PINK HEART COOKIES

Ingredients:

Eggs - 2
Melted and cooled butter - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1 cup
All purpose flour - 4 cups
Vanilla sugar - 1 pack/7 gms (or vanilla essence - 1 2 tsp)
Beetroot juice (extracted without water) - 7 tbsp ( or pink food color)

Preparation:

Grate beetroot and extract juice without adding water. Or use a juicer to extract juice. We need 7 tbsp juice. Beat eggs in a vessel. Then add sugar, vanilla sugar and butter one after another and beat well.


Now add 4 tbsp beetroot juice and mix well.


Then add all purpose flour little by little and mix well. Knead to a loose dough. Finally add another 3 tbsp juice to get a nice color and refrigerate for 30 minutes.


Preheat oven in 180 degrees Celsius. Shape the dough to heart shaped cookies.


Bake for 7 minutes if you need it in pink.


But pink cookies wont stay good more than 3 days. If you want to store long then bake for 10 minutes. This stays long but color will be brown.

  

Note:
Pink food color can be added for a better result. I don't want to add artificial color. So I used beet juice.

TOAST BREAD WITH VEGGIES

This is also my daughters own recipe, She asked me to toast bread, grate carrots and coconut and to chop red bell peppers. She prepared and had. and then said tasty ma.

Ingredients:

Toast bread - 2 slices

Butter to toast the bread

Freshly grated coconut - 2 tbsp

Grated carrots - 4 tbsp

Chopped red bell peppers - 2 tbsp

Grated emmental cheese - 2 tbsp (If emmental is not available any nutty semi hard cheese can be used)

Preparation:

Toast the bread slices with butter.

Mix together coconut and carrots. Now spread this mix over the slices. 

Now sprinkle chopped red bell peppers.

Finally sprinkle cheese and enjoy.

RAGI / FINGER MILLET IDLY (WET GRINDER METHOD - RAGI FLOUR AND WHOLE RAGI)

Using ragi flour

Ingredients:

Black gram splits - 1 cup

Ragi flour - 3 cups

Salt to taste

Preparation:

Soak black gram splits for one hour and grind in a wet grinder. Add water little by little to make a smooth and fluffy paste. When done transfer to a big vessel.

Add ragi flour, water and salt  to make a batter little thicker than idly consistency.

Allow to ferment for atleast 8 hours. Not like rice idly, ragi idly batter must be really fermented and raised. 

Now spoon batter to idly plated and steam for 10 minutes. 

Ragi idly tastes good with spicy gravy or sambhar.

Note:

No need to grease the idly plates before pouring batter. After steaming remove the plates and turn upside down. Pour some cold water carefully over the plate. 

Now let it sit for two minutes and use a spoon to remove idlies. It will be easier to remove and also hot too.

Using whole ragi

Ingredients:

Black gram splits - 1 cup

Raw rice - 1 cup

Whole ragi - 2 cups

Salt to taste

Preparation:

Soak gram splits in a bowl for one hour. Soak rice and whole ragi together in another vessel for one hour. When soaked grind the black gram splits into a smooth paste in a wet grinder until fluffy. Transfer to a big vessel and now grind rice and ragi together to a coarse batter.


Now mix this with the gram splits paste to get a batter of idly consistency. Add salt to taste and allow to ferment.


When fermented prepare idly and serve hot with any side dish of your choice.

When carefully noted some skin of ragi can be seen. Ragi cannot be grinded so smoothly but still the idly turns out very soft.

Note: 

• Grind ragi together with rice. Otherwise it takes a long time to grind and also it wont turn out good.
• Any whole grain millet can be used in this same ratio. 
• If so then grind rice and the millets separately. Only for ragi grinding together is must. Others give good results when ground separately.