Dairy Free Fruit & Nut Bars- Quick and Easy one bowl recipe that's Healthy and Yummy too!

We're nuts for these healthy and delicious Fruit and Nut bars. They contain only 1/4 cup of flour just enough to keep the dried fruits and nuts together and just 1/4 cup or less of sugar so they are tasty without being too sweet, and are like quite like granola bars. The nuts make them crunchy and the dried fruits are both sweet and tart. It would be interesting to make these with rum soaked fruits during Christmas time, instead of the fruit cake which I'm not such a fan of. These though, you must try, even if you are not a fruitcake lover, but love dried fruits and nuts as I do. They leave you feeling pretty full too. Perfect as an after-school snack or breakfast-on-the-go.It would be interesting to try a spicy and salty version of this too, which I might just do soon, but first a version with some chocolate chips!

Important Note: The taste of this really depends on the quality of the fruits and nuts you use. Nuts go rancid very easily and so don't use nuts that taste stale.For longer life, I store nuts in the freezer. If your dried fruits have become hard and dry, you can rejuvenate them, by soaking them in a little warm water- hey add some brandy or rum instead if you like! And they will become juicy and plump again. Drain and pat them dry with a towel and then proceed with the recipe.

Last week, I participated in a Bakesale for Japan and these Fruit and Nut cookies were one of  the goodies I had taken, along with World Peace chocolate chunk cookies, Vegan Banana Bread made with coconut oil and these buttery Nutella stuffed cookies I was thrilled to see all my goodies disappear!

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Lemon curd and some citrus love!

Citrus. Citrus. Citrus. My current favourite word, and one of my all time favourite flavors. Mouth puckeringly tangy, fresh lemons, oranges, sweet limes! Whenever I have a chocolate overdose, I find relief by indulging in some serious citrusyness. hence, you'll find many citrus based recipes here. 

I think some tangyness is in order in the middle of my sweetness overdose! Yes it has been all sweets all this week over here, with my sweet celebration mini event. Joining me in tempting you today is:

Vidhya of Vidhya's good eats with some gorgeous Red velvet bites topped with coconut, inspired by Lamingtons and Renita of On My Platter with a delicious Meringue Coffee Cake filled with Nutella- my other addiction! You can get even by tempting us back with your sweet dish posts from this week by leaving the link in my comments. 

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Announcing food photography event DMBLGIT (Does My Blog Look Good In This?) April 2011 edition

Update: Winners have been announced here



I am so thrilled to be hosting one of my most favourite events this month! I've had such a hard time keeping my excitement levels under control!

"Does My Blog Look Good in This?" popularly known as DMBLGIT is a food photography contest or rather THE food photography contest, which was started in 2005 by Andrew of SpittoonExtra. It's best described as a monthly food and drink photography event open to all bloggers who have posted a food photograph on their blogs during the previous month. At least 6 awards are given each month based on scoring of photographs in the 3 categories of edibility, aesthetics, and originality by 5 judges. 





This month I have the honor of having a group of really AWESOME people who have graciously agreed to  judge the event: Zoe Francois of Zoe Bakes and cook book author of the Bread in 5 series, food bloggers and friends Ria Mathew of Ria's Collection and Shaheen Peerbhai of The Purple Foodie, and food photographer Dario Milano of Food Pixels. Helene Dujardin of My Tartlette, who is also launching a much awaited book on food photography and styling Plate to Pixel will choose her favourite picture, from those that didn't make it to the winning list, but received high scores from the other judges. 





Do check out last month's breathtaking winning entries and gallery of all the spectacular entries over at the awesomely talented and sweet Xiaolu's site  6Bittersweets for some inspiration. Let me warn you though, you may experience awe, food cravings and a strong desire to bite your computer screen! 

General DMBLGIT Rules:

• Only one food/drink photograph may be entered per person.



• The photograph must have been taken by you.


• The photograph must have been posted on your blog between March 1st through March 31st, 2011.


• The deadline to submit your entry is April 20, 2011 at midnight, whenever that is in your part of the world.

Scoring:

The Panel of judges will choose 6 winners based on the following criteria:

Aesthetics: composition, food styling, lighting, focus, etc.

Edibility: does the photo make us want to take a big bite out of our computer monitor while drooling on our keyboard?

Originality: a photo that makes you stop, look twice, and think “Wow! I never thought of photographing it like that before.”

Three overall winners will be selected plus one in each of the 3 categories. Apart from this one photo that  stands out, but wasn’t chosen as a winner will also be picked usually by the host, but thankfully the lovely Helene who is a much more qualified person for that job, will be doing it this month! My post announcing the winners for this month will be published by May 1, 2011 

How to Enter DMBLGIT:

Send an e-mail with "DMBLGIT Entry" as the subject line to me at magpiemails [at] gmail [dot] com. In your email, please include:

• An attachment of a single qualifying food or drink photo you'd like to enter. It should be without text and no more than 500 pixels in width.



• Your name


• Your blog URL


• The title of the image/what it is


• The URL of the post containing the photograph


• The camera and lens you used


• Please also mention if you are a professional photographer or an amateur

Photographs will be loaded into this gallery in Picasa as I receive them. If you don't get an acknowledgment from me within 72 hours of sending your entry, please leave a message in the comments section of this post. By submitting a photo, entrants agree to their photo being redisplayed and altered in size on the host’s page and on the SpittoonExtra DMBLGIT page.

If you have any questions about this month's event, please feel free to email me. Anyone with interest in hosting a future edition of DMBLGIT should email Andrew with "DMBLGIT Host" as the subject. 





I can't wait to see each and every one of your beautiful entries! 





Update: Winners have been announced here

Cardamom Dulce De Leche in 15 minutes ( Microwave version)

I'm sorry to be doing this to you. Yes I know it is pure torture. First I say I am going to foist sweets on you this entire week as part of my week long sweet celebration mini-event, then I do this! I know you do not need the thousand calories and more ( I don't even want to know) that are contained in a can of condensed milk. No, caramelizing condensed milk  does in no way mitigate that, though it does make it even more delicious-(and hence maybe worth it?). And no, there is no way to prevent you from adding said calories to your hips in one sitting if you are a greedy girl or boy and finish the entire can without sharing. See I shared. I'm nice like that.

Some one else who is nice? Sarah of Spoonful of delight. She's joining me in my sweet celebration today as well with some awesome caramel candy apples! thanks Sarah! You can join in the fun too. Just leave a link to a sweet dish you posted this week and I'll include it in my sweet post tomorrow :)

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Nutella stuffed butter cookies and Nutella swirl cookies, to celebrate a sweet victory!

Nutella can make me weak in the knees. Mostly I end up eating huge gobs of it straight from the jar ( Sssh! don't tell!) but then sometimes I save it ( well some of it atleast) to bake stuff with, like these oh-my-goodness-so-awesome Nutella Brownies  or these buttery crunchy Nutella swirl cookies as well as cookies stuffed with gooey Nutella. These golden brown swirly beauties are my second entry to my week long sweet celebration, Yes, I will be posting one sweet dish everyday of the week till Saturday! Joining me today is

Sarah of Spoonful of Delight with Marble Cupcakes and Sneha of Inspirational art of cooking with chocolate muffins! if you want to join in the sweetness, just leave a comment with a sweet dish you posted this week and I'll include it in my post the next day :)Would be nice if you could add a link back to this mini-event in your post too.

I was thrilled to bits that these chocolate chunk cookies a.k.a World Peace cookies and Nutella swirl cookies were sold out almost as soon as they were placed on the table at the bake sale for Japan  this Saturday- in about 10 mins flat!

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Coconut Kissed Banana Bread (No butter, no eggs!) to kick start a week long sweet celebration!

I was busy  baking and packing some goodies to take to the bake sale on friday night and meanwhile getting a feel of what was going on during the match through the husband's reactions. "Noooo!!!"and @#$%! whenever we lost a wicket and claps and cheers and much thumping of our poor table when something good happened. Comments were flying through FB too and it was fun to read everyone's reactions! 

Definitely a sweet victory for cricket crazy India, after 28 long years since the last World cup win. Most definitely something worth celebrating! 

I though this deserves an extra special celebration- like a week long sweet celebration! Yes I will post one sweet or dessert posts every day of the week till Saturday! This will also motivate me to post the recipes of the goodies that I already baked for the bake sale, and also some new ones I am dying to try! You are welcome to join me on this sweet ride! Leave a link to your sweet dish in the comments and I will link it in my next day's post :) It would be nice if you can link back to this mini event post in your's too.

This sweet coconutty banana bread, would be a perfect treat to start with especially for fellow banana bread/cake lovers like me. It is also one of the easiest things ever to bake. All you need is a bowl and a fork to mix the batter. No need for electric mixers, and also no need for butter or eggs! 

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Spicy Rice Crispies, what we munched on during the match!

I am not a sports fan. I am a food fan! If I ever go to a baseball match here, I am sure I will be more interested in the stadium hot dogs than the match. The last time the husband tried to get me interested in American football, I was looking at game menus and baked some super quick and easy beer bread for us to have instead- don't blame me for that though- that game is so crazy! There are waaaaayyy too many rules and too much violence for me!  

However, some times, you cannot help getting caught up in the excitement around you. And being so very far away from home, I never expected that I would get caught up in the cricket craziness here in the US!

But the excitement of my FB friends and that of the sports obsessed husband was infectious. 

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