Pesto Pizza

This is a really easy pizza to make. Here's the pizza dough recipe.

Semolina pizza dough
Enough for two very thin, 12-inch, round pizza crusts
3/4 cup warm water
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup semolina flour
1 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp sea salt
3 tbsp olive oil

In a cup, add the yeast to the warm water and stir to remove lumps if any. Set aside. Sift together the flours, sugar and salt. Add the yeast mixture and olive oil and stir with a wooden spoon till the mixture forms a sticky dough. On a floured surface, knead dough till smooth. Put dough in an oiled bowl, turn to coat the entire ball and cover the bowl with a damp towel or plastic wrap and keep aside to rise until it doubles in size. Once risen, you can cut it into half and roll out for 2 thin crust 12" pizzas or use just one portion and freeze the other. Sprinkle the pizza stone with some semolina and place the rolled out pizza on top, add toppings and bake at 220 C for 12-14 mins or until crust is golden.

Pizza sauce

For the sauce, you'd need
2 medium sized tomatoes
1 red pepper
3 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
About a table spoon of olive oil
1/2 tsp of Oregano

Skin the tomatoes and puree with the garlic cloves,  salt and pepper. Cook till the sauce turns a dark red, stir in the olive oil. Add the oregano and keep aside. Remove the skin from the red pepper. (Place it in a pot filled with about 2 inches of water and bring to a boil with the lid on. Let it boil for about 5 minutes. Take off fire and set aside to cool. It should be easy to get the skin off once it's cool). Puree the skinned pepper and stir into the cooked tomato sauce. Spread onto the pizza dough and add toppings.
I used onions, tomatoes, salami, pesto and mozzarella :)

Chocolate Cake

This one is really easy to make, it's very very chocolatey and super moist! Here's the recipe!


1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup boiling water

The oven needs to be preheated to about 175C. Combine all the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Whisk while adding the boiling water, so that the eggs don't scramble. Slowly whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones.
The batter is quite runny and you can pour it into two 9" round tins that have been greased. Bake for about 25 mins each if you have 2 tins. You might need about 15 mins more if you use just one pan.

For my cake, I layered it with strawberries and cream, and topped it off with a chocolate ganache and some strawberries on top!

Baby Elephant Cake

Here's another one we tried out, with the same recipe as the Rocking Horse cake!!

Rocking Horse Cake

Well this one sure wasn't easy! We started off with a plan to make a Minnie Mouse cake, but the cake tin scared us off. Too much frosting and too many colours. Since this was for my 2 year old niece, we wanted to completely avoid food colouring. So we stuck to chocolate and plain frosting and a marble cake, that's her favourite!

So here's the recipe for the Marble cake. We'd planned to layer the cake but chickened out. What if it cracked! It was a super soft cake anyway, and the glaze + the frosting helped keep it moist.

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups milk
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour pan.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter , eggs, vanilla extract and milk in bowl. Beat slowly to moisten, then beat with an electric mixer at medium speed for about 2 minutes until smooth. Keep aside 3/4 of the batter; pour the remainder into another bowl.
3. Stir cocoa into the 3/4 portion of batter. Drop by spoonfuls into pan. Alternate with the plain batter. Using a knife or skewer, gently swirl the cocoa batter into the white batter.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 40 -45 minutes, until an inserted wooden pick comes out clean. Mine took about 45 minutes but check when it's about 35 minutes and then keep it in the oven a while longer if it's not done yet. 

Once the cake cools transfer it on to the cake board that you intend to serve it on. Before that, if the cake has risen too much, you could trim it a bit so that it stays flat on the board. Also, that way you have something to munch on while baking :)

Glazing the cake before frosting it is a good idea. All you need is Icing sugar and water (room temperature would do). Gradually mix in water, one teaspoon at a time till the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Then pour it over the cake, covering it completely. You could line the base with strips of foil so that once you're done you just pull the strips off and your base is clean! The glaze icing takes about 2 hours to set. I had to use about 500 gms of icing sugar for this cake.

For first time frosting makers, this website might help. 

Frosting

We used regular frosting, and not strawberry. So just use the same proportions, just leave out the strawberry. How much frosting you need, of course, depends on the cake time. But for this cake we used about 350 grams of chocolate icing sugar and the same amount of plain icing sugar. 

Once the glaze icing had set, we drew outlines and then filled it in with frosting. The base of the rocking horse was filled in with sprinkles since we ran out of frosting :)

Here are some more pics!

Comments please!!

Limoncello Coolers

The original recipe from Giada's show uses Blueberries, but then you could always use any fruit you like, as long as you freeze them before hand.
I used Strawberries and skipped the mint because I'm not a fan!
They're really easy to make and look pretty fancy! :)

I used my crackled champagne flutes from Pier 1 to serve these!



Chocolate Cake

I found this recipe on the Food Network website, and it's really, really chocolately! The cake doesn't rise much, but it's really dense and sort of like a devil's food cake. So if it's for a birthday, I make 2 of them and layer it with some chocolate frosting/ ganache in between. It tastes really nice with strawberries too!

Strawberry Muffins

 This is my all time favourite muffin recipe, that's super easy and really quick!

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/4 cup butter 

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F (205 C)

2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, whisk the egg and stir in the milk, butter and vanilla. Once combined, add the entire mixture to the dry ingredients and mix quickly and gently with a fork. Don't worry if the batter is lumpy.

3. Add chopped strawberries and mix gently. 

4. Pour into paper lined muffin cups.

5. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. 

You could always use any other fruit or even cheese/ bacon/ ham for savoury muffins.