Swathed in milk

Food Fiesta

Banana Toffee Verrine

Baked Mango Yoghurt

Milk and its by-products are always nutritious and yummy in flavour. Here are a few recipes that can be rustled up at home.

Baked mango yoghurt

Ingredients

Milkmaid ½ tin - (200gm)
Hung curd - 1 Cup
Fresh cream - 1 Cup
Milk (warm) - 3 tablespoon
saffron - Few strands
For garnish - Pistachio
Chopped mango (or any fresh fruits) - 1 Cup

Method

Soak few strands of saffron in 2-3 tsp of warm milk and keep it aside.
In another bowl mix Milkmaid, fresh cream and hung curd and give it a good mix. Pour it into ramekins and bake in a water bath in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Let it cool down completely. Then pour little saffron milk on top and garnish with fresh mango and pistachio.
Serve it cold or at room temperature.

(Courtesy Chef Bhakti Arora, runner-up, MasterChef India Season 4)

Rich Milk Cake (Tres Leches)

Rich Milk Cake (Tres Leches) is an absolute favourite of milk lovers. It is considered to have originated from Mexico though, there are many who will dispute that. Still, there is no doubt about its popularity. Tres Leches means three types of milk. In this recipe, milk is used in three different forms, whole milk, evaporated milk and condensed milk. So while preparing this recipe, one cannot skip either of these three.

Ingredients

For Sponge

Milkmaid ½ cup
Thick curd - 3 tablespoons
Milk - ½ cup
Oil - ¼ cup
Vanilla flavour -½ tablespoon
Flour - 1 cup
Cornflour - 1 tablespoon
Baking Powder - ½ tablespoon
Baking soda - ½ tablespoon
Salt - a pinch

For Tres Leches mixture

Milk - 1 cup
Milkmaid - ½ cup
Fresh cream - 3 tablespoon
Vanilla flavour - ½ tablespoon

For frosting

Milkmaid- 3 tablespoon
Hung curd – 1 cup
Vanilla essence - ¼ tablespoon

Method

For sponge

In a bowl take milkmaid, curd, oil and vanilla essence. Using a whisker, whisk till uniform consistency. Sieve flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt directly into a bowl of wet ingredients. Mix dry and wet ingredients. Slowly add milk bit by bit to get pouring consistency. Meanwhile, keep the oven for preheating at 180 C and line an 8x8 inches square tin with parchment paper/butter paper. In absence of butter paper, simply grease the tin evenly with butter. Pour the prepared batter into the tin and tap it on the counter. Keep the tin in the preheated oven at 180 c for 20 min or until cake passes the toothpick test. Remove it from the oven and let it rest in the tin for 10 min. Then de-mould the cake. Let it cool for another 5 minutes and slowly remove the butter paper, if used. Keep it in a tray/plate

For Tres Leches mixture

For evaporated milk, pour 1 cup milk in a heavy-based saucepan. Stir constantly until it comes to a boil. Allow the milk to simmer on low flame with continuous stirring to avoid any burning. Once the milk reduces to half of the initial quantity, then stop simmering. The evaporated milk is ready.
In a bowl, take prepared evaporated milk, milkmaid and cream. Add vanilla essence and whisk it. Using a fork or toothpick, prick the cake. Pour the prepared Tres Leches mixture all over the cake. Now keep it in the refrigerator for 30 min.

For frosting

Whip the hung curd with milkmaid and vanilla essence. Take out the cake from the refrigerator and spread this frosting evenly on the cake
Tres Leches cake is ready. Garnish with any seasonal fruit on top. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

(Courtesy food blogger Sonia Gupta)

Banana Toffee Verrine

Ingredients

Milkmaid- 400g (do not open the can)
Crispy biscuit crumbs - 1 cup
Powdered sugar - 8 tablespoon
Melted butter - 8 tablespoon
Small glasses - 6 to 8
Solid butter - 3 tablespoon
Ripe banana - 2-3
Fresh cream – 1 Cup
Grated chocolate (optional for garnishing) - 4 tablespoon

Method

Mix biscuit crumb, 5 tablespoons of powdered sugar and melted butter to make a crumbly mixture. You can reduce added sugar if you are using sweet biscuits for crumbs. Keep aside Boil the whole can of Milkmaid as it is (without opening the can) in boiling water for at least 2 hrs. This will make a nice dulce de leche (i.e. caramelised form). Take it out of the boiling water and rest it for a few hours. In a non-stick pan, take solid butter and prepared dulce de leche and cook together on low flame till all the butter is incorporated and a nice fluidity is achieved.

Whisk fresh cream in a bowl with 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar over an ice bath until little stiff and sugar dissolves completely. In each glass, sprinkle about 2-3 tablespoons of the crumbly mixture prepared in Step 1. Add 1 tablespoon of dulce de leche layer on top. Now put some sliced banana pieces. Top up with crumblier mixture for extra crunch. Pour some whisked cream. Top up with dulce de layer again. Finally garnish with grated chocolate and refrigerate for a few hours and serve chilled.

(Courtesy Gaurav Wadhwa, founder, Theos Bakery)