When I get the craving I make sure to succumb to it. I’ve been craving for Mysore pak for many days and it was on sunday evening I finally decided to give it a shot in my kitchen. Making Mysore pak is not a completely new thing to me, I had witnessed my mom make this quite a few times in her kitchen. That time I never cared about how it was made, but only about indulging in this sweet and of course finished it with so much greed…

Mysore pak is a famous sweet of Karnataka, India. It’s not just available in Karnataka, but it’s sold in almost all sweet stores all over India. With a little bit of patience you could make this in your own kitchen.

When I started making this, I never thought that I would end up making it flawless. It wasn’t that hard as I thought, in just 25 minutes using very simple ingredients I was able to whip up the delicious mysore pak. When I greedily had a bite of this sweet I couldn’t appreciate enough about myself for a while After few rounds of having this, I squared them and stored them in an air tight container with the thought of snacking it for at least a few days. However, it was just a thought as my husband and I have been taking bites after bites saying that would be the last bite after every bite.

And I loved the aroma of ghee that has filled  my house…

Mysore Pak

Makes: 10 square pieces.

Ingredients:

• Gram Flour or Besan- 3/8 cup (half of 3/4th)
• Sugar- 1 3/4 cups
• Ghee, hot and melted- 1 cup or more if you prefer
• Water- 1 cup

Preparation:

• Sieve the gram flour without any lumps and keep aside.
• Place the ghee in a bowl and melt it in the microwave or stove top, keep aside.
• Combine sugar and water in a large non-stick cooking pan and melt it over medium heat.

• Once the sugar melts in water, keep stirring it until it forms a thick constituency and fine threads start to form, about 15 minutes. Don’t let the sugar syrup turn brown in color.

• While stirring the sugar syrup, be careful not to spill the syrup on your hands as it’s very hot.
• Add 1/2 cup of hot melted ghee to the sugar syrup and continue stirring for few minutes.
• Add the gram flour and keep stirring breaking any lumps that forms.
• Add rest of the ghee to the mixture little by little by stirring continuously.

• When you add the ghee the mixture will sizzle.

• Continue stirring till the mixture just starts to dry. Don’t wait till it gets too dry or brown.

• Pour the mixture on a pan greased with ghee and evenly spread the top.

• Allow it to set and let cool down for 15-20 minutes.

• Cut into square or diamond shapes.

• Enjoy the mysore pak and the aroma of ghee from these sweets.

Tips:

• Double the amount of ingredients to make more.
• To make perfect shapes without breaking, allow it to cool for 20 minutes. It will harden as it sits idle for a while.
• My mom used to roast the Gram flour in ghee to remove the raw smell of the flour. However, I didn’t roast the flour and it didn’t have any raw flour flavor.

A glass of Avocado milkshake is not enough, your taste buds will definitely beg for more…

Whenever I come across avocados in the grocery store, I ask them: Are you a fruit or a vegetable? And their answer is “I am definitely a fruit, but in some kitchen I am treated as a vegetable”. This is yet another fruit I had ignored all these years. The only dish I’ve tasted made with avocado is Guacamole, that too in restaurants. During my last grocery shopping, I invited some of these fruits to my kitchen and gave these buddies a special place in my refrigerator. Every time when I opened the refrigerator, I thought what I should make with these fruits. I was totally confused and so made them sit there for few more days.

Finally, when I felt that I am being mean to these fruits by not giving them the opportunity to be a part of my cooking, I took them out. At first, I thought I should just scoop the flesh, mash it and put some seasonings and have it as a dip. After a second thought, I felt I should put them in the blender along with milk and sugar and transform them into a milkshake. I went with my second thought.

When I had a sip of this milkshake, I felt terribly guilty for not buying these all these years. The milkshake was extremely delicious; it had a buttery and smooth finish. I didn’t think any further and gave all the avocados a milkshake makeover.

If you haven’t tried anything with avocados I would highly recommend this easy and quick milkshake, any one will fall for this the moment they take the first sip.

Not to forget the health benefits of Avocados:

• Avocado extract is good for prevention and treatment of breast cancer as well as prostate cancer.
• Avocados contain “oleic acid”, a monounsaturated fat that may help lower cholesterol.
• Just a slice of Avocado improves your body’s ability to absorb carotenoid.
• Avocados are powerhouse of vitamin E.
• Avocados are shown to maintain good cholesterol while reducing the bad cholesterol.
• Avocado is a good source of potassium, a mineral that helps regulate blood pressure.

Avocado Milkshake

Yield: 2 glasses

Ingredients:

• Ripe Avocado: 1
• Milk- 2 cups
• Sugar or honey- 2 tbsp

Preparation:

• Scoop out the flesh and put it in the blender.
• Pour milk and put the sugar to this.
• Blend it until smooth and serve in a juice glass.

Tips:

• Use ripe avocados for making the milkshake.
• How to buy ripe avocados: Avocados are relatively firm, color cannot be trusted to determine whether they are ripe or not. A ripe avocado will yield slightly to the touch when pressed, and this slight softness indicates it’s ready to eat.
• It’s usually hard to find ripe ones, get the unripe ones and place them in a paper bag or on the kitchen counter to ripen it at home.

A spoonful of this creamy dessert and you will feel heaven in your mouth…

The more I have this, the more I fall for this dessert, totally love the personality of this dessert. It’s rich, creamy and just melts into your mouth. It can be made with less effort and with ingredients always hanging around in your kitchen. Very flexible dessert, each time I make this, I try out different flavor and all came out pretty yummy. Of all the flavors, I love the orange flavor the best, the tangy flavor of the orange gives this creamy dessert an extra kick.

Panna Cotta, an Italian dessert, which means ” cooked cream” is made by simmering together cream, milk and sugar, mixing this with gelatin, and letting it cool until set. To this we could add any kind of flavor, you name the flavor and you have it.

Perfect dessert for any special occasions, I am sure just like me you are not going to wait for any special occasions, any day is perfect to have this dessert.

Orange Panna Cotta:

• Recipe Courtesy: Gale Gand
• Cook Time: 10 min
• Yield-6-8 servings
  

Ingredients:

• Powdered gelatin- 1 tablespoon
• Water- 3 tablespoons
• Heavy cream- 4 cups
• Sugar- 3/4 cup
• Fresh orange peel (orange part only-no white pith)- 6 wide strips
• Vanilla bean, split lengthwise or vanilla extract- 1/2 or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Semisweet chocolate curls, for garnish (optional)
• Orange segments, for garnish

Preparation:

• In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let soak 10 minutes (do not stir).
• Meanwhile, heat the cream, sugar, orange peel, and vanilla in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, to dissolve the sugar.
• As soon as it simmers, turn off the heat and add the gelatin mixture, stirring to dissolve the gelatin. (If the gelatin doesn’t completely dissolve in 3 minutes, return to the heat and warm gently until dissolved.)
• Strain the mixture into a pitcher to remove the vanilla bean and orange peels.
• Pour the mixture into 6 to 8 ramekins or dessert cups, or into 1 larger dish.
• Chill, uncovered, at least 3 hours.
• To unmold, dip the cups in hot water for 10 seconds, then turn the panna cottas out onto dessert plates (or, simply serve in the cups or by the spoonful).
• Shave some chocolate curls onto the top of the panna cottas and serve with the orange segments.

Tips:

• Other flavors you could try are passion fruit, coconut, strawberry, chocolate etc
• You could pour this in different kind of fancy containers and chill it or even shot glasses, martini glasses works too.
• You could even use Agar agar instead of Gelatin: Add 1/4 cup agar agar strands (2 inch cuts) to 1/2 water taken in a sauce pan, and heat it to dissolve the agar agar, strain it and add to the cooked cream.

I never had the nerve to make puff pastries on my own. So I always go with the easy way of getting it from the frozen isle of a food store. I love to have puff pastry almost every day, but when I look at the nutritional facts label on the box, the percentage of saturated fat it has freaks me out. This doesn’t mean that I totally skip this crispy and flaky goodness. Occasionally, I get the craving to eat this. I usually make a meat filling and stuff it inside the puff pastry sheets, which are cut into medium sized squares. But this time I wanted to make a different kind of filling, so I chose a sweet filling for this. I made the filling with coconut, eggs, sugar, raisins and almonds. When the puffs came out of the oven, it was crispy, flaky and golden. I couldn’t even wait for the puffs to cool down; hence I took a bite of it immediately. This sweet puff pastry tasted so good and loved the added raisins and almonds in it. One thing that happens whenever I make puff pastry is that the platter gets empty in just a matter of seconds.

Ingredients:

• Puff Pastry (store bought)- 1 sheet, cut into medium sized 9 squares

For making the filling:

• Coconut shredded( frozen/fresh)- 1/2 cup
• Egg-1
• Sugar-3tbsp
• Cardamom powder-1/2 tsp
• Raisins-2tsp
• Almonds sliced-2tsp
• Butter or Ghee-2tsp+2tsp

Preparation:

• Thaw the puff pastry sheets according to the instruction given on the back side of the box.
• Heat a skillet and add 2tsp of butter or ghee to it, when it melts, add the coconut to it and saute till its color starts to turn golden.
• Add the egg and scramble it, cook the egg without any lumps.
• Add sugar to this and stir well.
• Push the coconut mixture toward one side of the skillet.
• Add cardamom powder to this.
• Now add the remaining 2tsp butter/ghee on the other side of the same skillet, roast the raisins and almonds in it, when they turn golden brown, mix along with the coconut/egg mixture.
• If you want you could roast raisins and almonds in  a separate pan and then add these to the  mixture. I roasted in the same pan to avoid extra cleaning
• Let the filling cool for sometime.
• Place about 1-2 tsp of filling on to the middle of the each puff pastry squares, close the squares and seal the edges by pressing with your fingers and place these on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Pre-heat the oven to 400F. Depending upon which brand of puff pastry you are using, the baking time might vary, so if you are using frozen sheets, follow the baking instruction given on the box.
• Bake it for about 15-20 minutes or until the puffs turn golden brown and crispy.
• Bake it on the lower rack of the oven for the first 10 minutes and then move it to the upper rack for the remaining time. This would avoid the lower side of the puffs from becoming dark brown.
• Remove the pastries from the baking sheets and let cool on wire racks for 10 minutes.

Tips:

• With this filling you can stuff around 12 puffs.
• If there is any filling remaining, it can be used to garnish  the puffs.
• In this picture I have cut the puff into two halves just to show the filling.