Boring Disclaimer. Marbled Chocolate-Banana Bread with Peanut Butter Frosting.

After almost a decade of their existence, I've realised the purpose of blogs. To be foist-fully heard.

No, I'm serious. I can text it, Status Update it and yell it along with the best of them, but I won't be heard as much as if I post it along with pictures of "deelishus!" food.

I'm so thoroughly grateful and happy to have people in my life who offer to send me cookies from across the seas and soup from across the streets. And to the people who make curious/concerned phone calls at the increasingly skyrocketing Bangalore-to-Madras rates. You're all very cool. Very occasionally.

Disclaimers aren't as cool, though. They are pesky, annoying and I almost always check "Agree to all terms and conditions" without reading them. You might want to read this bit.. You can doze off and pretend you have. I almost always do. Here goes.

Kindly take everything I say with a pinch of salt (make it Fleur de Sel, if you can lay your hands on some). I never, ever speak as a medical practitioner in this site. Butter and dark chocolate do not cancel each other out. My 8-year-old sister can tell you that. As a doctor who sees hoards of people with a plethora of lifestyle diseases, whose origins are almost always in the refrigerator, I know I have a responsibility. Which I hope I fulfill within the confines of my Outpatient Department and the people who call me for the purpose of medical advice.

On this blog? I'm your average twenty-four-year-old. I care equally about shockingly-blue skinny jeans and the fibrofatty plaques on  arterial walls. I blissfully lie to myself that Frozen-Yogurt is healthy. I touch the petri-dishes that handle-bars on the local trains are, without the fact even registering in. I regularly extol the virtues of raw cookie dough (the kind with eggs in it).

Sometimes I do not know if I'm typing out on a sordid Blogger text box or performing theatrics at The Globe. That's just me. I'm sorry. It's nearly impossible for me to completely cut the medicine out of it. I might tell you to add in flax seeds or talk about how crucial Calcium is.

But, please, please take caricature-ish verses on Butter with a pinch handful of salt. Call me during working hours, and I'll ask you to stay off both.

Not here. Of course, if it falls under the ambiguous umbrella of Healthy, I'll tag it.

I've spoken enough for my generation and the next. We'll head on to the Recipe of the Day.

Banana Bread. You can never have enough recipes for it.

This loaf has less calories than your average nut-studded, brown-butter-filled loaf. It has chocolate in it, though. Taste (and calorie count) is heightened by the addition of creamy, slightly salty Peanut Butter Frosting. That's all I'm saying.

Latha (tamil-muslim-word for big sister)'s little helper enjoys the cake of our labour!

Marbled Banana Bread:
(recipe source for bread: Post Punk Kitchen)


Ingredients:

1 cup mashed over-ripe banana
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil (canola, sunflower)
1/3 cup milk (make it almond to go Vegan!)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
6 tablespoons boiling water, divided

Peanut Butter Frosting:
1/4 cup peanut butter (Creamy/crunchy are both fine)
2 tbsps milk
1 tbsp butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt.
Method:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mash bananas (3 or so), until you get a cup's worth.

Beat in the sugar, oil, vanilla and milk until you get a smooth mix.

In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt until combined. Fold it into your banana-egg mix gently. It's OK if there are tiny streaks of flour. Do NOT overmix.

Measure out one cup's worth of batter in a separate bowl and keep both portions aside.

In a small cup, mix together 3 tbsps cocoa powder and 3 tbsps boiling water until it forms a homogeneous mix. Add this cocoa to the cup's worth of banana bread batter and fold with a fork until it's combined.

To the remaining plain banana bread batter, add 3 tbsps of boiling water and mix with fork until combined.

You now have your batter duo.

 Layer one batter over one corner of the greased loaf tin.

Add the chocolate-filled batter to the other half.

Swirl it around carefully with a blunt bread knife. Over mixing defeats the purpose of a marbled bread!

Bake for around 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Slice and frost with the Peanut Butter frosting while still warm.

Peanut butter frosting comprises of all the ingredients blitzed together in a blender. Thin out with more milk or sweeten/thicken it with more powdered sugar. It really is that simple!

Enjoy with a cup of tea/coffee.

Or just attack the frosting, then the bittersweet chocolate portion and then the scented banana portion.

Laatha's little helper is always right. When it comes to food.

No-bake Cheesecake with Strawberry Coulis and Chocolate Ganache-covered Strawberries.

I believe in hard work.

I do! If a certain something is too easy or inexpensive to attain, there has to be an obvious catch. I deviate towards elaborate recipes; the ones that call for refrigerating cookie dough for 2 days, roasting tomatoes for 2 hours and boiling cans of condensed milk for an eternity and a half.

I'm wired to believe that anything made the old-fashioned way is better. For example. Brewing homemade stock, shelling prawn, steeping porcini mushrooms in hot water, shaving Parmesan cheese and asparagus, zesting lime: all this and an hour's worth of intensive stirring and tasting to make an Entree-sized portion of Risotto.

At the end of this labour-intensive exercise, if somebody dares complain along the lines of "this was what all that noise and dirty dishes were about?", I would throw the mother of all hissy fits. And then some.

So when it comes to cheesecake, I'd believe the demanding-neonate-like recipe. The one that the asks for a waterbath, hours of cooling down with the oven switched off, then chilling in the refrigerator overnight, health insurance and pension. Only 5% of the above sentence is grossly exaggerated.

And then there's the no-bake cheesecake. With just a handful of ingredients (albeit pricey-pricey ones at that). No Masterchef skills, no hours of babying. Which, I've been told, tastes better than the baked version.

Don't let this put you off from trying the baked version (recipe coming soon)! I love my Creme Caramel to be dense (hello! Flan exists for a reason) and almost overcooked, so I prefer the heavier baked cheesecake. But more than half my testers loved the creamy, fluffy no-bake cheesecake, with the strawberry coulis, digestive biscuits and ganache-covered strawberries.

And even though Cheesecake has New York stamped all over it, this  dish is more British to me. Don't run away now, there's no lard-filled pastry crust or eggy lemon curds involved.

I know Philadelphia cream cheese belongs to Kraft, as does Toblerone. But Toblerone was originally made only in Switzerland and England. It's one of those things people coming back from London bring in their suitcases (along with McVities' Dark Chocolate Digestives, KitKats and Cadbury's Milk Tray/Quality Street chocolates. And a truckload of Tesco/M &S products, depending on their budget).

Enid Blyton has instilled the belief of strawberries being quintessentially British, in me. McVities is also spelt B-R-I-T-I-S-H. So I'll let Kraft and Nabisco do their mergers and buyouts and takeovers. And live in my strawberry-flavoured bubble. Big believer in blissful oblivion.

No-Bake Cheesecake with Strawberry Topping:

Ingredients:

For the base:

3/4 cup Digestive biscuit crumbs (can use Graham crackers)
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter

For the cheesecake:

180 g Cream Cheese
3/4 cup heavy cream (I used Amul)
1/2 cup condensed milk or 1 cup sifted/powdered sugar*
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla

*Since I used only 25% fat cream, I used the condensed milk for a richer cheesecake.

For the strawberry topping

1 cup strawberries, hulled and halved
2 teaspoons sugar (alter according to sweetness/tartness of strawberries)
1 teaspoon lemon juice/balsamic vinegar

For the ganache-covered strawberries:

10 large strawberries
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate
1 tsp unsalted butter

Method:

For the base:

Bash/Pulverise the Digestive biscuits until you have fine, beach sand-like crumbs.

Add in the melted butter and powdered sugar.

Fill 5 cups (quantity around 200 ml) with the base mix. Press them well with your fingertips so you have a compressed base.

Chill these in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Make sure they are covered with either cling film/foil/random lids.

I go for up to 5 cm depth with the crust.

For the cheesecake:

Bring the cream cheese to room temperature before using.

In a chilled, clean bowl, whip the heavy cream until you get soft peaks. I chill the beaters, bowl and cream in the freezer for about 10 minutes before I do the whipping.

 If you're using the icing/castor sugar, add in around 1/2 cup of the icing sugar and whip until combined. Do not overwhip. Keep this in the refrigerator until needed.

In a mixing bowl, beat the softened cream cheese on Medium for about 2 minutes until you get a fluffy texture. Add in the lemon juice and vanilla essence and beat for 30 seconds.

Add in the condensed milk and whip until combined. If you're using icing sugar, add the remaining half-cup and beat it in until combined. Fold in the whipped cream.

Taste the mix to see if it needs more icing sugar/condensed milk. If you've run out of condensed milk, you can add in powdered/sifted sugar and the cheesecake will be fine.

Divide the mix into the prepared chilled bases. Smooth the tops, cover with cling film and stow it away into the refrigerator for another couple of hours until firm.

For the strawberry coulis:

In a saucepan, add the strawberries, sugar and balsamic vinegar and bring it over medium heat.

Once it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and let it cook for another 2-3 minutes until thickened. You can squish down a couple of strawberries and leave the others whole.

Take it off the heat and let it cool in the refrigerator until needed.

For the ganache:

Bring the 1/4 cup of cream to a simmer. Pour it over the chopped chocolate chunks.

 Add in the butter into the hot mix. Whisk with the fork until well combined. Make sure that neither the fork nor the bowl has any grease/water in it. Let the ganache cool down to room temperature.

Dip the whole strawberries in it. Lay them out on baking/foil paper. Refrigerate until set. You can also just cover these with melted chocolate, but I made ganache as I had 1/4 cup of cream left over from the Amul packet that I used.

Assembling the cheesecake:

Pour the coulis over the chilled cheesecake.

Serve with the ganache covered strawberries.

That's the cheesecake, all creamy and fresh out of the refrigerator. You can clearly see that I haven't smoothed the peaks down. I'm a free-form girl, I am.

This is easily one of the best desserts you can whip up in minutes. It amounts to about 50 bucks per serving, but any half-decent place with plasticky cheesecake would charge four times as much. Make it.

And I'm thinking that the photo above has to be rated at least PG-13. Sort of Dexter meets Valentine's Day. Colour me happy, happy Red!

"Mmm. Food." tries Vegan!

I'm a big believer in chocolate and butter and sugar. That's how the world goes around.

But my favourite type of thing to eat? Grilled chicken breast on top of a hearty fattoush salad. Broiled teppanyaki-type fish with wilted greens and rice. Nutella.

I absolutely love light, healthy food, cooked with the freshest of ingredients and minimal cooking techniques. I abstain from posting these from the blog, because my Stats-meter always shows heavy leanings toward Falooda and Chocolate Biscuit Cake.

Even then, if the dish is good enough, I will break my own rules and post it for the world to see. Case in point: Oven Roasted Chickpeas, Muhammara and Garden Pesto Pasta.

My family is another whole story... they don't go a day without eating poultry, meat, fish or worst-case scenario, eggs. And I go rogue. I make Vegan food.

You heard me. Vegan. No meat. No eggs. No dairy. No honey, even!

The sister-in-law said even "poor" people didn't eat this way... and that she wasn't brought up eating "this type of food". The brother said he was 99.99% sure that it was unlawful to shun all that God made rightful (Muslim men love bringing up religion when it suits them). On a side note, annoyingly-ignorant match made in heaven. I told them that I wouldn't be offended if they didn't taste, and that I'd make enough only for me and my health-freak of a mother.

So for today, I give you a savoury dish and a dessert... the tiniest steps you can take into Vegan-dom. There are plenty of amazing, exclusively Vegan food blogs like Chocolate-Covered Katie (from where both recipes du jour have been adapted from) and Oh She Glows. However, if you're hesitant about starting with Chia seeds and Virgin coconut oil, these two dishes could be your happy crutches into the land of all things Vegan.

The first is my excuse for Nutella. I'm a Nutella-holic. I make my own from peanuts. I buy bottles of the stuff from a whole-sale retailer. No lie.

The second is an Italian spin on Hummus. Pizza hummus! I had to add Parmesan cheese and de-Veganise it, but that's just me.

Chocolate-Banana-Peanut butter fudge:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut butter (can substitute with extra peanut butter)
80 g over-ripe banana
a pinch of salt

Method:

If you want to make your own coconut butter, just whiz around 3 tbsp of freshly grated coconut in the mixie/food processor until it forms a smooth buttery/chutney-like mix.

Add the peanut butter, salt and cocoa powder, and blend some more.

Add in the overripe banana, and give it a final blitz.

Taste the mix, to see if you'd like a teensy bit of brown or white sugar.

Pour it out into a bowl and freeze until firm. You can also refrigerate and eat it like frosting/Nutella.

Pizza Hummus:

Ingredients:
1/2 cup garbanzo beans, drained (chickpeas that have been soaked and pressure-cooked)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (sub with nutritional yeast to keep it Vegan)
1 cup cherry tomatoes (or regular)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 an onion (un-chopped)
1/4 tsp dried basil
2 tsps tomato paste/ketchup
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Microwave or boil the tomatoes until the skin bursts.

 If you're microwaving, poking all over with a fork prevents them from splattering out.

In a medium sauce, heat the olive oil. Add the peeled, deseeded tomatoes, half an onion (unchopped) and the garlic with some fresh basil (if available).

Let it stew on medium heat for around 15 minutes.

Once this has cooled down, remove the onion. Blitz the rest of it in a mixie/food processor, along with the ketchup. Add in the chickpeas/garbanzo and blend will until no chunks remain.

Add in the dried basil and the cheese and give one final whirl. Taste it.

Add more olive oil for richness, extra salt, pepper and ketchup to taste. You might need more of the "pizza sauce" if the consistency isn't that of hummus.

Serve with crackers or veggie sticks.

My sister-in-law, the veggie-hater, ate the whole bowl, albeit with plenty of extra shaved parmesan.

My brother nearly cut his hands trying to get the last bits of the Chocolate-PB fudge out of the mixie cup.

I'd be more smug about the whole thing if they had bothered to save me some.

Wholewheat Orange Ricotta Scones/Dessert for Breakfast!

I'm a dessert snob. Dessert has to be dessert. Seriously.

I'm not saying that I need a pint of expensive gelato with visible vanilla bean flecks. A sliver of cheesecake, a spoonful (or ten) of Nutella, honey-swirled Greek yogurt: qualifies for dessert. Half an apple isn't. Not even if you sprinkle cinnamon on it.

For the longest time, the only healthy component in any of my desserts happened to be Oats. In cookies, crumble, fudge... the other components being only butter, sugar and maida (AP flour). And chocolate.
The sad part being, this wasn't the best scenario in a household where the prime eaters are a diabetic-with-a-sweet-tooth-and-no-self-control (Dad) and the-girl-who-had-a-root-canal-at-the-age-of-five (Sums).

Dad has his own definition of dessert as well. Cinnamon rolls made with wholewheat flour, Phirni made with Splenda and Slim milk, he does not deign to eat. Trust me, I've tried. As for Sumi, she adds extra butter when I'm not looking. Who are these people?

So when I came across another one of those "healthy dessert" recipes, I didn't ever think it'd make the cut/blog. I made it from milk that had curdled in the cruel Madras heat! How can a recipe from odds-and-ends taste remotely good, right?

Wrong.

These Orange Ricotta scones are fantastic. Crisp like a biscuit on the outside and light-fluffy-airy on the inside.

They can be manipulated with whole-wheat flour and sugar-substitutes; nobody would know the difference. I'd suggest that the sugar that you use for sprinkling over the scones, pre-baking, is either raw/demerara/turbinado or the coarse/granulated sugar that is given out by the Tamilnadu Government's Ration-kadai. It'll add a nice bit of crunch and luxurious sweetness to a simple breakfast pastry.

Everybody (including Dad, whose version was a leetle bit toned down) enjoyed it. Even Sumi ate a couple... she recommends you dunk it in condensed milk or honey or both.

One more thing I'd have to insist on is you make them and eat them instantly. These do not keep (keep well, at least). I always freeze my shaped scone dough in Ziploc bags, so I can take out and bake it at my wish and whimsy. It's almost a party trick, when you make a smashing smoothie out of frozen, over-ripe bananas and a plateful of freshly baked Chocolate-chip cookies and present it to a guest within five minutes of their unexpected arrival. So don't let anybody tell you it's weird to stock your deep freezer.

We'll get to making these scones now? I've liberally adapted the recipe from this site, subbing out all the "fancy" ingredients for healthier options and methods suited to the Indian kitchen. They're easy-peasy, but also equally easy-peasy to go wrong. After many attempts, I'm leaking out the secret on these babies. Pay attention, my lovelies.

Wholewheat Orange Ricotta scones:

Ingredients:

1 cup wholewheat flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
zest of half an orange
3/4 cup fresh chenna (paneer) or whole ricotta cheese
1/4 cup butter (cold)
1/2 cup milk + 1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp orange juice
1/4 tsp vanilla essence

For sprinkling
1 egg, lightly beaten (I skipped this)
1 tbsp raw/demerara/turbinado sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Centigrade, 400 degrees Farenheit. Line a baking tray with greased foil or baking paper.

In a bowl, rub the orange zest into the sugar, releasing all the flavour and colour into it. Add into it the white flour, wholewheat flour, sugar, baking powder, baking powder and salt. Give it a stir and set aside.

Use a grater/microplaner to grate the cold butter into the flour mix. Combine the flour and the butter (use your sterilised thumb and fingers!) until the mixture resembles coarse sand. There should be a few clumps.

Combine the milk and paneer(curdled milk)/ricotta.

For a richer scone, use whole milk or half-and-half!

Add the milk mix to the scone dough and combine with fingers until it is a granular mix.

Add in the vanilla and orange juice and stir gently.

Turn the dough out onto a clean workspace that has already been dusted with flour. Pat the dough into a circle.

Don't pummel it too much, or the pastry will be gummy.

Cut it into 8 triangles. You can flash-freeze and store these in an airtight freezer bag/box for a few weeks.

If you're making them right away:

Brush the tops of the individual scones with the beaten egg or milk (I used milk). Sprinkle the sugar over it.

Bake for around 15-20 minutes, until the craggy exterior is all golden brown.

Eat hot! And you know what else is better than Dessert? Dessert for breakfast!

With a mug of Cafe au Lait and the Sunday tabloids. It's my version of living the high life.

Valentine's Day Special #1 / No-bake fudgey Chocolate Peanut-butter cookies.

There are sometimes in life when Chocolate becomes a necessity. So much of a necessity that you consider getting a Continuous Ryle's Tube feeding of molten chocolate.

It could be post-breakup, especially when Valentine's Day and celebrity couples of amalgamated nomenclature and your late-teenaged neighbour flaunt their Two-Hearts-One-S***holeSoul status. It could be post-midnight, when all the shops selling candy (of the chocolate, not the substance-abuse variety) are closed. It could be post weddings of grandeur and younger cousins popping out babies; seats of higher-education or topnotch jobs gained. You're truly happy for them, but this gives you a fat nasty dose of Reality.

There's also another females-only situation.

Science recognizes this as the big M. Men may know this as a time in life where you've been forced to lie "you? Fat?! You're painfully skinny!" As for the women, I feel for you. I really do.

Apart from throwing back a couple of Meftal-Spas 500 and drinking black tea and doing your version of pranayamas, this is the only solution I have for you.

Load up on the carbohydrates, banish the bloat-inducing salt.

And by carbohydrates, I mean Sugar. Quite a bit of it. But there's also heaps of oats, peanut butter and milk, so it should cancel out, by the laws of Denial.

These No bake cookies require no oven. They require no eggs. They require no patience. And they taste bloody good. This is the closest I've got to Z's Fantastic Chocolate-Peanut Butter fudge, the ones I used to beg her to make (so good!) and not make (fattening). Of course, she would be outraged at the addition of oats.

This recipe is made out of pantry staples.

And if you close your eyes and add a little more salt, you can pretend these are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Yum!

No-Bake Fudgey Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies:

(Adapted from Food Network)

Ingredients:

1-3/4 cups white, granulated sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter (smooth is preferred, I used chunky)

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

3 cups oatmeal (instant oats)

1/4 tsp salt (optional)

Method:

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, whisk together the sugar, butter, cocoa and milk. Place the pan over high heat.

Bring it to a foamy boil, and let it boil for exactly one minute.

If it isn't nicely reduced and fudgey, boil for 30 seconds more.

Whisk in the peanut butter, vanilla essence, salt (if using) first.

Add in the oats.

If the mix is too runny, you can add a couple of tablespoons of oats. If it's too stiff, thin it out with a teaspoon of milk or peanut butter.

Place scoops of cookie dough onto a sheet of waxed paper or aluminium foil.

It will ideally set in its shape at room temperature, but if you live in Madras, refrigerate!

Things to do with the cookies:

Eat with milk for breakfast.

Eat by yourself in pajamas while watching one of Woody Allen's movies.

Pack them and give to your loved ones.

Invite a friend over and gossip/b**ch/polambify for hours over these.

Or if you have a boring life, you can chase random brats who steal your cookies and run out when you aren't looking.

This is Zaad's happy/hungry face. People say he takes after me.

You can easily halve the recipe and still get at least a dozen large cookies. Which will keep, wrapped in foil, for around a week in the refrigerator in a normal household and three hours in mine. There's just one niggling thought.

Please make it with Nutella and tell me how if it matches up to all my daydreams/fantasies.

P.S.: This post is dedicated to some skinny-yet-strong women:

Rad (who asked for egg-less); for Spica (who asked for more non-NEWT-y recipes); for Anisha L (cupcake liners and making me mildly famous!); for A, who would have eaten it with no regard to "calories-and-crap"; for Z, who made me fudge for the first time and for funding my two-Reese-cups-per day habit (for a whole week); for Sarbee (who likes her chocolate-laden cookies, but has no oven) and for Nigbe (who pretends to hate Valentine's Day, but is a closet romantic and the happiest when true-love stories do work out).