a sponge, but definitely soft, moist, not very dense and incredibly flavorful. My oh my the smells! I was overwhelmed by the beautiful smells coming out of the oven which complimented eachother so wonderfully. I'd nailed the perfect combination finally- Too much banana isn't pleasant, it's quite headache inducing. And yet you need enough to replace the fats and bind everything together.

This is no birthday cake, but it's a pleasant smelling sweet snack for when you really want to bake a cake but without so much of the guilt!

 

Here's what you need.

1 & 1/4 cup All purpose flour

3 teaspoons Cocoa Powder

3/4 cup yogurt (I used low fat)

3/4 cup sugar

1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 tablespoons vinegar

one medium sized very ripe banana

1 teaspoon vanilla 

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F or 175°C. Prepare your cake tin.

2. Sift flour, cocoa powder into one bowl.

3. Blend the yogurt, sugar and pieces of the banana into a smooth mixture.

4. Add half a teaspoon of baking powder and the vanilla essence to the banana mixture and beat well. Let there be lots of  bubbles!

5. Tip into the flour mixture and gently mix.

6. JUST before you pour the batter into the tin, add the remaining baking powder to the vinegar and mix quickly. Tip this mixture into the batter, give it one good mix and get it into the oven as soon as possible so as to not lose the air bubbles.

7. My cake was done in 30 minutes, but check just in case yours is done sooner. When its almost done you get this gorgeous smell so watch out for that!

And this is one of those cakes which tastes even better the next day. But if you can't wait till then,     

tuck in! :)

Silken Tofu and some Silky Chocolate Cake - Part II

Have you ever seen a sachertorte? Or tasted one? It's an austrian cake made with no flour and a tonne of eggs. I have neither seen one, not  tasted one, but I've ogled over pictures of flourless cakes countless times. They look incredibly soft, silky, and rich, and it seems like one would need no teeth to chew this cake for it looks that silky. Here's a droolworthy picture of a flourless cake that I found on google.

Looks incredible right? I've always dreamt of eating a really silky, soft eggless chocolate cake. I've make plenty of different eggless chocolate cakes but somehow, they all taste pretty predictable. If you've been baking for quite sometime like me, I'm sure you're bored of the vinegar vegan chocolate cake, however tasty your friends may find it. Slightly hard on the outside, soft and moist in the center, with the rich aroma of cocoa powder. BORING. I was desperate for a new eggless recipe that was silky soft but without any butter and condensed milk.

Having made some silken tofu by myself earlier this evening, I didn't know what to do with it. I had only a quarter cup of silken tofu, and found Madhuram's eggless silken tofu chocolate cake recipe. Madhuram's recipes always turn out perfectly for me, but I instinctively made a couple of modifications to this one. Here's the best chocolate cake I've ever made.

Ingredients

1 Cup All Purpose Flour

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 Cup Oil (I used sunflower)

1/2 cup Yogurt/Curd

1/4 cup pureed silken tofu

1/4 Cup water

1/2 tsp Coffee Powder

1tsp Vanilla

1tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat the oven to 160 C or 325 F for 15 minutes

2. Sift flour,  cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda. Add sugar.

3. Add the coffee powder to hot water and wait till cool. 

4. Add the oil, curd, silken tofu, coffee mixture and vanilla essence to the flour mixture. Gently mix, do not beat the living day lights out of it.

This makes a rather thin batter, but it didn't worry me. After all, it was Madhuram's recipe :)

5.Bake for about 15 minutes or till a knife inserted in comes out clean.

What a cake!! Like her recipe name suggests, I can't believe it's eggless! It was soft, moist and so very silky!

If you're in a festive mood, slather nutella on the top and garnish with flakes of semi sweet chocolate. Or devour it in its simple silky way, it's irresistable!! I just helped myself to the fourth slice, I am going to show off so much with this cake! Thank you Madhuram!!

Silken Tofu and some Silky Chocolate Cake - Part I

Silken Tofu is often touted as an extremely versatile ingredient which can be used to replace so many ingredients. Eggs, Cheeses, cream, meats....It can be hard or soft, and has a chameleon like nature, soaking up whatever flavors you choose to give it.

Sounds amazing right.

Except, if you're a pocket conscious baker like me, the price of silken tofu can be a slight put down. Unlike its firm Chinese style counterpart, Silken Tofu doesn't exactly come cheap.

And yet, it is placed on such a high pedestal by so many food bloggers that I simply had to give this a try. As soy milk comes cheap, I decided to try making my own. It was after quite a bit of googling that I found that instead of Nigari or Magnesium Chloride, the traditional Japanese coagulant which I have NO IDEA where I can find, the oh-so-cheap epsom salts can do the job.

Since I already had a packet of epsom salts on hand, I immediately started fantasizing. Vegan Rasmalai! Vegan Rasgulla! ooooh!

Okay so I didn't really make those. At least not yet. But my silken tofu did come out beautifully. Not that I can tell, never having bought silken tofu from the stores before. But the chocolate cake I baked with my homemade silken tofu was simply brilliant.

So here's what you need to make your very own silken tofu.

Yield: about 1/4th cup when pureed.

• 400 ml of plain soy milk. 
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon epsom salt
• A Sieve or a Colander
• Cheese Cloth

How you do it.

1. Bring soy milk to a boil. This will take about 5 minutes.

2. While the milk is heating and is about to boil, heat the water and add epsom salt to it. This is the coagulant mixture.

3. Add the coagulant mixture to the boiling soymilk WHEN THE MIXTURE IS STILL HOT. this is very         important.



4. Once the soy milk begins to Curdle, turn off the heat. Let the curdling take place, leave the milk undisturbed for about thirty minutes.





5. Place the Sieve on a bowl, and place the cheesecloth on the sieve. Pour the curd and the whey into the cheesecloth. Wrap the ends of the cheese cloth over the curds.

6. Place some weight on top of the cheesecloth. I used another vessel with flour inside it for the weight. Most websites recommend leaving the curds under the weight for about an hour, but I left mine for two hours.


7. Your Silken Tofu is now ready to be used :)


8. If you want to store it, store it in a vessel with water in a refrigerator and change the water everyday.

Ofcourse, my tofu didn't take any particular shape. If you want your tofu in blocks, use a tofu box.












In Part II- the best, silkiest chocolate cake I have ever baked!!

My love for food blogs and my failures as a baker.

I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to baking, I've been a pretty passionate baker for more than a year now. The first time I put my heart and soul into baking a chocolate cake was for this friend's birthday back when I was in school. The result was fantastic, I earned the reputation of being a good baker over night. woo hoo!!

I guess different people are motivated by different things when it comes to baking. I mean, cooking is an art. You throw your herbs in, you hum a little tune, you modify things a little, and even if your dish doesn't quite turn out right, you alter this, you add that, and you have a fairly acceptable meal to present to your disgruntled family.
Baking is so not like that.
Once it's gone in the oven, it's gone.
Sometimes the batter tastes good, but the cake isn't right.
Sometimes the batter tastes not so great, but the cake is oh-my-god.
Sometimes the batter sucks. You shiver with fear, hoping it turns out like it did above.
and, *my world* sometimes, both the batter and the cake taste absolutely unbearable.

I'm writing this blog post because the smell of my most recent cupcake debacle still makes me feel slighty nauseated. *shudder*

I should probably mention here that I can't bake with eggs at home. My tam bram parents went no-egg sometime back, and honestly, I think I can do fine without that awful smell of raw eggs. It was when I googled for other options that I discovered the vast world of food blogs. Oh what a beautiful world!!

But it was when I stumbled into Sunita Bhuyan's website that I realised the magnitude of the word food blog. Oh my. That food photography!!! I'd go visit various recipes that I knew I was never going to try just to ogle at the pictures. All I wanted at that time was a glorious food blog of my own, with lots of tantalizing pictures and a pretty picture of myself at the top. *sigh*

And then there's Madhuram.  What a website! Her Website is pretty much the bible for the eggless baking newbie. What an EXHAUSTIVE collection of recipes! It was her website that opened me up to the whole food-blogosphere. Oh, such domestic goddesses, these food bloggers! They come up with one inventive recipe after another, and then take those sexy pictures, and we're left helplessly staring with desperate longing.

And there are people like me. Wannabe-kitchen-goddesses, who try and fail again and again to invent a perfect healthy, yet tasty cake recipe that the real kitchen goddesses may someday try out and say, "Oh, that was wonderful! Thank you so much!". Haha. Yes, I'm quite a dreamer.

Okay, it's not like I don't have the occasional success. How ever much I maybe stripping myself of my self respect with this post.

But my constant bold experiments have left me with enough disaters to write a book about, So Here's, in a nutshell, what I learnt from my failures this far.

1. DO NOT TRY TO BE OVERLY HEALTHY. I mean, it's a cake for crying out loud. WWF cakes made with pilsbury aata can earn you a bad reputation with your friends. Try it on your unsuspecting brother if you must.

2.DO NOT TRY AND REPLACE ALL THE SUGAR WITH DATE SYRUP AND EXPECT NO ONE TO NOTICE. I've had some of my worst disasters with date syrup, trying to create that magic healthy recipe. But to be fair, date syrup is AMAZING. Check out the chocolate chip cookie recipe with date syrup in this website. I baked them without eggs. Beautiful :)

3.NEVER MIX MANGO AND CHOCOLATE :( Those cupcakes in the kitchen I mentioned? They look incredible. And they're so soft and moist. And almost fat free. But smell them and you're going to pass out. NEVER  mix mango and chocolate.

So that's it for this post. I doubt anyone is ever going to read this. But if you're a food blogger and you've read this loooong post till the very end, and if you do experiment senselessly like me, please do make sure your food doesn't go into the bin. After all, there is a famine in Somalia and there's millions of hungry people out there :(.

Alright, Ciao!

Don't irritate thy neighbour.

When you've been raised a vegetarian, to love animals and to make conscious choices, living a cruelty free life isn't really hard. Some of my friends are astonished when I tell them I don't buy Garnier because its animal tested, but its not like that's going to influence their choices anyway. It's more of a I-respect-you-for-your-strength-but-there's-no-way-I'm-going-to-do-that sort of thing.

This post is not an attempt to convince anyone the right way to go. I was just wondering..

Is it my responsibility to attempt to influence those around me? Does the burden of convincing people that its not so bad become the duty of those of us who care for our cause?

The Hard and bitter truth...most people hate it. No one likes being forced to like animals. Trying to impose a bloody video of torture and animal cruelty on an unsuspecting audience doesn't always change things for the better, p.e.t.a. has demonstrated that quite aptly. I'm not denying that p.e.t.a does influence a lot of people to change, but for the most part, You cannot torture someone into changing their lifestyle, it simply won't work!!

As a child, I was quite a fan of the organization and saw only the bright side of things. Which was why I was quite shocked when I came across this...http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=At3wLyLLCJHghpunfiiHAYcjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080812142819AA2Pb72

So yeah, no one likes being lectured on the unpleasant stuff. But that doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done. Think about it. If my cruelty free hair care routine is going to beat your Garnier Fructis routine, you're gonna want to try mine anyway.

 So if you've got a sweet beauty secret out there, don't hesitate to share it because you might be doing the world some good! 

Of Animal Testing and the Woes of having Curly Hair

Garnier. Dove. Herbal Essences. L'Oreal. What do all of these have in common?

They make amazing products which are, sadly, animal tested.  

Sure, they may have websites claiming they are against animal testing, but haha. Read between the lines and you know that they just mean their finished products aren't animal tested. Nothing new about all that, really.

It's just such a pity. When people rave about a Garnier gel or whatever, I'm itching to buy it. I almost forget why I stopped using that stuff in the first place. I mean, my hair is just unmanageable. Ironing it makes it look good for a little while, and then it becomes like a big bush of HAY. And to know that there are products out there which are going to help...aaaargh.

I happen to live in India, and here not a lot of people really are aware of the horrors of animal testing. I once told a friend not to buy animal tested stuff, and she gave me an amused look and said '' so what? they're shampooing a rabbit, it''s gonna end up all nice and clean and fluffy!!!'' 

That's how clueless people are.

The worst part is, even those of us who are aware don't really have a lot of choices. In India, cruelty free means herbal, or unimaginably expensive. Or both. (The Body Shop =/ ) I've wanted to use John Frieda products for curly hair ever since I heard of them, but you don't get them here, and its ridiculous to think of having shampoo shipped. 

Over the years, I've tried almost every single cruelty free hair care brand in available in India, and I've found ways to tame my bush and make my wet hair curls last through the day! Without heat, without chemicals, without expensive rubbish.With simple kitchen remedies. 

More detail on all that in posts to come!