Celebration Chocolate cake

This is the most yummiest eggless cake I have ever eaten. It reminds me very much of the chocolate cake from Sweet Chariot in Bangalore. This awesome recipe has been adapted from DivineTaste and you can use it to make a 9" round cake. I doubled the ingredients to make a layered cake with chocolate frosting for my daughter's 5th birthday.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup All purpose flour
• 1 can (400 ml) Condensed milk
• 1 cup Milk
• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 3/4 tsp Baking soda
• 8 tbsp Cocoa powder
• 8 tbsp Sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Sift the dry ingredients i.e. flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, cocoa powder in a large bowl. 
3. Add the wet ingredients, i.e milk, vanilla, melted butter and condensed milk and mix well. (You can use a whisk / beater to mix it well but since I dont have both, I just use my hands and it tuns out good too)
4. Pour the batter into a greased and floured (or parchment lined) cake pan.
5. Bake for around an hour or till the toothpick inserted comes out clean.
6. Cool the cake completely on a wire rack and decorate the cake if you would like with your choice of frosting. 

Suggestion / Notes

if you would like a soft wet cake, then make a sugar syrup by boiling 1/4 cup of sugar in 1 1/2 cup of water and once cooled completely, pour the syrup on top of the cake before frosting the cake.

Homemade Chocolates

My mom always made these for our birthdays and we all used to love it because we can get to eat more. Now as a mom, I would still prefer giving these chocolates to my daughter than the store bought ones as it is made without artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup or any other preservatives. This is a simple recipe that takes less than 10 min to make and you can use your creativity to make a variety of chocolates.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Milk powder
• 2 tsp Cocoa powder (Adjust to taste)
• 2 tbsp Butter
• 1/2 cup Sugar (Adjust to taste)
• 1/4 cup chopped dry fruits & nuts like Cashews, Almonds & Raisins (Optional)

Sathu Maavu Urundai / Healthy Rounds

This is a very healthy snack that can be prepared within a minute or two. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make this for me using just the sprouted and roasted Ragi flour. But nowadays you get many health drink mix (Sathu maavu for Kanji) readily available in the stores. The Health mix is basically a powder made from sprouted and roasted multi grains and nuts flavoured with cardamom. I generally use the Manna brand of Health mix which is readily available in powder form, from the Indian stores. Alternately you may also make the Health mix at home for which I shall post the recipe soon. Since most of the kids generally don't like to drink the porridge made with the health mix, this snack is a very nice way to get them to eat it. And not only kids even the grown ups will enjoy them.

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp  Health Mix
• 2 tbsp Organic Cane Sugar/ Powdered Jaggery
• 3-4 tsp Ghee

Method

1. Take the health mix in a bowl and add the organic sugar/ jaggery.
2. Add the ghee little by little and mix to form a dough.
3. Make small balls of the dough and serve the tasty and healthy snack.

Suggestions/ Notes

1. You may use only sprouted and roasted Ragi flour if you don't have the Health mix readily available.
2. The measures of the ingredients are only a suggestion. You may add more or less to adjust to your taste.
3. Use only ghee for this recipe as butter will not taste as good.

No-Bake Biscuit Brownie

This is a fabulous recipe with no cooking involved and with only very simple ingredients. This recipe adapted from edible garden makes around 15 small brownies.

Ingredients

• 22 Marie biscuits
• 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup roasted nut of choice (I used chopped Almonds)
• 1 tsp sugar (Adjust to taste)
• 7oz/ 200gm condensed milk

Method

1. Break the biscuits and crush them by hand or with a pestle. Alternately you may coarsely grind it in a blender.
2. Add the cocoa powder and sugar to it and mix well.
3. Add the nuts and the condensed milk and mix well to form into a dough.
4. Grease a baking tray with butter or line it with parchment paper and transfer the mixture to it.
5. It will be sticky, so press firmly and level it with clean wet fingers and refrigerate it for around 4 - 5 hours or overnight.
6. Slice the brownie into cubes with a knife and serve!