Chocolate Brownie with Chocolate Frosting

Today was Jai's Birthday and as this month we had so many celebrations Jai told me not to bother making a birthday cake for him. But since I thought it wouldn't be nice on my part to "ignore" his birthday, I thought of making this brownie with chocolate frosting instead, as he likes brownies very much.  This is an easy to make one and I would recommend any of you who has not yet tried making a brownie with frosting to try this. This frosting is a really good one and I am sure would go well with the cakes too. I sure am planning to try this out on a cake soon.

For the Brownie make 1 quantity of this in a round cake pan
Frosting:  Source:Hershey
6 tablespoons butter, softened
6 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar
2  tablespoons milk
Method
Beat the butter, cocoa, corn syrup, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar and the  milk, and beat well. Add more  milk if needed  until a spreading consistency is attained. Frost the cooled brownie with an offset spatula.

Palak Paneer Parathas with Tomato Chilli Relish

For this week's Blog hop Wednesday by Radhika, I was paired with Kalyani. She has a wonderful food blog. Most of her recipes comes in combinations. I tried out this combo. Both the Paratha and relish was well liked, my daughter who hates bell pepper gave me a double thumps up after trying this. I made a few changes to my liking in the making of the tomato relish. Mainly in the order in which the ingredients were added and also to increase the spice level as I love my food to be a  little spicy.   I have bookmarked more recipes to try from her space,as we loved this so much.

Recipe Source:Sizzling Tastebuds
Makes:  6 parathas and 3/4 cup of relish
Ingredients:
(A) For Palak Paneer Paratha:
Palak (fresh Spinach) - 15 leaves
Wholewheat flour / atta - 1 cups
Panner - 5 TBSP grated
Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - to taste + oil - to fry the paratha
Method:

Blanch the leaves in boiling water for 2 mins. Drain. Puree with half the grated paneer to a thick consistency without adding ANY water (spinach itself is watery). Retain the drained water from the blanched spinach. In a large bowl, add the atta (wholewheat flour), rest of the grated paneer, spinach-panner mixture, salt and red chilli powder. Incorpoate the panner and spinach well into the atta till it resembles crumbs. Now. add the preserved blanched water (from the spinach) little by litte and form into a chapati like dough. Pinch out a large lemon sized ball and roll out slightly thick parathas. Cook on a hot tava. Drizzle 1/4 tsp oil on one side. When cooked, flip on the other side till the paratha is fully cooked ( although this is a paratha, it didnt require more than 1/2 - 3/4 tsp of oil / paratha).
 Work with the remaining dough and make the rest of the parathas similarly.Serve hot with the Tomato - Chilli relish (recipe below)

(B) Tomato - Chilli Relish: This can be prepared in a larger quantity and stores well for 4 - 6 days under refrigeration. Increase the quantities if you want to prepare in bulk, and reduce the water quantity indicated below..You can enjoy this relish with chapati/ poori / curd rice or even dosas.

Ingredients:
Ripe tomatoes - 2 medium
Bell pepper - 1 medium
Green chilli - 1 no (i used the less spicy ones) - deseeded
Onion - 1 no - chopped fine
Oil for tempering
Tempering : Mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves
Turmeric powder - a dash
Tamarind paste - 1/3 TBSP
Rasam Powder -1 and 1/2 tsp
Salt - to taste
Jaggery / Sugar - 1/2 tsp
Method :
In a pan, heat 1 TBSP oil and add the tempering. Once mustard stops spluterring, add onions, turmeric and fry till translucent. Add finely chopped tomatoes and green chilly. Fry again. Add salt and 1/2 cup of water and cook covered for 4 mins. Now add the bell peppers  and cook again for 2-3 mins till the peppers are done cooking. Now add Rasam powder, tamarind paste, sugar, coriander leaves and mix well. Add a little more water to get the right consistency. Serve with Palak Paneer Paratha (recipe above) or even curd rice / chapatis / phulkas :)
Sending this over to

Thayir Vada / Curd Vada / Dahi Vada and a Tag

Yesterday I had made some medu vadas for breakfast. I had made more batter than what was needed for our small family. Since I was expecting some guests for dinner today, I thought of making half of the batch into thayir vadas so that I can have one more item without much effort. And I knew that it being summer still, everyone would like the coolness that thayir vada's are famous for. It was appreciated by all well, especially since today was a warm day.
Ingredients:
Meduvada/Uzhunnuvada-1/2 the amount made of this recipe
For Curd/dahi mixture:
3-4 cups curd/yogurt(preferably not so sour)
1 tbs grated ginger
1/2 tsp green chilli paste
salt to taste
Seasoning:
1 tsp oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
3 red chillies,broken
5-6 curry leaves
a pinch of hing
Garnishing:
1/2 cup of grated carrot
few cilantro
Method:
Whisk yogurt with salt well. Add grated ginger and green chilli paste to this and mix well. When the vadas are golden brown drop the hot vadas drained from the oil directly  into the curd mixture and let it soak in it for 30-45 mins .
After the soaking, remove the soaked vada's and arrange them on a plate and pour the left over curd over it. Garnish with cilantro and grated carrot. Heat the oil in a small pan and splutter the mustard seeds. Add broken red chillies and curry leaves and a pinch of  hing to this. Remove this from the stove. Add the seasoning to the soaked vadas. Chill them and serve.

Kaveri of Palakkad Chamayal , Ramya of Ramya's Recipes  and Santosh of  Santosh's Kitchen has tagged me for this 7 Links Tag game. I would like to thank them for that. This is the first time I have heard of this game and it sounds like an interesting concept.
The blogger who is tagged in this game must select the most apt posts from his/her blog for the categories below, which are the 7 links:

 1. The most beautiful post
 2. The most popular post
 3. The most controversial post
 4. The most helpful post
 5. The post that was surprisingly successful
 6. The post that did not get the attention it deserved
 7. The post I am most proud of

Then the blogger should publish these in his/her space, choose 5 other blogger friends and pass it so as to keep the ball rolling. I thought this was a good incentive to go through my older posts with a critical eye and these were the ones that I came up with against each of these categories.

 1. The most beautiful post :
Deep,Dark Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache and Buttercream
  Personally, there are other posts that I thought were more appealing to me, but based on the feedback I got from my friends, this was the one that created the most "wow"s. Another reason I selected this one is that I took this photograph before my food blogging days, when I was not paying too much attention to the visual appeal of the food item - still, looking back, I am proud of my handiwork.

 2. The most popular post -Cooking with your Little Sous-chef and Yin Yang Tofu

 I had to pick two posts for this because, if I went strictly by the number of pageviews, Cooking with your Little Sous-chef event that I hosted was my most popular post. But that being an event rather than a food post, I picked the Ying Yang Tofu which was a close second.

 3. The most controversial post-Coconut Cookies
 There were no controversy as such about this post in my blog, yet as one of the finalists in the Manjula's Kitchen contest, this one generated a little bit of controversy. There were some who thought I had used saffron in this and had failed to mention it while it was just the browned coconut which was showing up. Also there were those who commented that it was not sweet enough while the recipe had more sugar than what is normally used in a typical cookie recipe. Apart from all  this, this post is special for me because many of my blogger friends and viewers started frequenting my space by seeing this post.
 4. The most helpful post-Vishu katta
  I had so many people who had Googled for making Vishu katta the easy way, who ended up on this post. I am happy that my post could make the long, tedious process of making the Vishu katta, simpler.
 5. The post that was surprisingly successful -Cinnamon rolls
 I had tried making cinnamon rolls before, but it didn't turn out to be this successful. But this time around,  when I tried mixing two of my favorite recipes, I ended up with great result.
 6. The post that did not get the attention it deserved-Upside-Down Double Apple Muffins

  I was disappointed with the repeat views this post received. I thought this deserved better as this was one of my favorites - being yummy and healthy at the same time.
 7. The post I am most proud of-Baklava
 I am really proud of how the Baklava turned out as I had always thought of this to require some special skills and training to make. But when I made this baklava, this was tasting even better than the best I had ever had.
Finally , let me pass the baton on to 5 blogger friends.to carry on with the game Hope you all would play along and enjoy as I had.

Deepa of  Hamaree Rasoi
Priya of Bon Appetit
Prathima  of Prats Corner
Kalyani of Sizzling Tastebuds
Angela of This is what I eat...

Red Velvet Cake for a Red Letter Day

Today my little girl turns 10 years and to  mark this special day she suggested having a Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I was a bit surprised by the cake request which was so very different from her earlier birthdays. May be its a sign of her growing bigger and her tastes changing as a result. I wanted it to be a bit different from the traditional Red velvet So I layered  one of the inner layers with cherry preserve and  covered the entire cake with cream cheese frosting.
Source:Joy of baking
For the cake-I used this same recipe
For the Frosting
Ingredients:

1 - 8 ounce cream cheese, room temperature
1 - 8 ounce tub of Mascarpone cheese,or another pack of cream cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1 1/2cups cold heavy whipping cream
Method:
Beat the cream cheese and mascarpone cheese until smooth. Add the vanilla and confectioners sugar and beat until smooth. Gradually add the heavy cream and whip until the frosting is thick enough to spread. Add more sugar or cream as needed to get the right consistency.
Assemble: Once the cake cools  down cut off the domed portion of the cake using a serrated knife, . Place one of the cake, onto your serving platter. Spread the cake layer with a layer of frosting.Spread the lightly diluted cherry  preserve on top of the frosting.  Place another layer of frosting on top of this. Place the other cake on top of the frosting.  Frost the top and sides of the cake. And finally pipe your  design of choice  on the cake.