with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Serendib House Valentine’s Day sale is live. Quantities limited — when we hit the point where I think I won’t be able to make them in time, we’ll close orders. Will post in more detail in the morning, but if you’re seeing this tonight, have fun. 
https://serendib-kitchen.myshopify.com/…/valentines-day…
Nice to wake up to scones. The kids, sadly, don’t love these because of the ginger — it’s a bit too intense a flavor for them. So I’m going to be packing most of them up later today to drop off to a few neighbors. But it was nice to wander down, a little groggy, and have these waiting for my breakfast. Reheat in toaster oven a few minutes, split, spread with butter and mango-passionfruit curd. YUM.
(40 minutes, makes 16 mini scones)
When researching vegan scone recipes, I found many versions that used ground flax seeds, which seem to be used as an egg substitute — but I don’t generally have flax seeds on hand, and was hoping to avoid buying extra ingredients.
Honestly, these didn’t seem to need them! Cream scones don’t generally require eggs. The solid coconut oil happily takes the place of butter, and rich coconut milk substitutes beautifully for cream. They’re delicious, light and tender, and quite more-ish, just as they are!
2 T. jaggery or dark brown sugar, optional
1. Preheat oven to 425 F.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
3. Chop coconut oil small and rub into the flour with your fingers until the flour looks pebbly.
4. Add coconut milk and gently combine with a silicone spatula or fork; do not overwork. Stir in mango and ginger.
5. Refrigerate dough for 15-20 minutes for better rise.
6. If using a mold, spray with oil; alternately, spray oil or add a sheet of parchment paper to a baking sheet. Fill mold with dough, pressing gently to fill. Alternately, press dough into a circle and cut into wedges, or cut out circles. Places wedges or circles about 1″ apart on sheet. Sprinkle scones with jaggery or brown sugar.
7. Bake for 14-18 minutes, until scones begin to brown. Remove from oven and serve warm. Traditionally they’d be split, and spread with butter, jam, clotted cream, curd, or whatever you like.
NOTE: Scones may be cooled and stored airtight at room temperature for several days; they can be frozen for longer storage.
(25 minutes, makes 16 mini scones)
Fast, simple, classic, delicious. I find kitchen shears work best for chopping up dried mango and ginger.
a few T sugar, optional
1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
3. Combine vanilla and cream, drizzle over dry ingredients, stirring gently to combine. Try not to overwork, or scones will become tough. Stir in mango and ginger.
4. If using a mold, spray with oil; alternately, spray oil or add a sheet of parchment paper to a baking sheet. Fill mold with dough, pressing gently to fill. Alternately, press dough into a circle and cut into wedges, or cut out circles. Place wedges or circles about 1″ apart on sheet.
5. Optional: brush scones with cream and sprinkle with sugar.
6. Bake for 14-15 minutes, until scones begin to brown. Remove from oven and serve warm. Traditionally they’d be split, and spread with butter, jam, clotted cream, curd, or whatever you like.
Served here with mango & passionfruit curd (recipe: https://serendibkitchen.com/2021/01/17/mango-passionfruit-curd/)
NOTE: Scones may be cooled and stored airtight at room temperature for several days; they can be frozen for longer storage.
Reminder note about two cook-alongs this week — Wednesday Jan 27 & Friday January 29! For Friday’s class, I’m tentatively planning to do both a meat and vegetarian (in fact, vegan) option (probably eggplant curry). Classes start at 5:30 CST, and people are welcome to just watch, chat, (and knit or crochet if they like) if they don’t feel like cooking along.
“Join us and special guest Mary Anne Mohanraj (2020 Fiberworld host!) to create the perfect Ceylon Curry mix! Mary Anne will take us through creating this delectable mix and then follow up with a hands-on make-along on January 29th to make the dish (YUM!). Join us for one or both events to put some spice in your new year!”
You can also buy a ‘spice bundle’ on the Fiberworld site, but it would arrive after the class. So if you’re signing up and want to make curry powder along with me, you might want to pick up the ingredients and supplies yourself in advance. You’ll need:
2 rounded t. cayenne (optional)
+ a mortar and pestle or dedicated spice grinder (I use a coffee grinder)
Sign up here: https://fiberworldshow.com
Folks, I am contemplating whether it makes sense to run a little Kickstarter for the Vegan Serendib cookbook. Originally, I hoped the profits from Feast would just cover the production costs, but the pandemic kind of shattered that hope — not anytime soon, anyway.
We’re not doing a print run, just POD, so I don’t need to raise a large amount of money in advance, thankfully. But there ARE some costs — aside from my time (ha ha), there’s Stephanie Bailey’s time editing and producing the book, the cover artist’s cost, etc. I feel like I JUST ran a Kickstarter for the podcast, and maybe my readers have Kickstarter fatigue from me? But maybe this is a completely different set of readers, and I shouldn’t worry about it?
I think we’d keep it very simple — essentially, Kickstarting it would be letting you pre-order it at a small discount — probably free shipping (plus possibly getting it a few months early).
Production costs are something like $3000 or so, so at $40 for a hardcover, 75 people pre-ordering through Kickstarter would cover it. Thoughts?
Why am I making ice cream in the dead of winter? Well, we’ve almost finished eating all the ice cream from the summer, and we wanted more ice cream. Also, I had a lot of mango-passionfruit curd (made because I had a lot of egg yolks left over after making chai meringue kisses), and I wanted to try something, hence: mango-passionfruit ice cream. It is VERY good.
This did push the capacity of my little ice cream maker, so you might want to reduce quantities a bit. But this is what I made.
*****
Mango & Passionfruit Ice Cream
1 c. mango-passionfruit curd (plus more for topping)
1. Prepare ice cream bowl the night before (mine requires freezing overnight.)
2. Whisk all ingredients except the curd together until the sugar dissolves, pour into ice cream bowl and churn following manufacturer’s instructions.
3. After about 10-15 minutes, it should be starting to look ice cream-ish. Add in passionfruit curd. (Could you just add it in at the beginning? Probably, but I didn’t try that, so no guarantees!) Continue to churn until you reach soft-serve consistency — generally 25-40 minutes total.
(Alternately, you should be able to make the vanilla ice cream, transfer it to a container, add the mango-passionfruit curd, then use a knife to drag it through, creating a ribbon of curd through the vanilla ice cream. I haven’t tried that yet, though!)
4. Transfer to an airtight container and freeze. (When I pulled mine out the next day, it was a soft frozen consistency, easy to eat with a spoon, creamy and delectable.)
5. Serve with a little more mango-passionfruit curd dolloped on top. Whipped cream and/or hot fudge would also go very nicely.
NOTE: For a Sri Lankan-style ice cream sundae, consider this ice cream with plenty of fresh mango, banana, avocado, a little drizzle of lime-ginger syrup to tie it all together, and some salted roasted cashews on top!
NOTE 2: Curd recipe is here.
(makes approximately 2 1/2 c.)
I doubled the amount when I was making this, because I had PLANS for my passionfruit curd. But this is probably an appropriate amount for reasonable people. Fabulous topping for vanilla ice cream (or mixed in while making your own, to create mango-passionfruit ice cream), equally fabulous on a scone, ideally with a bit of clotted cream or butter.
(Honestly, sometimes I just open the fridge, grab a jar, and help myself to a spoonful straight up. It’s fruit! And eggs! Surely that’s good for you…)
Recipe adapted from Nik Sharma’s recipe for passionfruit curd. Sharma uses fresh passionfruit for his, so has lovely little seed flecks; you can certainly do that as well, if you have fresh passionfruit on hand, though it’s a bit more work and does change the texture. A food thermometer is very helpful for making curd of any kind, though not a requirement.
Ingredients:
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1. Make a double-boiler: fill a medium saucepan with about an inch of water and bring to a simmer; place a large heat-proof bowl over the saucepan. (The water shouldn’t touch the base of the bowl.)
2. Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl and whisk about 6-8 minutes; mixture will thicken and turn pale yellow (around 151F). (You may want to use an electric beater, to save your arm.)
3. Whisk in the passionfruit puree, mango puree, butter, and salt until combined. Switch to a silicone spatula, and from this point on, stir constantly, scraping the sides of the bowl regularly. Cook until the mixture thickens, about 10-12 minutes (to about 165-170F). You’re aiming for a thick, custard-like consistency. Congrats, you’ve achieved curd!
4. Remove and transfer the curd to a container — if you’ve whisked and stirred well, there shouldn’t be any scrambled egg bits. If there are, you can strain the curd through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth.
5. Cover (a piece of plastic film pressed against the surface will avoid a skin forming) and refrigerate at least 4 hours until chilled. Keep refrigerated and use within one week. (It never lasts that long here.) You may also freeze it for up to one month.
Mango & ginger cream scones. Recipe tomorrow.
Cute, hm? Not quite my usual style, but very sweet. Passionfruit-rose soap in a knitted heart for Valentine’s Day.
I’m thinking we can probably put together some kind of Valentine’s Day treat package, but quantities will be very limited — I can maybe do 15 of them? I’m thinking these kinds of things:
– knitted vanilla candle
Pick 7: $30 + shipping
No shipping for local porch pick-up?
And then the option to add on cookbooks, tea towels, gift cards, etc. Comment here if you’d like to be tagged in…
