The 100th post!

I cant believe I am writing my hundredth post! A few years ago someone asked me ‘Why don’t you start blogging?’ and I laughed. Me? Blogging? And now look at me, completing my maiden ton!

I wanted to do something special for this post and as usual breaking my head over this for some time. Then on Twitter I saw a tweet from Bristol Bites that she was taking up a challenge to raise funds to support a very noble cause. It is called Live Below the Line. The charity that is fighting against the world poverty. They had a challenge for the participants to have at least three meals of the day costing no more than £1 /day. The event started on 7th May and went on till 11th. While taking up this challenge you can have sponsors who would sponsor you by donating money to Live Below the Line for this noble cause. I was really excited and immediately asked Emily (Bristol Bites) that I am interested to take part, how do I do it? She got back to me immediately with all details and an invitation to join her team. I signed up and accepted her invitation on T-2 days.

I had to plan my all 15 meals for the challenge and have on £5 to do so. Not only the main items I need to buy within that but also the other things like salt, oil , pepper or any spices I intend to use should also be included in your budget. So I measured roughly how much I need for the 5 days and calculated the price of them (salt, teabags and oil) and added in my list. Here is what my list looked like.

My shopping and item cost list for the 5 days challenge :

Price Items
-----------------------------
0.85 6 eggs
0.20 0.5 kg Potato @40p/kg (Local veg shop)
0.35  350 gm Mushroom @£1/kg (Local veg shop)
0.39 pasta (500 gm)
0.45 300ml oil @ 15p/100ml
0.20 0.5 kg Onion (Local veg shop)
0.44 4 Instant noodles @ 11p
0.52 1.5kg plain flour
0.35  basic jam
0.07 teabags 20 @27p/80 bags
0.47 basic bread
0.017 50gm basic salt @34p/kg
0.18 Ground Black Pepper, Basics 25g
0.49 1 pint Milk
-------------------------------------------------------
4.977 Total

Armed with my above shopping list and my fingers cross I started my challenge on 7th May.

Day 1 : 7th May 2012

Breakfast: 2 slices of bread toasted and with jam + a cup of black tea

Lunch: Mushroom and onion pasta (cooked enough for at least 2 meals, stored the left over for another meal )

Dinner: Made hand made roti and potato fry (I made some 10 rotis and enough potato fry for another 2 servings.)

Day 1 felt quite good, was very tired by the end of it because I also had to make food for my little one and my hubby, which was obviously different from my food.

Day 2:  8th May 2012

Breakfast was again the same as day 1 , Jam toast and tea. 

Lunch : left over roti and potato fry and a cup of tea with milk this time.

Dinner : I just had a packet of instant noodles. Easy and lazy meals.

Day 3: 9th May 2012

Breakfast : Same old same old, jam toast and tea. Three days in a row, so started to get a bit boring now! I consoled myself saying to morrow I will have something different.

Lunch: Mushroom and onion pasta, left over from day 1. So no cooking for me!

Dinner: I still had 2 rotis left but there were no cooked potato left so I cracked two eggs and made two omelettes with them adding quarter of an onion, salt and pepper to each omelette. Next wrapped the omelettes in the rotis to make two individual egg roles, to complete my dinner. A little bit of tomato ketchup would have lift the flavours but that wasn't in my budget.

Day 4: 10th May 2012

Still going on ok but started to feel the pressure. Still 6 more meals left, and I am already running low in steam. Especially because I am addicted to chocolate, and that wasn’t there in my budget! I tried a lot to fit at least some chocolate in my budget but it was just not possible. Now I know I have chocolate in my fridge and I am craving for it but can’t have it! Every time I open the fridge to take something out, I felt, that bar was staring at me and asking “why I am still untouched?” Ignoring such temptation was real tough for me!  

Breakfast: I made muffins. Her is how I did! I used 2 eggs, instead of butter I used oil (2 tbsp), I didn’t have sugar in my budget but there were lots of jam so used quite a lot of them and there were no shortage of flour and milk! They aren't the best muffins I had ever tasted but it was a change from my regular jam and bread. I had 2 of 5 muffins I made.

Lunch: Instant noodles. Made them slightly different! boiled the noodles in plain water and then fried them with little onion and mushroom and the taste maker it comes with. Wasn’t bad!  

Dinner:  Made Alu paratha. Ideally we would have it with yoghurt and spicy pickle but both were not not my budget so had them just like that! Trust me it was good on its own. Had 3 out of 12 I made.

Day 5 : 11th May 2012

This was the last day of the challenge and I was eagerly waiting for it. Finally after this day I will be able to eat what ever I want, when ever I want! Trust me that dark chocolate bar in my fridge was calling me like anything and I was doing the hours countdown..15, 14, 14.5…

Breakfast: My fabulous muffins I made yesterday! I guess any thing hot out of the oven taste much better than a day old! Anyway, just two more meals left to go.

Lunch:  Left over Alu parathas and cup of tea.

Dinner: I had two of the eggs left, so decided to make some French toast (savoury version, not the sweet one!) with the bread! Basically beat the eggs with salt, pepper and finely chopped onions, dip the bread in the egg mix and shallow fry them. 

Post Challenge: 12th May 2012 and onwards

I used most of the items in my shopping list. The thing I was left with was half a pack of bread, some flour, half a bottle of jam and 2 packs of instant noodles. It might not have shown in the above meal description but I did finish all the teabags and milk I had in my budget. Now, I am back to my usual routine. During the challenge, I was so tempted to eat chocolates, I thought when the challenge ends, the first thing I would eat is that bar of chocolate sitting in the shelf of my fridge door. Surprisingly enough I didn't. I just went on with my usual life and food and forgot about the chocolate!

Well, that didn’t last long! I received a pack of Billington’s sugar and a recipe to make some chocolate muffins from Baking Mad. I made the batter but due to this last week challenge and the fact that I was working with chocolate, I was running out of patience and instead of making muffins and I made a batch of chocolate brownies and before I know almost half of it was gone! 

I couldn't raise much, but after reading my story if you feel like donating for this noble cause you can still do it here.

Chocolate Cupcakes and a sweet moment to remember

Time flies, and just like that I didn't realise how these last six months came and went. So many things happened during this little time. I remember the day very clearly when my mum was coming to be with me for sometime. I was so excited and happy when I saw her coming through the doors, I was jumping with joy and happiness. She was here for the most important event of my life. I was so glad that she came and was with me for the birth of my baby. With the baby, my mum and my better half, time passed by like a blur and now I feel so sad as she will be leaving this weekend.

Now that I have sat down to write this post I am reliving all those countless moments of pure joy and fun we had together. This post won’t finish if I try to pen down all of then but one such sweet moment was when we celebrated her birthday. It was always she who baked my birthday cake when I was growing up and this time I thought of baking one for her. I can’t tell you how nervous I was, especially because I was baking for her birthday. But she kept telling me keep it simple and gave me enough confidence so that I can finish my cupcakes. I made very simple chocolate cupcakes just like she wanted without the frosting on top and she loved it!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

100 gm plain flour

100 gm brown sugar

100 gm butter

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 tbsp Cadbury's cocoa powder

Method:

Melt the butter and add the sugar to it and start beating it. Add the eggs and continue beating till the mixture turns pale yellow and smooth. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl then take one table spoon at a time and add into the wet mixture and keep beating. Continue this process till you have finished adding all the dry mix to the cake mix.

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C. Place the muffin cases in the the muffin tray and pour the cake mix on the muffin cases with a tablespoon. Bake for 20 minutes or till the cupcakes are done. Once done take them out of the oven and let them cool. you can do any frosting you like but I kept it simple and served it just like that.

Valentine’s day – Part 2

Although you can buy practically everything from the supermarket its always nice to have some personal touch to the food we cook or share. They don't have to be perfect and that’s the beauty of it.

I have got these beautiful bars of chocolate from Sainsbury, you can eat them just like that or you can use for your baking. I did. I noticed I don’t have any cupcake recipes here. Its Valentines day, another excuse to have chocolates and cakes. Not that I would like to bake a huge cake but a small one just for two of us or some cup cakes which we can finish in one go.

 

I had some beautiful little chocolate truffles which I thought I could use for decorating these chocolate muffins as my dear husband is not very fond of creamy icing.  After all, I was making these muffins for him only. BTW guess what I got in return, a trip to SFO and LA. Isn’t that great! Well it's our milestone anniversary weekend as well!

 

As usual I am referring to Nigella’s recipe. As you know if it involves chocolate and indulgence but is quick and easy, it has to be Nigella. For these little chocolate cupcakes I used her recipe from Nigella Feasts – Comfort Food. Here is a link to the video Choc Chip muffin.

  Ingredients :

For the cupcakes:

First the list of dry ingredients:

100 gm of dark chocolate (melted)

1/4 th cup of dark chocolate chip (recipe suggested 3/4th cup but as I used 100 gm of dark chocolate so I reduced the chocolate chip amount )

1+ 3/4 th cup sugar

1 + 3/4 cup plain flour

2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

List of wet ingredients:

1 cup of milk

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

For the icing:

100 gm dark chocolate

100 gm white chocolate

100 gm melted butter

2 tbsp cherry Liquor (for the dark chocolate icing)

Sainsbury’s TTD Chocolate truffles

 

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 400 degree F. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and keep it aside. In a separate bowl add one by one all the wet ingredients and whisk it together so that the egg is mixed well. Now add the mixed wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix it well. Place the muffin cups on the baking tray and scope the cake mix in them. Bake them in the oven for 20 minutes.

For the icing melt the dark and white chocolates separately and add 50 gm of butter to each of the melting chocolate. keep stirring and then finally add the cherry liquor to the dark chocolate for little extra flavouring.Once the muffins are cooled down I put the icing on them and decorated them with the chocolate truffles.

I am sending this as an entry to Maison Cupcake’s event Forever Nigella #2 “Seduced by Chocolate”

Cupcake with Chocolate centre

I am a big fan of chocolate. The other day I was wondering what to have for tea break which is light and sweet. I thought of having a chocolate but what I really wanted was something more than chocolate. So, I ended up making these chocolate cupcakes. I love chocolate fondant but its quite difficult to make especially the melted centre is quite difficult to get right, so I used a trick (you will find that in the method below).  Its simple, easy and bite-size so you can have them guilt free as you won't be consuming a lot of calories (unless you eat all of them together!!). Here goes  the recipe..

Ingredients:

4 pieces of dark chocolate
3 tbsp of self raising flour
2 tbsp of sugar
2 eggs (beaten)
20 gm of melted butter
pinch of baking soda
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:


Add the butter and sugar to the beaten eggs and beat the mixture till it turns into a smooth batter. Now add the flour slowly to the mixture and continue to beat. Add the vanilla essence and the baking soda and continue to beat until the mixture in a homogeneous and there are no lumps remaining.


Roughly chop the chocolates into small pieces. Don't worry if they are not even as they are going to melt anyway!!

Butter the ramekins and pour the mixture into it till only quarter of the ramekins are filled.  Now add the chopped chocolate in to the center of the mixture then pour the cake mix on top of it so that the chocolate is completely covered. Don't fill the ramekins more than 3/4 of its capacity. Now place them in oven and bake for 15-20 minutes at 200 degree Celsius. Check with a skewer by poking in the cake. If it comes out clean (well you might see some melted chocolate) then its cooked. Serve hot with tea or coffee. Enjoy!!