Pineapple Muffins - No Guilt Snack

So, I call this a no guilt snack.  Why? Reason is I used few ingredients which are really good for health and you don't have to feel bad for eating a sweet.  First thing here I used Whole wheat atta instead of APF. I used EVOO for butter, Low fat yogurt for full fat sour cream, egg whites for 2 eggs and Xylitol instead of sugar.  You can read about the goodness of this sweetner here.

Plantain podimas - Thanjavur style

This is again one of my favourite receipe. In my mom's place, I haven't seen her making podimas with platain (vazhakkai). But in my In-laws place, they make this plantain podimas. The main ingredients are as follows:
Ingredients:-

1. Plantain(vaazhakkai) - 2
2. Oil - 2 tbsp
3. Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
4. Urid dal - 1/2 tsp
5. Fresh coconut - 1 tbsp
6. Green chillies - 2
7. ginger - a small piece
8. Lemon juice - 1 tbsp
9. Salt to taste
10. Curry leaves - 10 nos
11. Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
12. Asafoetida powder -

There are two ways of cooking vazhakkai here, one is remove the skin, cut it into small cubes, pressure cook it adding salt and turmeric powder, upto 2 whistles ( do not mash the cubes). The other method is, cut the vazhakkai into two pieces (after removing the edges), pressure cook it adding salt to it upto 2 whistles. After taking it out from the pressure cooker, remove the skin(it will be easier) mash it. You can choose either one.

Now take a wide pan, pre heat the oil, add mustard seeds, when it splutters add urid dal, green chillies, curry leaves, asafoetida powder, turmeric powder (if you choose the second method of cooking), ginger and try it till golden brown. Now add the vazhakkai pieces or mashed vazhakkai to it and mix everything thoroughly. Turn off the stove and let it cool. After 10 mts add the lemon juice to it and mix it. Sprinkle the fresh coconut on top of it. Vazhakkai podimas is ready to serve. This shoule be a wonder side dish for vatha kozhambu or any kind of kozhambu.

Eggless Dates & Nuts Cake

I made this cake after reading the post from Sony's Kitchen.  I almost followed the same recipe except I used dark brown sugar instead of granulated white sugar.  When we melt the sugar in milk/oil, it will ooze out little bit more water than the regular white sugar.  So I had to add more flour to this cake than the original recipe.

Spicy & Salty Potato Crackers

I made these crackers today for evening snack.  As usual got the recipe from Priya's blog. I almost followed the same recipe except included Ashirwadh atta along with APF.  Here goes my version of spicy crackers.