Baking ~ Cranberry Almond Biscotti

Its almost the end of the month. But missing deadlines is my speciality. I do it like there is greatness in it. Sometimes I don’t miss deadlines, I discard tasks completely and feign it wasn’t important enough to do, so to hell with the deadline anyway!

Having said that, there is allegiance in me so strong, that I just wish I take up more significant causes, cos my conscience sometimes never ever gives up. Pushing me to do stuff which in my mind I had thought it was ok to abandon.

Confused? Don’t be. Its just that, no one wanted it to lose steam. The baking club I mean. Both my namesakes, Aparna and yours truly. We did the mango pound cake with all enthusiasm and then poooof! It was like suddenly thunder struck and lightening did us in. only each of us had a valid reason to not finish the theme this month which was biscotti. Only Arundathi Krishna finished it well ahead of time and posted to…so brownie… err biscotti points to her. Much as I tried to finish this biscotti baking business, my head was spinning around and I was going nuts. Ask my husband K he will vouch for the loony I became this month. I had grand plans to get my apartment painted and that snowballed into an activity that drove me to my edge and made me look like I would have been a better person if I was on drugs!

Anyone who has taken up a remodeling activity while living on the premises will tell you its not such a great idea. Further, anyone who has dealt with labour inIndiawill tell you how they have a mind of their own even if you are paying their wages! Add to that my hormones were in overdrive with an impending birthday looming large over my head and a visit from the mater. All this was brought to a head because I have a house full of so much stuff, I do not know when I acquired most of it, I do not know what to do with it and seriously made me aware of the addiction I have for knick knacks!

So apart from tearing my hair out, whining all evening once K got back from work, painting the study a shade of blue grey and the ceiling of a bedroom green with stark white walls, I was generally being such a pain in the backside even I couldn’t bear myself. Then I went and baked biscotti.

To describe to you the aromas of baking biscuits in a house that looked like the tsunami had hit it is going to be impossible! Lets just say that I sat on my gorgeous sunny now painted warm yellow balcony to enjoy this fantastic biscotti with a cup of elaichi chai, everything was made worthwhile, even turning a year older!

I followed the recipe from Joy of Baking and added chopped almonds in place of pistachios. I got about 14 pieces, but i think i needed to slice them thinner. Below is my version

Cranberry and Almond Biscotti

2/3 cup (135 grams) granulated whitesugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoonpure vanilla extract

1 teaspoonbaking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups (245 grams) all-purposeflour

1/2 cup (60 grams) Almonds, chopped roughly

1/2 cup (75 grams) dried cranberries or cherries (can also substitute with tutti fruitti, raisins or any other sweet dry fruit of choice)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminium foil.

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the sugar and eggs on high speed until thick, pale, and fluffy (about 5 minutes).  (When you slowly raise the beaters the batter will fall back into the bowl in slow ribbons.)  At this point beat in the vanilla extract.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Add to the egg mixture and beat until combined.  Fold in the chopped pistachios and cranberries.

Transfer the dough to your foil lined baking sheet and form into a log, about 12 inches (30 cm) long and 3 1/2 inches (9 cm) wide.  You may have to dampen your hands to form the log as the dough is quite sticky. Bake for25 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Transfer the log to a cutting board and cut into 3/4 inch (2 cm) slices, on the diagonal.  Place the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet.  Bake for about 10 minutes, turn slices over, and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and let cool.  Store in an airtight container.

Makes about 16 – 20 biscotti.

Baking Escapades #17 – Spice it up!! Cookies and Chai

The Monsoon is my favourite time of the year…..i forget about the wetness and the slush and the inconveniences people face…..i love to curl up on a chair, feet nicely tucked under me and sip on a cup of hot spicy tea…..sweet and strong and flavoured with ginger…..i love the smell of the earth after the rains wash it….

This year we almost didn’t have the rains….there was talk of the rains having failed and all that…..it affects the entire ecosystem…..reservoirs dry up which badly affects water and electricity supply….i was saddened that I wont have my favourite season……and then it came upon us…..later than usual….but in full gusto…..it has been raining pretty incessantly for the last couple of weeks…..just the perfect time for some ginger spiced cookies and ginger chai…..

I made these cookies from sunitha’s blog…..infact Deeba mentioned them and I was interested..i tried them and we loved them….just the right chewiness…..spiced and very mildly sweet….what’s more…they’re made of whole wheat flour…..these cookies have become rather regular at home….its just that the rains have made them all the more special…..

Baking Escapade #10: Chocolate Pinwheels

A few short months ago, had anyone suggested that making biscuits and cookies from scratch can be easy and delightful, I’d have plead guilty to “willful damage to life and property” and caused bodily harm….i think that’s where my favourite book( The Cookie Book, over 300 step-by-step recipes for home baking by Catherine Atkinson, Joanna Farrow and Velerie Barrett) came to my rescue…. I’ve come to think otherwise now…. Though I have a long way to go before I can be super confident… Sometime last month I baked these delightful chocolate pinwheels…….they’re easy, look awesome, make for great gifts and are a perfect excuse if you are chocoholic….. i’ve met with the same success every time I have made them….so they come highly recommended especially for novice bakers.

this is being sent off to Susan of the Food blogga who has this fabulous round up for christmas cookies. i’ve already made a few selections to make up for christmas….she’s updating the entries as she receives them, so be sure to check it out here.

this also fabulously qualifies for JFI….this month is one of everyone’s favourite!! Chocolate. JFI is the concept of Indira’s from Mahanandi and this month is hosted by Deepz of Letzcook. she is a self confessed chocoholic ( who isnt??) and is thrilled to be hosting this…..scurry over for some sinfully chocolatey recipes…..

Baking Escapade #9: Date and Fig Ravioli

Tuesday was a day that S and I spent the way most of us love to spend time…..shopping…………..not just anywhere, but in my beloved gallis of general bazaar or king james street in Secunderabad…..its a veritable treasure trove and you can find just about anything you are looking for……..S is the proud owner of a brand new OTG and what better way to celebrate than to trudge half across town to buy baking supplies?? So off we went buying cake tins, muffin pans, icing guns, cookie cutters and everything else that took her fancy in the baking supplies shop…… the excitement is just so contagious ….. and the next day I found myself poring over my cookie book…..at the back of my mind I was looking for something that I could send in as my entry for AFAM, this month it is dates and I actually had no idea what to do…..the book on hand has 300 assorted cookie recipes…and as luck would have it…just one with dates….. Fig and Date Ravioli….i reversed the quantities of figs and dates as this is my entry to AFAM, this month calls for dates and is hosted by Chandrika of Akshayapatra…….I looked up the dictionary which describes Ravioli as a “small circular or square cases of dough with savory fillings” …. The recipe didn’t looked too scary and so last afternoon I set myself up in my kitchen….. those of you who have been reading my baking escapades know by now that the afternoons are my time of choice for baking…because if it ends in a flop show, I have enough of time to junk the evidence and fumigate the kitchen!!

The ravioli, called for short crust pastry which I had no idea what it was, so I decided to make the basic cookie dough with very little sugar as a substitute…..I need’nt have feared, today when I looked online, I discovered that short crust pastry was the same thing minus the sugar!! If sugar is added to the mixture it becomes a sweet crust pastry…..read more on this here….. The ravioli turned out beautifully, far above my expectations and I literally had to plead with K to leave some for the photograph….ofcourse he attempted to guilt trip me with the “you are always cooking for the blog these days” look….but I managed to get a few shots…I must add a disclaimer that they don’t do justice to either the way the ravioli looked or tasted…. It was a crisp biscuit case with a nice mildly sweet-nutty stuffing…..this will be added to my festive repertoire for sure…..

this too like the pinwheels is being sent off to Susan of the Food blogga who has this fabulous round up for christmas cookies. i’ve already made a few selections to make up for christmas….she’s updating the entries as she receives them, so be sure to check it out here.

Baking escapades continue chocolate class update and turning a year older!!

With all the things happening around me and threatening to engulf me, the one thing I really missed was my blogging….not just posting….i haven’t cooked up anything worth a post, but taking a peek into all the kitchens that I usually do……I turned a year older on the 9^th and this time decided that I wouldn’t fall apart freaking out….if I don’t feel it, I don’t look it right?? With the internet playing such a major part in everyone’s life, I spent a good part of 3 hours cumulatively on the phone and responding to messages….its great to feel so loved….we’d planned on a quiet do ….cos hadn’t I mentioned that K is kitchen challenged and the last thing I wanted to do on my birthday was to cook and clean up after people ….. so a quiet dinner with friends it was….K gave me some snazzy gifts that left me smiling like a Cheshire cat….so all that hint dropping worked in the end!!

The update on the chocolate making classes is that there’s been terrific response…. I have two per week as I’d planned and they’re going well…… am quite happy that I have worked out a schedule and am able to put the house back in shape within the hour of the class getting done with….its fun to watch people take tentative steps towards chocolate and its very satisfying to see them leave so happy…one participant even got her four year old to call me and thank me for teaching his mom to make chocolate at home…his favourite he said was white chocolate!!

Yesterday I made a huge batch of chocolate which I will donate to the church. On my birthday, the priest came home to pray for the family and wish me…this apparently he is doing voluntarily and visits at least one member of the congregation a day…on special days…I was so touched that I offered to make chocolate hampers which he could give them…. I said he should call me once he runs out of them so I can replenish the stock….he was thrilled at the idea…..so my first batch is made, packed and ready to be sent to the Church…..mother of course thinks I will get the best seat in heaven for this gesture, I am not convinced that the one above can be bribed with a little home made chocolate!!

On K’s request I made another batch of Jam tarts. This time with proper tart moulds….i went shopping to stock up on chocolate making supplies and ran amuck in the store….i picked up baking dishes and an icing bag with a few nozzles to experiment …so beware…I shall be subjecting you to all my experiments!! (atleast visually!!) all in all I’ve had such a busy time that I have not realized that its almost the weekend already!! Which in a way is really good…cant remember a time I was this busy even when I worked at a corporate job fulltime!!

Baking Escapade # 3 with Cookies / biscuits

I didn’t think I would do it…but I did!! Baked another something because I was feeling lousy about not having pictures for my previous post!! That’s back to back baking!! I hope the euphoria remains!! For a baking dud like me, this is like having passed the board exams with a distinction!! The net results are far better than yesterday’s effort that I was crowing about in the previous post…..i feel like taking small steps towards climbing that mountain called baking which from childhood I was told is where the ogre lives!! I am a terrible procrastinator and most of the excuse I make for being so is that the task is very difficult and I will need all my ‘time and energy’ to tackle it. When you finally get down to doing it, you realize that it was made difficult by just your imagination….by no stretch of imagination am I trying to say that baking is easy…far from it…but its challenging enough not to take the fun out of it….and boy!! am i having fun or what…i just love the way the kitchen fills up with the lovely smells….and no i don’t rush to switch on the chimney for once….I have also discovered something…..unlike cooking (which you may slave over for hours together) baking is an absolute attention grabber!! The incredible “you made this” look is to die for!! and this time I altered a few things in the tart recipe from here. Only as much as I dared. The result is about 30-35 cookies.

Baking Escapade # 2 with Jam tarts / biscuits

Since the success of my chocolate cake, I have dreamed and drooled (which by now’s a regular feature) over baking recipes. I mustered the courage to buy a desserts only cookbook too – Egg less Desserts by Tarla Dalal. it has a pretty good collection of Indian desserts, cakes, cookies etc also a few easy to do assembly desserts. i thought it would be a good place to begin, though I didn’t own any of her cook books, I admire the lady for having taken the Indian cooking –writing scene by its neck and having a vice like grip on it long before all the other celebrity chefs came along. i love the way she breaks down even the most complex recipes and presents them in a very simple ‘can do’ manner. She also gets full marks from me for innovation. All these accolades are based on the fact that at the small bookstore I was browsing, there was such a mind-boggling array of cookbooks with so many titles that I was reeling. It’s a tribute to her success as a food writer and her innovation and re-invention as a cook (with a huge heap of credit to the people who manage her work too!!)

Anyways, yesterday I ventured to make the simplest recipe in the whole book. One that called for the least ingredients!! Unfortunately I didn’t get to take any pictures of the jam tarts because they got polished off with that much ferocity by K. infact the batch that I had kept aside to be photographed this morning was consumed through the night…all this writing is making him voraciously hungry for snacks!! This post minus the pics is specially for N, my comment fairy and dear dear friend. She asked when I was going to post something and I thought the lack of a photograph is a lousy excuse for not posting a recipe!! Here’s to you N….the next time you’re here I promise you garam adrak chai and jam tarts!!

I was quite happy that not only was the recipe very simple, it was totally fool proof. I was a little skeptical since it called for no sugar. The result was a very buttery crisp cookie and the tartness if the plum jam (my mother doesn’t smother it in too much sugar) went perfectly with it. Since I didn’t have tart tins I just cut the dough out in various shapes with assorted cookie cutters and put them to bake. Using the cookie cutters reminded me of my childhood when we would be “called upon” to cut out biscuits using horlicks bottle caps!! We’d eat half of the dough till my mother would get mad and ask us to get out!! Somehow the dough tasted better before being baked!! And though my mother would make allowances for the pilferage, she’d tick us off anyways. This whole drama made it even more exciting and added to the taste of the cookie dough!!

No such thing with me though as this was a solitary escapade. However what really tested my patience was that the electricity kept going on and off and baking 3 batches of cookies that would take about 30-40 mins took about 2 hours to finish. By the time I could preheat the oven, the lights would go off ….. I was ready to bake the electricity board by the end of it!!

Here’s the recipe for jam tarts. I simply followed the same recipe, cut out the dough with a cookie cutter and baked them as biscuits, topped with my mother’s plum jam and served.