Bagara Baingan / Baingan Salna

A Hyderbadi specialty, Bagara Baingan is a delicious gravy made with Indian brinjals (eggplants). The body of the unique gravy is plumped with peanuts, coconut and sesame seeds in a spicy tamarind broth. Looking at the ingredients list might make some people dizzy - how can so many different spices and ingredients be forced into one dish, and what will happen to the poor brinjals swimming within all the spices? Worry not, everything will come together nicely and the intrinsic taste of brinjal will withstand all the spicy assault, and will actually complement the tanginess of the tamarind and the earthiness of the peanut-coconut paste. The whole spices (cloves, cinnamon and cardamom) will give a subtle aroma and tie everything together. 

This is a very different gravy and a versatile side dish that goes with most Indian rice and bread varieties.

Substitute brinjals with spicy peppers and you get Mirchi Ka Salan. For a spicier version, add whole black pepper corns to the whole masalas.

Almond Mascarpone Pound Cake

When it comes to Italian desserts, there are only two or three that come to mind - tiramisu, gelatos, and biscotti. Of these, I have never tried (nor do I have the right equipment or knowledge) to make a gelato or biscotti. So, I challenged myself to use ingredients commonly used in Italian cuisine to make the kind of dessert I am comfortable with.
So, this is a simple pound cake that is flavored with amaretto and softened with mascarpone. Due to the butter and mascarpone, the resulting cake is buttery soft, but it is not too rich or cloying. Perfect with a cup of espresso!

Fruits & Nuts Bundt Cake

My first bundt cake! All these years, I put off buying a bundt cake-pan because I didn't need one more baking equipment to tempt and taunt me. However, I was recently absolved of all guilt because my husband picked it up because he felt like having a bundt cake.

I found an interesting recipe in Piece of Cake, called an Ambrosia Cake. It had pineapple, canned mandarin oranges, almond extract, cherries, pecans, and sweetened coconut flakes. What a medley of flavors! And what better way to christen the bundt pan!

I adapted the recipe to suit the ingredients I had on hand, and I played around with the measurements and technique accordingly. This is a dense and hardy cake that is sure to be a popular holiday dessert, and it serves a huge gathering!

Orange Cake with Chocolate Glaze

Orange and chocolate seem to be this year's favorite flavor in our household.

Every so often, I get a detailed request from my husband to cook or bake something specific. A couple of months ago, after trying out an orange-chocolate cake at a restaurant out of town, I received a detailed text about how my next express task was to make the afore mentioned dessert. I appreciate such requests - it makes me feel useful, and it gives me a great excuse to bake ;)

However, I was honestly tired of making yet another citrus based treat with chocolate on top. Especially since I had just made a batch of chocolate brownies with orange zest. How many more orange-chocolate treats could the husband hanker for? Why couldn't he ask me for something more exotic?

Anyway, after rifling through my recipes, I realized I had never actually made a bold, stand-alone orange cake. So, I decided to use utilize this excuse to make a cake packed with as much orange flavor as possible. And of course, to appease the husband, I added chocolate on top.

Chocolate Caramel Torte with Peanuts

Our wonderful friends and former neighbors gave us this fabulous book

I think the book pretty much sums up the foundation of my marriage :). One insatiable sweet-toothed chocoholic, and one insatiable baker with a soft corner for chocolate. It is a match made in cocoa heaven, at least until we keep diabetes at bay!

The husband flipped through the book and predictably pointed at a recipe that involved chocolate (of course), caramel, and nuts. He also wanted me to somehow add orange to it, so that all his favorite flavors get mushed up, but I laughed him off. 

The original recipe called for walnuts. Since peanuts are my husband's favorite, that too peanuts gelled in caramel (South India's kadalai mittai/peanut brittle), I added peanuts instead.

This was the first time I tried baking a torte - a type of cake that has little to no flour that is baked at a lower temperature (300 F). In this case, there is no flour; just healthy amounts of bitter-sweet chocolate, butter, sugar, and eggs (whipped whites and creamed yolks). It is topped with a simple caramel sauce made from brown sugar, corn syrup and more butter! Finally, the peanuts add a lovely bite. This is surely a rich cake. A small serving goes a long way.

The best part of the cake is the play of textures and layers of flavors - soft, gooey and crunchy, with bursts of peanuts and caramel mixing with the rich and fudgy bitter-sweet chocolate.

Thank you so much N and C for the lovely book!

Garlic Roti

Strictly for those that appreciate the flavor and healing properties of garlic!

Garlic Naan is one of our favorite types of flat breads. Lazy enough to follow the procedure required to make a paratta, I decided to work around the protocol and try something easier. And the garlic roti was born.

Spiced raw garlic is ground to a paste and mixed with whole wheat flour to make a soft dough, which is then rolled out in the usual fashion to make rotis.