Cardamom dry fruit cake

A day to go to reach a small milestone in my own blogging world.  Thank a lot to all of the enouragement.

Milestones have to celebrated, right? Right. So to celebrate the milestone and as a Thank You for all of you who dropped by, here is a Cardamom dry fruit cake. A simple cake with a lots of flavor. Often I try cakes using condensed milk , but this cake I tried with evaporated milk.

Ingredients : 1 1/4 cup -- All purpose flour 1 cup  -- Evaporated milk 3/4 cup -- Light brown sugar 2 nos -- Ripe banana 6 tbsp -- Unsalted butter 1/4 tsp -- Salt 1 tsp -- Baking powder 1/2 tsp -- Baking Soda 2 nos -- Cardamom 1/2 cup -- Chopped nuts and dried fruits Method : --- Pre-heat the oven to 170 C or 350 F. --- Grease a 8" pan with butter. --- Heat the evaporated milk along with sugar and butter, until the sugar dissolves. Let the milk to cool. --- Meanwhile shift the flour, baking soda and baking powder. --- Powder the cardamom and add to the dry mixture along with the dry fruit. *** Here's a small tips to powder the cardamom. In a blender take few spoons of flour and add the cardamom and blend it  to fine powder. If using for any other sweet or dessert, blend the cardamom with few spoons of sugar. So that you will not get the cardamom pods while enjoying the dessert. --- Mash the ripe bananas without any big lumps and mix it to the milk mixture. Add a 1/4 tsp of salt to it. --- Add the dry ingredients in batches to the wet ingredients and mix well.  --- Pour the cake batter into the greased pan and bake it for 25 to 30 minutes, till its done and a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. --- Cool the cake completely before serving. --- You can serve the cake with or without frosting. --- I frosted my cake with a thin layer of simple banana chocolate cream and dusted with dry coconut flakes and sliced almonds.

You can enjoy the flavor of banana, coconut flakes, cardamom and dry fruits in every bite.

Vazhaikai podi

Introducing a couple of items that we would not normally associate with a banana. One - a hot, spicy podi to go with white rice and the other - a saree. Yes, you read that right. A saree. Weavers from a town called Anakaputhur - barely 5 miles from my place in Chennai - are making wide range of sarees from banana fibre!

Coming to the recipe, plantain podi is one of my favorite recipe, which I am sending to the event 'Banana' hosted by Sameena in her blog 'My Culinary Creations'

Ingredients : 4 tbsp -- Channa dal 2 tbsp -- Urad dal 7-8 nos -- Dry red chillies 1/2 plantain 2 tbsp -- grated coconut (optional) 1 tsp -- asafoetida 1 pinch -- Tamarind 1 tsp -- oil Salt to taste Method : --- In a medium heat, take a pan and add a tea spoon of oil and dry roast all the ingredient except plantain, salt and coconut if using. Roast the mixture till the dal colour changes to golden brown. --- Transfer the mixture in a plate and keep aside to cool . --- Meanwhile, peel the half plantain and dice them finely and cook them in the same pan. Just sprinkle some water and close the lid , will be cooked in minutes. Allow it to cool. --- Once the dal mixture is cooled, grind them to a coarse powder, now add the cooked plantain, salt, and grated coconut if using to the powder and pulse the mixer for 2-3 times, just to mix them thoroughly. --- Do not run the mixer in high speed, the banana will be get smashed, and you will not be able to enjoy the tiny bits of banana taste. --- Enjoy this podi with steaming hot rice and a spoon of gingelly oil.

Banana Bread

Bananas are the one and only fruit in my grocery list every week. Never knows how it gets over in my home. Some times my husband will have it for the break fast. I used to eat bananas for breakfast and also as main meal for my Lunch not now...! Those are the days, before my in-laws arrival.

Also I mainly use it for baking, will always use bananas in the place of eggs. So in some form we will have bananas daily.

Last week, we had left with over ripen Bananas. From the day it started to change color from normal yellow to golden yellow, my mother in law was asking us to eat. Me and my husband found the jar of cookies more tempting. After a day, the color of the banana changed more, the black dots over the skin spread all over the banana. Neither I liked to eat it or to throw. So decided to bake cookies using it.

I wasted one more day and the bananas were looking very bad at this point, the skin was totally blackish, but fortunately the fruit inside was unspoilt. I searched for a new dish and found one but I could not try that as the quantity of banans that I had was not sufficient. Planning to make tomorrow, if it turns out well sure I will share with you.

With the above mentioned 2 bananas, I did banana bread, from 'Medhaa's' blog. It was a big surprise to my in-laws and to my husband, because I just went inside the kitchen and came out with a lovely, tasty bread. Didn't gave them any hint about baking.

Recipe here.