Twice Baked Potatoes & A Kebab Filling

Many a times I wonder why did I name my blog Confusion Cook? And then to re-jog my memory and of my tiddly-piddly followers, I create a recipe which truly in every sense a confusion or amalgamation of tastes, processes and ingredients.

We were planning a Xmas dinner with friends as a pot-luck dinner. I was all ready with my raw ingredients & basic processes, when my little angel decided to cry herself hoarse for the whole day & we had to rush her to a doc when she didn’t let up at all. In the end we had to cancel the dinner and help her calm down and sleep. And I was left with batter of dahi ke kebab, which was ready to be rolled & fried when guests were to come.

I was looking for a baked potato recipe when I came across this recipe which bakes potato twice and I realized that it is quite easy to use my dahi ke kebab batter here. I skipped using the scraped potato back into filling. The batter already had Indian spices so I didn’t add any more as per the recipe.

Twice Baked Potato

It was a delicious take on potato. It was bit sour, spicy, tangy & really tasty. Baked skin of the potato was an added bonus. The best part was the goodness & richness of potato without the extra calories as I did not use the scooped potato. This is a keeper recipe for me.

Twice Baked Potatoes –

Ingredients –

• 2 – Potatoes, large
• 1 tsp – Butter
• 3 Tbsps – Hung Curd
• 3 Tbsps – Paneer, grated
• 1 tsp – Besan
• 1/2 Tbsp – Fresh Coriander, chopped
• 1 – Green Chilli, chopped
• to taste – salt, chaat masala, black pepper

Method –

1. Pre-heat oven at 190 C. Scrub both the potatoes well. Prick them with fork multiple times.
2. Bake them on a wire rack for 90 minutes or till tender. Cool the potatoes for 10 minutes.
3. In the meanwhile, mix all the ingredients except butter in a bowl.
4. Split the potatoes lengthwise into half. Scoop out the tender potato leaving just little thin shell. Keep aside the scooped potato.
5. Fill the potato shells with the prepared filling with a heaping mound. Dab little butter on top.
6. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 190 C. Serve with chopped coriander.

Linking this to –

1. New ‘U’ 2013 by cooks joy
2. Bake Fest # 15 by Sumee’s Culinary Bites

Eggless No Bake Mango Cheesecake – A Bid Adieu to Mango Season

I always look at cheesecakes & wondered how they get this cheesy look, feel & taste. Every day I come across very appetizing cheesecake recipes & ‘transport to heaven’ photos on google. So this had to be a bakelist item for me. My To Bake List mostly comprises of goodies for which either I do not have correct equipment or I do not have the courage to test my abilities.

With a lot of apprehension and misgivings I chose to make Mango Cheesecake. I went for a tried & tested recipe by choosing from a blog. Anushruti of Divine Taste, blogs vegetarian recipes which she has created herself. Her recipes are perfect & snaps even better than perfect. 🙂 Hop onto her blog for some more wonderful recipes. I didn’t want to make a very big cheesecake (always need to watch my weight 😉 ) so reduced the quantity by half & used a loose bottom pan. I had little mixture leftover, so I used jelly moulds to set them individually.

Eggless Mango Cheesecake

For the sauce I used some more left over from Mango Cake & Mango Pudding. This time with every intention of finishing it. 🙂

Eggless No Bake Mango Cheesecake –

Recipe Source – minimally adapted from Divine Taste

Ingredients –

For Crust –

• 80 gms – Crushed Digestive Biscuits (I used Marie)
• 50 gms – Chopped Salted Butter (I used Amul – 1/2 stick)

For Filling –

• 80 gms – Powdered Sugar
• 400 gms – Hung Full Cream Curd (hang 800 gms curd to achieve 400 gms hung curd)
• 200 gms – Fresh Paneer
• 3/4 cup – Water
• 5 gm – China Grass
• 1 – Mango, peeled, chopped & pureed
• 1 tsp – Vanilla Extract

For Sauce – Used sauce left-over from Mango Cake

Method –

1. Place biscuits in a zip lock & crush using a rolling pin into powder.
2. In a large mixing bowl, place butter & crushed biscuits. Using your hands rub in butter & biscuits together until well mixed.
3. Place the mixture in a 6 inch loose bottom pan or spring form pan. Press tightly to form a crust. Set in freezer for 1/2 hour.

1. 

   Eggless Mango Cheesecake Batter

2. Meanwhile, soak china grass in 3/4 cup water for 10 mins until it becomes soft.
3. In a processor run hung curd & paneer until smooth & creamy. Transfer it to a mixing bowl.
4. In a heavy bottom sauce pan, heat mango puree over medium flame. Do not allow this to boil.
5. In a separate sauce pan, place china grass & water mixture until it melts completely, about 5-6 mins. Do not allow this to boil.
6. Once china grass melts completely, pour hot china grass solution into hot mango puree, stirring all the while.

1. 

   Eggless Mango Cheesecake – being set

2. Slowly add the mango-china grass mixture to curd-paneer mixture.
3. Stir in the sugar & vanilla extract and beat with a wire whisk until well blended.
4. Pour this mixture over the prepared crust & allow to set in refrigerator for 3-4 hours.

Assembling the Cheesecake –

1. The sauce should be at room temperature. This was important for me as I was using preserved sauce from earlier recipe.
2. Spread the sauce over the set cheesecake.

1. 

   Eggless Mango Cheesecake – Ready to be set

2. Chill overnight in refrigerator for good setting or you can set in freezer for 2-3 hours.
3. When set, slice & serve chilled.

I served it to my brother-in-law and his friend. To say the truth, friend was completely taken with it, and brother-in-law was thoughtful with every bite. Till date I do not know, whether he liked it or hated it. 🙂 I personally loved it but I guess my family was not very ready for this creamy cheesecake especially no-bake version as my sister kept prodding me to bake it which I refused to do. In hindsight, I feel I should have done then atleast they would have enjoyed it. So on my To Bake List, I add a Baked Cheesecake.

Eggless Mango Cheesecake – all set

I had to serve this cheesecake to guests who were almost running outdoors towards their car and hence couldn’t wait for the sauce to set properly – you can see my sauce it still slightly loose on top. It was perfect when I cut a slice from it next day.

Sending this to Mango Event hosted by Dr. Shameena of My Culinary Creations. Visit the site for some very interesting recipes.

Perfect Eggless Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake – A Sweet Punch 2nd Attempt

Baking this cake turned out to be a perfect example of Murphy’s Law in terms of planning. Whatever I had planned to do with it, went straight out of the window. I had promised myself to bake the next cake on a weekday, but as luck would have it, V decided to come home for lunch, right in the middle of mixing batter on speeds and demanded LUNCH! My oven had been pre-heated for so long, that it went off to zero and had to be re-heated once my batter and tin was ready. And if this wasn’t enough, to my utter dismay, we had to cancel our trip as V got fever in the evening. 😦 How I was looking forward to this trip only I know. Pune is full of must-see neighboring places during rainy season but since our move here 4 years ago, I haven’t been able to see much as pregnancy, infant and toddler kept me busy. Even this chance went for a toss. booo hooooo 😦 some more tears.

Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake – Ready to Eat

To start from where we left, I made Eggless Banana Pound Cake with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting for this month’s Sweet Punch with not so much PERFECT results. So I did a second attempt – for reasons see the earlier post. I used cocoa & Ricotta Cheese (paneer) for my recipe. I still added baking soda to it.

Eggless Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake – I replaced the eggs with Ricotta Cheese in this recipe – (1/4 cup paneer replaces 1 egg). This time I used my 8 inch round tin as I was planning to take this cake for a trek to Raigarh Ropeway and there were others to share. So I increased the quantity by 1/3rd maintaining the same proportion.

Recipe Source – A Sweet Punch Team

Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake Batter

Ingredients –

• 4 Tbsp – Milk
• 1 cup – Home made Paneer (replaces 4 eggs)
• 2 tsp – Vanilla Extract
• 2 cup – Sifted Cake Flour with Cocoa (see below)
• 1 cup – Sugar
• 1 tsp – Leavening Agent (3/4 tsp Baking Powder + 1/4 tsp Baking Soda)
• 1/4 tsp – Salt
• 246 gms – Unsalted Butter

Method – I replaced the egg with paneer in the steps. Use only home-made paneer.

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line & grease 8 inch pan.
2. Puree the paneer in a blender till smooth.
3. Lightly whisk together milk, paneer and vanilla in a medium bowl.
4. Place dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix on low-speed for 30 secs, until blended.
5. Add butter & half of the paneer mixture, and mix until dry ingredients are moistened. On medium speed beat for 1 minute. This will aerate and develop cake’s texture. Scrape down sides.
6. Add the remaining paneer mixture in 2 batches, beating for 20 secs between each addition. Scrape down sides.
7. Pour batter into prepared pan. Smooth surface with spatula. Baked for 45 mins.
8. Let cake cool on a rack in the pan for 10 mins before inverting onto a greased wire rack.

1. 

   Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake – Cooling

For making Cake flour at home – Take one cup of APF and remove 2 Tbsp from it. Replace 2 Tbsp flour with cornflour and sift together 2-3 times. Cake flour is ready to use. I removed 4 Tbsp from 2 cups of cake flour and replaced with 4 Tbsp of Cocoa Powder.

I had read many times that replacing more than 2 eggs is very difficult, next to impossible. But I didn’t feel so. The cake was very good – moist, soft, crumbly, tasty. V couldn’t stop praising or eating. V praising is big because he drives me to tears many a times with his curt remarks about my cooking. So if he praised to the extent that this by far is the best cake I’ve baked then I believe him and you do so too.

Chocolate Ricotta Cheese Pound Cake – Sliced

I felt that sugar was less and could have been increased more, which was due to addition of cocoa powder. But I didn’t alter any ratio as I wanted to maintain that. I sprinkled the cake with some powdered sugar and I was home. Since the cake was big and I didn’t want us piling kilos, I gave half to our dear friend & neighbor – They also loved it in equal measure as V. 🙂 This one is for more Sweet Punch to experiment with!

Vegetable Loaf – My Favorite from Mom’s Recipe

This summer at my mom’s place I was busy dishing out (rather baking out) goodies. Everytime I would tell my mom about my food misadventures :), she would say ‘jungle mein mor nacha kisne dekha!‘ which literally means, who has seen the peacock dancing in a jungle! She said if you want me to believe that you are learning to bake and getting better at it, prove it. She said I will take care of your son, you be busy in the OVEN!!

This gave me a chance, apart from recipes which I baked for them (mostly googled), to re-visit her secret recipes 🙂 and enjoy some more tasty treat!

Vegetable Loaf – Ready to Eat!

When V was visiting my place some time ago, she had served him this vegetable loaf & he being a foodie had loved it. And since then he has always been asking me to learn and make it. I finally did it!

Vegetable Loaf – Recipe source – My Mother

Ingredients –

• 4 medium – Potato
• 1 cup – finely chopped Carrot
• 2 cup – finely chopped Cabbage
• 1 1/2 cup – finely chopped Cauliflower
• 1 cup – finely chopped Peas
• 1 cup – Beans
• 2 – medium Onions
• 2 – Tomatoes
• 1 tsp – Ginger
• 3-4 – green chilli
• 1/2 Tbsp – Olive Oil
• 100 gms – Fresh Paneer
• 1 cup – Cornflakes
• 1 tsp – dried mint leaves (you can use fresh)
• to taste – Black Pepper
• to taste – Salt

Recipe –

Vegetable Loaf

1. Boil potatoes & grate them.
2. Steam carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, peas & beans. Mix together.
3. Lightly crush cornflakes & keep aside.
4. Pre-heat the oven at 175 C.
5. Prepare a loaf tin by greasing it.
6. Fry onions in olive oil, add tomato, ginger & green chilli.
7. Mix all vegetables & seasonings together.
8. Now spread crushed cornflakes in the base of the tin.
9. Place strips of paneer on top of cornflakes so that the base of the tin is completely and evenly covered.
10. Now spread half the quantity of vegtable filling on top of it & press it down with hand. This is required to firm up the loaf so that it doesn’t fall apart upon de-moulding.
11. Now place the second layer of paneer.
12. Spread the remaining vegetable filling and press it again.
13. Now cover with crushed cornflakes.
14. Bake for 15-20 mins or till done. The loaf should brown slightly & start to leave the sides of the tin.
15. De-mould. Carefully cut into slices & serve hot.

Vegetable Loaf – Straight Out of Oven

I had some leftover batter, so i placed them in tarts shell & baked along with loaf. While the loaf baked, I happily gorged on them.

Vegetable Loaf in Tart Mould