How to make cookies at home easily 

[hana-code-insert name=’rectangle’ /]While watching your favourite movie, just having a casual snack in the evening or for guests to offer the best form of a light eatables are undoubtedly ‘Cookies’. Cookies are best enjoyed when eaten with a cup of hot cappuccino or dipped in chocolate sauce with nuts as a topping. This irresistible snack can easily be prepared at home with no cumbersome ingredients or much effort.

Cookies can be enjoyed both in summers and winters, if served with the right kind of a beverage. For winters cookies can be savoured with a cup of grand espresso and in summers they can be teamed with milkshakes, cold coffees and even ice cream. Who says cooking is a rocket science? It is easy and a fun activity to make quick snacks like the cookies.

Ingredients to prepare simple butter cookies or better known as plain cookies

• 3/4^th part of a stick of butter
• 1/4^th cup of sugar
• ½ tea spoonful of cardamom
• 1/4^th cup of cashew nuts
• 1 cup of flour
• 1/4^th cup of almonds
• 1/4^th cup of raisins
• 1/4^th table spoonful of baking powder
• Chocolate syrup
• Chocolate chips. Just about a handful of them.

Method for preparation of cookies

• Add sugar, butter and baking powder in a bowl and blend it thoroughly ensuring that no lumps shall appear.
• Now add the cardamom and flour to the blended mix and again beat and blend it.
• While blending the mix add raisins, almonds and cashew nuts to it. Keep stirring meanwhile.
• When the mix is well blended, take one tablespoon of it and flatten it on a smooth non-greased surface or a sheet, making it look like a cookie.
• Now bake the cookie dough kept on the non-greased surface on 350 degree for about 15-17 minutes.
• After it is baked it must be golden brown in colour as this ensures that the cookie has been baked perfectly.
• Garnish the cookies with a small quantity of chocolate syrup poured onto it and a few chocolate chips sprinkled all over.
• Serve with a cup of cool mocha-chillo to beat the summer heat.

Some important tips

• To make chocolate cookies add cocoa powder into the above mentioned ingredients.
• For vanilla cookies, vanilla essence, which is easily available in the market, too can be added.
• For any other flavour, essences can be bought from the market and added into the mix.
• Apart from the toppings mentioned above any other kind of toppings or garnishing materials can be used too depending upon your taste and choice.

How to Make  Chocolate Cake

Do you often dream of a fantasy world where everything is made up of chocolates? [hana-code-insert name=’rectangle’ /]Rivers made up of chocolate flowing softly from the valleys of chocolate mountains. Where chocolate candies hang from the trees instead of leaves. Whenever you open the tap you see chocolate flowing out of it. A world where there are chocolate fountains, field where chocolates are grown and chocolates are sold for a living… and suddenly you wake up to find that it was just a dream!

Now you sure need to have something to quench your chocolate urge. How about a chocolate cake! The last thing you want to do is get up, change and drive your way to the cake shop, but there is nothing to worry about because a chocolate cake can easily be prepared at home itself. With no heavy equipments and complicated ingredients you will be ready with a delicious, lip-smacking ‘Chocolate Cake’!

Ingredients to prepare the chocolate cake

• 2 eggs
• ½ cup of milk
• ½ a teaspoonful of salt
• 2 teaspoonful of baking powder
• ½ cup refined oil
• 1 cup of sugar
• 6 tablespoonful of cocoa powder
• 1 ½ cup of flour
• 2 ½ teaspoonful of vanilla essence
• 1 egg white
• 300 grams of sifted powder

Method for preparing the chocolate cake

• Mix egg, flour, 4 table spoonful of cocoa powder, salt, vanilla essence, sugar and baking powder in a container.
• While beating the mix add milk and refined oil to it. Make sure to beat the mix thoroughly and make it silky. To check take some mix out on a spoon.
• Now take another pan with height of about 8 inches and apply some refined oil to its base.
• Put the mix in this pan.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Put the pan inside the oven and again set the temperature to 350 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. When you take out the pan the mix should have become fluffy and should have bloomed to look like a cake.
• Now take out the pan and insert a toothpick in the middle of the cake to check that the mix should not stick on the toothpick. If it does it means the cake needs to be baked for some more time.
• Keep the cake aside to let it cool down.
• Take a bowl in the meantime and put egg white into it and start stirring.
• While stirring keep adding sifted powder into it.
• After stirring it for some time add 2 tablespoonful of cocoa powder into it and again start stirring for it to be thoroughly mixed into each other and appears to be shiny.
• Cover this bowl with a warm towel for sometime.
• This mix is called ‘icing’ and it is spread on the top of the cake.
• By this time the cake too must have cooled down. So now apply icing on the top of the cake and the rest around the cake.
• You can also sprinkle graded chocolate on the cake or can make designs on the cake by putting some icing in a nozzle.
• The lip-smacking, yummy chocolate cake is now ready to be cut and savoured transporting you to your dreamy, chocolaty fantasies!

How to make Biryani: Hyderabadi style

India is famously called the land of spices. Here people of different culture prepare different kinds of food and the delicacies are so delicious that people from other parts of the world on having Indian food for the first time always wonder why they’ve missed it all their life! [hana-code-insert name=’rectangle’ /]The aroma of Indian spices and dishes pulls in a lot of tourists from all over the world. Not only is its landscapes worth treasuring, so are the welcoming people and the food they serve to their guests, called ‘Atithi’ with love and care. Here they believe, “Atithi Devo Bhava”, which means that the guest holds an equivalent position to the Almighty and that he/she is to be served nobly with care. Different parts of India are famous for different kinds of food.

Talking of Biryani, it is such a famous dish in India that people from all other cities and states apart from Hyderabad too love having it. We always lure the dish and long for the next trip to Hyderabad to savour the taste of the very famous dish of the Nizams, the Biryani. So, here’s a simple recipe of this famous dish so that the next time you wish to have it you can easily prepare it at home!

Ingredients to cook biryani

• 3 tablespoonful of cashew nuts
• 3 tablespoonful of raisins
• 2 cups of Basmati rice
• Finely chopped 1 potato, 1/3^rd cabbage, 1 carrot, 50 grams beans, 2 green chillies, 2 garlic cloves, 2 tomatoes and 1 onion.
• 50 grams fresh green peas. If It’s not a peas’ season, frozen peas can also be used which is easily available in the market.
• Salt to taste
• 1 teaspoonful of red chilli powder
• 2 tablespoonful of dalchini
• 2 tablespoonful of zeera
• 5 cloves of laung
• 2 pinches of mustard seeds
• 3 pinches of pepper
• 1 cup yoghurt or dahi
• Refined oil.

Method for preparing biryani

• Rinse Basmati rice in clean drinking water thoroughly.
• Take a pan and add 2 cups of water, the rinsed rice, a pinch of salt, cashew nuts and raisins in it.
• Cook the rice without closing the lid. Remember not to cook the rice fully and leave it half cooked to be later cooked fully with the vegetables. The Basmati rice just needs to be flavoured with cashew nuts and raisins.
• Take a large pan and add 2 tablespoonful of refined oil and sauté finely chopped vegetables in it. Also add green peas to it.
• Then add zeera, dalchini, laung, mustard seed and pepper in it. Mix it well.
• Add salt to taste and red chilli powder too in it.
• Fry them till they are well cooked.
• Till the vegetables get fried blend the yoghurt well to make it thin. Remember no lumps should appear.
• Now add the yoghurt to the vegetables being fried and stir it well.
• When the yoghurt gets mixed in the vegetables add the Basmati rice to it and let it cook for 5 minutes.
• Garnish Biryani with dry fruits, elaichi, mint and saffron.
• Serve the aromatic, mouth- watering Biryani with Pyaz Ka Raita and become a true Hyderabadi for a day!

How to make fried rice : Chinese style

[hana-code-insert name=’rectangle’ /]China is famous for many things, its culture, its people, its infrastructure and the architecture of its cities. When it comes to architecture how can we not mention magnificently beautiful in sight ‘The Great Wall Of China’, but what China is most famous for is its food. The delicacies prepared by the Chinese are so delicious and mouth watering that no matter how many times we have it we are still left asking for more! Chinese food is available in almost all the parts of the world.

Not every, but many dishes are famous globally for its distinguished flavour and recipe. The Chinese are one of the largest consumers of rice in the world and their famous dish, the ‘Chinese Fried Rice’ is loved by one and all. We often wonder how they are so proficient in cooking and never fail to achieve the same taste every time. The answer to this question is that they have their set recipe and methodology that they follow while cooking which can be achieved with practice. The good news is that it is not even difficult to prepare!

Ingredients for preparing fried rice:

1. Salt to taste
2. 2 finely chopped carrots
3. 1/3^rd cabbage finely chopped.
4. 2 cups of rice
5. Pepper to taste
6. 4 tablespoonful of refined sunflower oil. Olive oil too can be used if you don’t want to run for extra hours on the treadmill to burn those calories.
7. 100 grams of French beans cut small
8. 3 finely chopped green chillies
9. 1 finely chopped onion
10. 1 sliced onion
11. 3 finely chopped garlic cloves
12. 2 tablespoonful of Soya sauce
13. 1/3^rd finely chopped ginger to add that zing to it.

 Method to be followed in the preparation of chinese fried rice

• Rinse the rice in drinking water thoroughly.
• Soak the rice for 15-20 minutes in water and then drain.
• Now boil some water in a pan, put the rice in it and add a pinch of salt.
• Put the flame on medium and let it cook. One thing to be kept in mind is not to overcook the rice as it needs to be cooked later too with other vegetables.
• Make sure you add in just enough water to rice so that after the water gets evaporated, leaving not a single grain of the rice sticky. For ensuring that the grains of rice don’t remain sticky add some oil or butter while cooking.
• When the rice is cooked rinse it in some cool water and again drain the water.
• Heat some sunflower refined oil in a pan.
• Add finely chopped onion, green chillies, garlic clove, ginger, cabbage and carrots to it.
• Sauté them for 5 minutes.
• Make sure the vegetables are not fully done and remain semi-cooked.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Now put in the rice and mix thoroughly.
• While mixing, add Soya sauce to it and again stir and mix.
•  Let the rice cook for 5 more minutes.
• Serve hot Chinese Fried Rice with a cup of herbal tea and sweetened cucumber and cabbage salad to get the real feel of China.