Wholesome with wholewheat!

Decadent is the word we associate with lot of baked creations. Which they are, mostly. But this post is about something not so rich. It is about something you would call wholesome, healthy, scrumptious and non-baked! Whole wheat Banana Pancakes!

Every once in a while I prepare pancakes for breakfast, from scratch. We love our pancakes. It's like having a treat at breakfast. Also, I enjoy the process of making them. Measuring and whisking and finally watching the pancakes fluff up on the frying pan.
But my recipe for original pancakes uses all purpose flour. Not a very healthy option for a meal, I know. So, although that recipe is a keeper, which I might share on this blog in future, I was looking for a healthier version.

This recipe was perfect because it uses whole wheat flour. And bananas. Banana-anything is welcome at our home. And Cinnamon. I love the combination of bananas and cinnamon. You can view the original recipe here.

For the pancakes to rise and get their trademark thickness you need some rising agent amongst the ingredients. Most of the pancake recipes I have come across use eggs and baking powder. Loads and loads of baking powder for one breakfast I say. Quantity enough to make one 8" round pound cake. Why not use the egg white meringue power instead to make the pancakes fluff up, I thought. So I have reduced the baking powder by half and whipped the egg whites to stiff peaks to get thick pancakes. A hand mixer comes handy for this purpose, though two egg whites can be easily whipped by hand.

I added a tablespoon or two of sugar to the batter. You can omit it if your bananas are very sweet. May be next time I will go for brown sugar. It would give a beautiful flavour too. Yum!

If you are looking for healthy, tasty and guilt-free option for pancakes, these are it. Hope you would give these a try. Here's the recipe:

Whole wheat Banana Pancakes

Yields 10-12 pancakes.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Whole wheat flour/ atta
1/2 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon powder
1 pinch of salt
2 Bananas, ripe or overripe
2 Eggs, separated
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 Cup Milk, room temperature
3 Tbsp Butter or Ghee, melted
1 - 2 Tbsp sugar

Steps:

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. This is the bowl in which you'll be preparing your batter.

In a separate smaller bowl mash the bananas. Add egg yolks, milk, vanilla extract, melted butter and sugar. Mix and set aside.

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks using a whisk. A hand held mixer would do this job in less than two minutes.

Pour the wet ingredients into dry in 2-3 batches, stirring just until mixed. Fold the whipped egg whites into the batter in two additions.

Heat a skillet/fry pan. Pour about 1/4 cup or ladle full of batter in the pan. Let it cook on medium flame till bubbles appear on top and the edges of the pancake become dull and loose their shine. This is an indication that the pancake is done at the bottom. Flip the pancake and let cook on other side for 1-2 minutes.
Serve warm.

Serving suggestions:

Serve the pancakes warm with honey, fresh fruits, fresh fruits, whipped cream or even Nutella. Kids would love these studded with some chocolate chips.


Happy Cooking!
Shwe

Oats for breakfast, Honey!

Breakfast is one meal that we never skip, but we don't have time to fuss about preparing it either. So we eat cold breakfast, mostly cereals, mostly locally grown like raagi (finger millet), popped raajgira (amaranth), popped jwari (jowar) flakes, sattu. Oats somehow never found a place in the breakfast menu. Mainly because it needs to be cooked which means hot milk and hot milk is a big no-no. 
So, this is the first time I have ever used oats in my kitchen, ever, yes that's surprising. And it's happy I am that I baked these muffins!

In India almost every lady of our previous generation cooks well and has couple of aces up her sleeves. But there are very few I know who bake. One among them is my aunt. She is an inspiration as a cook, as a baker and above all as a person. It is she who suggested me to try out oats as an ingredient in baking, that had me promptly buying a packet of instant oats. 

Now all I wanted was a recipe! I stumbled upon it when my sister-in-law pointed me towards this food industry event which was to happen in Bangalore. And one link led to another, and a lot of clicks later I found this recipe. These are filling, breakfast or snack-time muffins.

The recipe calls for very little bit of mixing. The batter comes together very quickly, once you have all the ingredients ready. I have used vanilla sugar, you can use plain granulated sugar. Adjust the quantity of vanilla extract accordingly.

Buttermilk can be substituted with 1/2 cup of milk plus 2 teaspoons of curd, set aside for 15 minutes. Since I make butter/ghee at home, there's always some frozen buttermilk around. 

As the name suggests, these are breakfast muffins, so I wanted to add some dry fruits or nuts. My li'l one fancies raisins so I added soaked raisins. When given a choice between chocolate chips and raisins as an ingredient of these muffins, he chose raisins without any qualms.

But the one ingredient you don't want to skip is cinnamon. Don't skimp. I would go so far as to suggest to increase it to 1/2 teaspoon while you are at it. While the muffins bake the aroma of cinnamon fills your home. Heaven!

When making cupcakes or muffins, if presentation is not a big concern, I prefer silicone moulds over paper liners. Mainly because they don't need any prep but more because I am a bit reluctant to loose even tiny of those scrumptious crumbs sticking to the liners.

These muffins are best served warm with a glass of milk or a hot cup of tea. The stress is on warm! Here's the recipe:

Whole wheat oat and banana muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup instant oats, measured then coarsely ground
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsbs vanilla sugar
3-4 small bananas, mashed (about 1/2 cup heaping)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsbs vegetable oil, sunflower/canola/olive
1/4 tsp vanilla extract (use 1/2 tsp if using plain sugar)
1/4 cup raisins, soaked

Steps:

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, ground oats, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla sugar using a whisk. Set aside.

Mash the banana in a small bowl. Beat in the egg. Add remaining wet ingredients to the banana mixture.

Add wet mixture to dry one in 2 batches. Mix till just combined or till no dry streaks of flour remained. 

Add in the soaked raisins and mix. The batter will be thick. 

Spoon the batter in muffin moulds/pan. Smooth the tops.

Bake for 15-18 minutes. The top of the muffins may crack. Check if done, using a toothpick. Be careful not to over bake else they muffins will turn dry.

Once done, set them to cool. Store in an airtight container once completely cooled.

Tweaks:

- You can replace 2 tablespoons of oats with same quantity of rava (semolina) for added crunch.
- You can add chopped, roasted nuts.
- You can use brown sugar instead of granulated white sugar. Gud/jaggery can be used too, increase the quantity as gud is less sweet than same quantity of sugar.
- You can sprinkle granulated sugar on top of the muffins, before baking.
The options are many!

Happy Baking!
Shwe

It's about time...

It's about time I log what I bake and what better way to do that than a blog. A little bit of history is called for here. I used to bake, learnt basics from mom, internet and books. My creations were savoured and appreciated by friends and family. They would encourage or suggest me to do 'something' with my 'talent'. So here I am taking a small step, putting into words and pictures the recipe, the final output and what goes behind the scenes in baking.

Here I present a banana almond raisin bundt cake. It is eggless, whole-wheat and yummy. This is an any-time-of-the-day cake, breakfast, snack or munch time.

I have tried banana in cakes earlier but this was my first try without eggs. The inspiration for the recipe is here. It includes cardamom (ilaichi / veldoda). I like cardamom but was a bit skeptical as to how it will work with vanilla and chocolate.  Since I was going to use cardamom, I decided to give it a desi twist. So out went the chocolate chips and the vanilla, and instead entered raisins and almonds. And while I was at it, I replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. I threw in some wheat bran as well. The bran adds to the fiber content and gives the crumb an interesting look as tiny golden specks. The original recipe calls for brown sugar. Since I didn't have any at hand, I used part white sugar and part jaggery.

The combination of banana, jaggery and cardamom was a winner I think. The fruit I used was the small yellakki you get here in southern India. It has a slight tang to it which gave the cake a nice flavour. Plump raisins added moistness.

I baked the cake in a bundt as it is camera, eyes and slicing friendly. And more importantly it was easily reachable in the rack. A warning for the first time bundt users though, a bundt pan needs proper greasing and dusting. Here's the recipe:

Banana almond raisin bundt cake

Ingredients:

1 Cup minus 2 Tbsps All purpose flour

1/2 Cup whole wheat flour / atta

2 Tbsps wheat bran*

1/2 Cup sugar, powdered

1/4 Cup firmly packed jaggery/gud

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 pinch salt

75 gm butter, softened at room temperature

3 yellakki bananas, mashed (about 1/2 cup) or 1 large banana

3 to 4 Tbsps milk

2 cardamom pods, powdered

2 Tbsps soaked raisins

2 Tbsps chopped almonds

*wheat bran is optional. You can use full 1 Cup all-purpose flour instead.

Steps:

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Sift the flours, bran, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Mix the ingredients again using a whisk to ensure that all ingredients are distributed evenly.

Put the softened butter, sugar and jaggery in a bowl and beat till the mixture is fluffy and creamy. Then add the mashed banana and beat till smooth.

Add the flour mixture in 3 batches alternating with milk, starting and ending with flour, and mix till combined. You can add a tablespoon or two of milk, adding just a teaspoon at a time, if the batter seems too dry.
Fold in the raisins and almonds.

Scrape the batter out into a greased and floured 6-cup bundt pan and bake at 165°C for 30 minutes. That would be 180°C for 30 mins for a regular square or round pan.

Test using a toothpick or a skewer. Remove pan from oven when done. Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes and then unmould the cake. Cool completely on a rack and serve yourself a thick yummy slice!

All in all the experiment was success. My kid, lets call him T (16 months old), loved it too. He seems to have a very developed sense of taste. Just the other day I tried something with blueberries, was my first attempt with the berries, and he didn't eat a second bite. hmm-mph.

I would suggest you try the original recipe too, banana and chocolate-chips is a great pairing.

Happy Baking!
Shwe