Beginning of story: I saw some recipe online that needed fresh cream/whipped cream and for the next few days kept looking out for it, but didn't find it weirdly enough. Then I finally saw a pack of Amul Fresh Cream and bought it, but had no clue what it was I had wanted to make :) ! What fun, it was time to look around and see what I could make. So the first attempt was a 100% whole-wheat chocolate cupcake, and the cream went into making a topping for it. Obviously I just slathered on the topping, it doesn't look pretty, but it was a nice combination! Recipe from
here for the cupcake. The topping was just whipped cream, sugar and vanilla essence - I used 3 tbsp sugar to 1 cup of cream, and 1/2 tsp essence.
So I still have most of the pack of fresh cream still left over and wanted to finish it off within 4 days (that's as long as you are supposed to keep it after opening the pack). So with some help and suggestions from my Foodies group on Facebook, I finally settled on a Chocolate Mousse. Slight problem, the idea of having uncooked egg was not too appealing to me, so went for an eggless recipe which came out pretty decent too. And it's finished with a dollop of the leftover cupcake topping of course ;). Recipe is
here.
And now to my grand finale - the Macaron ! For making these out of the blue, had the small excuse of the leftover topping still remaining, but actually just been wanting to make them for a long time now, and I saw this very approachable looking recipe and jumped at it. So the recipe is
here and it's really as simple as it looks, except that you can't do the piping part without the equipment of course. I just plonked spoonfuls of the batter onto the tray, which of course gave me different sized, differently done macaroons but still for a first attempt at what I thought was a super difficult item, it went off quite well :). Didn't even feel like sandwiching them finally as they are just so crunchy and lovely on their own.
That's some adventures in baking you are having. I think its time you spin off your gardening, green living and baking adventures into a separate blog :)) There's so much that you need to document :) I didn't look at the recipes, but will bookmark them and try them out soon. I love chocolate mousse, so I'm going to try that first.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aparna :)
ReplyDeleteWe already discussed this, but just for the record - I was wondering about a different blog for my non-child related updates, but have justified it currently as loosely coming under "Life as a mom" ;)
Will try to do that indexing I was mentioning about, let me see how that works.
the pics look yummmmm...so, the adventures in gardening are spilling over to baking too??
ReplyDeleteliked the new look of the blog..:-)
Yes Uma, baking, cooking, working up enthusiasm for lots of interesting stuff :).
DeleteAnd thank you!
I love the new look, aparna!! very vibrant yet not too loud.
ReplyDeleteThank you :) Was hoping for something like that ;) This is only a standard template though, but still quite nice I thought.
Deleteinstead of eggs, you could use avocados (don't know if they are available locally) - performs the same function. even if you did use eggs, they aren't really raw. you are supposed to beat it in a water bath.
ReplyDeletealso for piping you don't need any special equipment - need a long polythene bag (like the milk sachets). fill it with whatever you want to pipe and clip the open end. when you are ready to pipe, cut the tip, use one hand to control the flow and the other to direct it. kind of difficult to explain it - easier to show it.
Thanks for the idea Ramesh, should be able to get avocado with some looking around I'm sure :). Yes the eggs do have some preparation, but since you can never completely be confident about the quality/storage of eggs I am not completely comfortable unless well-cooked. Sooo long since I tried a runny egg :(.
DeleteLove love love the milk packet idea - thank you !! Tried it with aluminium foil - that was a bad idea of course, but this sounds brilliant. I'm also in the mode of recycling dry waste nowadays, so my milk packets are anyway clean and readily available :).