Ribbon Pakoda

This is a tasty and crunchy snack and easy to prepare. The main ingredients for this are rice flour and gram flour. Actually there are many variations for this recipe and mostly made with more of gram flour and little of rice flour. But by mistake I made it with more of rice flour and less of gram flour and it came out well. The rice flour actually helped the pakodas stay white and crispy.


Ingredients:

Rice Flour - 2 cups
Gram flour - 1/2 cup
Red chilly powder - 1 tsp
Salt
Butter - 1 tsp
Oil - to deep fry
Water

Method:

• Mix rice flour, gram flour, salt and chilly powder in a mixing bowl

• Melt the butter and add it to the above mix

• Add water little by little and knead well to make a soft dough

• Heat oil in a pan for frying.

• Put the mix in the press with the plate having thin lengthy slots (This will get the dough in thin flat strips)

• Press the ribbon pakodas directly on hot oil round throughtout the pan as you would do for omapodi. Cook on both sides till the spluttering of oil stops

• Drain excess oil on a tissue paper. Cool it and store in an air tight container

Mysore Pak - 1.1

This is a revised version of my earlier mysorepak. For the first one I used excessive sugar and in this one I've reduced the sugar and ghee and it still tasted good. This recipe makes around 40 mysorepaks.

Ingredients:

Besan flour – 2 cups
Sugar – 2 cups
Ghee – 3 cups
Water – 1/2 cup

Procedure

• Sieve the besan flour to make it fine
• Melt the ghee and take it from flame
• Add the besan flour to the melted ghee and mix well without any lumps
• In a heavy bottomed pan add water and sugar
• Stir to make the sugar dissolve in water
• After the syrup starts thickening pour the besan- ghee mix and keep stirring
• Once the mix starts thickening and comes rolling to the center remove from heat (this takes around 5-10 mins)
• Pour it on a ghee coated vessel and allow to cool
• While still warm cut to desired shape(before it turns hard)
• Allow to cool down completely and remove the pieces.
• This can be stored outside for 10 days and for 2 months if refrigerated.

Yam(Suran) Vadai

I got some frozen yams and my husband didn't liked the usual "Karunai kuzhambu". So I had to search for new recipes and found this good one. As any vadai this tastes good and it stays crispy for 4-5 hours. I used the frozen yam and this can be substituted for fresh ones too.

This recipe makes around 8 medium sized vadais.


Ingredients:

Frozen Yam - 1 cup
Chopped Onions - 1/2 cup
Corn flour - 3 tbsp
Rice flour - 1 tbsp
Green Chilli - 2
Ginger - 1/2 inch
curry leaves - 2 tbsp
salt
Oil- to fry

Procedure:

1. Thaw the yams in cold water and steam them for 10 mins. If you are using fresh yams, then clean the skin and pressure cook for 2 whistles.

2. Grind the Green chili and ginger to a coarse paste

3. Mash the yam and add cornflour, rice flour, grinded paste, salt, onions and curry leaves. Mix them well and make small balls of them

4. Heat oil in a pan. When it is ready, press the balls to vada shape and drop them in oil carefully. Cook on medium high until golden brown on both sides.

5. Serve hot as a snack with any green or coconut chutney.

Pumpkin Roll

It was Halloween time when there were lots of pumpkins throughout the store. So, I got one but didn't know wat to do exactly with it. First I tried the most crazy "pumpkin pie" but that didn't turned out good. And I had some more pumpkins left out. I searched for and got this great looking dessert.

This is basically a pumpkin cake rolled with sugared cream cheese and sliced. I am posting it with little alterations on the sugar quantity as the filling turned out to be very sweet in my case. Please click here for a video demo of this recipe (not mine!!!)



Ingredients

Cake Roll:
Pumpkin puree - 1 1/2 cups (or use canned pumpkin - 1 can)
All-purpose flour - 3/4 cup
Granulated sugar - 3/4 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
salt - a pinch
eggs - 2
chopped walnuts - 1/2 cup optional

Cream Cheese Filling:
cream cheese, softened - 1 (8 oz) package
powdered sugar - 3/4 cup
butter or margarine, softened - 4tbsp


Procedure:

Pumpkin puree:
You can always use canned pumpkin. But if you want to start from the scratch, cut the whole pumpkin into slices, remove the seeds and pressure cook for 5 whistles. Remove the skin part and blend in a mixer to get the puree.


Pumpkin cake:
PREHEAT oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 15 x 10-inch baking pan; line with wax paper (to make it easy to remove from baking pan). Grease and flour paper.

COMBINE flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts on top.

BAKE for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Slightly wet a clean kitchen towel. Loosen the cake and turn it onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool down for 2 hours.

Filling:
BEAT cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Make sure you don't beat too much as it may not stay stiff.

Pumpkin Roll:

Carefully unroll cake; Spread cream cheese mixture over cake.


Reroll cake. While rerolling remove the towel. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 5 hours.

This can also be kept in the freezer if you need it for another day.

After 5 hours remove from the fridge and slice into 1 inch rolls. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.