After the success of the Baked Sabudana Recipe, Uma had asked me to share my Baked Hara Bhara Kebab recipe. Here you go , Uma, dedicated to you
The first time I tasted a Hara Bhara Kebab was in Ahmedabad, and that taste stayed with me forever. I just loved the taste, the texture everything. So a few years ago, I was experimenting with what to cook, when I decided to try making it, but by baking instead of by deep-frying. Surprisingly, it came put better than I expected. Here is what I how I make it. I like making these because the added advantage of having green leafy veggies in it.
Baked Hara Bhara Kebabs
Ingredients
2 large potatoes – boiled
1 cup of finely chopped spinach – I used frozen spinach as I always have some stock of it.
1 cup Methi leaves – finely chopped – I used frozen methi too.
1 cup peas – I use the frozen petit pois – we like the taste much better.
1/2 teaspoon of Chat Masala
3 or 4 green chillies – finely chopped - you can use more or less depending on how you like it.
Handful of coriander – finely chopped.
salt to taste
Method
Defrost all the frozen stuff – if you are using frozen and mix all the ingredients together. Shape into cutlets or kebab shapes.
Grease a baking tray and place the the kebabs. Brush the kebabs with a little oil or spray some cooking oil on it.
Bake at 180 deg for around 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with a dip or sauce of your choice. We love this with Maggi Hot and Sweet Ketchup.
Here is how mine turned out. I was in a bit of a hurry when I made it, so the shapes are not exactly great, but they did taste good.
You know what, when I started the NaBloPoMo, my worry had been that I would have nothing to post. Funnily, the more I write, the more ideas I get. Even if I do end up boring you guys to death.
The bigger problem I have been having is that I have no time to blog-hop or to reply to comments. And that is killing me. I just hate it that the time just flies. Add to that, with the BPL contest, I have come across some more wonderful blogs and more to read, and no time to do it. Unfair, don’t you think? Anyway, I do think that NaBloPoMo, is not for me, and this is probably the last time that I do it.
To make life easier for all you guys, who have been groaning about the number of posts clogging the reader, let me post a recipe today.
I have a morbid fear of oily things. Not that I don’t eat them. I do, and then I feel horribly guilty. But one thing I draw a line at , is making them myself. I go to ridiculous heights to avoid frying things. I bake just about everything I can and whatever cannot be baked, does not get made in my kitchen. So here is my version of baked Sabudana vadas/cutlets. Easy-Peasy, as Poohi says and delicious too – certified by husband. Just so that you know, most of the things I make, do not pass his certification process.
Baked Sabudana Vadas
Ingredients
1 cup sabudana – soaked – I soak it for around 6 hours – but even 3 hours should be good enough
2 medium potatoes – boiled
3-4 green chillies – as per taste
1 cup peanuts – roasted and coarsely ground
1/2 inch grated ginger
salt to taste
1 tsp lemon juice – or as per taste. You can also use amchur powder, if you prefer that.
chopped coriander- optional
Method
Mash the potatoes, add the rest of the ingredients and mix them well.
Shape into vadas.
Grease a baking sheet or tray with oil and place the vadas on it. Spray the top of the vadas with cooking oil spray or simply brush with some oil.
Bake until golden brown at 400 deg for around 20 mins or until golden brown, turning over midway through the process.
I have been asked this by several people after seeing the cake that I made for my daughter, and I am so delighted to say that it was simpler than I thought. Here is the step by step methodology.
Here is the cake I made.
And here’s what I did. I found this video on Youtube, which was very comprehensive by itself.
They recommend using 2 8 inch cakes and one cake made in a mixing bowl using cake mixes. Now, I have never used cake mixes, so was not really sure if I wanted to start now. And I had also picked up a princess cake mould, from a local specialty cake store. It is available on ebay and on Amazon, I think. And if you don’t want to buy, you could always use a glass mixing bowl. If you don’t want to use the mixing bowl, you could just bake 2 more 8 inch cakes and simple shape it to look like a skirt.
Now the next step to decide was what cake to make. I researched and found that for cakes like this, madeira cakes are the best to use. I experimented once and found my cakes turning out rather dry. After a lot of research, I chanced upon this blog - which has several recommendations to make a moist madeira cake and mine did turn out moist. It was not perfectly leveled, but that was not too difficult to handle. I just leveled it off.
I made one 8 inch cake based on this recipe. I made another 7 inch cake, because the base of my princess mold was 7 inches based on another recipe – simply because I was too lazy to do the calculations to modify the first recipe to suit a 7 inch tin. I did incorporate all the tips that Lindy’s blog has recommended like using glycerine and lining the cake tins. One of the tips, that I can certainly recommend, is to go by the size of tin mentioned in the recipe. Using a different size tin may cause problems. If you do want to use a different size, it is important to scale down/up the ingredients accordingly.
And my final barbie/princess cake was made using the first recipe mentioned. I made all these cakes in advance as these cakes are supposed to get better after a few days. After the cakes were completely cooled down, I wrapped them in 2 layers on cling film and a couple of layers of aluminium foil and stored them. The night before the cake was to be assembled, I took them out, leveled the cakes, cut them out, using a cake leveler, and then wrapped them as mentioned before and popped them into the freezer.
Just before preparing the frosting, I took the cakes out and let them thaw.
Now for the frosting. This was what was giving me nightmares. I had never decorated for a party before. And I was terrified of making a mess. I was also confused between which type of frosting to use. I prefer buttercream as it tastes better, but fondant frosting looks better. Finally, I decided to go with buttercream. I had bought some ready to roll fondant, to experiment with, in case I felt like it.
Buttercream frosting recipe.
There are loads of recipes for buttercream frosting. Most of them use shortening. I was not able to lay my hands on shortening, so decided to go with butter. Here is the recipe I used. If you can get shortening where you are, apparently, it is better.
1. Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
2. Add the remaining icing sugar and one tablespoon of the milk and beat the mixture until creamy and smooth. Beat in the milk, if necessary, to loosen the mixture.
3. Stir in the food colouring until well combined.
The method of frosting that I used is the one demonstrated in the video. I started with a crumb coat. The one thing I did not do was pop it into the freezer after the crumb coat. My freezer was not big enough. I just left it out for about 0 minutes before applying the next coat. And after the final coat was done, I smoothed it out, as was demonstrated in the video. Mine was not half as smooth – but am sure we can get there with practice. My next dilemma was about what to do next. I found making twirls on the icing was not as easy as she made it look. So I just went ahead and smoothed it all out. And then decided to give fondant a go. So I cut out triangles to look like flounces on the skirt and just layered it around her waist. and decorated with white icing flowers that I found in a supermarket. And that was it. It still took me around 5 hours in all, to assemble the cake. But it was simpler than I thought. I had planned to pipe decorations on it, but I had no energy left at the end of it.I used fondant to make the top part of the princess’ dress. It was not very neat, but as I said, I was too tired to do more I put the fondant dress on her before putting her into the cake.
If you need more inspiration. Do check out these sites. I spent hours on the internet checking out stuff.
And if you don’t want such a big cake – I had lots of guests , so wanted to make sure that everybody gets a piece, you could use a miniature doll and just use on 7 inch cake and shape it like a skirt. There are so many ways of playing around with it
And do let me know if you do make one I think I had as much fun making it as my daughter had on seeing it
Blog Blog Blog… Everybody around me seems to be blogging and I have been thinking about joining the bandwagon , never really being able to decide what to write about. What with my extremely active 2 yr old, being extremely allergic to me sitting at the computer.. It just was not working out. So in the middle of trying to potty train her and getting her to eat something – I decided that enough was enough and I am going to write and here we go.
So ! As my little girl seems to be saying these days., what better to write about other than food.. Now , despite the fact that I am a full time , stay at home mum, I am not a great cook – but I love food – I actually dream about food and these days the only thing I watch on TV is UK TV food .. So what better to write about other than food.
Now , to give you an idea , of the kind of cook that I am. I end up cooking good stuff accidentally – I never seem to know how to replicate anything I cook well.. So to my husband constant disappointment – I can barely get his favorite dal-chawal right . Having said that my total passion is for baking. I love cakes – I can stand for hours at Morrisons Bakery section gazing at the cakes – embarrassing poor dear hubby to no end. And my favourite browsing sites are always food sites – baking of course. And there is something about the smell of baking that I just love! I always loved it since I was a little girl when Amma used to bake the most delicious cakes ever.
So when I took time off work to stay at home with my daughter , my most enthusiastic experiments were always the baking ones.
Here is the very first recipe that I tried out and amazingly came out really well.. It is an Annabel Karmel recipe – and is very very simple.
Method
1. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Sieve the almonds and flour and add to the mixture.
2.Gradually beat in the eggs one at a time and add the milk.
3. Transfer half the cake mixture to another bowl and stir in the almond essence and orange rind.
4. Melt the chocolate in a microwave or double boiler, and stir the melted chocolate and sifted cocoa powder into the remaining cake mixture.
5. This looks best when baked in a 20cm/8in ring tin, fluted for the prettiest effect.
6. Grease and flour the tin first or use a non-stick baking spray.
7. Spoon alternate layers of the cake mixture into the tin and use a skewer or a knife to swirl through the mixture to give a marbled effect.
8. Level the surface and bake for about 1 hour at 170C/325F/Gas 3 or until the cake is well risen and golden.
9. Turn out on to a wire rack to cool. If you like, you can sieve a little icing sugar over the top.
It is absolutely delicious this way , but on my daughter’s birthday, I baked 2 cakes, and filled and topped with Chocolate Buttercream topping – Yum!! Unfortunately , I do not have any photographs of the cake – next time I bake it – I will remember to take some snaps and add it on.
Happy Baking!
p.s. I have to really thank my friend Ramya – as I posted this right after having a conversation about blogging all the recipes that I tried out:)
