Gluten free Brownie Muffins

As you might know, this is the trial where I made a gluten free version of brownies, but without the xanthan gum. We made them using a muffin pan. Sonny boy loved these, so did I. To bite into the crust and then into the soft centre. It was something like a different version of Eclairs! :D
Hubby, he's not a brownie fan. But, the reason could have been the not so perfect results. The long baking time I used made the outer cover dry out a bit and I had to increase the baking time as the centre was still much too soft after 30 minutes. And maybe it was the lack of xanthan gum needed to replace the absence of wheat flour. I'm not sure. So, you see this is not a perfect result. I do plan to make them again and tell you about the improvements. But, anyways they tasted wonderful!

And here is the recipe:

Gluten free Brownie Muffins

I used a recipe from Wiki (here).

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Baking time: 25-35 minutes
Baking temperature: 160-170 °C (convection: 150°C)


Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter (60 g)
1 cup sugar (200 g)
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract -I used bourbon vanilla extract
2 eggs -I used 1/2 cup or 100 g silken tofu, whipped smooth with a hand blender
1/3 cup all purpose flour (40 g )- I used 30 g rice flour and 10 g cornstarch
6 tbsp cocoa powder (40 g)
1/4 tsp salt (a pinch) -I used lesser than 1/4 tsp
1 cup whole nuts of choice, chopped or whole, like walnuts or hazelnuts or pecans

Method:

• melt butter in a pot, add sugar, vanilla extract and eggs (or whipped silken tofu) and whip everything together
• add flour(s) and cocoa powder (preferably sieved, to prevent clumps)
• and stir to make a creamy paste
• add the nuts, chopped or whole, and mix
  
• spread on a small baking pan - I used a muffin pan
  
• bake at 160-170 °C (convection: 150°C) for 25 - 35 minutes (check after 25 minutes) - I had to bake for 40 minutes

NOTE: The inside was very soft and gooey and the outside a bit dry. Although I'm told that this is how a brownie normally is, I'm not sure if this was an optimal result. Maybe I need to add xanthan gum or something similar to compensate for the wheat flour.

Rishab and I enjoyed the last bit of it yesterday and it was pure pleasure for both of us. So, I thought I might as well publish these not-so-perfect but yummy recipe, even though I had initially planned to bake it again and then publish it. As you can see I also made a coating of chocolate icing to compensate for the dryness, which worked wonders....

Chocolate muffins

I feel like I have made them hundreds of times. Whenever we have friends over, which usually means Rishab's friends rather than ours, I practically toss everything together and put them in the oven to bake ready while I finish up the rest of things before we expect our guests. Most of the time it is last minute preparations. Muffins are so easy to make, require small amounts of everything, can even be made without eggs, easily, and are ready so fast, in about 40 to 50 minutes if you are quick and use a simple recipe like this one.
Chocolate muffins, we love them and they are my son's favorites. Well... now that I think of it, it isn't that easy to decide, but he never says no to chocolate in any form! Maybe also because he does not get it so often. I made them quite spontaneously and found all the ingredients I needed for that, most important of it: chocolate of course!

Chocolate Muffins
(Basic recipe)

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 25- 30 minutes

Dry Ingredients:
250 g (10 oz) all purpose flour
3 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
50 -60 g (1 1/2 -2 oz) dessicated coconut, grated (optional)

Filling:
12 large or 24 smaller pieces of any type of chocolate like chocolate chips, 6 bountys - halved, chocolate filled with whole hazelnuts, or with raisins and nuts or with almonds, or even chocolate with biscuits

Wet Ingredients:
3 tbsp apple puree/ yoghurt (instead of 1 egg)
200 g yoghurt
75 ml sunflower oil
125 g sugar
1 envelop Bourbon vanilla sugar (or use a teaspoon of vanilla extract)

Glaze:
1 packet (200 g ) chocolate couverture/icing, melted in a water bath or double boiler on low medium heat

Method:

• Mix the dry ingredients evenly in a bowl
  
• add the chocolate pieces now or later, just before pouring the batter into the muffin tin
  
• In a large bowl stir the wet ingredients together for short
• Add the dry ingredients to the bowl and mix everything for short with a spoon, just to make everything wet
• DO NOT STIR anymore!
• Quickly spoon the batter into the muffin tins, if the chocolate is not already inside, add the pieces into each of the muffin moulds
  
• And bake at 165 °C in convection oven (175 °C electric) for 25-30 minutes
• Check with a knife after 25 minutes if they need to be baked further or not.
• In the meantime melt the chocolate couverture/icing and dip the muffins into it by turning them upside down and
  
• place them on a plate to cool down or serve warm
  
• If desired, you can always serve these with some whipped cream or chocolate sauce instead of the couverture

I made these muffins with bounty chocolates. I just halved them and tucked each piece into each muffin pan for the 6 muffins I made. I used to make 12 muffins, but then I realised that you end up collecting too many and eating them all away is doing no good to our healths, so I started making them with half the quantity and it works out great! And at the end you are left with no muffins anymore either...... to my relief!
It is wonderful to bite into these chocolaty
Can you get bored of these muffins? Nooooo...........!! Not of course! Not us.

I'm sending this over to the Event Food in colours: Brown, this months colour, at Sunshinemom's Tongueticklers.


And now about one more thing which is special. I never realised what was happening until I saw this article in The Daily Telegraph. I was contacted by someone to give my views to some questions three days before she was supposed to publish her article. I somehow felt like answering the questionnaire, but due to time stress wrote in quick short answers, but to the point. And then the whole thing was forgotten. And then I got an email from the author sending me this link. I was a pleasantly surprised. Hubby dear, who does not care so much about my blogging, when he heard about it on phone while I had called him up for some other matters, even he was happy and said "and you are telling this to me so casually!" I was totally taken aback by his response and it actually made me feel good. Well, food blogging is in trend, so they are being talked about in the media. But, it was fun and somewhat exciting too to see my name and that of my blog in the newspapers!

I'm sending these muffin to Madhuram's Egg replacement event: pureed fruits taking place between 18th November and 31 December 2008.

Creamy Strawberry and Chocolate Icecream

Rishab, my son, loves sweets and chocolates. His clear answer this year for the type of cake he wanted for his birthday party was a chocolate cake . But a few weeks back we got to know, or realise, that he might be lactose intolerant. Some checkups still need to be done, but, as advised by his gastroenterologist, we are giving him a lactose free diet. That means I have to exclude anything which contains any type of milk or milk products, unless it has been made lactose free (through lactase enzyme).
That also means no icecreams for him. I found one packet of lactose free icecream, but after tasting its artificial flavours, I was quite apprehensive of buying them again. Of course, my son didn't mind it. Anything sweet is always good!
Well, after seeing so many icecream recipes at different blogs I felt I should also make some on my own, as I found lactose free creams as well in the market. Now, all I needed was a good recipe which can be made easily, without requiring any icecream maker, and I found a delicious recipe at Meeta's "What's For Lunch, Honey?"
On asking him, if he wanted a chocolate icecream, he immediately said "yes!". Not surprisingly, as he is not allowed to eat chocolates right now as most of them contain milk or milk products and I haven't tried dark chocolates, but for the longer run, I'll have to figure out something.
Though, now I felt that he deserved a chocolate icecream as he has been so cooperative, never complaining about all the changes that I have made in his diet plan, worst of all at the kindergarten.
So, this was my first trial at making icecream, for which I took this simple but tempting recipe of a "Dark Chocolate Icecream" at Meeta's What's For Lunch, Honey?

I have modified it sligthly to make it lactose free and used strawberries instead of raspberries.
Ingredients:

250 ml soya cream (17% fat)
120 ml lactose free heavy cream
5 tablespoons (40 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
140g ( about 2/3 cup) fine sugar
250g (2 cups) strawberries


Method:

• Whisk together all the ingredients,except for the strawberries, in a saucepan.
• Puree the strawberries and pass through a fine sieve.
• Bring the cocoa-cream mixture to a rolling boil while frequently whisking in between.
• Remove from heat, add the puried strawberries and mix. Cover the saucepan for approx. 10 minutes.

• With an ice-cream maker (detailed instructions given at WFLH):
• Place the mixture in the fridge an chill completely for 24 hours.
  
• Allow the mixture to churn and freeze until smooth and creamy, as per the instructions of the manufacturer.
  

• Without an ice-cream maker (that is how I did it):

• Pour the ice-cream mixture into a flat steel box with a lid. Once the mixture has cooled down, put it at -15 °C in the freezer for about an hour.
• Take out and whisk everything shortly and thoroughly with a hand blender.
  
• Put it back in the freezer and repeat the process after every hour, until it begins to thicken on the edges of the tin. Decrease the time to 45 minutes if required.
• Once it is smooth, creamy and frozen it is ready to be served.
  

NOTE: Depending upon the temperature of the freezer whisking may be more frequently required.

Rishab enjoyed the icecream fully. He got two small scoops of the icecream and finished every bit of it and wanted more strawberries for it, which I gave him a bit surprised though, that he actually wanted to eat the icecream along with the fruits.
Me and hubby ate some as well and found it quite delicious. It had a rich chocolately flavour and this slightly tangy flavour of the fruits, as described by Meeta in the recipe. Strawberries also have this fruity sourness along with being sweet, just like raspeberries, which also makes them so delicious.
I must also mention that I could not continue to blend the icecream every 45 minutes till the end after it had begun to harden on the edges, as it was already time to go to bed, but it tuned out soft enough, I felt, that was quite good for the fact that I didn't have an icecream maker.

This is going to be my last minute entry to "Fruit Fair", this months MBP, being hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen.

Chocolate dessert

Preparation time: 5 minutes
3 servings

Ingredients:
For the smoothie:
2 cups yoghurt (from the fridge)
1 cup cold milk
1/2 Banana, sliced
1 tbsp haselnut spread (like Nutella)
1 chocolate muffin, cold (from the fridge)











In addition:
3 muffins with chocolate glaze

Method:

• Mix the smoothie ingredients in a Blender.
  
• Cut the muffins horizontally into two halves.
  
• Take 3 dessert glasses. Put in each: the lower half at the bottom.
• Put some fruit pieces over it.
• Add the smoothie.
• Followed by the other half of the muffin.
• Decorate with another piece of fruit. and serve.

I have tried to make it as healthy and low in calories as possible. Basically this is another effort to feed my son some milk and yoghurt. And it surprisingly turned out better than I feared. But I do need to optimise it further. This was a very spontaneous idea which I just made with my gut feel.

Chocolate Cake for Rishab's third birthday

Rishab's Birthday Cake

Rishab loves chocolate and anything made with chocolate, so I was sure what kind of cake I'll be making from him. A chocolate cake. I spent quite a lot of time to find a good recipe for a cake with a lot of chocolate (: D)! And I found one which I felt would just be the right thing.
And since we were going to celebrate his birthday two days later, on a Saturday, Rishab was home on the Friday, when we both made the cake together. He loves helping me with baking cakes and muffins. It was not a very relaxing activity for me, but I wanted to make sure that Rishab had his share of fun. After all, the party was for him. And the cake turned out really good. I had to use more frosting than given in the recipe, which I have basically copy pasted from the source (cacaoweb.net). I used a slightly simplified version of the cake (two layers instead of four).- I had too many guests for that. To be exact, I had invited ten children (with parents and siblings) of which nine actually came. Since Rishab had just started going to the kindergarten, I had invited all of his friends (or going-to-be-friends).

Chocolate Layer Cake
Ingredients

1 ½ cup (340 g) butter, softened
1 2/3 cup (340 g) sugar
6 eggs
2 2/3 cup (340 g) all-purpose flour
ca. 3/4 cup (120 g) finely ground almonds
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup boiling water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180° C (Gas mark 4 or 350° F).
2. Line two 9 inch (23 cm) cake tins with greaseproof or other non-stick paper and grease the tins.
3. Beat the softened butter with sugar.
4. Add one egg at a time, mix well between each egg.
5. Mix with flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, vanilla extract, and finely ground almonds.
6. Add ½ cup of boiling water and mix well.
7. Transfer to two separate cake tins and bake at 180°C just until set in the middle, approximately 30-45 minutes. A wooden pick inserted in centre should come out with just a few moist crumbs on it. Do not over-bake!
8. Cool the cakes and cut each in half, horizontally. They are easier to cut if they are kept in a refrigerator for a few hours before cutting.

How I made the cake: I took the recipe as it is but, instead of taking two baking tins made it simply on a baking try of an (European-) oven, which was almost the same size as the two tins together. And instead of making four layers, I just made two layers. So, I cut the cake once horizontally. Now, I first cut the cake once in the middle to prevent the layers from breaking, and separated the two layers. Once I had poured enough chocolate frosting over the lower layer(s), I put back the upper layer(s) back and poured the rest of the frosting. Before the frosting hardend, I started placing gummy bears and fruits over the cake together with Rishab.

Frosting
Method with heavy cream:

1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream or whipping cream
14 oz (400 g) sweet dark chocolate/ milk chcolate (or a mixture of both)

1. Heat the heavy cream or whipping cream in a sauce pan.
2. Remove from heat, add finely chopped sweet dark or milk chocolate, and stir until smooth.
3. To test it, transfer a tablespoon of the frosting into a chilled cup and place in the fridge for 15 minutes. If it is too thin, add some more melted chocolate. If it is too thick, add a few tablespoons of cream, stir until smooth, and test it again.