Vanilla cupcake

My luggage, when I was going back to hostel after vacations, used to be mostly comprised of several large steel dabbas filled with ribbon pakoda, murukku and sweets. I am sure I must have been quite a strange sight on the bus that I took from home to hostel. Where most people would expect a college student to travel with books and clothes, here I was with no books, a small bag of clothes and a large number of steel containers. Despite the fact that I am not a huge fan of sweets, my mother would make maida cake, seven cup cake, rava laddoo and rava kesari so that  I could take it back for my friends who had not one, but many sweet teeth.
This vanilla cupcake, which I tried from Joyofbaking is easy to make and will definitely enjoyed by kids and adults alike.

What you need:(Recipe source : Joyofbaking)
All purpose flour/maida - 1.5 cups

Butter - 1/2 cup (softened, at room temperature)
Sugar - 2/3 cups
Eggs - 3
Baking powder - 1.5 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Milk - 1/4 cup
Vanilla essence - 1.5 tsp

Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time and beat well. Add the flour mixture and the milk to the wet ingredients, alternately and in three additions, beating well each time.
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees centigrade. Spoon the batter into the muffin pan/muffin liners until 3/4th full and bake for 15-18 minutes or until done.
I have topped the cupcake with whipped cream frosting and some multi-coloured sprinkles.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#26
This goes to Kamalika who is hosting Kids' Delight, brain child of Srivalli, themed on Back to Hostel Food.

Eggless Mango banana muffins

The mango season is upon us and the variety of mangoes that is available in the market leaves me confused as to which one to buy. I end up buying a different kind each time.
On a recent trip to Coorg, I saw a stretch on the Bangalore-Mysore highway filled with street carts that were laden with different types of mango. The foodie in me had to stop and take a closer look. What I liked best about these vendors is that they give nice juicy chunks of mangoes as samples.....you can taste the mango(es) before you decide which one you want to buy.

These vendors from whom I bought mangoes were very happy to pose for a photo.
The mangoes I bought from them have nothing to do with this post because they were eaten up in almost no time.
I recently (as in this morning) bought a silicon muffin pan and immediately started scouring the web for a good muffin recipe. The search led me to Vaishali's mango cupcakes. I made some minor changes to incorporate ingredients that were in a "use-or-perish" state and the end result is a moist, soft and delightfully yellow cupcake.

What you need:
All purpose flour/maida - 1.5 cups
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Baking powder - 2 tsp
Cardamom powder - 1/2 tsp
Mango - 2 medium sized ripe ones
Banana - 4 small, over ripe ones
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Oil - 1/4 cup

Mix the maida, salt, baking powder and cardamom powder together.
Puree the mango and banana. The quantity I used gave me two cups of thick puree. Take sugar, oil and vanilla essence in a bowl. Add the puree to this and beat till well blended.
Stir this into the flour making sure that it is well mixed but take care to not beat too vigorously.
Pour into the muffin pan until 3/4th full. With a silicon pan, there was no need to grease and the baked muffins were extremely easy to pop out of the pan. I made a few in paper muffin cups as well.
Bake at 175 degree centigrade for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let it cool completely and then dig in.

This post goes to Divya's Show Me Your Muffin event.