Banana Apple Muffins

I'm always looking for fun and healthy food to bake with my daughter. When I came across Divya's post in her blog, Easy Cooking, on Eggless Apple Banana Muffins, they sounded perfect. I was fine with using eggs, but decided to just follow her recipe. I made a couple of changes though, I added some chopped walnuts, and a small fistful of chocolate chips.

Banana Apple Muffins (without eggs)

(from Easy Cooking blog)

3 ripe Bananas, chopped (OR 1 egg + 2 Bananas)

1 cup Apple, peeled and chopped

1/4 cup Butter, melted and cooled

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

1 1/8 cup All-Purpose Flour

1/3 cup + 1 tbsp Brown Sugar

3/4 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Cinnamon Powder

1/4 tsp Salt

1/8 cup Walnuts, chopped

1/8 cup Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 180 deg C.

Mix together the mashed bananas, sugar and vanilla until the sugar is well blended. Whisk in the melted and cooled butter.

Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, apple and salt). Fold in the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Spoon the batter into a greased and lined muffin pan. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

The muffins are absolutely delicious. And both my daughters ate them as they came out of the oven!

Thanks for a great recipe, Divya. And I'm excited this is my first eggless muffin recipe, and it's already a keeper.

Apple Salad

I was asked to bring a salad to a dinner last night. My family and I brainstormed on a fun new salad. Someone first suggested zucchini and cucumber together because of the similar textures and flavors. Then green apple and green bell pepper for crunch and color. I have a good yogurt dressing recipe, so decided to go with that. And for extra crunch, we decided to add peanuts. In the last minute I added some crushed red pepper for extra zing. It was a true culmination of ideas.

It reminded me of a video of chef Grant Achatz coming up with ideas for new dishes - something called Flavor Bouncing. Watch the video - it's very cool. How exciting to be doing this for a living!!

(As the salad was fast disappearing, I had to take a photograph quickly with my phone camera, so excuse the photo!)

Apple (and Bell Pepper and Zucchini and Cucumber) Salad

1 cup Apple, preferably green apple, peeled (optional) and chopped

1 cup Green Bell Pepper, seeded, cored and chopped

1 cup Cucumber, peeled and chopped

1 cup Zucchini, chopped

Dressing:

1 cup plain Yogurt

2 tsp Powdered Sugar

1 tsp Vinegar

A pinch of Salt

Garnishing:

2 tbsp Mint Leaves, chopped

1/4 cup Peanuts, crushed

2 tsp Crushed Red Pepper, or to taste (optional)

Heat a pot of water to boiling. Drop in the bell pepper and zucchini, and quickly blanch for a minute and drain. Cool completely.

Store the chopped cucumber and apple in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Combine all ingredients for the dressing (except for the mint), keep aside. Just before serving, toss the salad with the dressing, garnish with the mint leaves and serve.

Sit back and enjoy the compliments! :)

This is a forgiving recipe. Feel free to use substitutions, or leave out any of the vegetables you don't enjoy. Also a nice touch would be to cut the veggies into long strips. The dressing is a keeper recipe though.

Apple Pachadi

In the hot summer in India, there's nothing nicer than these cool pachadis. Pachadi is an Indian term for plain yogurt, mixed with fruit or vegetable and seasoned with spices. The most common ones are cucumber, onion and tomato. Apple pachadi is quite unusual but its absolutely wonderful!



Apple Pachadi

1 Apple, cut fine
2 cups plain Yogurt
2-3 Green Chillies, cut fine
1 tbsp Ground Coconut
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
1 tsp Urad Dal
2-3 Cilantro Leaves, chopped fine
Salt, to taste

Grind the coconut and green chillies together.

Mix together with the yogurt and the apples.

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds and urad dal. When the mustard seeds start to splutter, add to the yogurt-apple mixture.

Sprinkle with cilantro leaves and add salt to taste. Mix together.

Vanilla Apple Cake

Mmmm... There's nothing much to say when you're eating this cake - its just sooo sooo good that you're not really concerned about what to say about it! Another winner this month from Maria and Rosie of Sweet and Simple Bakes.


Vanilla Apple Cake
(recipe from S+SB)

9 oz (about 2 sticks) unsalted Butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
1 1/3 cups Caster Sugar
4 Eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups All-Purpose Flour + 1 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
3 small Apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
2 tbsp Demerara sugar
¼ tsp Cinnamon Powder

Heat the oven to 180C. Butter a cake tin and/or line with parchment paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the beaten eggs and vanilla and beat together. Slowly add in the flour (be as gentle and quick as possible as the flour tends to weigh down the beautiful lightness of the creamed butter and sugar).

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin. Top with the apple wedges - sinking them in a little as you place them. Here's where you'll think oh-my-goodness there are too many apple wedges and not enough space, but they'll shrink and you'll be glad you added all the apples!

Sprinkle with the Demerara sugar and the cinnamon. Bake for about an hour or until the top is slightly browned and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Leave to cool on a wire rack.


Serve warm with vanilla ice cream (the vanilla ice cream is not optional!).

Apple Crumble

For the Open Sesame riddle (and I love DK and Siri's riddles!), I was sent this one:

A moniker in my name for a city
A phrase with me will make you cherished
I am so good for you in my utter simplicity
In Medical dictionary the fact so furnished

I am so famous in the world of bytes
Known for many aspects of usage
I am fat and rotund and make crunchy bites
My fame known from many religious traditions - right from the old age

Am, I forbidden? Or mystical ?
or the eternal giver of Youth
I consist of five internal carpels
Am good for good health of your mouth

I am as basic a fruit as you can think of
Or as hard if you don't try enough
If You eat me on a day to day basis
Then you don't have worry about anything - be it cold or dry cough

.....
Easy enough? I guessed Apple and I was...ahem...right.

I eat fresh apples quite a bit, but don't cook with them very often. The one time I loved apple as dessert was an Apple Crumble that my friend's mother used to make many years ago. I remember sitting at their dining table, sipping tea and eating crumble while it rained outside - rain is the perfect accompaniment for crumble!

I went to their house, learned how to make it and came rushing home to try it. And soon in my house there was the glorious aromas of home baked crumble! There's really nothing better!


Apple Crumble

4 apples, peeled and sliced into large chunks (choose firm, crunchy apples - green or yellow)
3 oz all-purpose flour
1.5 oz cold butter
1.5 oz brown sugar (I used Demerara)

Butter a baking dish. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.

Fill the baking dish halfway with the apple slices


Add the butter to the flour, and blend in to resemble bread crumbs (try not to use your fingers to do this, as the butter tends to become warm - if you can, use a fork. If you have cold hands, no problem!). Blend it in quickly and lightly - just till combined.

Add the sugar to the flour mixture. This is what it will look like.


Scoop the crumble onto the apples.


Bake for 20-25 mts, until slightly browned on top.



Enjoy.

DK and Siri, you know you rock! :-)