ROCKY ROAD MUFFINS

What better way to celebrate the arrival of our bundle of joy, than with something sweet and decadent ! ROCKY ROAD MUFFINS to announce that Riona Dasgupta has made her debut. After a 23 hour labor, as I held my daughter skin to skin, I had the brightest smile on my face. The only smile which could give this smile some competition was the smile of the new Daddy. So after  2 months of getting to know each other, finally decided to get back to some writing. As she settles into a cat nap, I have to type away super fast. May be it will take a few of her cat naps, before i hit PUBLISH, but I ain't complaining.

Ideally I should have started on my exercise routine by now, but then I am just being lazy. And not to mention, I am still on a binge eating spree, as I was during my pregnancy days. Blame it on the nursing or just a bad habit, my chocolate consumption is on an all time high. From hot chocolate for the surprisingly cold Spring evenings, to all kinds of Chocolate munchies. So even when I baked, it had to be something Chocolaty.

So as I cooked away dinner, a few weeknights back, the selections of nuts in the pantry caught my eye. Immediately thought of Rocky Road. The debate in my mind for the next five minutes or so whether they would be Brownies or Muffins. And finally ROCKY ROAD MUFFINS it was. All the tiredness of the day, suddenly had flown away out to the patio, as mixed and measured. Whoooshhhhhhh went the hand blender. It was like a well choreographed dance almost. In no time, the man had sauntered in, daughter in tow, as the Muffins were let out to be cooled.

The man had been hinting towards some Fruit Cake, but I cheated my way around it.ROCKY ROAD MUFFINS do have loads of nuts in them, I assured him. As he took the first bite, I knew, he had already forgiven me for not baking what he wanted.

ROCKY ROAD MUFFINS:

Ingredients: 
Granulated Sugar: 3/4 cup
All Purpose flour: 1 1/2 cup+ 1 tbsp
Cocoa:  1/4 cup
Salt: a pinch
Vanilla Extract: 1 tsp
Egg: 2 large
Canola Oil: 1/3 cup
Baking Powder: 2 tbsp
Milk: 1 cup
Cashew nut, Golden Raisins, Almonds, Walnuts: Chopped: 1/2 cup

Procedure: 
Pre-heat the oven to 325F. Line the muffin pan with paper liners. Sift the dry ingredients through a sieve and mix well. In another bowl, whisk the wet ingredients together.

Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.

Dunk the chopped nuts in some all purpose flour. This is a trick I have learnt from Preeoccupied. This prevents the nuts from sinking to the bottom of the pan. Dust off excess flour from the nuts.

Throw in the flour coated nuts and fold in lightly.

Use an ice-cream scoop to scoop out the dough in the lined muffin pan.

Bake the muffins in a pre-heated oven for around 20 minutes, till they have risen, dark and springy.

Drizzle some chocolate syrup and dig in !!

Bon Appetit !!!

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VANILLA CUPCAKE WITH A DASH OF LEMON: MONDAY MORNING BAKING

Going back to school has been a great experience so far. For the last few years, I had been procrastinating it, but finally when I am physically not 100 percent perfect, I pushed myself to it. I have always admired confection and the art of decorating it. While I continued to bake, my decorating skills had been always pretty rudimentary. I have always admired cupcakes at the baker's window or marvelled at a multi-tiered cake iced in myriad colors. YouTube tutorials are there and shall be there, but I wanted a hands down experience of learning from a teacher in class. And so the saga began. It started with cookies. How exactly does one decorate cookies was my first back to school experience. My teacher Mindy Badgley is an absolute doll with patience personified. She inspires you at every step, even when you are doing the simplest of decorating exercises.

So Mondays became Baking Days at the household. Well, that seems to have become the norm for the past few weeks. I have baked and I have iced, and I must say, I have enjoyed myself. Now that my cake decorating classes are quite on a  roll, I finally took out some time, to pen down.

It was Cupcake Time at the class!!!  After a few weeks of baking quite big chocolate cakes, I decided on vanilla cupcakes. It was time to give chocolate a miss for some time.  I have been binging on chocolates in general, so thought that Vanilla Cupcakes with a dash of lemon, would be perky.

I have never baked with cake flour and mostly all cupcake recipes I came across today, used cake flour. Till I decided to go back to my baking Godmother: Stephanie Jaworski. She always has a solution to my baking dilemmas, and she did so, even today. Loved the simplicity of her Vanilla Cupcakes and yes, it did have the hint of lemon, I was looking for. A big virtual hug goes to Stephanie ! With the holidays round the corner, I thought of sending a batch of cupcakes to Hubby's workmates. All of the boys have been under loads of work pressure, so though of sweetening their day a bit, with some treats. Here's hoping that they like the lil Thanksgiving cheer, which I shall be sending along with Hubby. 

VANILLA CUPCAKES WITH A DASH OF LEMON: 

Recipe Courtesy: Vanilla Cupcakes by Stephanie Jaworski(Joy of Baking) 

Ingredients:
Butter(Unsalted): 1/2 cup (1 stick) at room temperature
Granulated White Sugar: 2/3 cup
Eggs: 3 large
Vanilla Extract: 1 tsp
Lemon Zest(outer yellow skin of a lemon): Zest of 1 large Lemon
All Purpose Flour: 1 1/2 cup
Baking powder: 1 1/2 tsp
Salt: 1/4 tsp (Skip the salt, if you are using salted butter)
Milk: 1/4 cup

Procedure: 

Pre-heat the oven to 350F/180C and line a 12 cup muffin pan, with paper liners.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter with a hand mixer until light and fluffy. If you have a stand mixer, then use the bowl of the stand mixer, with the paddle attachment.

Add in the eggs one a time, beating after every addition. Ensure that the eggs are at room temperature.

Add in the Vanilla extract and mix it well.

In a separate bowl, sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. With a dry whisk, mix in the lemon zest and whisk everything well.

Alternately in the flour and milk, to the butter mixture, in three batches, beginning and ending with flour.Ensure that the mixer is on low speed, or else you will land up with flour all over you, rather than in the batter. You might have to scrape down the sides of the bowl, while your are mixing it. Do not over beat the flour mixture, or you will land up with tough cupcakes.

Use an ice-cream scoop or two spoons to evenly spoon out the batter onto the muffin pan.

Bake for around 17-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean. Check at the 15 minute mark. Do not over bake.

Cool them on a wore rack, after your remove them from the oven.

Frost the cupcakes only when they have totally cooled.

Here's how I frosted the Cupcakes !!  

Dig into some soft velvety cupcakes.

Bon Appetit !!! 

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BANANA-CHOCOLATE CAKE

Decadence is the word when one thinks of V-Day desserts. Its the day to indulge and savour. Every year Valentine's Day is an overload of chocolates.So to ease out my guilty mind, I thought of adding some fruits to the dessert menu this year.The ripe bananas, staring at me from the fruit basket on the table, seemed to be the right choice.After all one could never go wrong with chocolates, could they?!I had to cheat my way through the dessert for the big day. Somehow did not want to knead any dough or go through lengthy prep work. It had to be an easy breezy dessert. Banana-Chocolate Cake it was.I wanted to stick to my basic chocolate cake recipe, with some mashed ripe bananas thrown in. I mean, I was hopeful it would hold together, and the cake would taste good.

Just to be on the safer side, sought some help from my saviour Stephanie Jaworski, from Joy Of Baking. Her recipe was very similar to my basic chocolate cake  recipe, and she had adapted it from some Canadian cookbook. Which just meant, that there were others who had followed the same path for an easy weekday dessert recipe. My only point of difference was the original cake had called for a larger baking dish, and the recipe was for a cake which could serve around 16 people. I wanted something for just the two of us, and which would fit in my 9" by 9" spring form cake tin.So adapted it to fit my requirements The cake worked wonders. No fancy ingredients, like expensive cooking chocolate or loads of butter, or meringue. As yet again, I did not have much of butter at home.

The cake scored full marks.It was moist,dense and chocolatey,and had just a hint of the ripe bananas.The best part is that it stayed well, for quite a few days, without any refrigeration in this mild winter that we are having this year in the Mid West. I am not exactly going in for calorie counts right now, as we can afford to indulge ourselves a bit every now and then.Even ran a few extra miles at the gym to compensate the large chunks of cake we polished off. Not to forget my Valentine loved the sweet surprise. So the midweek dessert was a hit. 

BANANA-CHOCOLATE CAKE: 

 Adapted from: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateBananaCake.html

Ingredients: 
Cake: 
Flour: 1 3/4 cup
Sugar: 2 cups(granulated)
Cocoa Powder: 3/4 cup( I used Regular Unsweetened Cocoa Powder and not Dutch Processed)
Baking Powder: 1 tbsp ( I skipped the baking soda)
Eggs: 2 large
Bananas: 2 ripe ones, mashed, makes about 1 cup.
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Milk: 1 cup.( I increased the milk and reduced the water)
Warm Water: 1/2 cup
Canola Oil/Sunflower Oil: 1/2 cup
Vanilla Extract: 1 tbsp
Cooking Spray

Frosting: 
Butter: 1/2 stick: 
Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips: 8 ounces
Whipping Cream: 3/4 cup

Procedure: 


Cake: 
 Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Keep two large mixing bowls ready. One for the dry ingredients, and one for the wet ingredients.

 In one bowl sift the flour, sugar and cocoa powder one at a time. The sifting helps to red rid of lumps in the batter and aerates it well.

Mash the ripe bananas in a smaller bowl with a fork. Two regular sized ripe bananas usually make around a cup of mashed bananas. 

Add in the mashed bananas with the whisked eggs, and the rest of the wet ingredients and mix well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and integrate everything into a smooth batter. Batter will be slightly runny, so do not worry.Grease the baking tin with cooking spray and pour the batter upto 3/4ths of the tin.You could also use a larger baking dish, if you are not comfortable with the one I suggested.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or till a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool for at least two hours before you start frosting it, or else the heat of the cake will melt away the frosting. After the cake has cooled, you can remove the spring form from the sides, before you start frosting it.

Frosting: 
Place the chocolate chips in a mixing bowl. Heat the cream and the butter either on the stove or in the microwave.As soon as the cream starts to come to boil, pour it carefully over the chocolate. This will start to melt the chocolate. Wait for a couple of minutes, then stir it carefully, so as to not incorporate much air in the the frosting. Use a wire whisk if necessary to blend it all well together. Let it come to room temperature, and then use a spatula to frost the cake. I just frosted the top of the cake.

Bite into chocolatey goodness with a fruity hint. Bon Appetit !

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