Choco Biscuits

I love the aroma that fills the room when something is baked. Though i love baked stuff for health + taste reasons, I am not an adept at this art. Purely for adventurous reasons, I tried my hand at biscuit making. You can take some tips from here but let me throw a disclaimer at this juncture, "don't ask me if it doesn't taste like the bakery biscuits" .



Now that I have played safe, let me start with the narration.



Ingredients



Maida - 2 cups

Salt - little amounts

Sugar (preferably powdered) - 1 & 1/2 cups

Cocoa powder - 3 tbsp

Milk - atleast 1 & 1/2 cups

Butter - 1 cup



Now for the preparation,



1) Mix maida, salt, sugar and cocoa powder in a dry bowl.

2) Soften the butter and add it to the milk.

3) Add the liquid to the dry mixture gradually and make a soft dough.

4) Pat and roll the dough (to 1 - 1/2 inch thickness)on  a flat surface.

5) Cut into desirable shapes using a knife (try an inverted steel glass for making round shapes)

6) Place the flattened "would- be" biscuits on a buttered oven plate/tray. Ensure that the biscuits are placed atleast 5 cm apart from each other. (on baking, these would swell)

7) Preheat the oven and then bake the biscuits for atleast 10 - 11 minutes.



Biscuits are ready. Take my advice, first try a piece on yourself before serving to others (call it precaution or true gandhianism !!!)

-priya varadan som

Linseed Laddoos

Just like any normal person, I love eating laddoos especially the motichur ones. To me eating a laddoo has always been a special occassion, for I get to eat them only during cousins' weddings and other festivities. Given the frequency at which I consume laddoos, I get this feeling that making them is an arduous process and only a skilled hand can accomplish the task.



Recently, on a particular sunday afternoon, I wanted to eat laddoos (don't ask me what on earth I was doing at that hour instead of enjoying a nice siesta). I rummaged my kitchen to look for potential ingredients to go into the laddoos. These are what I had:

• some lumps of jaggery
• linseeds (white til)
• water

To make the linseed laddoos using jaggery, I needed to first make some jaggery syrup. So I poured two glasses of water into a vessel and added the jaggery lumps (quantity to be added depends entirely on your sweet tooth; I added one cup of jaggery). The syrup making process was the most time consuming. In case you venture out to do this, you can perhaps finish off some other chores while the liquid is getting all syrupy and aromatic.



I started the work on the til seeds in the meantime. In a dry kadai, I roasted the til seeds (3/4th cup of seeds) and spread them on a plate.



As the consistency of the syrup was most critical, I had to keep a check on it at regular intervals. When the liquid started boiling, I took out some of the syrup and poured on a cooler surface. It immediatley started to solidy indicating that the syrup was done. I poured the syrup on to the roasted til seeds in the plate and mixed well.



I immediately started rolling the solid mass (fast) into small balls. Voila, the linseed laddoos were ready to be devoured. Not a bad way to spend a sunday afternoon !! (thought that passed my mind after eating a laddoo).



- priya varadan som