Kids and even adults love fruits served with a gooey, sweetened cream. It’s called a Fruit Dip and it can be made very easily.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups sour cream

1 cup whipped topping

3 1/2 (3.5) tablespoon sugar (I prefer brown sugar)

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. You can even use 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract instead of nutmeg

Recipe:

Take a bowl and mix sour cream, sugar cinnamon and nutmeg/vanilla extract. Refrigerate it for 45 minutes. Now add whipped topping to it and refrigerate it for another 15 minutes.

Cut fruit of your choice such as apples, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, oranges, peaches, watermelon into pieces.

Tip: If you are using bananas or apples, dip them into lemon juice. This prevents discoloration.

Place the fruit dip in the center of the plate, with fruits around the dip and serve!

Image courtesy [cracker and cheese]

Vermicelli Upma or Semiya Upma is made out of vermicelli/sevaiyan we use to make kheer. It is seasoned with onions, peppers, chillies and salt and forms an excellent breakfast or snack.

Ingredients:

200 gms semiya or vermicelli (roasted or non-roasted),

1 large onion, chopped,

1 small red pepper; deseeded, halved and sliced,

1 small green/yellow pepper; deseeded, halved and sliced,

2 green chillies; deseeded and finely chopped,

1/2 tsp mustard seeds (rai),

1/2 tsp cumin seeds (jeera),

A pinch of asafetida (heeng),

1/2 tsp turmeric powder (haldi),

Few curry leaves,

Salt to taste,

Oil for tempering,

Water for cooking vermicelli,

Freshly chopped coriander leaves to garnish.

Method: 

If using non-roasted vermicelli then add heat a kadhai and roast the vermicelli on a low flame until they turn light brown in color.

When roasted (or using already roasted ones) add hot water only enough to cover them, add some salt, give it a nice stir, cover with a lid and let them cook for 3-4 minutes or until they break easily when pressed between your fingers. Drain out the water completely and toss with little oil.

Meanwhile, in a pan heat 3 tbsp oil for tempering. Add mustard, cumin, asafetida, curry leaves and when the seeds splutter add onions and chopped chillies. Sauté until they turn light brown. Then add turmeric powder, peppers and cover and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Then add some salt (adjust as per taste since we added some salt while cooking vermicelli), stir and add the cooked vermicelli. Stir well and let them cook for few minutes.

Garnish with freshly chopped coriander leaves and serve as a breakfast or snack.

TIP:

You can also add tomatoes if you like.

Fruit Custard is a version of fruit salad. Well you can call this recipe a fruit salad too. I have added fruits to the custard and garnished with dry fruits and cream. It can be served as a dessert as well as a good way to make your kids eat fruits. I would not say a healthy one, because fruits are to be eaten in their whole form to get maximum nutrients. But this way you can at least get your kids to eat some fruits.

Ingredients:

1 litre low/whole fat milk, cold or at room temperature

4 heaped tbsp of vanilla flavored custard powder (you can use any other flavor like mango or strawberry, melon

4-5 tbsp sugar,

2-3 cups of chopped fruits like apples, chikkus (sapota), bananas, strawberries, bananas, grapes, oranges, papaya or any other seasonal fruits,

Some cashew nuts,

Sweetened cream (optional).

Method:

Take a cup of cold milk and add custard powder to it. Mix until a paste in formed. Bring remaining milk to boil. Add sugar while boiling the milk. Once the milk boils, reduce the flame to minimum and add the paste to it. Stir or mix using a whisk instantly and continue to mix the custard else lumps would be formed. Cook the custard for 3-4 minutes and remove from flame. Let the custard come to room temperature.

Then using a hand blender or a mixer grinder, blend the custard into a smooth paste. Then chill it in the refrigerator. Chill the chopped fruits in the refrigerator until ready to serve. While serving, combine fruits with custard, garnish with cashew nuts and cream.

TIPS:

1. Avoid using sour fruits like kiwi, cherries, etc in the custard as they may spoil the taste.

2. Chop apples and bananas only at serving time, so that they do not turn brown in color until you serve.

3. You can add the cream along with custard while blending it.

I was visiting my in-laws and had some guests over for dinner. We were around 15 people and I and my mom-in-law were cooking. We decided to prepare 2 types of chicken curries and 2 types of vegetarian gravies, along with a fresh green salad, rotis, meat biryani and Trifle pudding as dessert. One of the recipes we prepared was Vegetable Manchurian and everybody loved it. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients: (Serves 10)

1 medium size cabbage; finely grated,

3-4 carrots; finely grated,

1 cup cauliflower florets; washed and pat dried, and finely chopped/coarsely ground,

4-5 scallions; chopped,

2 tbsp garlic paste,

1 cup or as required corn flour,

Salt and pepper to taste,

Any vegetable oil for deep frying.

For the sauce -

1 tbsp very finely chopped garlic,

1 tsp very finely chopped galangal (or use ginger),

3 scallions; finely chopped,

1-2 green peppers (optional) (you can use red/yellow peppers too); chopped,

1/2 cup red chilli sauce,

2 tbsp dark soy sauce,

Salt and sugar to taste,

1/4 cup corn flour mixed with some water to form a paste,

1/4 cup olive oil (or you can use the same vegetable oil you used for frying),

1 tbsp white wine vinegar,

Water as required.

Method:

Combine all the ingredients for Manchurian balls and knead into a dough like mixture. Grease fingers and palms with some oil and make balls. I made around 32 balls from the above mixture. The number may differ upon the size of the balls. Meanwhile place a wok on a low-medium flame and heat oil in it.

Once all the balls are rolled and oil is hot (not smoking hot). Drop a small piece of the mixture into the oil and if it surfaces to the top of the wok, then the oil is at the right temperature. Drop few manchurian balls into the hot oil and fry them at a golden brown color and crisp texture (see picture below). Drain them on paper towels and fry the next batch.

When all the manchurian balls are ready, we will prepare the sauce.

For preparing the sauce -

If using the same vegetable oil, reduce the quantity of oil in the wok to up to 1/4th cup, else in another wok heat olive oil on a low-medium flame for a minute. Add chopped ginger and garlic and sauté on low flame until fragrant. Then add peppers and scallions and stir fry on medium flame. Then add soy and chilli sauce and combine. Add some water, enough to prepare a medium thin gravy. Then add salt (soy sauce has some amount of salt in it, so adjust as per taste), sugar, vinegar and stir. Stir in the manchurian balls and let the gravy simmer for a few minutes. This way all the sauces and flavors will be incorporated in the manchurian balls. In the end, add the corn flour paste, stir and you will find the gravy thickening instantly. Turn off the flame and serve hot over noodles or boiled rice.

NOTE: The sauce in this recipe is not very thick, so that it could be eaten with rice.

Serving Suggestions -

1. Fried Manchurian Balls can be served as a snack or appetizer (starters).

2. The sauce can be very thick and lesser in quantity (reduce the amount of corn flour paste) to prepare a dry manchurian.

My father-in-law loves sweets but is highly conscious about ghee and sugar. He insisted me to make Besan ke Laddoo and asked if they could be made with less ghee and sugar. This is my mother-in-law’s recipe. The original recipe calls for a 2:1:1 ratio of gram flour, ghee and sugar, but as I told you earlier, I modified the recipe to a lesser fatty one. So here in the recipe I will give you the original recipe as well as tell you how I modified it.

Ingredients:

3 cups coarse besan or gram flour,

1 1/2 cups ghee (I used only 1 cup),

1 3/4 cups powdered sugar (I used 1 1/4 cup),

1/2 cup crushed dry fruits like cashews, pistachios, almonds and raisins,

1/2 tsp ground elaichi (green cardamom).

Method:

Melt ghee in a heavy bottom kadhai and add the crushed nuts except raisins. Roast them on low flame for few minutes until they begin to brown. Drain them and set aside. Now add raisins and fry them in ghee for a minute. Drain and set them aside along with other fried nuts.

In the same kadhai, add gram flour and roast on low flame for around 20-25 minutes stirring continuously so that it does not burn. The sign to stop roasting flour would be that the flour becomes fragrant and turns very light brown in color. Do not over roast else it will burn and impart a bitter taste to the laddoos.

When done remove from flame and transfer to a big flattish plate (precisely a parat). If you have used 1 1/2 cups of ghee then wait for the mixture to cool down at room temperature before you add sugar. But if you are using 1 cup ghee as I did, add sugar to the flour immediately. I would suggest you to grind the powdered sugar for a few seconds before you add it to the flour. This way you ensure there are no lumps in sugar and it eases the mixing process.

Then add the fried nuts and mix well. Start rolling laddoos by holding a spoonful of mixture in between your palms and pressing it to fix.

With more quantity of ghee, rolling laddoos is very easy, but with lesser ghee, it make take up some efforts.