Eggless Chocolate Cupcake

After making the vanilla cupcakes, i wanted to try my hand at chocolate, and see if I could make that work (this time at least!) with the new recipe. It worked!! So here goes:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Maida/All purpose flour (apf)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate powder (i prefer Hershey’s, you can use any other brand, but the taste may be slightly different)
• 1.25 cup thick curd
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cooking oil (except olive oil)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp soda bi-carb
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

• Pre-heat the oven @ 210 deg C / 400 deg F
• In a large mixing bowl, mix the curd and sugar until the sugar has completely dissolved.
• Add in the baking powder and soda bi-carb and let it rest. the mixture will start to “bubble” in 2-3 minutes
• Sieve the maida/apf and chocolate powder together and set aside
• Add oil and essence to the curd-sugar mixture and mix well.
• Gently add the flour and mix thoroughly to avoid clumps
• The mixture should now be in dropping consistency, else add a bit of curds.
• Grease your baking dish/cupcake moulds with oil and lightly dust with maida/apf
• Pour into the baking dish of choice and place in oven
• Bake for 10 minutes
• Lower the temperature to 150 deg C/ 300 deg F and bake for ~18 minutes at the lowered temperature.
• Test the cake by inserting a toothpick into the center. When pulled out, it should be clean, without cake stuck to it.
• Visually, the top should be lightly browned and formed a “crust”
• Let the cake sit for a few minutes in the dish before removing it.
• Let the cake rest on a wire grill to cool. Let it cool to room temperature before cutting.

I hope you enjoy making this quick and light cake!

Eggless Choco-chip Cookies

My favorite food has always been chocolate! 😉 So it seems almost expected that the one baking dish I would excel in would be the choco-chip cookie. It gets done fast, and is a universal (almost) favorite with those surprise guests. 😉 You just can’t go wrong…

Chocohip cookies! 🙂

Ingredients:

• Unsalted (or cooking) butter – 1/2 cup or 113 gms
• regular sugar – 3/4 cup
• buttermilk – 1/3 cup
• vanilla essence – 1 tsp
• all purpose flour or maida – 1.5 cup
• baking soda – 1/2 tsp
• salt – 1/4 tsp
• chocolate chips – 1 cup or as much as desired
• nuts and raisins (optional)

Method:

• Cream together butter and sugar. Try and ensure it becomes light and fluffy
• Add vanilla essence and buttermilk and beat till creamy.
  • If the butter is not fluffy initially, this may take a slightly longer time. The buttermilk doesn’t blend in easily, so its ok to take time to ensure this step in completed properly.
• Mix the flour, baking soda and salt and sift to ensure proper mixture
• Add the sifted flour to the butter mixture and fold.
• Add the chips and nuts and mix well
• Refrigerate for 1 hour
• Preheat oven to 175 deg C.
• Make small lemon-sized balls from the dough and place about 1-1.5″ apart on a greased or butter-paper-lined baking tray. Flatten the top slightly to get a better cookie shape.

Flatten very lightly on the top on the dough ball.

• Bake for 15-20 mins. Mine too exactly 18 mins to get done.
• The cookies should be dark brown on the outer edge and light brown on the top.

Perfectly baked!

• Once baked, more them to a wire rack for cooling.
• Store in an airtight container.

These cookie are meant to last about a fortnight. However, they don’t last that long at my place, so I cant really say! 😉 😛