Paneer Matar Masala

Today while writing this post I am getting the feel of a devoted blogger. I baked the banana choco chips cup cakes today and posted it on the blog within minutes of the completion of the whole baking process , then in the evening I took them to the my neighbours favourite haunt and the whole lot got polished off in a jiffy , came back home made a quick fix dinner , every one liked it and here I am blogging about it. Wow what a day!!

Now this post has no history nor any interesting story behind it.

        I wanted to finish the left over packet of frozen peas and the home made cottage cheese I keep storing in small steel containers in the freezer for fixing such quick meals.

        All I did with about two cups of frozen peas and about the same quantity of cubed cottage cheese was this.

I warmed some refind oil in a heavy bottomed pan and just added two medium sized finely chopped onions , the moment they turned pink I added a chopped green chilli , followed by two level tablespoons of “Everest Pao bhajee masala” . 

          I stirred for about half a minute and then added two medium sized finely chopped tomatoes, again a stir fry for about a minute , and then tumble in the peas , a stir and then the cottage cheese and finally the salt. And the result was a "Chat pati masaledar quick stir fried sabzee."

Banana and chocolate chip cup cakes

My kids are not too fond of any loaf or cup cakes I make with banana. But what do I do when sometimes I have over ripe bananas and the best way I know is to make cakes out of them. I took a challenge that I would make  such delicious cup cakes that the little devils find them irresistible.

      So here is what I did.

Ingredients:

1.   200 grams flour / one and half cup Indian measuring cup

2.   150 grams powdered sugar / one cup plus two tablespoons

3.   1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

4.   ½ teaspoon baking soda

5.   One cup mashed over ripe bananas

6.   100 grams softened regular salted butter

7.   ¼ cup hot milk / 50 ml

8.   One large egg

9.   100 grams chocolate chips / about a handful

10.      1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

1.  Since the butter is soft / room temperature , it is very easy to cream it with sugar with just a few movements of the whisk.

2.   Add the egg , give a good stir and follow with  the mashed bananas. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little curdled as the flour with sort the problem out.

3.   Sift the flour with the baking powder and soda and gently stir into the batter with out beating too much.

4.   Alternate the flour with spoons fuls of the hot milk and in the end you will get a lumpy and stick batter.

5.   Stir in the chocolate chips and the vanilla essence.

6.   Spoon a tablespoon each into a muffin tray and bake at 190° for 18 – 20 minutes. For my size of the muffin tray which has medium sized cups/ pits I get a turnover of 24 cupcakes , but if the cup size of your cupcakes is larger then I would suggest that you bake for another two minutes more and check with a toothpick inserted in any one cupcake, if it comes out clean and the top of the cup cakes is nice and golden brown , then your cup cakes are ready.

The thing that I love most about these cup cakes is that they taste absolutely delicious when they are straight out of the oven , at room temperature and incidentally even chilled in the refrigerator.