Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts

25 Jan 2013

Cupcakes Without A Muffin Tray


I love eating cupcakes. I remember as a child my grandfather used to always get me a box of goodies when he returned home from work and in that box cupcake was a constant goodie!
Yesterday when I went to bake some cupcakes I couldn’t find my muffin tray anywhere and I was craving for them so badly and I had to make them at any cost. You know how they say ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’, well I found out that you could actually bake cupcakes without using a muffin tray!!
This recipe is the simplest way of making classic cupcakes.

Ingredients:
Butter – 125gms (melted & cooled at room temp)
Egg – 1 (beaten)
Milk – ¾ cup
Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
Self raising flour – 2 cups
Tea cups – 12 to 13
Note: you can make self raising flour at home. For every 1 cup of all purpose flour add 1 ½ tsp of baking powder and 1 tsp of salt.

Method:
Preheat oven to 200C
Sift the self raising flour couple of times. Add the flour to a bowl. Make a well in the center. 
Add the butter, milk, egg and vanilla essence to the flour and mix well with a spoon until well combined without any lumps.
Place the cupcake liners on top of the tea cups. Add dollops of the batter into each liner. (Every time you pour the batter be careful as the liner will sink into the tea cup coz of the weight. So pour it carefully.)
Arrange the tea cups with cupcake batter onto a tray and bake it for 15mins or until when a skewer inserted comes out clean. When done top it up with frosting.
Well they might not be pretty but tastes good!

Simple Frosting:
In a bowl mix 1 cup of icing sugar with 1 to 1 ½ tbsp. of water and a drop of color of your choice (if you want). Spoon it over the cupcakes.

This is a great technique for those of you who bake cupcakes only occasionally don’t want to spend money on buying a muffin tray.

24 Jan 2013

Homemade Butter

Since I love baking, I always make sure I never run out of butter or ghee. When you make them both at home, why buy them from outside? It’s cheaper and without any preservatives. It’s very simple and easy.

Ingredients:
Malai – 1 cup
Cold Water – 2 cups

Method:
When you cool boiled milk, a thick layer of cream is accumulated on the top. This is ‘malai’. Collect this malai everyday until your container is full. Now you are ready to make the butter.

Transfer the collected malai to your mixer. Add the cold water. Blend it for a while until the malai curdles and it gets collected on top.

Once the malai has been collected on top, squeeze out the excess water and collect it in a bowl of chilled water. This makes it easy to handle as the butter gets thick. Wash it with some more cold water. That’s it! Homemade unsalted butter is ready. You can use it for all your baking needs!