Ribbon Pakoda

>> Friday, December 24, 2010

It has been raining here for the past few days... My mind was thinking about something to munch.. Crunchy and spicy.. Then came the idea of ribbon pakodas that are very simple to make and taste really great. Its a very easy snack to make at home in just few minutes. But the only requirement is to have the mould to get the desired ribbon shape for the snack as its name suggests.

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Com Sot Ca Chua - Vietnamese Red Rice

>> Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Bored with the usual fried rice.. Then here comes the red fried rice with a mild tomato flavor added to the usual fried rice. It is said that this rice tastes better with leftover refrigerated rice. Here I am presenting the recipe for vegetarian red fried rice. To the same recipe we can add in any non vegetaran flavors of our choice, like egg, chicken, shrimp or even crab.

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Suzhiyzam

>> Tuesday, December 21, 2010

These little sweet dumplings are made with bengal gram/kadalai paruppu mashed with coconut and grated jaggery. They are commonly referred to as suzhiyam or suzhiyan in Tamil. There are one of the traditional dishes that are made during Diwali nombu as part of offerings to God. But never mind to enjoy them with warm with a hot cup of tea, that too when its raining and cold outside.. :)

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Tofu Spinach Cutlet

>> Saturday, December 11, 2010

Now a days cooking has to been based on what my picky 20 month old son will eat. So came this recipe of tofu spinach cutlet. I know he will like tofu, so just wanted to pack lot more nutrition to it I add spinach and made it into a yummy cutlet which he really liked. I just shallow fried these cutlets with some bread crumbs on them. For lot more richness, the cutlets can be deep fried.

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Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate chips Cupcake with Peanut butter frosting( Eggless version)

>> Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Here comes a simple and yummy cake that can be made with the ripe bananas sitting in our freezers waiting to be used in some way. I have been looking for various recipes with ripe bananas recently. Though there were many banana bread recipes, this yummy cake recipe caught my eyes. These turned out really soft, moist and tasted great with the simple peanut butter frosting. I was happy to share these cuties with one of my friend on her birthday and was happy to know that their 18 month old daughter, my son's playmate enjoyed it... :)

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Kung Pao Chicken

>> Monday, November 29, 2010

Hi all.. Its long since I posted my recipes here. My kid is keeping me really busy these days and just trying to get back to the blogging routine. Also I was unable to visit any of your blogs and I looking at my dashboard its like I have so many yummy recipes.. Hope to catch up with you all sooner. Today I am here with the recipe for Kung Pao chicken. This is one our favorite Chinese chicken dish.. Whenever we go to Panda express, one of our entree will be kung pao chicken. I wanted to try this recipe at home and did a google search. I landed up with this blogchef.net site and it said that the recipe is almost a copy cat of Panda express recipe.

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Crispy Murukku

>> Monday, November 15, 2010

This is another snack I made during Diwali. Was unable to post the recipe then. This is a very simple, crispy snack that can be made in just few minutes even in large batches. With little butter added to it, these yummy murukku will melt in mouth and will a great snack for coffee. This recipe can also be made with store brought rice flour.

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Chilli Tofu

>> Saturday, November 13, 2010

Here comes the recipe for the simple and yummy chilli tofu I made for our lunch yesterday with fried rice. Thinking what to do with the pack of tofu I was having my fridge, I landed up with this dish. Tofu fried with few veggies like onions, bell peppers along with a touch of tomato ketchup results in a great side dish for noodles or fried rice. It goes well with chapathi also and can be fixed in less than 15 minutes. Extra firm or firm tofu will work great for this dish.

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Thattai

>> Friday, November 12, 2010

Thattai is one of my favorite snacks that I love to munch for evening snack. Its long since I had those crispy thattais made by my mom. So wanted to make them myself for Diwali and they turned out perfect with little spiciness from chillies, crunchy and with flavors from curry leaves. These are very easy to make when all the flour is ready or if we use the store brought ones. Those were the days when me and my sister used to sit with my mom pressing those thattais for her when she makes them in large batches...

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Profiterole - Simple French Dessert

>> Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Profiteroles are French pastry shells that are quiet easy to make and can be served with many variations. In France they are often filled with whipped cream or ice cream or even served plain sprinkled with powdered sugar or a drizzle of chocolate sauce. These are popularly known as cream puffs in the US. The dough that's used for this dish forms the base for the other most famous dessert Eclairs. These yummy little puffs are made from Choux pastry (warm pastry). Profiteroles first appeared in France in the 16th century and are thought to have been created for Catherine De Medici's.

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Jelabi

>> Thursday, November 4, 2010

Here comes one my favorite sweets which I love to eat anytime and how much ever I want.. :D This is one of the few stuffs which me and my hubby love to enjoy together. It's his favorite sweet too.. Anytime he goes to the Indian sweets he will buy a few pieces for us to enjoy it. I was searching for a simple recipe to try at home. Then came the posting of Jelabi recipe in Show me the curry. It sounded very simple and it was the instant version of jelabi recipe making use of yeast. So with no more time to wait I mixed in all the ingredients and squeezed the bubbly batter into the oil to get my yummy jelabis soaked in sweet syrup. This recipe was great hit and we liked it. I am sure to try this again and next time will try improving on the shape of my jelabis.

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Pakoda Potato Kuruma

>> Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A simple yet delicious curry that will make a great combo with pulav, chapathi, dosa or rice. Potatoes and soft pakodas or Bengal gram fritters soaked in the curry filled with flavors of spices and coconut makes it a great dish. My mom usually makes this kuruma with pakodas by grind the kadalai paruppu. I also made it the same way, but for a simpler version, we can also make the pakodas with just Bengal gram flour/kadalai maavu when we are lazy for elaborated cooking.

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Poppy seed Almond Basundi and Won MLLA 26

>> Friday, October 22, 2010

Basundi is one of my favorite sweets which I love to enjoy with chapathi and pooris.. This used to be my favorite combo for my lunchbox during my school days.. How can we forget those days.. :) My mom used to make this yummy, rich, simple dessert often. This sweet is simple to make and needs not much of work, that you can fix it up easily for the guests. And there is no way that we could go wrong with this recipe. Just for a twist, I tried adding some poppy seeds and almond to the usual basundi and it turned out really rich and delicious. Poppy seed and almonds added more flavors and a rich body to the milk making it a yummy dessert.

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Star Gooseberry Pickle/ Nellikkai Urukkai

>> Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Me and hubby are not a great fan of pickles. Rather we don't even have any pickles at our home. But I planned to make some pickle for CMT - Pickle event guest hosted by Nivedita started by Jagruthi. In that process, I had a chance to find some star gooseberries in my near by Chinese store. Its very rare to find such stuff here..

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Happy Saraswathi pooja - Sakkarai pongal/Sundal/Vadai

>> Monday, October 18, 2010


 Happy Saraswathi Pooja/ Ayudha pooja to everyone. Today being the pooja, I was busy making all the food that have to be offered to God as prasadam. This list includes the Sakkarai ponga, a sweet dish make with rice and jaggery, sundal and vadai. Its a custom in my MIL's place to make only masala vadai for pooja and not the usual Urud dal vadai. I too followed the same tradition. Apart from this prasadams, we also offer rice, paruppu(cooked toor dal), ghee and vegetables of our choice.This pooja is specially referred to as 'Sakthi poojai' in our place and usually performed in the evenings after the sunset.

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Mushroom and Potatoes in Spicy Minty Almond Curry

>> Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Here comes a spicy, rich delicious curry with mushroom and potatoes loaded with flavors from almonds and mint. I usually make use of peanuts, almonds, cashews in my gravy to make it rich. But today just for a change, added few mint leaves along with almonds and got this yummy curry filled with minty flavors. It tasted great with rice or chapathi.

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Chickpeas and Spinach Stew

>> Saturday, October 9, 2010

This is a simple and light curry or stew made with chickpeas and spinach. This stew could be made in just few minutes if we have cooked up chickpeas or canned garbanzo beans ready in hand. It goes good with idli, dosa, chapathi or as a side for spicy kuzhambu rice. This is my entry to CWF - Chickpeas event by Kiran guest hosted by Nithu.

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Carrot Macaroni Kheer

>> Thursday, October 7, 2010

Here comes a simple and delicious dessert that will be ready in few minutes and with the simple ingredients available. I was having a pack of baby carrots that needs to be used sooner. So thought of making some carrot kheer. Just for a change tried adding few boiled macaroni to it and turned out to be great. My 18 month old son loves macaroni. That too macaroni in a sweet.. he just loved it and enjoyed eating it by himself... :)

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Tangy Tomato Chutney/ Thakkali Thokku

>> Monday, October 4, 2010

This is a simple chutney that can be made in few minutes to be a good combo with idli or dosa. Few people make this chutney just with tomatoes. But I have also added some onions to give in extra flavors.

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Chocolate Oats Walnut Laddu

Here comes another simple laddu recipe I tried for Celebrate sweets- Laddu event started by Nivedita and guest hosted by Nithu. This is a simple and chocolaty laddu made with oats and filled with nutty flavors of walnuts. Chocolate in any form is always good. Same goes with this laddu too.. It was really yummy and rich with chocolate that we could hardly taste the oats in it.

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Badam Oats Khoya Laddu

>> Sunday, October 3, 2010

Here comes a yummy and new kind of laddu that I tried yesterday. I was having some leftover khoya I used for gulab jamuns sitting in my fridge. To finish it off, I was thinking of making some sweet. Then came the idea of this laddu. Just oats wouldn't give much flavor to the sweet, so decided to add almonds too. This combo of almonds, khoya and oats resulted in a really delicious laddu.

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Stir fried Okra and Sweet corn Salad

>> Thursday, September 30, 2010

This is a very simple and healthy salad that can be made in just few minutes. It's a great, light snack or the same can be converted into a yummy raita by adding some yogurt to it. I have the used the traditional seasonings for this salad to give it that Indian touch.

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Farsi Puris

>> Wednesday, September 29, 2010

This is the dish I made for Nayna's Flavors of Gujarat event. I got this yummy snack recipe from Kajal's Recipes. Her beautiful presentation and the tempting pics made me try this recipe. My farsi puris turned out really great. These are mini, crispy, spicy puris filled with flavors from cumin and ajwani seeds.

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Hyderabadi Chicken Briyani

>> Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I usually make briyani in pressure cooker and follow my mom's recipe. My hubby also likes my briyani recipe and we make briyani once in a month usually on Sunday. But this time he wanted me to make the Hyderabadi style of briyani. So I made the Hyderabadi chicken briyani for our Sunday lunch. I have made this briyani many times and few times it has turned out perfect. That's because it sometimes made mistakes by overcooking rice. So this time I didn't want to repeat the same flaws and to my surprise.. It was a happy plate of steaming hot Hyderabadi briyani which we enjoyed with spicy prawn curry.

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Bread and vegetables stir fry

>> Monday, September 27, 2010

Thinking what to make for breakfast or evening snack.. Here is a simple and healthy dish using bread and mixed vegetables. Just with a pack of mixed veggies and few bread slice, our plate will be filled with colorful and delicious dish.

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Pineapple Kiwi Preserve

>> Sunday, September 26, 2010

We bought lot of fruits last weekend, as we went to the near by farmers market. We got some kiwis and pineapples too. But unfortunately the pineapple was not sweet enough. So I just combined the kiwis and pineapple to make a preserve. The preserve was really great and we enjoy it with bread or chapathi. Just with simple ingredients we could make delicious preserve at our home with the fresh fruits.

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Spicy Prawns in Coconut Curry

>> Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Here is a spicy prawn curry which is an intermediate between kuzhambhu and kuruma recipe. This recipe uses less coconut but still is a rich gravy with almonds added to it. This gravy will taste great with briyani, pulav, rice or chapathi. Same recipe can be used for chicken, mutton or even potato curry.

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Gulab Jamuns

>> Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Yesterday being my hubby's birthday, I made some of his favorite foods including mutton briyani, chicken kuruma, fish fry, gulab jamuns and also baked his birthday cake myself... :D I made him a black forest cake and it turned out to be great and he liked it a lot. My hubby loves gulab jamuns, but not the ones made using mix. He likes only if I make them from scratch. So I having being trying harder for past few weeks to perfect my gulab jamun recipe and at last it was a great hit with him. After my three bad failures I got this perfect and easy gulab jamun recipe. If you have khoya at hand, yummy, soft gulab jamuns will be ready in few minutes.

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Steamed Chocolate Cake

>> Wednesday, September 15, 2010


I have been thinking about making my own chocolate cake for a long time. When I was searching for a simple and decent chocolate cake recipe, I was attracted towards a pic of a chocolate cake slice, which looked really moist, soft and delicious. I immediately wanted to try it and to my surprise it was a steamed cake!! I got much more interested and made this cake. The cake was really moist, yummy and was too simple to make. I we just have a pressure cooker and want to make a rich yummy chocolate cake, then this recipe is sure to help. Its a dense rich chocolaty cake which was enjoyed by us with coffee.


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Mava Cake - Tried and Tasted from My Diverse Kitchen..

>> Tuesday, September 14, 2010

While I was browsing through Aparna's My Diverse kitchen, this cake recipe caught my eyes. It was quiet a simple cake recipe, incorporating unique Indian flavors into it. I am a person who loves cashews and flavors of cardamon in anything. So I wanted to try this cake and it turned out to be really great. Mava cake turned out to be really delicious, soft, filled with flavors of cardamon and khoya. My hubby liked this cake and enjoys it with his coffee. But next time he wanted me to add more cashews into the cake.

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Happy Vinayagar Chathurthi - Puranam Kozhukattai/ Rice flour dumplings with Coconut filling

>> Sunday, September 12, 2010

Happy Vinayagar Chathurthi to everyone!!! Today we celebrated Pillayar chathurthi with the traditional menu including plain kozhukattais, puranam kozhukattais, sundal, venn pongal, vadai and payasam. Also this year I made pillayar idol myself with the modelling clay and it turned out great.. And I was really happy to celebrate pillay chathurthi with our home made pillayar idol.. :)

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Pineapple Raisin Egg Fried rice

>> Friday, September 10, 2010

This is a simple fried rice recipe with slight twist from the usual egg fried rice. I got this idea from the Thai pineapple rice and modified the recipe to suite our taste. Add pineapples and raisins to the rice really enhanced the flavors, also the mild sweetness from pineapples and chewy raisins in each bite made the fried rice great.

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Egyptian Semolina Syrup Cake - Basboosa

>> Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Basboosa is a traditional Egyptian semolina cake, made with few ingredients but tastes great. Its a soft, moist cake that soaked in honey sugar syrup. Its very simple to make and tastes good with tea. My recipe made quiet sweeter cakes. So next time I will reduce the sugar used for syrup a little bit.

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Reposting for Letz Relishh Paneer event and My first award

>> Sunday, September 5, 2010

Here is my Rasmalai and Rasgulla for Jay's Letz relishh event- Paneer.


I am very happy to let you all know that I have won the 9th Mediterranean cooking event Tunisia started by http://www.tobiascooks.com/. I received the book titled 'North African Cookery' by Arto der Haroutinian. Its a nice book with huge collection of various recipes from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya explained in simple words with very few ingredients and without much complicated techniques. I would like to thank Tobias the author of Tobias Cooks for such a wonderful book.. :)
I will soon start trying out the recipes from this book and share with you all.

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Butterscotch Peda

>> Thursday, September 2, 2010

This year I started my Krishna Jayanthi preparations with this peda. Its usual tradition to make milk sweets as part of offerings to Lord Krishna. So decided to make some pedas. Just add few butterscotch chips that was laying in my pantry to give some new flavor to the sweet. Peda is one of the easiest dessert to make. Mixing together milk, sugar, nuts and the extra flavors we need in right proportion will result in yummy pedas.

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Simple Spicy Chicken Kuzhambhu/Chicken Curry

>> Tuesday, August 31, 2010

This is one of my hubby's favorite non vegetarian side dish. Sunday morning breakfast will usually be either chicken curry with hot idlis or dosa and chicken soup combo.. :) The traditional way of making this chicken kuzhambu needs roasting of onions, grinding and stuff like that. But when I am lazy to do all that, I use this quick version of it... ;) Just a can of hot Mexican tomato sauce would do the magic. My hubby doesn't know about this secret and he still thinks that I make the kuzhambu in the traditional manner.. :D

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Turkish Rice pudding - Sutlac

>> Sunday, August 29, 2010

Every cuisine seems to have their version of rice pudding. One such Turkish version is the Sutlac, which is a light, creamy  and easier pudding to make. This Turkish pudding has two versions, one is the normal stove top version called Sutlac and other is baked pudding called Firin Sutlac. I have made the stove top version and it was really yummy.

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My first muffin - Blueberry Muffins

>> Saturday, August 28, 2010

This is the first muffin, I baked at home. I have been wishing to make my own muffins for a longer time, but it just turned out right today.. :) I was really happy about, how my muffins turned out. I made blueberry muffins because those are my hubby's favorite. I made a very small batch of just 3 muffins, as I didn't want to take risk.. ;) But the muffins were so good that they were gone in few minutes. My 16 month old son really enjoyed it for his evening snack. I was fun watching him eat his muffin with those cite little hands.. :)

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Carrot Lemon rice - Spinach Lima Beans rice - Coconut rice

>> Friday, August 27, 2010

I had some left over rice cooked for yesterday's dinner. Didn't want to waste it and also I was not in a mood for long cooking hours. So thought of adding few veggies and some flavor to the left over rice and made it into a delicious colorful variety rice for our lunch. A plate of colorful variety rice will always be perfect with some raita, chips or appalam. I didn't want to make the usual lemon rice or puliyodharae. So just modified the usual stuff to add extra flavors and so came our lunch plate with Carrot lemon rice, spinach Lima bean rice, coconut rice. It was a perfect combo of tangy-spicy-rich rice dishes.

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Cucumber Mint Dosa

>> Tuesday, August 24, 2010


Are you in mood for a different dosa.. Thinking what to make for dinner without dosa batter.. Then here comes the easy yummy dosa that can be made in a jiffy. When ever I am out of my usual dosa/idli batter, I keep experimenting by combining all the dals to make a new dosa/adai. In that process, came my cucumber mint dosa which tasted really good and is a great fix for breakfast and dinner when we are short of regular dosa batter.

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Tomato Poori with Mushroom Potato Curry

>> Sunday, August 22, 2010

It has been very long since we had pooris. I guess we had it sometime back in India.. :D My hubby usually don't like fried stuff and so I avoid making deep fried stuff. But today there was something that was making me of pooris.. I don't know why.. So I decided to make poori and mushroom curry for our dinner. Just thought of adding some tomato paste, few spices and ginger garlic paste and made a spicy tomato poori.

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Milagai Kootu/Chilly kootu

>> Saturday, August 21, 2010

I had few chilly peppers left in my fridge after making the spicy bhajjis/fritters with them. These light green to yellowish colored peppers are usually refereed to as ' bajji milagai' in South India. That's these peppers are commonly used to make the spicy fritters, which is a must in all the fares and beaches in south India... :D  The spiciness of these peppers is little bit more than bell peppers.  I just thought of trying some kootu with the left over peppers. It turned out to be really good and my hubby enjoyed it with his kuzhambu rice.


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Turkey Cabbage Kheema Curry

>> Thursday, August 19, 2010

I usually make the kheema curry whenever we buy turkey. But this time I tried some turkey pakodas and had some left over turkey meat in the freezer. This was not sufficient enough for our lunch. So I decided to add some filler to the meat and make it up for our lunch pate.. ;) So came the turkey cabbage kheema curry. Here I have used purple cabbage, but the recipe can be adapted with normal cabbage too.

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Cabbage Mullangi Poriyal/ Cabbage Radish poriyal

>> Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Thinking for simple side dish to go with sambar rice, kuzhambu sadam or even curd rice... Here comes the simple and delicious cabbage radish poriyal. I was just left out with some chopped cabbage and radish in my fridge. So I just grabbed them both and made a simple poriyal to go with the sambar rice.

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Urulaikilangu Yennai bathai/ Potato Fry

>> Monday, August 16, 2010

This is one of my hubby's favorite vegetarian side dish. He likes it with his vendakkai sambar. Sounds a perfect combo right.. It's my MIL's recipe and I don't make this often, as it needs to be cooked with really a huge amount of oil to get that yummy taste. The name itself says 'urulaikilangu yennai bathi' meaning potato slices soaked in oil. Hope you get the taste of the yummy, spicy potato slice fried in oil just from its name.. :)

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Steamed Eggless Banana Cake

>> Saturday, August 14, 2010

I have read about the Chinese and Japanese steamed cakes. In a curiosity to taste them, I tried this steamed banana cake with the ripen banana I had in my fridge. I followed this original recipe and the cake turned out to be really soft and light. I would call it a healthy cake making used of very less fat and also less sugar. But next time when I make this cake, I am sure to increase the sugar and also add some flavoring extracts like vanilla or almond . We can also try adding some chocolate chips, nuts or raisins to make the cake taste rich.

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Sangi
San diego, California, United States
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