Simple Apple Pie- For Thanksgiving and to celebrate 10 years of blogging!!!!!

First of all a BIGGG THANK YOU to each and everyone of you for showing so much love, support and encouragement. Thank you for everything. It's been 10 years since i started blogging. I couldn't believe that the blog space which I started on a Tuesday morning would finish 10 years, which wouldn't be possible without any of you. And also a best way of celebrating my blog's birthday is on a thanksgiving and making an apple pie!!!!!

Apple pie is a dish which I never tried before. I wanted to make this but thinking about the work involving making the filling, then the crust was a big job for me. But once I started making the pie, it was done very quickly. Now I have the confidence of making pecan pie, pumpkin pie and many other pies.

This is the recipe which I made for our thanksgiving dinner along with our friends. This is the first time we are doing the thanksgiving dinner, me and my friend shared the work of making the dishes. My friend made the turkey and boiled veggies whereas I made the mashed potatoes, boiled corn and apple pie. I was little hesitant to make the apple pie, but surprisingly it came out well.

In this recipe I cooked the apple filling, there are some recipes in which it is not required. We can just keep the filling mixed for an hour and it will release the juices. Just add this on the crust and bake.

This recipe has become a favorite and am going to bake this again tomorrow. The crust can be made in advance and can be refrigerated, the same with the filling. Hope you all will try this and if you do please let me know.

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

1. All Purpose flour- 2 3/4 Cups
2. Salt- a pinch
3. Butter- 1 Cup
4. Cold Water- 3 Tbsp

For the Filling:

1. Apple (peeled, cored and sliced)- 4Cups
2. Sugar- 1/4 Cup
3. Cinnamon Powder- 1 tsp
4. Nutmeg powder- 1 tsp
5. Butter- 1tbsp

For Egg wash:

• Egg- 1
• Milk- 2 tbsp

Method for egg wash: Mix the egg and milk and keep it ready.

Method:

For the crust:

1. Place the all purpose flour and cubed butter in the food processor and  Pulse for a couple of seconds. 
2. Then slowly add the cold water and pulse until the dough barely begins to hold. The dough will be ready when you pinch the crumbly dough together with your fingers. Be cautious with the amount of water you add, too much of water and the dough will be tough.
3. Empty the crumbly mixture on a clean and dry surface. Use your hands and knead until it forms a dough ball. Wrap it in cling film and store it in the refrigerator till the filling is done.

For the filling:

1. Add the apple slices, sugar, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder in a pan and mix well. Place it on a stove with medium flame. Stir well and mix till all the water gets absorbed. At last add the butter and mix well and keep this aside.
2. Take the pie crust from the fridge and let it rest for 10 minutes to soften the dough.
3. Roll the dough using rolling pin on a slightly floured surface. while rolling make sure that the dough is not sticking to the surface, add some flour if necessary.
4. Place this carefully in a greased baking pan and cut around the excess of the dough using a kitchen scissors. Place the apple filling and spread evenly now for the pie to cover roll out the excess dough and cut into long strips and lattice the top. Trim the edges and brush the top using egg wash. 
5. Bake the apple pie for about an hour and the top should be lightly brown in color. If the top is browning too quickly, cover the top using an aluminum foil. this will slow the browning.
6. When the pie is done, let it cool and cut into slices and enjoy along with ice cream.

Caramel Apple Cake- A simple cake for special occasion....

Caramel apples are fall's greatest pleasures. I always thought of trying them, but thinking about the calories never dared to taste them. As today is our wedding anniversary, like every year, this year too, I thought of baking a cake. I always have a batch of homemade caramel in the refrigerator. My daughter drizzles them on ice creams, or on toast and so on. I wanted to make a cake using caramel and so this caramel apple cake clicked in my mind.

This is a super soft, moist, delicious cake which will be finished within no time. The addition of apple sauce, caramel sauce gives a light and fluffy texture.

Every year for our anniversary, I will be baking different varieties of cake with varieties of frosting. This year I wanted a simple cake without any frostings. I decorated the cake with powdered sugar and drizzled with caramel.

I got the recipe for the cake from the blog "Sugarhero", which has got some amazing dessert recipes. I modified the quantity accordingly and baked a soft, moist cake which we all enjoyed and shared with our friends.

This cake looks tedious but can be done within less time. This will be a perfect cake for birthdays or any other occasions. You can decorate this cake with your choice of frosting. In anyways, this cake will taste delicious. Try this out and let me know how it turned out.
Adapted from Sugarhero:
Ingredients:

1. All Purpose Flour- 2 Cups
2. Baking Soda- 1/2 tsp
3. Baking Powder- 1 1/2 tsp
4. Cinnamon powder- 1 tsp
5. Salt- a pinch 
6. Sugar- 1 Cup
7. Apple Sauce- 1/2 Cup
8. Caramel Sauce- 1/2 Cup
9. Eggs- 2 nos
10. Vanilla Essence- 1 tsp
11. Buttermilk- 1 Cup
12. Apple- 1 no (Peeled, cored and finely diced)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a baking pan with oil and dust with flour. Keep this aside.
2. Beat the sugar along with eggs, till light and fluffy, add the applesauce, caramel sauce, vanilla essence, and buttermilk. Beat well using a hand blender or a stand mixer.
3. Sieve the all purpose flour, salt, cinnamon powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Add this slowly in the wet ingredients and fold using a spatula. Meanwhile, mix the diced apples with 1 tbsp of flour and add them to the above batter.  Pour this mixture in the greased pan.
4. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean.
5. Sprinkle the top of the cake with powdered sugar and decorate using caramel sauce.

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Healthy Banana and Mixed Berries smoothie

My dear friend introduced me to this smoothie, who herself is a big smoothie lover. She would always tell about different varieties of smoothies which she makes at home for her family. One day when I was in her house, I asked for the recipe and generously she made a big batch of this smoothie and whatever she told about the smoothie is completely true. It is a very filling, healthy, appetizing, flavorful and simply mind blowing. While adding the frozen berries, banana and spinach the smoothie will be thick, just add enough amount of water or milk.

There are lots of variations in making smoothies, like for kids we can add milk, for adults, who are health conscious can make this smoothie by adding water. Instead of regular milk, you can also add almond milk, by making the almond milk at home. I will share the recipe some other time.

This makes more healthy by adding dates instead of sugar. If you want your smoothie sweeter, you can increase the number of dates. This is so filling that you can have this instead of breakfast or lunch. I made this for lunch after my workout and it is very filling and healthy. There are much more different smoothie recipes which she gave and you can see all the recipes in my future posts. For now, enjoy an amazingly delicious healthy smoothie and stay fit...

Ingredients:

1. Banana- 1 no
2. Apple- ½ no
3. Frozen Mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries)- ½ Cup
4. Dates- 5 nos
5. Chia Seeds- 1 tbsp
6. Flax Seeds- 1 tbsp
7. Spinach- ½ Cup
8. Water- ¼ Cup

Method:

1. Combine all the ingredients except chia seeds in a blender until smooth with the required amount of water.
2. Soak the chia seeds in little water for about 10 minutes.
3. Pour the smoothie into a serving glass and garnish with the soaked chia seeds and enjoy a healthy smoothie. (You can add the chia seeds in the smoothie and blend everything together).

Baked Apple Roses

Baked apple roses are just like apple pies but which looks like beautiful red roses. These apple roses are surprisingly easy to make , gorgeous  presentation, best in taste.These make beautiful desserts for parties and kids will love them.

I have seen these apple roses many times , but never tried it. My SIL who is an incredible cook and who likes to try out a new variety of dishes sent me the pics of these baked roses which she made. You can see her work in one of my previous posts, which is chocolate roll cake. I was so excited to see the pics as I would never try these because my daughter is not a big lover of apples and moreover if we buy apples, it would either end up in  a cake or we like to eat just like that.

This is a very easy dessert, in which the sliced apples, sprinkled with cinnamon powder are rolled in puff pastry sheets and baked. If you feel while baking the apples are getting browned, keep them on the lower rack. This will help the puff pastry sheets to cook well and the apple slices will be soft. Make sure that the apples are sliced using a sharp knife and very thin. For the preserve, you can also use apricot/ raspberry preserves of your choice. Hope you all like this.

Ingredients:

1. Apple- 1 big
2. Lemon Juice- 2 tbsp
3. Puff Pastry Sheet- 1 Sheet
4. Cinnamon Powder- 2 tsp
5. Strawberry Jam/ Preserve- 2 tbsp

Method:

1. Cut the apple in half and remove the core. Cut the apples into paper thin slices and place this in a bowl filled with water. Add lemon juice and stir.
2. Microwave this for about 3- 4 minutes. Remove the apple slices on a kitchen towel.
3. Unroll the thawed puff pastry sheet. Using a rolling pin stretch the sheet into a rectangular sheet and using a sharp knife cut the sheet into 4-5 strips.
4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees C. Spread a thin layer of the strawberry jam / preserve on the sheets. Arrange the apple slices on the dough, overlapping one another, make sure the top of the apple is outside.
5. Sprinkle some cinnamon powder on top and fold the bottom part of the dough, now starting from one end carefully roll from one end to the other and pressing with your fingers, keeping the apple slices as it is.
6. Place this in a muffin pan. Repeat with the remaining apple slices and the dough and bake for about 35- 40 min. Sprinkle with some powdered sugar on top and enjoy.

Apple Jilebi

Last week after seeing so many mouth watering pics of Diwali sweets in many blogs and  FB posts, I was like, I have to make something to satisfy my sweet tooth and so here I am, with an amazing post. First, I was not sure of what I wanted to prepare, but when I was scrolling through my fb post, I saw Pavithra of “dishes from my kitchen” uploading a pic of this lovely dish. As soon as I saw it, I decided that this will be my next post and here it is.

A perfect festive dish. Apple jilebis are fritters soaked in sugar syrup. The sweetness from outside and soft apple inside is a lovely combination. The consistency of the sugar syrup is that of gulab jamun. If you want you can add little bit of red colour to the syrup. Not only almonds, pistachios or saffron can also be sprinkled on top of these jilebis. Just try this out.

Ingredients:

1. Apple- 2nos
2. Maida- 1 cup+2 tbsp
3. Cinnamon Powder- 2tsp
4. Curd- ¼ cup
5. Water- as required

For Sugar Syrup:

1. Water- 1 ½ Cups
2. Sugar- 1 Cup
3. Cardamom Powder- 1 tsp

For Decoration:

• Almonds (sliced)- few

Method:

For Sugar syrup:

• Mix water,sugar and cardamom powder and keep this on medium flame. Stir well till all the sugar gets dissolved and when it becomes ½ thread consistency switch off the flame.

1. Peel the skin of apples and scoop out the seeds using a sharp ended knife. Slice the apple into perfect rounds and keep this aside.
2. Mix 2 tbsp of maida along with cinnamon powder and dust the sliced round pieces of apple.
3. In a bowl mix together remaining maida, curd and required amount of water. Make sure that the batter should not be watery. It should be little thick.
4. Heat oil for deep frying. Dip each dusted apple slices in the maida batter and slip slowly in hot oil. When they turn golden brown in colour, remove and dip them slowly into the prepared sugar syrup.
5. When the pieces are completely coated in sugar syrup remove and enjoy these hot apple jilebis as it is or with rabdi or ice cream.

Easy Apple Cake

Hello my dear friends, I am back from Kerala after a short vacation. Had a lovely time there, enjoyed a lot and now with a lot of holiday hangover, I am back to my daily routine.

In the meanwhile, I tried making this apple cake, which is very easy to prepare and bakes quickly. This will be loved by all, as my parents who does not have too much of a sweet teeth also loved this and were not stopping with one or two. I grew up eating the vanilla cake which my mom used to make and in those days, there was not much of such special fruit cake preparations. 

Recently, as there were so many apples left over at home,  I thought of giving it a try and made this as I had a recipe ready in hand. This is a very easy and simple cake within minutes.
Apple cake is a popular dessert in which the main ingredient is of course, apple. In this, various spices such as nutmeg powder or cinnamon powder can be added which gives the cake an unique flavor.

Ingredients:

1. Apple (washed and diced)- 1cup
2. All purpose flour- 1 ½ cups
3. Sugar- 1cup
4. Cinnamon powder- 1tsp
5. Baking soda- 2tsp
6. Vanilla Essence- 1tsp
7. Oil- 1/2 cup
8. Egg- 1no
9. Salt- a pinch

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Sift the all purpose flour, baking soda, cinnamon powder and salt in  a bowl.
3. Mix egg and sugar in a bowl till frothy. Add this in the above dry ingredients. In this add vanilla essence and oil and mix well without any lumps.
4. Add the apple pieces in the above mixture and stir well.
5. Grease the baking tray with butter and flour. Pour the above mixture in the pan and bake for about 40- 45 minutes.
6. When it is done, cool it on a wire rack and decorate as you wish.