Chocolate fudge using Marshmallows

Phew, after 3 days of great struggle, I took this photo.

I know this is a not great looking photo, but Im happy to report that it tasted better than it looks. The day after I made this fudge, I was waiting for a clear morning sunshine but as it always happens, the whole day was fully dark and it was raining heavily. Next couple of days tried some shots and all were disaster. By this now, the jar of fudge has been reduced to just 4 pieces.

I was having some ingredients in my pantry hiding for a long days. So decided to put all in one and make a sweet dish and good thing is it turned out very good.

Ingredients : 3 cup -- Sugar 1 cup -- Heavy cream 1 cup -- Evaporated milk 200 gm -- Marshmallows 6 tbsp -- Unsweetened Chocolate powder 3/4 cup -- Unsalted butter 1 tsp -- Fine salt 1 cup -- Chopped nuts 1/4 cup -- milk Method: --- Take a big heavy sauce pan and mix the sugar, butter, heavy cream and evaporated milk in medium heat. --- Sieve the cocoa powder and mix the powder in the milk without any lumps. --- And the cocoa milk mixture and salt to the sugar and mix well. --- Stir the sugar mixture in medium heat until the quantity is reduced to half. No need to stir constantly, good news is you can very well take a break and do in frequent intervals. --- But have an eye on the mixtuure while boiling. Be careful the mixture might overflow, so tall utensil is preferable. I used a pan then in half way changed the mixture to pressure cooker, since the mixture started to overflow while boiling. --- Meanwhile toast the chopped nuts. I used almonds.And also grease the plate with butter and keep it ready. --- Once the quantity is reduced to 1/4th, add the marshmallows. --- And stir for few minutes till the marshmallows are dissolved in the cocoa mixture. --- Drop a spoon of gooey mixture in a cup of ice water, If you able to make a soft ball then immediatey switch off the heat and add the toasted nuts and mix well. --- Transfer the mixture to the greased pan and let it cool completely. --- Using a greased knife, cut the chocolate fudge.

I cut my fudge an inch size so I got around 60 - 70 pcs. Adding salt gave a unique taste to the chocolate fudge and marshmallows gave a nice soft texture.

Walnut brownies

 Hmm... More chocolate coming on your way to dazzle you. Followed by Hazelnut chocolate fudge  here comes walnut brownies.

Nearly, after 9 months I baked this mouth watering walnut brownies. Remember long long ago, I tried a walnut brownie with chocolate fudge recipe and those brownies turned to brownie walnut balls. To read more about that scrumptious walnut brownie balls, click here.

I tried some new ingredients to substitute eggs. Though it is an experimental recipe, the outcome was perfect. The brownies were soft, moist and delicious.

Ingredients : 1 cup -- All purpose flour 1/2 cup -- Cocoa powder 3/4 to 1 cup  -- Granulated sugar** 1/2 tsp -- Baking powder 1/2 tsp -- Baking Soda 1/2 cup -- Walnuts 5 tbsp -- Butter 1/4 cup -- Condensed milk  (optional)** 1/2 cup -- milk 1/4 cup -- Paneer 1/4 cup -- Banana smashed 2 tsp -- Espresso coffee Method : --- Preheat the oven to 350 F --- Grease a 8" square pan and with wax paper. I strongly recommend to use a wax paper, but as I did not have wax paper in stock when I tried this recipe , I ended with brownie walnut ball. --- Grind the paneer cubes to a fine powder. --- Mix the paneer to the sugar, smashed banana, espresso coffee  and milk. If using condensed milk, mix it also with paneer banana mixture. ** I had some left over condensed milk in the refrigerator, so I added the same. ** Brown sugar would have been wonderful, but i had to make do with granulated sugar. If not using condensed milk, adjust the sugar accordingly. --- Melt the butter in a pan and mix the cocoa powder. --- To the cocoa mixture add the banana paneer mixture. --- Shift the all the rest of the dry ingredients. All purpose flour, baking powder and baking soda. --- Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. --- Last but not least, add the walnuts to the batter and mix well. --- Pour the batter on to the pan and bake it to 25 to 30 minutes until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

Enjoy the brownies with whipped cream or serve hot with cool vanilla Ice cream and chocolate fudge topping.

Hazlenut chocolate fudge

Chocolate, hmmm yummy...

I made this yummy chocolate fudge a month ago.  But it me took 4 days to get this into its final shape!

Now comes the behind the screen story of this fudge. At the end of the story I will ask a question, If you find the answer, please mail it to me :)
Last month on 27th we celebrated our Swamiji's 6th Aaradhana. I wanted to take some special quick and easy sweet for Neivedhyam. On the previous night, I decided to make chocolate fudge using microwave oven.

In a microwave-safe pan I added a tin of condensed milk and 1/2 cup of cocoa powder and 3 tbsp of butter. Mixed them thoroughly and cooked in the microwave for 2 minutes. Then took it out stirred them along with a tsp of Vanilla essence. Again cooked in the MW oven for 5 more minutes. Transferred the mixture in to a greased pan and cooled it for 2 to 3 hours in the refrigerator. After 3 hours, I was ready and eager with my knife but alas, the fudge was not

The fudge was not set, so I kept it inside the refrigerator the whole night. Next day morning at 5 O' clock again I tried to cut the fudge it was so gooey. Since wanted to go for the Pooja early in the morning, I dumped the same in the refrigerator and rushed to the Pooja.

Next day, I took the fudge mixture in a non stick pan and added 1/2 cup of sugar and again cooked over the stove for 15 - 20 minutes. The mixture was not sticking on the sides. I transferred the same into a greased pan. Again chilled and the same thing happened. So me and my husband, both started to scoop the mixture and to eat the fudge. I kept a spoon permanently in the pan to ease the process and in two days we managed to complete half of the fudge from the 8" pan.

Still I was not convinced with what I made, on Friday 29th I took the pan and cooked in the MW oven for 5 minutes. Stirred well and added some hazelnut milk chocolate which I had in the pantry for more than a month. Approximately 1 cup of chocolate. Cooked in MW oven for 2 more minutes. Transferred the mixture to the greased pan, chilled it completely. Took my knife and tried to cut, voila it was perfect.

So, it is true. Perseverance does pay off!. Its question time, remember I mentioned in the starting. My question is : What is the final recipe and the cooking method of this yummy chocolate hazelnut fudge.

Christmas cookies continues...

Here comes another Christmas treat in my cookie series.

Pinwheel Cookies

Zebra cookies

Gifting home baked cookies is the great way to celebrate these holidays. But why settle for one type of cookies when you can easily have many ?

One base recipe +   Some   magic   =    Bourbon biscuits    Choco cookies    Pinwheel cookies    Zebra cookies

Doesn't the above equation reminds you the old chemistry class or Maths Theorem class ?
This is the secret formula for my Christmas cookie treats. By keeping the bourbon biscuit recipe as my base recipe I did little variation and did 3 more kind of cookies. Thanks to Nithu's kitchen, the Bourbon biscuit now got two more little sisters, Pinwheel cookies and Zebra cookies.

For both the cookies, I used two coloured cookie dough with single recipe.

Ingredients : One layer -- the chocolate layer the ingredients same as the choco cookies. Second layer -- Plain one, except the cocoa powder and instant coffee. Preparation  : --- Prepare the two separate dough as mentioned in the choco cookies. Don't make the dough  more soft. Play with water and make sure all the crumbs are held together and knead the dough. --- Wrap both the dough separately and refrigerate it for an hour. *** Click here to find the recipe and the method to prepare the dough Method - for Pinwheel cookies --- Preheat the oven to 350 F --- After an hour, take both the dough out from the fridge, unwrap them. --- Take either one of the dough, divide the dough into two equal parts. Roll one dough to 3-4 mm thickness on a parchment paper and make approximately  10" x 8 " rectangle. --- Follow the same  procedure for another color dough and make another rectangle. --- Place rolled white dough on to the chocolate dough, press gently to make an even layer. --- From one end, start rolling the rectangle dough tightly and form a log. Wrap the log and refrigerate again for an hour. --- Follow the same step for the rest of the dough. --- Take the dough and cut 1/4 inch thick slices. Now you can see nice two coloured swirls. --- Place them on the cookie sheet and bake it for 10 - 12 minutes. --- Once baked, cool it and put it in air tight container.

I did not roll tightly the first set of dough and also did not refrigerate it. So the dough was little flimsy and I was not able to cut the log properly. This led me to Zebra cookies.

Here comes the method for making these cookies. --- Since the log was flimsy I was not able to cut the dough log in proper round. So I cut the log  to 1/2 inch  plus thickness. --- Then cut the 1/2inch dough vertically, flattened it and formed a round shape. I got uneven color on the flattened uncooked cookie. --- Made some impression using the fork, sprinkled some raw sugar. Placed on the cookie sheet and baked them at 350 F at 10 - 12 minutes.

These cookies were a big hit, my husband still asks me how I made the patchy effect on the Zebra cookies and the double swirl effect on the Pinwheel cookies.

Christmas choco cookies

When I think of Deepavali, the first thing strikes my mind is the fresh smell of new clothes, next comes the smoke of crackers and different kind of sweets and savories. When I think of Christmas, it is decorations, Christmas tree, exchanging gifts and baking delicious cookies and cakes. It is just 4 days to Christmas and I like to drive through to see the light decorations in the night. It is very nice to see the houses, malls and the streets decorated with hundreds and thousands of lights.

My holiday celebration started from the Thanksgiving day. Windows are decorated with the cute multi coloured  LED lights and a kutti Christmas tree as a center piece of attraction. As a final part of the celebration, here comes the Christmas treat.

Baking cookies and cakes at home is a holiday tradition. Ginger bread, sugar cookies, butter cookies and cookies cut into various shapes related to holiday themes, fruit cakes... So many varieties.

Choco cookies

Infact, these choco cookies are ' little sister ' of the Bourbon biscuits, which I tried from Nithu's Kitchen. I used the same recipe, instead of filling the cream in between the two biscuits I used it to decorate on top of each cookie.

Ingredients : 1 cup -- All Purpose Flour 1/4 cup -- Butter 1/2 cup -- Sugar 1/2 tsp -- Instant Coffee Powder** 1/2 tsp -- Baking Soda 1/2 tsp -- Baking Powder 2 tbs -- Cocoa 1/2 tsp -- Vanilla Extract 4 - 5 tbs -- Milk ** Instant coffee powder is optional. But always try to use instant coffee are freshly brewed coffee when you are using chocolate in any recipe. This will enhance the chocolate flavour more. Method: --- Preheat the oven to 350 F. --- Mix the sugar and butter along with the vanilla extract. --- Sieve all the dry ingredients (Flour, Coco powder, Baking powder, Baking soda) except the instant coffee. --- To the dry mixture, add the instant coffee. If using fresh brewed coffee, you can add along with the sugar butter mixture. --- Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients and mix well. If required add milk half to one tsp at a time to the mixture and form a dough. --- Take the dough and roll them to 3- 4 mm thickness on a plastic sheet and cut them according to desired shape and bake it at 350 F for about 12-15 minutes. --- Once the cookies are out, cool them completely before doing any decoration on it.

This is a very simple cookie. To have a celebration touch I decorated these cookies with the store bought Icing tube, resembling the snow effects.

Bourbon biscuits

A glass of warm milk and plate of freshly baked Bourbon biscuits, Oh its great !
Bourbon biscuit is one of our favorite biscuits from the childhood. We all grew up eating this biscuit. Hope everybody agree with me. Even last week we bought two pack from an Indian Grocery and finished it on our way back from the shop. FYI, the distance from the shop to our home is only 2 miles. We can't stop eating after having one. I like the large crystal sugar on top of the biscuit.

I used to wonder how they make this biscuits. Even in my dreams I never thought of baking one by myself. 
But I did it, I baked my all time favorite Bourbon yesterday.
Thanks to Nithu, she commented in couple of my earlier posts. When I visited her space the first post I saw in 'Nithus's Kitchen' was Bourbon biscuit. Can't believe by myself, can we do these biscuits at home? If yes, then why shouldn't I try at once ?

Whenever I am trying a new recipe, always I will call my husband and tell him . About this Bourbon, I didn't give him any clue. Wanted to surprise him. Quickly went to the kitchen, took all the ingredients and started working on the biscuits. Since its our favorite one, I doubled all the measures.
Did a couple of changes from the original recipe.
**Instead of granulated sugar, I used Brown sugar.
** And I used 1/4 cup Vegetable oil and 1/4 cup butter. This is because I had only one butter stick, I needed 1/4 for cream, so...
Rest all I followed the same from the original recipe For the recipe, click here

The biscuits turned out perfect. Indeed my husband was little shocked on seeing this. He was so happy and announced that from now on he is going to stop buying outside. How is it !

Bournvita Milk cake

Here comes another sweet treat for Deepavali...

Its again my Mom's recipe, in which I made a small twist to make it little more delicious. She will make yummy cake for Deepavali. Most of the time, she call me or my sister to help in this, as this cake gives a good exercise to our hands and shoulders.

I enjoyed making this cake today, because I did a lot of workout after a very long time. Hard work always pays off. The amount of work you put in making this dish will yield a fruitful result. Ok, let me straight away come to the recipe now.

Ingredients:
--- 1 cup Maida / All-purpose Flour
--- 3/4 cup Bournvita / Sweetened cocoa / Drinking Chocolate
--- 1/2 tin Condensed Milk

--- 3 cup Sugar

--- 1/2 cup Ghee
--- 1/2 cup Roasted nuts ( I used Cashews)

Preparation:

First Stage --- In a sauce pan add ghee and Maida and fry it for 10 - 15 minutes, until a nice aroma fills the whole kitchen. Exactly it will be like a freshly baked biscuit from a nearby bakery shop. If you want to taste the mixture, don't hesitate go and give it a try, it will taste like biscuits. Don't get too absorbed by aroma, because you might burn the mixture. Once it is done, keep the mixture aside and let it cool.

Second Stage --- Now comes the chocolate part, mix the bournvita and the condensed milk. Its a little messy work. To make it easy, first mix the bournvita in little warm water and make the cocoa batter without any lumps. Now pour this mixture to the condensed milk and mix it. No need to mix thoroughly, anyways we are going to put all these into a giant pot.

Third Stage --- Grease the pan or plate and keep it ready.

Final Stage --- Take a heavy bottom pan. Add sugar and 1/2 cup of water. Make sugar syrup with a single string consistency. Don't keep the burner in high flame, have it in medium flame and cook. Now add the roasted Maida and mix thoroughly. After few seconds add the Bournvita, milk mixture. That’s it all in one pot. Now comes the arm exercise. You have to constantly stir the mixture till it thickens. This is to avoid the mixture sticking to the bottom. Once the mixture starts leaving the sides of the pan add the roasted nuts in to it. Turn off the mixture and transfer it to the greased pan.

--- Though the mixture tempts you, please don't attempt to put your fingers in to it. Experience talk, I burnt my finger today.

--- keep aside the tray for cooling, meanwhile when the cake is warm, take a greased knife and cut the cake according to desired shape. Let the cake cool completely before taking from the pan.

Share the joy and happiness along with the bournvita sweet treat...