Milky –Jelly

Believe it or not I came up with this dessert idea because of my toddler. I got some apples from the market as my baby loves fruits. But when I made a puree of those apples with couple of apricots, the puree turned out to be too sour for him. May be it was the apple I choose but anyhow I made melon puree for his lunch but didn't throw the apple and apricot mix away.

Once he was fed and asleep I was left with that puree. Can’t drink it, as it was too sour and can’t throw it as well. The colour as you can see is very beautiful too. So I went back in the kitchen and this is what I ended up with. It tasted as good as it looks.

I added some sugar (as per your taste you can adjust the sweetness) and some corn flour to say 150 ml milk (normal temperature) and then placed it on the hob and started heating the mixture. You can also use soymilk instead of cow milk if you want this recipe to be dairy-free.  Brought it to boil and at some point I could see the mixture is getting thicker. You can add few drops of vanilla essence at this point, but that’s optional. I poured it in to the dessert glasses and left it in the fridge to cool and set.

Next step, I took that fruit puree in to a saucepan and placed it on the hob. Added 3 tbsp of sugar in it. You can add more or less sugar depending upon your taste and the sourness of the fruits. Boiled it for couple of minutes then added one full sachet of gelatine powder. Kept stirring so that it gets mixed in the puree well. Took it off the hob and let it cool for 5 minutes. Now took those set milk glasses and pour this jelly mix on top of it, spoon by spoon. Don’t pour it in a continuous flow then it will melt or cut through your set milk. Fill the glasses and return them in the fridge for couple of hours to set. Serve chilled.

Note: Don't start making your jelly before the milk has set. else your jelly will be ready but the milk in the bottom won’t set. Also the jelly wont be very wobbly, as the fruit puree will of thicker consistency compared to the normal jelly liquid. It will be more like jam. 

Something Sweet and First Giveaway at NuttyCook

 

I love cheese-cake! No matter what flavour it is, I just love it. At first you get that smooth, creamy, slightly sweet soft cream cheese and then comes the contrast in texture, crunchy, buttery biscuit which simply creates magic in your mouth and melts away.

But this pleasure comes at a cost. Every time I thought of making a cheese cake, first thing comes to my mind is I have to finish it all alone. Ideally that is not a problem for me but since I am counting my calories now I can’t really afford to have lots of cheese cake. If not heart attack I would die out of guilt! So, I was looking for alternative solutions to soft cheese that I can use and guess what I found .. yoghurt!

This dessert is so simple that I couldn’t believe when I finished making it. It’s really an assembly job of very few ingredients and no cooking involved. You can do so many varieties of it that the possibilities are endless. And to top it all it’s quite low in calorie compared to traditional cheese cake and it is eggless too.

Ingredients:

(Serves 2 : in individual serving glass or bowl)

6-8 tbsp of low fat set yoghurt

2 digestive biscuits (broken into very small pieces)

4 heaped tsp sweetner

2 heaped tsp dry roasted broken pea nuts

4-6 dried apricot (cut into small pieces)

2 tsp mixed peal (I used orange and lemon but this is purely optional)

Handful of broken pistachio nuts for garnishing

 

Method:

Take a big sieve, place it on top of a wide container which can collect the liquid draining from the sieve. Place a cheese cloth on top of the sieve and pour the set yoghurt on it. Cover the top of the sieve and place the whole arrangement in the fridge and now you can forget about it for next 24 hrs.

After 24 hrs of draining the moisture out of the yoghurt, transfer the content of the cheese cloth to a container and add the sweetner to it. If you want to use sugar instead then go ahead but use icing sugar as it will melt instantly and mix easily. Now add the chopped dried apricot and the mixed peal to the yoghurt. You can use any dried fruit or even chocolate if you want. its entirely up to your taste.

Mix the toasted nuts and the digestive biscuits and pour 2 tbsp on each serving glass press a bit to get the air out of it. Now pour the dollops of yoghurt and dried fruit mix on top of the biscuit and nut mix. Pour as much as you like, then garnish it with pistachio nuts. You can also use dark chocolate, it will work equally well. Now you can either serve or keep in the fridge and serve chilled later.

Coming to the Giveaway bit..this is the first time I am having a cookbook giveaway on NuttyCook and I am really excited about it. I was thinking about it for a long time but for some reason or the other this was getting postponed. Now that Easter is coming I thought it will be a perfect opportunity for me to host the giveaway. So without further delay here comes the details of the three great cookbooks I have for you!!

The first one is: Pasta

The second one is : Entertaining at home 

and the third one is : Easy Food for Utter Indulgence

I will giveaway one book to each winner, which means there will be three winners of this giveaway! The giveaway will be open for 2 weeks from now. I will be announcing the name of the winners on NuttyCook’s Facebook page and on Twitter. I guess now you would want to know what you need to do, to win this fabulous cook books. Well nothing much just do the following..

1. Leave a comment in this post stating which book you would like to receive if you are the winner.

2. Like NuttyCook’s Facebook page 

3. Follow NuttyCook on twitter @thenuttycook

4. Spread the word in twitter using #nuttycookbookgiveaway (this is optional but if you do then I will appreciate it a lot and consider that as an extra entry from you).  

I will collect all the entries and choose the winners randomly.

Now comes the fine print bit:  I can only post the books to UK address.

So guys tell me your choices and you could win one of these fabulous books.