Savory Cheddar Cheese Scones | Eggless Baking

Scones are like a quick bread and are perfect for baking in a pinch. Last weekend I made two breads - the cinnamon rolls and a vegetable bread. Both moved really fast and last night I knew I'd need another batch for the week. So instead of starting another batch of yeast bread I decided to make savory scones. Quick baking, a tasty bread that can be eaten warmed with butter, turned into a delicious sandwich, or even dunked in hot soup at dinner.

Spinach and Broccoli Mac & Cheese

Who does not love Mac & Cheese - its the ultimate comfort food. Deliciously simple and creamy with loads of cheese, Mac & Cheese in it many avatars has won the hearts of kids and adults alike. We love Mac & Cheese around here, but I always try to make a variation around this theme. This recipe is something that came to me as I sat down to plan dinner last week. I wanted to make something with broccoli and spinach, maybe add it to a pasta sauce or make a pesto of it.

Summer Sweet Corn and Tomato Pie

Its coming up to the end of summer and corn and tomatoes are available aplenty here. I made this sweet corn and tomato pie last week to enjoy both the flavours at the peak of the season. We had picked up some sweet corn from a farmers market and the tomatoes I got from the farm where I get my summer produce!! The pink tomatoes were just so gorgeous that the moment I saw them all I could think of was making a pie with them.

Daring Bakers February 2012: Delicious Quick Bread

Kudos to Lisa for supplying yet another wonderful Daring Bakers Challenge!! No surprises for guessing that I picked to do the Savoury version of this recipe!! With some changes of course. I made a Bacon and Cheese Beer Batter Bread!! Only it had neither beer nor bacon in it!!

Confused? Well I substituted the beer with buttermilk, added an extra teaspoon of baking powder, replaced half the AP flour with whole wheat flour, and some vegan bacon strips. The latter I fried per the instructions on the packet, let them cool completely, and then chopped them into bite size pieces. I added them with grated cheese into the batter and baked it for 45 minutes to get a beautiful, incredibly tasty quick bread.

This Challenge has so many doable recipes, I look forward to trying them all eventually!!

Post Script: The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

Click Here for the Complete February 2012 Daring Bakers Challenge.

All content, text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007 - 2012. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

Delicious Baked Potato with Vegan Chili

Nothing warms the kitchen and a home like a bake in the oven. Adjusting to the temperature change ever since I returned and its not been easy. This despite the fact that we barely seem to be having a winter around here!! I mean today is only the second time its snowed since I returned and that is not normal for this time of the year.

Delicious Macaroni and Cheese Bake

Mac & Cheese is the ultimate comfort food! We adore mac and cheese round here. I generally use different ingredients each time I make mac and cheese and so have developed several versions of this lovely dish. A couple of weeks back it suddenly turned cool around here. There was even frost on the ground!! Craving something very comforting and warming, I decided decided to make a classically creamy baked version of mac and cheese.

Cheesy Hot Toast

Last weekend I visited a cheese shop in our parts and was delighted to see some lovely artisan cheeses on the shelves. The one that caught my eye was none other than a - hold your breath - three alarm cheese. With a name like that I just had to pick it up. A spicy mix of three different chilies lends its name to this cheese. And no more than the tiniest bite assures you that this cheese was made to live up to its name.

Now, as almost everyone would agree, there is nothing quite like hot toast with tea on a freezing winter afternoon!! The only thing that can make it better is some spicy melted cheese on the top - Yum! And if you want something superlative, stick some tapenade on the toast just under the cheese.

Ingredients:
4 slices honey wheat bread
1 tsp butter, softened
2 tbsp tapenade
4 tbsp 3 alarm cheese, grated (replace with
Jalapeno Jack for a milder taste)
2 tbsp mozzarella cheese, grated

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 350F. Place the bread on the wire rack and toast until crisp and golden.
2. Remove from the oven and butter each slice. Now thickly spread the tapenade on two of the slices.
3. Mix the two cheeses, and spread equally on the 4 slices.
4. Return to the oven and grill until the cheese melts completely.
5. Carefully remove the toasts from the oven. Cut into squares or triangles. Serve immediately.

These mini-toasts are superb with a cup of tea or coffee. They are also great when served with wine. These spicy snacks are making their way to Pallavi @ All Things Yummy. Don't forget to visit Sunday Snacks this month, where you will find all things Hot n Spicy!!


All text and photographs in this blog, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright of © Annarasa 2007. All Rights Reserved. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.

The Way of the Daring Baker: To Mix, To Knead, & then To Toss....

This Daring Bakers Challenge involved an excellent choice of recipe. It comes from Peter Reinhart's: The Bread Baker's Apprentice. This recipe Pizza Napoletana is simply lovely - and as described by Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yums yields a beautifully tasty, thin, crispy, yet chewy pizza crust.

The Challenge
This challenge required the Daring Baker to try and use the tossing method for at least 2 Pizza Crusts. of course, a switch to the rolling method was permitted, but tossing was the key to the challenge. And the moment of the toss as it were had to be captured on film for all posterity!!!! Talk about taking it up a notch....

Hot and Spicy Black Bean Fusili

The great thing about pasta is that its just so so versatile. I simply love to be innovative with it and every time I decide to make some, I try to work with ingredients in my refrigerator and pantry. Last Sunday, after a beautiful and very fun day out, I was rummaging in my pantry when I suddenly felt a craving for black beans. I love black beans in Vegetarian Tacos, acaraje, and salsa. But I have never tried them with pasta. So I asked myself - why not? And below is the result :)

Spinach & Mushroom Rotini

Spinach and mushroom make for a wonderful combination. And with whole grain rotini, the taste is almost heavenly. This is one of my favourite recipes, one I created on one of those long winter evenings when I had a craving for a hearty yet healthy meal!! I am sharing this with all pasta lovers via Presto Pasta Night, hosted by the lovely Ruth.

Dreamy Vegetarian Pizza

So, I was surfing the internet for interesting food events.... Yup, feels like I have been doing a lot of that lately!! But then there are so many wonderfully enthusiastic chefs out there, each dreaming up new ways to challenge our skills and creativity!! I still continue to be quite literally gobsmacked at the variety and range of food events online.

Anyway, the first site to pop out from the blogosphere was Stephanie's blog announcing a Pizza Party. Just perfect I thought. And then, almost simultaneously - what exactly is a pizza? I mean I know what a pizza is, I have eaten it often enough, I bake it at home quite frequently - and yet - what is a pizza?? Quite simply, a pizza as we know it today is an Italian open pie usually made of thin bread dough spread with a spiced mixture of a.k.a tomato sauce and cheese. According to the Smithsonian, the pizza could be said to be a descendant of the focaccia or bread rounds covered with herbs and spice which made their debut in Naples around 1000 years ago. Essentially a peasant food, it was a way of recycling leftovers by placing them over thin crusts of dough and the baking them. Indeed there was no tomato on the earliest pizzas as Europeans came to know of this beautiful fruit sometime in the 16th century, and it was added to the pizza only subsequently.