Wordless Wednesday

Cilantro Jalapeño Hummus

Panera Bread has a fantastic Mediterranean Veggie sandwich on their menu. I like this sandwich so much that I tried recreating it at home recently. I purchased most of the ingredients required for the sandwich at an adjacent Trader Joe's, but decided to make the cilantro-jalapeno hummus, an important component of the sandwich, myself. I tweaked my roasted red pepper hummus recipe from a few years back to come up with this one. While this did not taste like the original Panera spread, it was really good and came pretty close to the real thing.

Ingredients:

• 1 can (15 oz) chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained
• 2-4 Tbsp lime juice or lemon juice
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 jalapeño
• 1 small bunch cilantro (I used the stalks as well)
• 1/4 cup kefir (optional- I only used it because I had difficulty bringing the hummus together in my food processor, but in the end, it did result in a smooth and creamy spread)
• 3-4 Tbsp olive oil
• ½ tsp roasted cumin powder
• Salt to taste
• Pepper

Method:

Place all the ingredients (except the oil) in a food processor and blend well. Add the olive oil in a thin stream, with the processor still running, till the hummus comes together. Season with salt and pepper.

Wordless Wednesday

Custard Powder Cake

An unusual combination of ingredients - custard powder, cream cheese, and sour cream, along with a few kitchen and pantry staples come together in this recipe.I found a recipe on Aparna’s blog that I used as a reference point but ended up making a whole lot of changes to it, adapting it to suit the ingredients I had on hand.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease your baking pan of choice. I used silicone bakeware (a mini loaf pan and a rose-shaped baking mold). This gave me a mini loaf and 6 mini cakes.

In a large bowl, mix together:

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup vanilla flavored custard powder (I used the Brown and Polson brand)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• A pinch of salt

In another bowl, mix the following very well:

• 5 Tbsp softened butter
• 3 Tbsp sour cream
• 4 Tbsp cream cheese
• ¾ cup + 2 Tbsp sugar (the cake was not sweet enough for me in the end)
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• ¾ cup milk

Combine the dry and wet ingredients together and then stir in:

• ¼ cup chopped sun-ripened cranberries
• ½ cup chopped toasted hazelnuts (reserve some for sprinkling on top of the prepared batter)

Transfer the batter to the prepared pans and sprinkle the reserved hazelnuts on top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. My mini loaf took about 40 minutes while the small cakes were done in 30-32 minutes.

Notes: The cakes were a little too dry for my taste and I was not very happy with their texture. I had to use a chocolate glaze to top the cakes since they were not sweet enough; I’ll increase the amount of sugar if I ever make these again. I’m glad I decided to add the toasted hazelnuts to the batter and as a topping for the cakes- in the end that was what gave the cakes their flavor. I’m not sure I’d make the custard powder cakes again without completely changing a lot of things about the recipe!

Wordless Wednesday: Coffee

Come Alive With Nescafe!

Strawberry Cake

I've been baking a lot lately. Here is a strawberry cake I made recently using a recipe from the Martha Stewart website.



Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• A pinch of salt
• 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar (set aside 2-4 tsp for sprinkling over strawberries)
• 1 egg
• ½ cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-2 ½ cups of sliced strawberries

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease your baking dish of choice. I wanted to bake this cake in smaller batches, so I used a small baking dish and 2 mini loaf pans instead of the 10-inch pie dish used in the recipe.

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In another bowl, beat together the egg, softened butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla extract. Stir in the flour mixture in small batches and mix well after each addition.

Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dishes. Arrange the sliced strawberries on top of batter, cut sides down, and sprinkle the remaining sugar over the strawberries.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Slice and serve.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday