Walnut brownie with hot chocolate sauce n cold Ice cream

 Its been a while since I posted my last blog. It was our 'little bundle of joy-Neil' who kept us occupied all around him day and night. He was born in 1st week of January and now he is 5 months old. He has started to roll-poll; babble and gurgle etc. etc. Now that I had some time off from work, I tried upon a couple of recipes which I will be sharing with you.

Also I will share with you the baby's first foods which can be useful to first time moms. I will talk about all this in detail in my next blog.

Coming back to cooking, here's 1 of the stuffs I made.....

Yes, it is a sinful walnut brownie with hot chocolate sauce n cold Ice cream

Brownies make me forget about the calorie count and I go on galloping it with loads of cold ice cream...hmm it's yummy!! Thanks to Divya for the wonderful recepie (to which I did a very little experiment). Here's the recipe for you...

Recipe source - 1. DK of Chefinyou 

                       2. Divya from Divya's Cookbook 

 

Ingredients  

Flour - ½ cup
Baking powder – ¾ tsp
Salt – a pinch
Walnuts,chopped – 1 cup
Eggs, lightly beaten -2[or 4 egg whites]
Butter, melted – ¾ cup
Cocoa – 6 tbsp
Sugar – 1 cup
Vanilla extract – ½ tsp

Method

1. Preheat Oven 350F. Grease an 8 inch square shallow cake pan with wax paper. Mix the butter and cocoa in a pan and set aside.
2. Beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl.
3. Mix it along with cocoa mixture.
4. Stir in the nuts.
5. Sift over the flour and fold it along with the mixture.Add a pinch of salt and mix well.
6. Pour this mixture into the cake pan and bake for 20-35 minutes until risen. It will still look soft and wet but it will cook further while cooling. Let it sit to cool.

So now it's your turn to dig your teeth into this sinful brownie!! Do tell me how it was... :)

Healthy Chocolate Nutty Parantha

This is my first blog on cooking. I like to experiment with different tastes and ingredients.. So let me share with you with my latest dish which I made during New Year's vacation.. I named it "Healthy Chocolate Nutty Parantha".
The inspiration to make dish came from 1 of the dish i saw in a cookery show called Master-chef India-2. where the original dish was called "Nutella Parantha". Since I was apprehensive about the taste of nutella, I did my experimentation here tooo :D Here's the recipe for you : 

Healthy Chocolate Nutty Parantha      

Ingredients (For 2 people)

• 1 cup of Wheat Flour (Aata)
• 2-3 spoons of Maida 
• Salt to taste
• 3-4 tea spoons Ghee
• 3-4 Tb. spoons of nuts/dry fruits of your choice(Almonds, cashews, pistachio, raisins.)
• Pinch of cardamom powder
• 1/4 cup grtaed chocolate
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1/2 spoon Honey (can be substituted with Jagger or sugar powder as per choice)

Methood:

• In a mixing bowl, combine wheat flour, maida, salt and ghee. Prepare a smooth firm dough by adding sufficient water. Cover the dough and keep it aside for a while.
• In a small frying pan, roast the dry fruits of your choice till light golden (do not roast raisins if using them). Remove from flame and keep aside for cooling. Once cool, grind them to make a powder.
• In a small bowl, combine honey with butter, 2 spoons grated chocolate, cardamom powder and powdered dry fruits. I added very little chocolate sauce too (If not using honey, you might need more butter or more chocolate sauce to bind the powdered nuts)
• Divide the dough into 12 balls , roll each out into a round Parantha. Apply melted ghee on each parantha, fold it, apply some more ghee on one side of the paratha and fold it again. Roll out into a triangular shaped Parantha. 
• Heat a tawa and roast the parathas partly basting lightly with oil. Separate a layer of each partially cooked parantha making sure to leave it intact on the two sides, fill in the dry fruit mixture, seal and cook the parantha completely till crispy n golden. 
• Once done, you can cut it into small triangular pieces and dash it with some chocolate sauce and grated chocolate on top.
• Serve hot. It tastes awesome when hot.

Try it out and tell me how it was!!!!

How to get rid of 'Fruit Flies'

Have you ever encountered those small, brick-eyed irritating flies in your kitchen or bathroom? Yes, i am talking about those irritating fruit flies....Fruit flies can be a common nuisance in many households, especially in the kitchen.

One morning, I suddenly encountered a couple of them in my kitchen. I was wondering what bought them here, as I had a habit of keeping my kitchen clean most of the times. Even our garbage bin had lid. Fruit flies are attracted by the smell of the ripe or rotten fruit and vegetables but we hardly had anything rotten in our kitchen. As an immediate action, I cleaned my kitchen and bins all over again assuming they would be gone by evening. To my surprise, it didn't happen. Rather they were multiplying hour by hour, day by day. They were driving me crazy.

Finally, when my cleaning and food and garbage hiding tricks didn't help me get rid of those tons of clumsy little fruit flies buzzing around my house, I started digging into Google. I got to learn a lot about these creatures (like they breed at damp n moist places, they multiply at supersonic speed by laying 500 eggs at a time, and are hard to get rid of, ehhh...). I also came across a couple of tricks and traps to get rid of them (to my surprise, i came to know that you can buy some ready-made disposable traps abroad). Below I have put the links which gave me ideas to get rid of these irritating flies. But the ingredients required to make these traps were not easily available to me. Hence, my irritation along with my study inspired me to do an experiment (oh no, here too, but yes I did and it worked ;P)

Let me quickly disclose to you what I did-
First I searched their breeding place, which was near my bins. Next step was to make my trap. Since the recommended traps needed wine or vinegar or ammonia which wasn't easily available, and since I had studied that they quickly dwell on the smell of ripe bananas or rotten bananas; I made my trap using bananas. I used a deep glass shaped plastic container with lid (to be specific, i used an empty but clean container of Amul dahi), made some small holes on it's lid, and inside the container, i kept some ripe bananas. I ensured that it is sealed properly and then kept it at their breeding place. Apart from this, i ensured that my kitchen was clean, no food item was left outside uncovered, and bins were properly covered. Then I left for my office.

On coming back home, to my surprise, there were a couple of flies trapped inside the box I had prepared to catch them. I was happy. I kept the box there for next 2 days after which there was a bunch of flies inside and the number was increasing outside.. Yeahhh I was happy. I took my box to a far and non-resident area and released the trapped flies there. After coming back, cleaned the box again, waited for it to dry and added fresh ripe bananas to catch the few leftover flies. in next 5 days, my kitchen was finally free from these small monsters. I took a sigh of relief!!

So now, if these flies are the reason of your headache too, dont worry, just try out this trap and relax..... Good Luck!!

Here are the links which helped in in this DIY task-

1. http://www.diylife.com/2011/07/18/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies/
2. http://howtogetridofall.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies
3. http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies
4. http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/how-to-get-rid-fruit-flies-10000001648489/index.html
5. http://howtogetridofall.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies