Food Minia

An easy and gooey melt in mouth  brownie recipe on stove-top!!! Ingredients: Powdered sugar- 3/4 cup Eggs-2 All purpose flour-3/4cup Cocoa powder- 1/4 cup Baking powder- 1/4 tsp Vanilla extract-3/4 tsp Oil-1/2 cup Salt-a pinch Chopped white chocolate- 1/4 cup (Or use chopped walnuts or almonds) Preparation: Grease a baking tray with oil and sprinkle some flour. Add 1 cup of salt (or sand) in a pan and put it on the stove-top on low flame. Place a stand above the salt and put the baking tray on top of it. Cover the lid of the pan and allow to pre-heat while the batter gets ready. Beat eggs and powdered sugar in bowl for a minute until just creamy. (no need to beat until fluffy) Add all the other ingredients except chopped white chocolate and beat until nicely mixed (only about a minute; don't overbeat). Add chopped white chocolates and mix with a spoon by folding it. Quickly pour the batter in to the baking tray; Cover the lid of the pan. Slow cook for about 45-50 minutes or until t...

Kneeding bread is a good exercise. No kneed bread is fine but a little kneeding makes better bread. IMPORTANT INFO: Using antibacterial spray on your work surfaces prior to kneeding bread will kill the yeast. It makes no difference if it's bakers yeast or sourdough. Those of you who have been following this blog over the years will know that I have been dabbling with sourdough for quite some time. I've had lots of failures as using sourdough is not as straightforward as using yeast. Now we need a drum roll as I believe that I have it sussed.  The result is a light soft bread with a crunchy crust that is all too good to eat. I just wish that I could share it with you all. I actually cooked this bread in a cast iron pan as this helps to steam the outside of the loaf and create this crust. Now, it takes time to make sourdough bread but it doesn't take much effort. A little weighing and mixing and leaving is all you have to know. It's the way that you do theses things that ...

I brought dessert to a party a couple weeks ago and everyone asked for the recipe, so here it is. :-) For a 10" tart (plus some left-over pastry): 1 egg 1/2 tsp salt 125g sugar 250g flour 125g butter 2 or 3 ripe pears (d'Anjou or Bartlett) ground cinnamon almond powder or thin almond slivers (optional) Prepare the  pâte sablée  pastry as follows: Beat the egg, salt, and sugar in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon, until they become foamy and turn to a pale yellow. (Note: why use a stand mixer when you can have a free workout?) Sift all the flour at once over the egg and sugar mix. Start mixing slowly with the wooden spoon, then use your fingers to mix all the ingredients. Rub small amounts of dough between your fingers or hands to turn the mix into a grainy "sand." ( Pâte sablée  means "sanded dough.") Cut the butter into small parcels. If the butter is very cold, heat up in the microwave for a few seconds. Add to the mix and knead the dough with your hands...

My pear cake recipe ( here ) works well with other fruits. Tonight, my daughter and I made a plum version of this cake with the following proportions: 5 ripe plums 4 eggs 180g (less than 1 cup) sugar 1 stick (114g) butter 170g (about 1 1/3 cups) flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon We beat the eggs and sugar until foamy. We added the melted butter, then the sifted flour, then the baking powder, vanilla extract, and cinnamon, mixing well (with a whisk) while adding each ingredient. We poured the dough in a buttered, round metal pan (the same old   10" x 2" I used in the pear cake recipe) . We placed the plums, halved and pitted, on the dough, cut side up. We baked for about 50 minutes in a  340ºF oven.