Paneer Cake

Paneer cake - sounds funny, does it not! What started off as rosogulla ended up as paneer cake. I am not kidding.

I'd wanted to make rasagullas and went through the whole procedure of splitting the milk and draining the whey. Sadly, I didn't have enough patience for the water to drain out completely. So the chenna was a tad soggy and wasn't quite pliable. I was sad and disappointed and was thinking of ways to make something out of this.

It was past midnight.

And then, this is what I did. I dunked the chenna into a bowl, added sooji, sugar, a tsp of ghee, about 1/4 cup of milk and a pinch of cardamom. I whisked it well and poured the batter into a microwave safe dish and  cooked on high for 2 mins. I'd increased it by 30 secs at a time, twice or thrice; so that's an overall 3.5 mins. This will vary with every microwave.

Let cool for a min or two, and turn it over. Make pieces and garnish with chopped badam. I could have added the nuts into the batter but was just too lazy.

This is best eaten slightly warm. To get a slightly better color, you can mix a few strands of saffron in warm milk and add to the batter.

paneer cake

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Microwave Cookie

The moment I made the emergency brownie so well in the microwave, I was curious to see if I can do anything else the same way. I googled and found that there were plenty of recipes. So what see here today is the cookie (single portion) made in my Samsung microwave.

I've always loved cookies and when Cookieman opened a store in Madras, I used to buy them by the tins (not to mention the tins were keepers :D)

Of course the microwave cookie is not going to be as crusty as the oven baked cookie, but this will do. To make just one piece, to satisfy my temporary craving, this one minute cookie is just about enough.

Ingredients:

Butter - 1 tbsp
Sugar - 2.5 tsp (The original recipe used 1 tsp brown sugar + 1.5 tsp regular sugar)
All purpose flour - 2 tbsp
Salt - 1 pinch
Baking powder - 1 pinch
Choc chips
Egg - 1 tsp
Vanilla essence - just a drop

Recipe:

Soften the butter and mix the sugar in the cup, until light & fluffy. Add the drop of vanilla essence and mix well. Next add the egg. Add the flour, salt, baking powder and mix well. Finally add the chocolate chips. Dollop this to the center of the plate and microwave on high for 40 seconds. Increase by 5 secs if you feel it's not done. :-)

Recipe adapted from prudentbaby.com

And with the remaining egg, I added salt, some herbs and pepper, poured it into a microwave dish and made a quick omelette :-)

Coming up... more microwave recipes

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Brownie in a cup - Microwaved

I realized I've not been fully utilizing the microwave. I've so far used it for just re-heating dishes and steaming vegetables and at times, making pulao. I always thought I needed an OTG to make / bake certain dishes. I am not a pro baker and my portions are going to be mostly for two. There are fundamental differences in the way a microwave and an OTG operates. If we understand this, then perhaps we can work wonders (on a smaller scale, of course. And I will also refrain from the heated debate - is the microwave good or bad)

I've been trying to lose weight and have been moderately successful. To celebrate a milestone I made this microwave brownie (recipe adapted from Cheryl Rajkumar's Kitchen Kemistry).

The recipe itself is fairly simple and calls for ingredients that we can normally find in our kitchen - Flour, Butter, Sugar, Cocoa Powder, Chocolate syrup. What I didn't have was chocolate chips. Instead, I used about 2 squares of grated Bourneville (dark). I also reduced the amount of sugar(and hoped it'd alleviate some of the sin.). The original recipe called for 11/2 minutes but mine cooked in a minute. The cooking time varies with each microwave, so it's recommended to start with a minute and increase as required.

I brought the cup and fork to my bed, sat down to message Cheryl and even before I could hit Send, I'd finished eating the brownie. It was delicious and a perfect dessert for that late night craving without having to spend too much time cleaning up.

The experiments with the microwave have begun!

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