Healthy desserts

Watching Masterchef Australia seems to have released some of my suppressed-due-to-laziness urges to cook and create. So I came up with this sunshine dessert over the weekend, which had the added benefits of being healthy, pretty, simple and liked by the kids!

Ingredients:
Hung Curd ( yogurt) - 1 liter
Powdered sugar - 2 tbsp
Peach slices - fresh or tinned ( if tinned in syrup, wash them else they can be sickly sweet)
Frozen raspberries/ blueberries - 1 cup
Pine nuts- handful, peeled and toasted

Tie up 1 liter of fresh curd/ yogurt in a thin linen cloth and leave out for about an hour, until most of the liquid is drained out. Add the powdered sugar to the hung curd and mix well. In wine glasses - because it looks so pretty and is easy to serve - put in a good dollop of the hung curd. Top with two peach slices. Add a spoonful of the rasps/ blueberries. Add another dollop of the hung curd. Sprinkle on the pine nuts. Serve!

This makes enough for 6 people. (Pic will be posted sometime soon)

Bananas about it

We love bananas in our family and end up buying large quantities of them. The only catch – you guessed it – they have this awful tendency to get overripe fast. The same thing happened last week and then an old family recipe dashed to the rescue. This is a banana relish, which is delicious eaten with rotis, on bread as a spread, served with pancakes/ idlis/ dosais or even by itself for dessert. And it lends itself easily to being taken up or down a notch with minimal effort. Try it, the kids will love it and it's easy-peasy!

Banana Relish

Ingredients:
2 slightly overripe bananas
Handful grated jaggery or brown sugar
Handful grated fresh coconut ( you can use dessicated coconut too, but in that case cut it into thin slivers)
To kick it up a notch: add a tsp cardamom, a bit of vanilla icecream, some slivered orange peel or if not serving to kids a peg of Malibu coconut liqueur, and a few roasted cashews

Mash the bananas roughly so they are still a little lumpy. Add the jaggery/ sugar and coconut and mix well. Garnish with cashews and serve to delirious applause from picky children!

This is one of my entries for Srivalli's Mithai Mela