Oat and Fruit Bars

My little one is obsessed with sticky and chewy sweets. It all started with the Vitamin C supplement that I started to give him. Sometime ago, I handed him a dried apricot and told him it was just like a "sticky sweet". He loved it and asked for more. I then introduced him to raisins, which he enjoyed as well. Then, I got quite excited and bought a whole array of stuff from the dried fruit section. And he soon lost interest.

I wanted to put the stuff to good use. I thought I'd make the jewel blondies again. But since cookies keep better, I decided to look up recipes for dried fruit cookies. I came across this Pillsbury site and decided to try this recipe. I modified the recipe a little and made fruit bars instead of cookies. The next time around I will reduce the sugar in the recipe to maybe 3/4 cup in all.

The end result: bars full of the chewy goodness of oats and dried fruit. This is a keeper recipe and I am sure adding nuts or chocolate/butterscotch chips will work well too.

Ingredients

¾ cup Sugar

¼ cup Brown Sugar

½ cup Butter, softened

½ tsp Vanilla

1 Egg

¾ cup Flour

½ tsp Baking Soda

½ tsp Cinnamon Powder

¼ tsp Salt

1 ½ cups Rolled Oats

1 cup Dried Fruit (I used Apricots, Raisins, Cranberries, Blueberries and Cherries)

Heat the oven to 375 F/190 C. 

Line two cake tins with parchment/baking paper. (I used 9" square tins)

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until  fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla beat some more. Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and mix well.

Add the oats and the dried fruit. Mix together until well blended.

Divide the mixture equally into the two cake tins. Bake for 8-9 minutes.

Remove from the cake tins and allow to cool a little on a rack. Cut into squares while still warm using a sharp knife or a pizza cutter.

Store in an airtight container when completely cool.

These will go into A's snack box next week and maybe I can now safely say goodbye to the store bought cookies/bars.

Mixed Fruit Bran Pancakes

I love pancakes, but I'm not sure I could eat them everyday. Not for breakfast at least. 9 out of 10 times, I'd vote for a savoury breakfast. I eat salted oats porridge with a sprinkle of molaga podi, much to the surprise of my colleagues who cannot imagine eating a porridge that isn't sweet. But I like jam on toast and pancakes with syrup as a sweet variation.

1/2 cup Flour

1/2 cup Wheat Flour

1/4 cup Wheat Bran
1 tbsp Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 cup Milk
1/4 cup Mixed Dry Fruits
½ tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Butter
A pinch of Salt
½ tsp Butter for frying

To Serve:
Maple Syrup/Fruit Cocoktail/Fresh Fruit

Beat the egg and then add milk. Gradually add the flour, wheat flour, wheat bran and the baking powder while continuing to blend. Add the sugar, salt, and butter and mix well. Blend in the dry fruit.

Heat the pan and add the butter. Coat the entire pan with the melted butter. Pour a ladleful of the batter onto the pan. Do not spread it with the ladle. Allow the batter to flow and form a circle. Cook for a minute and turn over. Cook on the other side for about half a minute and then transfer to a plate.

Repeat with the remaining batter. Stack the pancakes on a plate and serve hot with maple syrup or fruit cocktail. I had a can of fruit fiesta cocktail that my friend brought for me. The combination of these pancakes and the fruit cocktail was very nice. S had his stack with maple syrup and I'm certain he enjoyed every bite.

Light Fruit Cake to celebrate

Not many can have a father

Who’s half as great as you.

Others might try, but they fall shy

You’re a top-notch father, it’s true.
So that’s why on your birthday,

I want to make sure you know,

I admire your sincerely and love you dearly,

And those feelings continue to grow.

I came across this wonderful poem on a site called http://www.poemsource.com/ and this poem was penned by Karl and Joanna Fuchs. And I could relate to the emotion. I am in Chennai to celebrate, among other things, Appa's birthday. I owe this man a great deal. He has always stood behind me in everything I've wanted to do. Pushed me to excel in just about everything I did. And as far as helping me hone my culinary skills, while he always maintained that he can "boil water without burning it", he has been a willing guinea pig. The man who ate semia upma and told his then 13 year old daughter it was delicious. Much later I realized that I'd used twice the amount of water I should have. A lot of my initial cooking happened when Amma was out of town and that meant that H and Appa were left to my "raj". While on the face of it, he may have thought I don't really care about his likes and dislikes, one word of appreciation from him can put me on cloud nine for a long long time. And so, while I didn't exactly learn any cooking from him, he taught me a lot.

I baked a cake late last night ans brought it with me this morning. The first thing we did after entering the house was to have him blow off the candle and cut the cake.

1 cup Raisins

1 cup Apricots

1 cup Figs

1/2 cup Sultanas

1/4 cup Currants

1/4 cup Dates

1/4 cup Candied Peel

1/4 cup Glace Cherries

1 cup White Wine

1 cup Dark Rum

3 cups Flour

1 cup Oil

2 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

1 tsp Cinnamon Powder

1/2 tsp Nutmeg Powder

1/4 tsp Clove Powder

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup Sugar

Soak the dry fruits for at least 2 days in the white wine and rum along with the spice powders.

Heat the oven to 350 F (180 C). Prepare two 8" cake tins.

Sift the dry ingredients. Add the oil and sugar and beat well. Add the beaten eggs with the essence and then fold in the flour mixture. Stir in the fruits along with the liquid and then divide the batter into the cake tins. Bake for 45 minutes.

As India celebrates her Republic Day, we celebrate the other occasion that makes the 26th of January ever so special. Happy Birthday Appa!

Incidentally, this is my 200th post. I can't believe I've reached a double century. It is thanks to all of you.

Fruit Cookies

One of the books that I picked up recently was The Cookie Book. It has over 300 recipes. I tried a few muffin recipes from this book, but wanted really to make cookies. I think what put me off was the 6 letter word I found in almost each recipe: butter! I finally decided to bring the butter out from the deep freeze and put it to use. I'd promised my team some baked goodies to celebrate a mini milestone. So, I thought, why not??

These chewy cookies are a real treat and considering how many cookies I got (roughly 50), I felt the 1/2 cup butter was understandable. When I see 1/2 cup, I feel like the entire 1/2 cup is going into one cookie and I think that's what puts me off. I modifed the recipe that I found in the basics section of the book. I remembered Anita asking me to try cookies with half and half (flour and wheat)

1/2 cup Unsalted Butter, softened

3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour or Atta

3/4 cup Flour

1/2 cup Sugar

1 Egg, beaten

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

1 cup Candied Fruit Bits (Papaya, Pineapple, Mango, Apricots)

Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).

Beat the sugar and the butter until fluffy and add the essence and the egg and mix well. Fold in the flours and gently stir the fruits in.

Grease a cookie sheet and drop spoonfuls of the dough on to the sheet. Leave ample space in between each cookie.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and then store in an air tight container.

Off this goes to Nags of For the Cook in Me who is hosting this month’s A Fruit A Month event. I even bought a raw papaya to make something savoury, but the baker in me took over.

Peach Apricot Bread Pudding

There are recipes that are handed down through generations. Intact as they pass from mother to daughter until they reach the likes of moi! Some day, I'll share my grandmother's recipe for a bread pudding with all of you. It is what I consider the ultimate comfort dessert. For now, you'll all have to be content with my new version. Peachy, you say. I agree.

I made this last night for dessert. And I'll have more of it through this week. And I'll also send a bowlful to Mansi for the A Fruit A Month (AFAM) event.

4 slices Brown Bread

2 tbsp Peach Apricot Crush, diluted with 2 tbsp water

1 cup Milk

3 tbsp Sugar

Soak the bread slices in the peach apricot juice mixture and arrange in a baking dish.

Bring the milk to a boil and add the sugar to it. Pour this mixture over the bread slices and cook in a microwave for 8-10 minutes. Enjoy it hot. Keep it in the fridge and enjoy it cold for a few days after that.

I'll upload the pictures of this dish later. Have been swamped and haven't had a chance to upload any pictures from my camera.

Summer Fruit Shake

Summer! I think I have a love-hate relationship with this part of the year. The heat I don't like. No, not even when it is zero degrees and we exist in our houses without heating, central or otherwise. I don't look forward to the nice hot summer months. Nice and hot together would constitute an oxymoron, wouldn't they?

But there are some things I simply love about summer. The fruits. The mangoes, watermelons, peaches, litchis, apricots, jamuns, plums, pears, cherries and apples. We stock them up at home and I can just go on eating fruit. I don't need much else.

Some pictures of fruit taken during our last holiday in Mussoorie.

Yet another breakfast in a glass. I have had to clean my fridge and use up as much of the stuff that's in there. And I also needed to feed myself. So here goes:

1/2 Apple, peeled and chopped

1 Peach, chopped

4 Apricots, chopped

2 Dried Apricots, chopped for garnish

1 cup Milk

Blend all the fruits along with the milk. Pour into a glass and top with dried apricots.

I had a glass of this and drank the remaining milk shake after about 15 minutes. The colour had turned a beautiful orange. I was so carried away that I forgot to take a picture. But it was a filling breakfast and that's all that really matters.

We're traveling for the rest of the week. My cousin and his family are here from London and we're off to the hills to have loads of fun. The doctor said that S could go along too, as long as he isn't driving. So, see you all when I get back.

Apple Apricot Shake and a Meme

There are those who for whom breakfast is the most important meal of the day and then there are those who couldn't care less. I fall in the first category and, sadly, S falls in the second. Slowly and steadily, I am changing the way he looks at breakfast. Very often, I pack stuff for him so he can eat it when hunger strikes. On weekends, I am a little lenient. I have a little something and then we have brunch. On Sundays, we have a customary visit to Naivedyam to have Idli Vada, Mysore Masala Dosa and coffee. And a little something like this shake keeps me going until we drive to the restaurant.





Again, I drew inspiration for this from Amma. I helped her modify (read simplify) the recipe and I added some apricots for extra flavour.

Ingredients:

200ml Milk

1 Apple, cored, peeled and chopped

5-6 Apricots

Chop the apricots and microwave them with a tablespoon of water for 1-2 minutes.

Blend these with the apples in a mixer. Add the milk and blend for a minute or so until smooth. Pour it into a glass. Your breakfast in a glass is ready in minutes.

I've been tagged by Priyanka of Lajawaab Aahar. I was tagged once before and played along at my other blog Random Thoughts. But I thought, "why not?".

• 
  I started talking when I was 9 months old.
• I believed that every child had a mother tongue that was different from his/her father tongue.
• I thought that all fathers were bald, and someone with ample hair on his head couldn't be anyone's father.
• I have not had the good fortune of knowing my maternal grandparents.
• I am the youngest of 14 grandchildren and am married to S, who is the youngest of 16 grandchildren.
• I have had a very interesting career. I started out wanting to be an Immunologist, then decided on Ecology, from there on shifted to Ecotourism and then to Tourism Administration. However, because I was studying Tourism, and was in Pondicherry at the time, I was encouraged to learn foreign languages. That led to a career shift to Translation and Interpretation from where I finally landed in HR. Who knows what lies ahead?
• My friends call me "Heathrow" because I am the "hub". I am touch with a lot of people regardless of how I came to know them. And because of me, several old friends have reconnected, and people have met and decided to get married.

And I, in turn, tag the following people:

Anita

Cynthia

Archana

Seema

Deepa

Sharmi

Play along if you have the time and inclination..... If you have already been tagged please ignore.