Announcing the winner of the giveaway & Red Velvet Cupcake ~ an e-treat for all participants -

After running a promotional giveaway for 10 days and now its time to announce the lucky winner. Thank you readers for your wishes and comments on that post. And Lady Luck has cast her smile on

Shoba of Anubhavati, Tastes from my kitchen. I am sure the gift will delight your daughter who loves waffles. Please mail me your address to claim your gift. Thank you CSN team at counter stools for the opportunity.

For all those who participated., here is a virtual treat for you. Hope you enjoy it. The recipe I follow is from Vcuisine(private blog). I have tried it twice following the recipe to T but have skipped the frosting both the times. This time I have made some changes like substituting part All purpose flour with multi grain, butter with oil etc. Beets puree is used as the coloring agent.

Ingredients

All purpose flour - 1 cup
Multigrain flour - 1/2 cup
Cocoa powder  - 1 1/2 tblspn
Baking powder - 1 tspn
Vanilla essence - 1 tspn
Salt - 1/4 tspn

Sugar -1 cup
Oil - 1/3 cup

Buttermilk - 1 cup
Beetroot puree - 1 cup (I used only 1/2 cup)

Cooking soda - 1/2 tspn

Lime juice - 1/2 tspn

Method

Steam cook beets and grate it finely. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Mix oil and sugar and whisk till sugar is fully dissolved. Mix grated beet and buttermilk in a separate bowl. Add flour mix and buttermilk alternatively to the oil-sugar combo. Finally add vanilla essence, cooking soda and lime juice. Mix well.

Grease muffin pan and fill 2/3 full. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 35 minutes.

Frosting
Maida - 2 tblspn
Sugar - 4 tblspn
Butter - 1 tblspn
Milk - 20ml
Vanilla essence - 2 drops

Mix flour in milk without forming lumps and cook till they form a pouring consistency. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla till fluffy. Add the cooked maida mix to the cream and frost the cake. The maida mix turned very thick for me and added few drops of milk to it. But the end mixture turned to be slightly runny and when I piped the frosting it started spreading. It didnot affect the taste though.

SpotLight Blog #My Experiments With Food ~ Recipe - Aval Kozhukkattai

The calendar is showing a new month and its time for a new blog to be on the spotlight. And this month, the limelight blog is Jayashree's 'My Experiments with Food'. The similarity doesn't end with our names and blog names, our traditional cuisine is same too (Palakkad Iyer cuisine).  I found many interesting, delicious recipes yet not very complicated in her blog.

The first recipe I tried for this series was Aval Kozhukkattai - Steamed balls from beaten rice. It made a quick and filling meal. The preparation is similar to upma kozhukkattai. When I first saw the recipe, my thoughts were how different is it going to be from aval upma/puli aval. The ingredients were almost the same except that tamarind or an equivalent is not used here. I am glad I tried it since it was so different from upma and had a unique taste. It was worth trying.

You need

Coarsely powdered aval/beaten rice - 1 cup
Water - 2 cups
Grated coconut - 2 tblspn
Salt to taste

Seasoning

Oil - 2 tspn
mustard seeds - 1 tspn
Chana dal, urad dal, peanuts - 1 tspn each
Green chilly - 1 no
Curry leaves - few sprigs

Method

I used the rose matta aval which is very tasty and has a thick texture. To get one cup of coarsely powedered aval, take 2 cups of aval. Make sure you don't grind it fine else the kozhukkattais will not have the right texture.

Take a kadai. Heat oil and add the seasoning ingredients. Add water and salt. When water starts boiling, add the powdered aval. Mix well. Cook on low heat till the water is fully absorbed and resembles upma. Add grated coconut and mix well.

Spread the cooked mix on a plate to cool. Spape the dough into balls and steam cook for 5 minutes. Jayashree has  done this in microwave and I chose to do it on stove top.

The kozhukkattais tasted good on its own. You can serve it with any chutney as dip or sprinkle some chutney powder on it and serve. I got 11 nos of the size shown in the picture.