“If chocolate is the answer, the question is irrelevant.”
Unknown
Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sablés … dark chocolate, a mix of wholegrain flours, a little all purpose too, brown sugar, sea salt, of course butter. All these come together to make an eggless cookie, the indulgent sablé, a quintessential round French shortbread cookie. Crisp, deeply chocolate, buttery, wholegrain, eggless, Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sablés are the yummiest cookies ever! Even better since the recipe is eggless. The only sablés I’ve tried before were Dorie Greenspans famous World Peace Cookies, ones that I loved. She’s since reinvented them into an even more delicious version that I just discovered.
With wholewheat and buckwheat in this buttery chocolaty shortbread, I didn’t expect things to go so well. Can safely say these are my best chocolate shortbread cookies to date, best eggless cookies too! They’re inspired and adapted from Chocolate Sables @ The Boy Who Bakes, and HE is so good in everything he bakes! These are great for the festive cookie platter, fab for hanging off the tree and make a great gift too.I did a batch for Diwali earlier, and now a cookie cutout one for Christmas. With hand made wreaths using the perennial local ‘Mor Pankhi’, a genus of coniferoustrees, it was a lot of fun. Made the wreaths for the Teabox Christmas shoot earlier in November, which was a fun & creative shoot. Here’s a peak of a couple I shot on the side, and you can see more on their website.You could always add some tea leaves into the cookies to make this a chocolate tea shortbread. Now that’s an idea I might work on. Until then, here are Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sablés, eggless cookies loaded with chocolate, and almost wholegrain, with the goodness of buckwheat {kuttu ka aata}. Great comfort food, great for the holidays.
Crisp, deeply chocolate, buttery, wholegrain, eggless, Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sablés are the yummiest cookies ever! Adapted from The Boy Who Bakes.
Course Snack
Cuisine French
Prep Time 10 minutesminutes
Cook Time 15 minutesminutes
Total Time 25 minutesminutes
Servings 2dozen
Ingredients
Dry mix
50gwholewheat flour {aata}
50gbuckwheat flour
50gplain flour
1/2tspbaking soda
1/4black truffle sea salt {or sea salt}
Wet mix
115gunsalted butter, room temp
1tspvanilla extract
100gbrown sugar
125g52% dark chocolateground {or finely chopped}
Instructions
Dry Mix
Stir dry ingredients in a bowl to mix. Reserve.
Wet Mix
Place butter, brown sugar and vanilla in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment. Whisk on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until smooth.
Add the dry mix and ground chocolate, and mix on the lowest speed just enough for the dough to come together.{You can do this by hand to play safe}. Don’t over-mix else the cookies will become hard.
Bring the dough together, either make a cylinder like roll, cling-wrap and chill for a couple of hours.
Alternatively, you could always use the dough for cut out cookies.
“A land of promise, a land of memory, a land of promise flowing with the milk and honey of delicious memories!”
Alfred Tennyson
Rich Spiced Hot Chocolate might well be the simplest thing to enjoy this season. It’s simple things that matter, and with recipes like these, ingredients are of prime importance. You can’t go wrong if you use good quality ingredients. This Rich Spiced Hot Chocolate is just that. Indulgent too. Made with Premium Milk from Mother Dairy, single origin couverture chocolate, dark cocoa, vanilla beans and spices from South India, it’s hard to go wrong. The milk was the biggest surprise though!It’s the best milk I’ve ever had! Words of praise from a dairy lover at home, one who lives to enjoy a chilled good glass of milk. The genes are the same. I love everything dairy too, but I am always surprised by how advanced his taste-buds are. One sip of the newly introduced Premium Full Cream milk from Mother dairy swiftly knocked his current favourite from another brand right off. It’s so good that I don’t even need flavouring mama he exclaimed!This new variant from Mother dairy which has the highest FAT content of 7% along with 9% SNF is ideal for those looking for a rich milk diet and also for folk like us who enjoy making home-made sweets, ghee and curd. It offers 15% extra malai {cream} in comparison to full cream milk. For someone like me who makes clarified butter / ghee at home every weekend, this new variant is ideal. I increasingly use clarified butter or ghee in baking now, and as my preferred medium of fat in cooking now that winter is here. The greens use mustard oil, and almost everything else goes the ghee way! Tadka is always ghee, the ‘icing on the cake’!Think little ghee cakes, think shortbread with ghee, think stuffed radish and cauliflower parathas, and think dollops of melting homemade sweet butter on hot sarson ka saag! After all in India, Ghee is equivalent to love. Finger licking good stuff this! There is just so much you can do with this indulgent product. I can only imagine setting Greek yogurt at home now. Also simmering a rice pudding into creamy goodness, maybe a tapioca pudding or a chocolate oat pudding too.
With a traditional Indian households still enjoying the top of milk cream for so many reasons, the malai that the premium milk yields is impressive. Just 2 litres boiled, cooled and chilled overnight offered almost a cup of malai. This Dark Chocolate & Walnut Wholewheat Cakeisa nostalgic favourite with ‘top of the milk cream’ or ‘malai’. It brings back memories of the quintessential ‘malai’ or ‘top of the milk cream’ cakes from yesteryear. Decades ago, every Indian household use to boil milk, collect the top of the milk cream, use some as is and make sweet butter of the rest. The more adventurous ones used to bake a delicious homey comforting cake with ‘malai’.Then the mind wanders into more delicious spaces like a lighter panna cotta, maybe a Vietnamese coffee. The possibilities are endless as I grabbed the few remaining pouches from the kid who is happy to guzzle down his new favourite. To prove my point to him that the milk makes things oodles better, I quickly stirred him a Rich Spiced Hot Chocolate. With winter around the corner, this drink is a winner, a simple winner! It’s a great hit with kids and adults alike. In summer I’d do a chilled version in bottles which is equal fun and very addictive!Then to dive into the past, how can I not make my husbands childhood favourite, a Masala Kadhai Doodh. This is where dessert meets milk, a quintessential Indian favourite, a concoction you would find across North India. It’s simple, it’s bursting with goodness and flavour AND a big hit always. It’s quite similar to a thandai, infinitely customisable.Masala Kadhai Doodh is simply simmered with a powdered nut & spice mix in a large kadhai or wok for the flavours to steep and milk to thicken. Only with this high fat content milk, the time to thicken is substantially decreased. I used a mix of almonds, melon seeds, cardamom, nutmeg, a pinch of turmeric and saffron.We are a dairy loving home, and I set yougurt at home everyday. With quite a welcome high fat content, Mother Dairy’s Premium Milk yields far tastier home made yogurt, paneer, quark etc. It is also far easier to use in puddings, traditional kheers, halwas. With winter here a gajar ka halwa is calling my name. Simmered in this beautifully thick milk, I can only imagine how good the end result will be. What would be your favorite way to use this?
Good quality ingredients and a simple simmering results in this indulgent Spiced Rich Hot Chocolate. Use a full fat milk like Mother Dairy Premium Milk for best results.
Course Breakfast, Drinks, Side Dish
Cuisine American
Prep Time 5 minutesminutes
Cook Time 30 minutesminutes
Total Time 35 minutesminutes
Servings 2
Ingredients
500mlMother Dairy Premium Milk
2-3star anise
1stick cinnamon
1/2vanilla beansplit
2tspbrown sugar
75gdark couverture chocolatechop
25ggood quality cocoa powder
Instructions
Place milk, star anise, cinnamon, vanilla bean and sugar in a heavy bottom pan and simmer for 15-20 minutes for flavours to steep.
Add the chocolate and cocoa powder, stir often to mix, and simmer gently until the chocolate melts.
Sieve and serve immediately, else steep for an hour, then reheat and sieve before serving.
Notes
Note: You can add a shot of Baileys irish Cream for an adult version. You can also add or remove spices as required. This also makes a nice chilled spiced chocolate milk. Stir well or sieve before serving.
“While there is tea, there is hope.”
Arthur Wing Pinero
Tea Rose Chocolate Truffles, simple chocolate goodness with a few of my favourite things. Chocolate, single cream and Mountain Rose Tea from Teabox. The tea is a fragrant blend of jasmine-infused winter flush black tea with rose and cardamom, and you can well imagine the lilting flavours it added to the truffles. Just right for the festive season. It’s also an extremely pretty tea. Take a look!Teabox is a brand I greatly admire, a brand I have been associated it since it was rebranded by Pentagram in 2015. Teabox, Kaushal Dugar’s brainchild for online tea retailing, aims to revolutionise the tea industry by selling products directly, days after it has been picked. It’s a model that works and works well, growing from strength to strength!Teabox is an experience, a tea experience which is crisp, simple, neat, offers great quality and above all, warmth. I’ve been styling the tea shoots for Teabox the past few years, and loved the very first lot I styled. In particular this banner below shot by the very talented photographer Mallikarjun Katakolin Bangalore is one of my favourites, a reflection of all things I love. The last lot I styled was for the Diwali shoot, and those are now up on Teabox. Here’s a few of those…With so much tea styling of late, it was but natural I develop an affinity to these leaves the world loves so much, even though I’m a ‘coffee person‘. I might not sip a cup of hot tea everyday, yet I’m happy to dive into iced tea, and of course play with the leaves!!Also happy to do recipes using tea leaves/blends which is something I increasingly enjoy. You might remember a batch of Mountain Rose Tea Cookies {below} that I baked a short while ago. I had such fun doing these cookies and shooting the images, the latter which is now quite addictive, that there’s been no looking back. From tea leaves are boring, to tea leaves are so happening, my world has come a long way. Teabox is leading in many ways, the latest it’s innovative concept called Teapac.TeaPacs are the first individually packaged tea bags sealed at the source using a natural Nitrogen flush that keeps the tea as fresh as the day it was picked. With them doing all the hard work, it leaves me a lot of time to get creative.Making chocolate truffles is probably the easiest thing ever. No rocket science here. Needless to say, make sure you use the best quality ingredients. The flavours really shine through, teasing the palette gently, making these the most delectable little bites ever. It’s great to involve kids in making these. Then sit back and see them disappear!Just right for the festive season, Tea Rose Chocolate Truffles are as simple as can be. They are also one of the best and most loved gifts ever. Vegetarian, eggless, gluten free, healthy, make ahead too, and indulgent in a guilt free way, can things get better? You could make these vegan using almond milk or coconut cream/milk. Feel free to experiment.As usual, I had a great time styling and shooting these. Served two ways, with a cup of brewed hot tea after dinner, or chilled Mountain Rose Iced Tea, my way, these make for great eye candy. They’ll be a great addition to your festive platter.Else make a batch, buy some tea and gift them to make someone happy something to remember! My next batch of truffles is going to be using the Kashmiri Kahwa Chaifrom Teabox. A blend of smoked green tea, spices and saffron from the valley, that tea has me smitten! Tempted to join in?
Tea Rose Chocolate Truffles, simple chocolate goodness with a few of my favourite things. Chocolate, single cream and Mountain Rose Tea from Teabox, so you can well imagine the lilting flavours it added to the truffles. Just right for the festive season and the recipe as simple as can be. Vegetarian, eggless, glutenfree, healthy, make ahead too, get indulgent in a guilt free way! You can make these vegan using almond milk or coconut cream/milk. Feel free to experiment.
Course Dessert
Cuisine French
Prep Time 5 minutesminutes
Cook Time 10 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours15 minutesminutes
Servings 16truffles
Ingredients
Truffles
250g52% dark couverture chocolateroom temperature
100gsingle/low fat creamroom temperature
2tbspor 2 teabags Teabox Mountain Rose Tea
Topping
20ggood quality cocoa powder to toss the truffles in
Instructions
Place the cream and tea leaves or teabags in a heavy bottom saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.
In the meantime, finely chop the chocolate, or run it in the processor until almost ground. {I ran it in the Thermomix for 20 seconds, Speed 10}
Place in a large bowl.
If using tea leaves, strain the simmering cream over the ground chocolate. If using teabags, gently squeeze the teabags, and dispose, then pour the hot cream over the chocolate.
Whisk with a spatula or balloon whisk continuously until the chocolate melts and is smooth.
Cover the bowl with cling-wrap, and chill for 2-3 hours or until firm to touch.
Using a cookie scoop or round measuring spoon, portion out approx 16 bits. With very clean hands, roll into balls, then toss in the cocoa powder. You could toss a few in tea leaves as well, pressing gently to fix for a je ne sais quoi feel!
“Food is something that manages to find a way in to approximately 12 out of every 10 conversations we have at Chumbak.”
Chumbak
Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sables – dark chocolate, a mix of wholegrain flours, a little all purpose too, brown sugar, sea salt, of course butter. All these come together to make an eggless cookie, the indulgent sable, a shortbread cookie is a French round shortbread cookie. Another eggless cookie, this time loaded with chocolate, and almost wholegrain, with the goodness of buckwheat {kuttu ka aata} makes for a great gift!
It’s a good time too, at Diwali, when it’s fun to bake and gift good things. With mithai or sweetmeats dwindling in popularity, chocolate always ensures happy gifting. I like to either gift handmade truffles, nut clusters, or then cookies paired with either a lamp, a birdcage, platters, jars etc. The new Gold Collection from Chumbak, with the already beautiful existing range, makes for beautiful gifts with my cookies. Gifts I would love to receive too. Take a look!
With wholewheat and buckwheat in this buttery chocolaty shortbread, I didn’t expect things to go so well. That they did, was amazing. I can safely say these are my best chocolate shortbread cookies to date, best eggless cookies too! They’re inspired and adapted from Chocolate Sables @ The Boy Who Bakes, and HE is so good in everything he bakes! I found them on Instagram and decided to bake a wholegrain version. I figured the food loving folk at Chumbak would love them too!
The dazzling beautiful range of lifestyle products from Chumbak, the quintessential owl included, has me smitten as you can probably see. Hoot Hoot!! I’ve been in love with their quirky designing, innovative products, Indian humour and what not! From a souvenier store for India and Indians in 2010, they’ve grown phenomenally over the past few years. Today, Chumbak is a design led lifestyle brand for products across apparel, home and accessories driven by the best philosophy ever – Make Happy!
This Diwali sees Chumbak creating absolute magic. Take a look at some of their range. I love the fact that I can mix and match infinitely, that I can do daytime setups with flowers, do a drop-dead gorgeous one for the night, build a terrarium within like Madhuli just suggested. There is so much goodness for gifting. Wrap some baked goodies or chocolate truffles {recipe coming soon}, with them to make that perfect gift.
Chumbak retails over 75 categories across 30 plus stores pan India across formats. To buy any of these looks, a a whole lot more, do stop by here.
“This is what we live for, this is our philosophy and those big words that are synonymous with it. This is #makehappy!”
These few products are just the tip of the iceberg. They have something for every budget, something for everyone. I picked a gold and teal line, a touch of yellow, owls galore. Oh and this wooden cake platter above. Precious like the rest of the wood accents line. Now for the recipe of these cookies!
Crisp, deeply chocolate, buttery, wholegrain, eggless, Wholegrain Chocolate Buckwheat Sablés are the yummiest cookies ever! Adapted from The Boy Who Bakes.
Course Snack
Cuisine French
Prep Time 10 minutesminutes
Cook Time 15 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours25 minutesminutes
Servings 2dozen
Ingredients
Dry mix
50gwholewheat {aata}
50gbuckwheat
50gplain flour
1/2tspbaking soda
1/4black truffle sea salt {or sea salt}
Wet mix
115gunsalted butterroom temp
1tspvanilla extract
100gbrown sugar
125g52% dark chocolate, ground {or finely chopped}
Instructions
Dry Mix
Stir dry ingredients in a bowl to mix. Reserve.
Wet Mix
Place butter, brown sugar and vanilla in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment. Whisk on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until smooth.
Add the dry mix and ground chocolate, and mix on the lowest speed just enough for the dough to come together.{You can do this by hand to play safe}. Don't over-mix else the cookies will become hard.
Bring the dough together, either make a cylinder like roll, cling-wrap and chill for a couple of hours.
Alternatively, you could always use the dough for cut out cookies.
“When you select the right kind of chocolate it is like giving your insides a hug. Everyone needs a chocolate hug”
Jean Kelsey
Dark Chocolate Walnut Oat Tart for times when you need a little more chocolate in your life. I know I just shared a chocolate cheesecake a few days ago, yet while doing that, I remembered this tart. How could I not have shared this too? So much chocolate, so little time!! This is a particular favourite since it has two things that I use most while baking. Yes indeed, oats and walnuts! Add to it brown sugar and ghee/clarified butter, and magic is guaranteed!It’s another simple fuss free recipe but delivers a sinful punch. I use a cookie dough for the biscuit base. Feel free to bake mini pies like those above, or cookies as below, with the dough instead if you like, maybe top them with a ganache. I really enjoyed making the Dark Chocolate Walnut Oat Tart. I love that recipes are so easily interchangeable, such fun to play around with, It’s not a lot to do actually because the biscuit base/cookie dough is a two step procedure, basically from the jar of one food processor into the bowl of the stand mixer. I use the basic recipe quite often.
It works well each time. This Mascarpone Lime Curd Walnut Oat Tart is testimony. The same cookie dough biscuit base again, topped in a spoon licking good mascarpone & lime curd topping! Hopefully I’ve got you convinced to give the Dark Chocolate Walnut Oat Tart a try. If not this one, then maybe do a variation on it!
Dark, divine, delicious is how this tart turned out to be topped with dark chocolate ganache! A healthy biscuit base makes the Dark Chocolate Walnut Oat Tart even better. You can make cookies with the same dough, as also use different fillings to top the tart.
Course Dessert, Snack
Cuisine American
Prep Time 10 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours30 minutesminutes
Servings 2tarts {7" each}
Ingredients
Oat Walnut Cookie Base
100goats
85gwalnuts
85gbrown sugar
1/4tspbaking soda
40gclarified butter/ghee chilled
1small egg cold
1tspvanilla extract
Dark Chocolate Filling
300g70% dark couverture chocolate
175gsingle cream
30mlfull fat milk
Instructions
Oat Walnut Cookie Base
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place oats, walnut halves, brown sugar and baking soda in jar of chopper. Blend in short bursts until you get a uniform brown sugar like consistency, just until it feels like moist breadcrumbs.
Don't overwork the blender or the walnuts will release oil.
Transfer to bowl of stand mixer, flat mixer attachment, add the clarified butter/ghee, egg and vanilla extract and mix at speed 4 until it comes together like cookie dough.
Line the base of the tart tins with parchment paper. Divide the cookie dough between the two. Work up t the edges, and then flatten the base.
Bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes, then cool completely on cookie rack.
Dark Chocolate Filling
Warm the chocolate with the cream in the microwave, agitate it with a balloon whisk, added a splash of milk, agitate it a bit more. {Agitate means to whisk briskly until smooth & glossy}
Once it chilled in the fridge for 30 minutes turned it into the baked shell, and let it set for about 2-3 hours.
Top with dark chocolate shavings and dust with cocoa before serving.
“Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real.”
Ned Vizzini
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake … life’s guilty pleasures simply served up, or life’s simple pleasures maybe with a little guilt. Whichever way you choose to look at it, this recipe is a winner. The recipe isn’t mine. It’s a recipe created by the super talented Ruchira @ Cookaroo, on the go as she said. She did make everything sound so simple, so matter of fact, that of course I didn’t believe her!
That changed very soon. In fact as soon as I put in the cheesecake to bake, I realised that it was really very S I M P L E. Absolutely fuss free. I changed a few minor things. The base for one as hers has Oreos and I prefer Digestives. No big deal there. Both packaged cookies so no work at all. I threw in some cocoa to make mine a chocolate base. Barely any other change other than using brown sugar for white!
The other guilty indulgence I added was topping the chilled cheesecake with a dark chocolate ganache as we had folk over for dinner. I wanted it to look special. the ganache and the dusting of cocoa gave it the ‘bells & whistles‘, and some more yumminess of course.
The beautiful thing about the Dark Chocolate Cheesecake, other than the ease of putting it together of course, is that you can bake it a couple of days before you need to serve it. Keep it covered in the fridge in the tin for a day or two. Demold it the day you intend to serve it, top with ganache and you’re good to go. Do remember to thank the Cookaroo if you make this. I’ve thanked her, and so has a reader of my blog, Tania Fothergill, from Tasmania who I shared the recipe with over 3 weeks week ago. It was Tania’s birthday and she really wanted to bake it. Here’s what she said about the cake.
Dark, divine, sinful, creamy, chocolaty and above all, as simple as can be, this Dark Chocolate Cheesecake will leave you wanting for more. Recipe minimally adapted from Ruchira @ thegreatcookaroo.com. You won't need another recipe ever! Can be made 2-3 days ahead of time.
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 1 hourhour
Total Time 9 hourshours15 minutesminutes
Servings 8
Ingredients
Biscuit base
150gdigestives biscuits
30gcocoa powder
20gbrown sugar
50gbutter
Dark Chocolate Filling
200gdark couverture chocolatemelted
400gcream cheese
200mlsingle cream
1/3cupcocoa
3eggs
1tsppure vanilla extract
3/4cupbrown sugar
Ganache
100g52% couverture
100mlsingle cream
Instructions
Biscuit base
Whiz the biscuits, brown sugar and cocoa in food processor until you get a fine meal. Add butter, whiz again to mix.
Press into 7-8" loose bottom tin. Chill in the freezer while you get the filling ready, and the oven preheats.
Dark Chocolate Filling
Preheat oven to 160C.
Place all ingredients in bowl of food processor, and blend well to mix, 1-2 minutes on medium speed.
Pour into crust, and bake for an hour.
Cool completely in the oven, then chill covered in the fridge, preferably overnight.
Ganache
Place chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl. Heat in microwave for 1 minute. Whisk with a balloon whisk until smooth. Cool about 30 minutes, then whisk again. Chill until a little firm. Whisk once again till glossy and smooth, and holds peaks. Spread over chilled cheesecake. Dust with cocoa.
