Tag: cake

DATE CAKE:

December 7, 2018

I must say, this cake is my Signature dish and very close to my heart. When I was trying my hand in baking, I experienced a lot of failures, but this recipe has uplifted my faith in trying and achieving my goal.

Whenever I made this, everyone liked it for its soft, moist texture. As a little treat to help you relax and settle into Christmas mood, I will share my very easy Date cake recipe with very minimal ingredients. If anyone wants to try their hand at baking, this is just the recipe for you. Just go ahead and try this, you will never regret it.

Now we will see how to make this,

Ingredients:

Dates – 1 cup

Butter /oil – 1 cup

Sugar – 1 cup

All purpose flour – 2 cups (you can mix whole wheat and all purpose too)

Eggs –  2 (beaten)

Water – 1 cup

Cooking soda – 1 tsp or little less.

Method:

– De-seed the dates and chop it either by using food processor or knife, keep aside.

-Grease the baking tray (you can use bread tin as well). Line this with butter paper, keep it ready.

– Take water in a small bowl and boil. When it starts boiling switch off the gas, add chopped dates, butter, sugar, and cooking soda to boiled water and keep aside at least for 20 min.

– After it cools, add beaten eggs and mix nicely.                          

-Now fold in All-purpose flour, mix gently and pour this batter to greased and lined baking vessel.                                              

-Bake this in a pre- heated oven for 35 -40 min or until done at 180 C.

-If you want to check its doneness, use tooth pick or knife. Insert this, if it comes out clean, remove the tin, keep it outside.

-After some time, remove butter paper and cool further.                  

-When it reaches room temperature, you can slice it or cut according to your wish and enjoy with cup of coffee or tea.

Note: For the Eggless Version, use 1/2 cup of flax gel and you can refer my earlier post for the preparation.

 

 

 

Walnut – Chocolate chip Coffee Cake:

January 27, 2018

Coffee flavoured cake happened by chance. I had some unused Nescafe instant coffee and wanted to finish it ASAP. So, I thought of baking a cake. It is made up of healthy flour and a very good option as a snack.

While getting ready to assemble everything, I thought of adding chocolate chip and walnut as an attraction to kids and it worked out very well with finger millet or Ragi flour as well. Now we will see how I proceeded with the ingredients.

DSC06113_Fotor

Ingredients:

Whole wheat Flour – 1 cup

Ragi/ Finger millet flour – 1 cup

Baking soda – ½ tea spoon

Baking powder – ½ tea spoon

Salt – ¼ tea spoon

Walnuts – ½ cup

Choco chip – ½ cup

Butter – 100 grams

Eggs – 2

Sugar – 1 ½ cup

Hot milk – 1 cup

Instant Coffee powder – 1 to 1 ½ table spoon

Hot water – ¼ cup (you can take little less than ¼ cup)

Method:

-Pre heat oven at 180°C, line a baking tray with the butter paper.

-Take one bowl and mix all the dry ingredients like, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, walnuts and Choco -chips.

-In another bowl, beat melted butter, eggs, sugar, milk by adding one by one respectively.

Ribbet collage 1

-Make dark coffee by mixing powder and water. Mix in the liquid and beat.

-Now wet mix is also ready.

-Pour this wet mixture to dry ingredients and fold the batter by using any spatula.

-Pour the batter in lined baking tray and keep this for baking until done.

Ribbet collage 2

-It takes anywhere between 40 to 50 minutes.

-Before removing, check with a knife by inserting, in the baked cake.

-Knife should come out clean.

-Remove the cake, cool before cutting, and serve.

DSC06109_Fotor

Note: For the Eggless Version, use 1/2 cup of flax gel and you can refer my earlier post for the preparation.

Chocolate cake from Ghee Residue:

June 17, 2017

Ghee residue is a moist, brown coloured by-product formed after preparing ghee from white butter.

Ghee residue is a rich source of essential fatty acids, natural anti-oxidants and proteins.

In olden days, people used this as a natural body scrub. When I was a child, my mum used to rub this on me, before bath and I now feel nostalgic while seeing this brown sediment and so I make it a point to use this without throwing by using either in Atta kneading or in baking.

This time, I had a couple of Pea protein powder packs in my hand, which was given by my lovely co-sister who is a Ayurvedic doctor. So, I included that as well in this brownie kind of chocolatey cake.

pic main

Ingredients:

All-purpose flour – 1 cup

Whole wheat flour – ½ cup

Mixed millet flour – ½ cup

Choco chip – ¼ cup

Protein powder – ½ cup

Milk powder – ¼ cup

Cocoa powder – ¼ cup

Sugar – 1 cup

Ghee Residue – 2 table spoons

Milk – 1 ¼ cups

Vanilla essence- 1 tea spoon

Baking soda – 1 teaspoon

Method:

  • Measure everything and keep it ready. Pre-heat oven at 180 C.
  • Mix all the dry ingredients like, flours, protein powder, milk powder, cocoa powder and sieve couple of times and mix in Choco chip and stir nicely. Keep it aside.
  • If you coat Choco chips with dry flours, it will not sink in the bottom while baking.
  • Now take ghee residue, put milk and heat it. When ghee residue is mixed nicely with milk, switch off the gas.

pic 2      pic 1

  • Add sugar, vanilla essence and baking soda and keep aside for 5 minutes.
  • After 5 minutes, beat this wet mixture thoroughly until mixture forms a bubble at the upper layer.
  • Fold in dry ingredient and make a batter. (don’t beat or over mix in this step)

pic 3     pic 4

  • Bake this in a lined baking dish in a pre-heated oven at 180 C for 30 to 40 minutes or until done (when you insert a tooth pick or knife in the centre of cake, it should come out clean)

pic 5     pic main 1

NOTE:

-You can use only All-purpose flour or mixture of any flour.

-If you don’t have any protein powder in hand, instead of protein powder, use milk powder.

Eggless Carrot cake:

March 5, 2017

This flavourful cake happened by chance. I usually make carrot milkshake paste with almonds in the summer. This year I tried this paste by adding pine nuts instead of almonds and it didn’t go very well with my family. To finish off this paste, I tried this by making cake and it was a super-duper hit and it tastes really moist and soft.

pic 8

Ingredient:

Whole wheat flour – 1 cup

All-purpose flour – ½ cup

Fine rawa- ½ cup

Baking powder – 1 tsp

Baking soda -1 tsp

Sugar – 1 ½ cup

Desiccated coconut – ½ cup

Carrot milkshake paste – 2 cups

Clarified butter/ghee – ½ cup

Cardamom powder – 1 tsp

Salt- ¼ tsp

Method:

-Sieve all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, fine rawa and baking powder for 2 to three times and keep aside. This is our dry ingredient mixture.

-Beat the wet ingredient like carrot milk shake paste, ghee, sugar.

-Mix in baking soda, salt and desiccated coconut, cardamom powder and beat.

-You will see a frothy texture. This is our ready wet ingredient mixture.

pic 2   pic 3

-Pour wet ingredient to dry ingredient, lightly mix without over doing.

-Bake this in a pre-heated oven at 180 C for 40 to 50 minutes.

pic 6  pic 4

-After checking its doneness, remove from the oven, cool and serve.

Christmas Fruit cake:

December 21, 2016

The day before yesterday, my daughter V asked, ‘Amma, everywhere I can feel the Christmassy atmosphere, why haven’t you made anything?  Please make a plum cake.”

Immediately, daughter A said, “No need to do that grrrrrrrrrrr, It has raisins; I don’t like raisins in any baked goodies. Make Red velvet instead of plum cake.”

Finally, mamma came up with this win-win cake for both –

This cake has no booze or fruit juice, or raisins.

Ingredients:

Dry fruits to soak – 1/2 to 1 cup (dried cranberries, tutti-frutti)

For the Caramel:

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Water – ¾ cup

Butter – 1 tsp

For the Cake:

All-purpose flour – 1 ½ cups ( you can take whole wheat flour + all-purpose flour as well)

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Dry ginger powder – ¼ tsp

Cinnamon powder – ¼ tsp

Cardamom powder – ¼ tsp

Pinch of salt

Eggs – 2

Light brown sugar – ¾ cup

Melted Butter – ¾ cup

Fresh Orange rind – 1 to 2 tsp (grated)

Caramel – ½ cup

Dry Nuts – 1/4  cup (cashew and almonds)

Method:

-Make caramel in a thick-bottomed vessel. Heat sugar and butter until it melts; lower the heat, add water, mix nicely, boil, and add the dry fruits.

-Here, I took dried cranberries and tutti-frutti. Soak the dry fruits for 2 hrs.

-When you are ready to bake the cake, drain these soaked fruits, separate the caramel and fruits and keep them aside. This caramel can be used while mixing cake batter.

-The next step is the preparation of the cake batter –

-First, we will mix all the dry ingredients, from flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger powder, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, and salt, in one bowl and dry mix using a wire whisk.

-Drop all the dry fruits like soaked and drained dry fruits, chopped cashews and almonds

-Once again, mix the flour nicely and keep it aside. This is the dry ingredient mixture.

-The next step is- to preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

-Line the cake tin in which you want to bake. I have used a bread tin over here.

-Next, we should make a wet ingredient mixture. Break the eggs, beat them properly, and mix in butter, caramel, sugar, and grated Orange rind. Beat all these together until the sugar dissolves.

-Take one wooden spatula, fold it in the dry mixture, and make a uniform batter of wet and dry ingredients with a very light hand. Don’t overmix this.

-Now pour this ready batter into the lined cake tin, sprinkle some cashew and almond chunks, and bake this for 40 to 45 minutes or until done at  180* C. Enjoy this fruit cake this festive season!!!