Caramelized Roti Crisps

My house help has been off for a week long leaving me in a state of utter dismay. I am without my her for the past 5 days and the next 2 days to come. And then, just yesterday I almost fainted when she called me testifying her extension of 2 more days. Life at home has sprung into chaotic scene devoid her presence. Several tasks that seized unattended adherence seemed to require vital attention. I almost broke my back giving bath to my baby, washing her clothes (no, we don’t use the washing machine for my baby’s clothes, they are hand washed and sanitized), followed by dusting and mopping the floor yesterday. Thankfully, dear husband vouched in to help me with the vessels.

Heck. Right from cleaning the chimney, the stove top to lobbing garbage, the chores seem unending. I end up exploiting 2 hours of what my maid does in less than hour. Suddenly, it seemed she was the most important person to me.

Between all these chores, there are some things that give a lot of solace, like food. Something quick and simple, yet so satisfying and immensely comforting. Leftovers of rotis made for our breakfast, carried over for the evening and transformed into a quick snack to go along with that coveted cup of desi chai. As kids we relished this to an extent that my mom would often cook a few extra rotis at breakfast to make these for our evening snack for her hungry kids back from school. It had no name, we would simply call it sihi roti (sweet roti in Kannada). She makes them for my daughter now. While she fries the entire roti on tava with ghee till crisp and then scatters sugar or honey till it caramelizes, I like to tear it into strips and do it in a wok instead, saving the extras in an air-tight container for a couple of days. This crisp sweet treat is delicious, made with whole wheat flour and sans butter it's healthier made with ghee. Hope you'll enjoy it too.

Caramelized Roti Crisps

INGREDIENTS

1 roti/wheat tortilla
1 tbsp. ghee / clarified butter
1 tbsp. sugar / honey
1/2 tsp. cardamom powder

DIRECTION

Tear the roti / wheat tortilla into rough bite sized pieces or into neat long strips as I did. Heat a wok / fry pan and add in a tbsp of ghee. Add in the torn roti and stir well so that all the pieces fry well. Stir for 2-3 minutes till the roti strips begin to get crisp. Sprinkle the sugar over and stir gently on low flame to coat all the strips, taking care you don't break them. The sugar will begin to melt and caramelize in a few minutes. Switch off the flame as they caramelize and turn golden brown. Sprinkle the cardamom powder and mix well. Serve with hot cup of tea.

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Mocha Muffins

Glad the Sunday is here. Yet another weekend and I am glad I got to bake these muffins. We spent our Saturday watching the romantic comedy flick Cocktail at Fame Cinemas yesterday, indeed worth the watch, and will tempt you to redo your wardrobe!

I'm hit with mid-week crisis on Wednesdays, generally. This week's been too hectic with a good amount of workload, deliverables carrying on my shoulder, some of which have been carried over the weekend too. I have been bogged down by the tight timelines of the deal I am currently working on. Weekend seemed far with two more days to go and I had felt I had worked long enough through Monday and Tuesday. Can we have a mid-week holiday too??? Wink-wink! Sigh.

It’s imperative I need bounty energy to knock this pressure off, punch it down and bounce back in action to sustain through the week. And what can do better than these mocha muffins, flavoured with coffee and chocolate, sweet crisp topping from damerara, a powerhouse of energy that I can take to work which will be a real saver, an energy booster I will rely on for my tea breaks, which I have been avoiding to race against my submissions. For a chocolate lover I have in myself, I know well it can only do good to my senses and that coffee adds in the kick factor. And not just for me, but also for the man I live with, who adores chocolates intensely, these muffins have been an instant hit with my family and friends.

Mocha Muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp. sunflower oil
225 gm. plain flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
115 gm. salted butter, melted
150 gm. damerara sugar
1 large egg, beaten
125 ml milk
1 tsp. almond / vanilla extract
2 tbsp. strong coffee
1 tbsp. instant coffee powder
55 gm. plain chocolate chips
25 gm. raisins

Cocoa Topping

3 tbsp. damerara sugar
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. all spice powder

DIRECTIONS

Oil a 12 cup muffin pan with sunflower oil or line them with muffin paper cases. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a large mixing bowl.

In a separate mixing bowl, add the melted butter and damerara sugar together, then stir in the beaten egg. Pour in the milk, almond / vanilla extract, coffee, the coffee powder.

Add this wet blend into the dry ingredients and gently mix them together. Then add in chocolate chips, the raisins to the flour mixture, stir together till just combined. Do not over stir - a little lumpy batter is just fine.

Divide the muffin batter into the paper cases till 2/3rd full. To make the toppings, place the damerara sugar in a bowl, add cocoa powder and all spices powder and mix well. Sprinkle the topping over the muffins, then transfer to a pre-heated oven and bake at 190 deg C for 25-30 mins, till risen and golden brown.

The recipe may seem quite a lot, it does fetch 12 large muffins which is quite a lot for our family. So I halved the recipe to get 6 large muffins. However what I have mentioned here is the original recipe for 12 muffins. Reduce it to half if you need to bake fewer muffins, But then these are delicious. They have chocolate, coffee and all things good, so you may want bake all of it and yet not feel guilt about devouring them. They do well as tea time accompaniments or even take away picnic treats.

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Unveiling the mystery of my whipped cream!

I do generally make some sort of a dessert or other on weekends, that needn’t be a bake alone. I’ve baked plenty of cakes in the past, but have hardly unleashed my creativity in terms of decorating cakes, something I always wanted to try my hand at. I always cringe to the thought that my low-fat fresh cream will never whip well to hold its shape. Of the several attempts made to whip Amul cream to perfection, I account to more flops than successes. If you are in India, are a reverent baker, then you know well what I am relating to.

Unfortunately options here are limited. Agar has at times helped me stabilize the cream, but then it does not make an attempt to the stiff peak stage that one would expect if you want to beautify your cakes. Eventually, after hours of effort going into freezing bowls, beaters and cream, I have often ended up being dissatisfied with the results, also constantly looking out for alternative dessert to be made from of the crudely whipped low-fat cream.

Then there have been other win win occasions where the cream whipped up considerably... especially when I managed to skim off that excess floating liquid (water) from the top of cream. But this cream tends to be moody. At times if it weeps out that moisture, it whips up, else will only make me weep!

Unveiling the mystery of my whipped cream!

Recently, I came across locally fetched cream on stands of Foodworld and thought I should share with all who are in similar shoes as me, for the ones who are looking out for a local cream rather than the expensive imported ones. ‘Milky Mist’ is an Indian brand for medium fat cream and whips beautifully light, airy and creamy. It’s a simple milk fat cream and though it doesn’t explicitly mention as whip cream, it does work like charm.

I picked this cream recently to use it in my curries. However back home as I went through the nutrition list, the fat content mentioned on the pack showed 39%. I stashed it into my refrigerator, however, on the back of my mind, the curiosity to whip it was killing me. In less than an hour, I pulled out my stand mixer, attached the beaters and went on a whipping spree. 39% fat does work for my job! My guess is the cream has no added preservatives and suggests to be used in 10 days from manufacturing date. On the flip side, the supply is very irregular and I have to often follow-up with the supermarket for more of these.

See how beautifully it whips. Aaah… glory!

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