Bag Cake

This is my first fondant work. The cake is baked in a round tin and then cut in the middle. The two pieces are stood with their backs against each other and stuck with buttercream icing. After an initial crumb coating, the fondant is directly placed on the cake.

The white fondant is cut individually for front, back and top by tracing the cake outline on a kitchen towel. Detailing is done with the pink fondant. The flower is made with fondant itself. The individual pieces of fondant are stuck using water.

The cake is a vanilla cake with layered rainbow colours.

Recipe for vanilla cake:

1 ½ cups flour
¾ cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup milk
½ cup oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

Recipe for buttercream icing:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2-3 tsp milk

Rainbow Cake

Have fun with kids or surprise everyone with a rainbow cake. Simply make a basic vanilla cake mixture and divide it into 7 parts. Add food colouring for VIBGYOR – Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red to each part. There is no need to get seven different colours. The primary colours, blue, yellow and red can be used to make the rest of the shades. However, you need to use a lot of food colouring to get bright vibrant shades.

Once the seven batters are prepared, grease the cake tin. Drop violet cake batter in the middle. This will form the base of the cake. Drop indigo cake batter on top in the middle and continue till you have dropped the red one. The cake batter will move slowly on its own to fill the cake tin. You can also start from red and go to violet.

Bake the cake as per instructions and let cool completely before cutting and see everyone’s jaws drop and eyes light up!

Chocolate Brownies

The best part of making brownies is the lovely smell that fills the house. Just be careful not to overcook them or they will become too hard and too crumbly.

Ingredients

6 tbsp unsalted butter + more for greasing

170 gm good quality chocolate with atleast 70% cocoa solids

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp instant coffee granules

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Chocolate Brownies

Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence till light and frothy.

Break the chocolate into small pieces. Mix in butter, cocoa powder and coffee powder and heat in a bain-marie or microwave for 1 min till the chocolate melts. Mix the chocolate with the eggs.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Add to the egg and chocolate mix and whisk slowly till the batter is of a similar consistency. Scrape down the edges to enable proper mixing of the flour.

Heat the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with parchment paper or foil and grease it. Leave a little bit of the paper/foil hanging from the edges. This will help to lift the brownie easily.

Pour the brownie batter into the prepared tray and bake at 200C for 35 mins.

Take out the brownie and let it cool for 15 mins before cutting and serving.

 

Tip: Make it more gooey and kid friendly by making the following changes:

Add 3 eggs instead of 2

Add 140 gm unsalted butter and 150 gm of dark chocolate

Eliminate the cocoa and coffee. However, the flavor will not be as deep.

Bake at 160C for 40 mins and let cool completely before cutting.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookie

Cookie man introduced me to home made cookies. Not the ones you get packed and ready in supermarket but those which are made fresh in front of you. They are fresh and warm and have an amazing sweetness to them. The aroma of freshly backed cookies hits you as soon as you enter the shop. It is an amazing experience and you cannot not buy some. And then when I moved to London where baking is a huge part of cooking, I wondered why not try to make some.

I bought a cookie sheet but I was always scared of making them. So after 2 months of resting the cookie sheet in the cupboard and having millions of dreams of milk and cookies, I finally took a chance. I chose an easy recipe for safeguard and I am happy to say, it was everything I could have imagined. The house was filled with the aroma of freshly baked cookies and the best compliment was from my hubby. He ate up the entire first batch without missing a beat and could not wait to have more.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups plain flour

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 pinch salt

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

2 tsp baking soda

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

Beat unsalted butter and oil with the white and brown sugar till light and fluffy. Add the eggs, salt and vanilla essence and mix together.

Sift flour and baking soda and mix it with the batter along with the chocolate chips.

Line a baking tray with cookie sheet. Drop 1/2 tbsp of cookie dough on the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart from each other. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 10 mins at 175 degrees C till the cookies are golden brown on the edges. Take out the baking tray and let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 5 mins. Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

The cookies will be crisp on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. Store in an airtight box for upto 1 week.

Zucchini Bread

Well, there are these zucchinis lying in my fridge, courtesy Hubby’s colleague. And hubby was quite tied up about the zucchini bread. So the search began again and the internet offered multitudes of zucchini bread recipes. Here is my adapted version. Turned out quite well I suppose as hubby could not have enough of it and even took some for his colleague as a thank you gesture.

This recipe makes a 2 pound loaf or you can divide it into two smaller ones.

Ingredients

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups white sugar

2 cups grated zucchini

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped almonds

Zucchini Bread

Beat the eggs till light and fluffy. Add oil and sugar and mix till well blended. Add the dry ingredients except flour. Add the grated zucchini and the vanilla essence. Mix thoroughly. Leave the skin on the zucchini for this gives a wonderful color to the bread. Squeeze out excess juices before mixing it in.

Add the flour one cupful at a time and fold in gently.

Grease the loaf tin and pour the bread batter in it. Sprinkle the almonds on top.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 165 degrees C for 60-70 minutes or till a toothpick when inserted comes out clean. Let it cool on a wire rack before serving.

Zucchini Bread

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

Exotic things are always, well, exotic. Mostly becau se they are not in our reach. Be it locations, people or in my case, fruits and vegetables. Zucchini has always puzzled me. It is there in Chinese food and Italian food and is served in all exotic restaurants. However, the concept of the vegetable always seems to have escaped me. Until recently that is.

Hubby dear has a colleague who, I have heard many times, a wonderful garden which he loved to tend. He grows many flowers, fruits and vegetables and does this and does that. All that was fine till we became the recipient of the exotic vegetable Zucchini. Four big fat green pieces of it and I had no idea what to do with them. So hubby and I did some research on it. We found that zucchini, also known as courgette (another puzzle of one more exotic food solved), is a small summer squash very akin to cucumber. However, zucchini being a vegetable, is always served cooked. The texture is different and it is harder than a cucumber. The color of the vegetable might vary from yellow to various shades of green. It can be prepared using a variety of cooking techniques, including steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed and baked, barbecued, fried, or incorporated in other recipes such as soufflés. It also can be baked into a bread, or incorporated into a cake mix. Its flowers can be eaten stuffed and are a delicacy when deep fried, as tempura.

Wow, I have this amazing vegetable at my disposition and I do not know what to do with it. So I again searched for zucchini recipes. I did find many but since we wanted to thank our dear benefactor, I mainly took the hint from souffle and looked in that direction. I came by a recipe I liked – chocolate zucchini cupcakes. Cupcakes look very serviceable because of their size and are suitable for gift giving purposes.

My adapted recipe is mentioned below. However, after searching high and low, I could not find the most basic thing about zucchini. That is grows back at home in my own garden in India and we call it Turai or Ninua! I have eaten it hundreds of times and have even had the fried tempura flower and man, is it yummy. So much for exotic!

Turai vs Zucchini

Ingredients – Makes 12 cupcakes

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 egg

1 cup grated zucchini

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 cup white sugar

3/4 cup oil

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1 tbsp orange zest

2 tbsp milk (optional)

1 tbsp slivered almonds

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcake

Beat the egg till light and fluffy. Add oil and sugar and mix well. Then add cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla essence, cinnamon powder and orange zest and mix. Add a little flour at a time and fold gently. Add milk if the batter consistency is too thick. Squeeze out the juice of the grated zucchini and mix it with the batter.

Line a muffin tray with cupcake holders. Fill them upto 2/3rd of the way with the batter and sprinkle some slivered almonds on top. Bake them in a pre-heated oven for 25 mins at 220 degrees C.

Once baked, let them cool on a wire rack. Store in an air-tight box.

Eggless Chocolate Banana Wheat Cake

This recipe has been submitted to Monthly Mingle – Bread and Chocolate (February 2010) hosted by Life’s a Feast and What’s for lunch hunney?

The whole wheat flour makes the cake healthy. Mashed banana holds the cake together so eggs are not required.

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat cake

1 cup mashed banana

1/3 vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp cardamom powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tbsp baking soda

1 small milk chocolate bar (I used 4 Lindt eggs)

Whole Wheat Chocolate Banana Eggless Cake

Mix oil and sugar in a bowl. Sift wheat flour with baking powder and baking soda on it while mixing the batter. Add banana, vanilla essence and cardamom powder. Slowly add milk tablespoon-by-tablespoon and mix the batter till it is of pouring consistency.

The cake will rise and will deflate when cooled. Do not worry. It will retain its shape. This cake is great for people who do not have eggs. Also, for vegans, milk can be replaced with water.

Eggless Marble Cake

Everything I have learned about cooking has come from my Mom including cakes. I remember when I was a kid, she used to describe a marble cake she used to make. She would spoon one portion of vanilla and then one portion of chocolate batter into the pan one after the other. She would relish describing it and that would make me also want to make it sometime. However, I never got around to doing it somehow….

Now I had made an eggless cake when my SIL had come over and half a can of condensed milk was left over. Just to use it up, I decided to give marble cake a try. I searched the recipe on the net and it was nothing but spooning two different batters into the cake pan one after the other just like Mom used to describe. Only thing is, I substituted condensed milk for eggs.

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour (maida)

1/2 can condensed milk (200 ml)

1/4 cup unsalted butter (ghee)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp baking soda

1 tbsp baking powder

Marble Cake

Cream the butter and sugar together. Sieve flour with baking soda and baking powder. Add the creamed butter and sugar to the flour. Add condensed milk and vanilla essence. Roll the batter while adding water spoonful by spoonful till it is of pouring consistency.

Divide the batter into two equal parts. To one part add cocoa powder and mix.

Marble Cake close up

Grease and dust the cake pan. Put one spoon of vanilla batter and then one spoon of chocolate batter in it. Alternate till all the batter is utilized.

Heat the pressure cooker. Place the cake pan in it and bake on low flame for about an hour. Remove when a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the cake. Cool cake on a wire rack before serving.

Extra Chocolaty Eggless Chocolate Cake

May has been the month to discover more about my new family. I had a lot of relatives coming and going and to celebrate the togetherness, I thought of baking a cake. Now plain vanilla is passé so chocolate sounded like a good deal. The only problem I faced was that there was no “great” recipe for chocolate cake on the net. I couldn’t very well go ahead and try any recipe. My reputation as the baker in the family would go bust along with the recipe. So I chose the recipe which I could relate to the most and then modified it according to my requirements. It was best to stick to the eggless vanilla cake recipe and somehow convert it to an eggless chocolate cake recipe.

I manufactured the recipe finally. My sister-in-law wanted to bake the cake along with me. So I had to be doubly sure that the cake would turn out well. So I just dumped all the contents in the bowl, made sure the consistency was right and then put it on the stove. After much waiting and peeping into the cooker, I finally got it out….and it got stuck to the cake pan. My heart started beating wildly. I was in a state of panic. No matter of beating the pan, shaking the pan or leaving it out would get it out. Finally my sis got it out and a small piece broke off from the side. We left it to cool. Then I made some icing to cover it up.

I mixed some cocoa, sugar and butter and gave it a good whipping. Problem was that the sugar had been ground at home so was not fine enough and obviously, did not dissolve in the butter and gave the whole thing a gritty feeling. To make it dissolve, I heated the icing. The sugar got caramelized instantly and what icing I had turned into small scattered solid masses. Scared as to what to do now, I added some cold milk to it. Thankfully, the icing relented its solid form and formed a smooth solid. But the sugar still did not dissolve. I had no choice now to to vow never to use homemade ground sugar for icing. I just coated the cake with icing and grated some chocolate on it.

This was not the end of my cake woes. I had read somewhere that one should turn the cake upside down and then apply icing. Anyways my cake was a little dented from the top so I did as advised. What I did not realize was the crust had become overdone as I had left the cake in for too long and was extremely hard. So when the cake was finally presented to the party and the kids lifted the knives to cut it, it would not! I was completely shaken. The kids started crying cos the cake was not getting cut. The attention was shifted from the cake problem thankfully and the cake was left to be tackled the next day. By then the crust had softened and the cake tasted like the most wonderful chocolate concoction ever made by me.

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour (maida)

200 gms condensed milk (1/2 tin Nestle Milkmaid)

½ cup ground sugar

¼ cup unsalted butter (ghee)

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp cocoa

1 tbsp chocolate syrup for the extra zing (I used Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup)

1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa. Add chocolate syrup, condensed milk, sugar and ghee and mix. Add vanilla essence. Keep adding water spoonful-by-spoonful till a pouring consistency is achieved. Grease and dust the baking pan. Pour the batter in it and bake for 45 mins to 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack before serving.

Extra Chocolaty Chocolate Cake

Icing

¼ cup cocoa

1 cup confectioners sugar

2 tbsp butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix all the ingredients and beat till light and fluffy.  Spread evenly on the cake immediately.

The best ever Eggless Whole Wheat Banana Bread with walnuts and cardamom sprinkled with sesame seeds on top – Baked in Cooker

It has always been my heart’s desire to bake bread at home. Bread is the daily staple and when one can prepare it at home, why get it from outside, right? So I opted for the simplest and the most delicious of all, the banana bread and gave it a twist. First of all, I added cardamom powder to it along with vanilla essence. That gave a truly unique flavor to the bread and make it really fragrant too. The taste lingers on in your mouth tickling your palate for a long time after eating the bread. The inside of the bread is taken care of. Now to improve the looks of the bread, I sprinkled some sesame seeds on the bread before baking it. The bread got a professional look and an extra crunch.

There is actually quite a debate on whether banana bread is not actually a cake. There is hardly much difference actually except that the cake is sweeter and you don’t have it with butter.

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour (gehun-ka-atta)

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup oil

2 ripe bananas

¼ cup walnuts, chopped

1 pinch cardamom powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¼ cup milk

The best ever Eggless Whole Wheat Banana Bread with walnuts and cardamom sprinkled with sesame seeds on top

Cream the sugar and oil together. Sift the flour with baking powder and soda. Mix with the sugar and oil, cardamom powder and vanilla essence. Mash the bananas properly to form a puree and add to the batter. Add milk to achieve pouring consistency. Do not make the batter too thin. Add walnuts. Grease the cake pan and dust it. Pour the batter in it. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Pre-heat the cooker. Place the cake pan in it and bake on a low flame for about an hour till a toothpick when inserted comes out clean. Cool the cake on a wire rack and serve with milk.