These are very soft, crumbly and melt- in- the -mouth kind of delicacies. It has rich corn meal flavour and it is neither a cookie nor a cake and is very mildly sweet. It does not need any side dishes like butter or jam and one can enjoy it as it is with a cup of tea or coffee.
Ingredients:
All-purpose flour- 1 cup
Cornmeal- ¾ cup
Butter- 100 grams
Dried cranberries- ½ cup
Baking powder – ¾ teaspoon
Baking soda- ¾ teaspoon
Salt – ¼ teaspoon
Sugar – ½ cup
Butter milk – ½ cup (chilled)
Topping – Sugar crystals
Method:
Pre heat oven at 170 C
Take one mixer jar or food processor. Put all the dry ingredients like flour, corn meal, salt, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Dry grind all these for a couple of rounds.
Chop the butter into bite size pieces and add. Again dry grind until flour becomes crumbly and wet.
Add buttermilk and run the food processor. Dough will become a little sticky.
Line the cookie tray with butter paper.
Drop the dough into lined cookie tray either by using spoon or ice cream scoop.
Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake this in a pre-heated oven for 12 to 15 minutes.
It yielded 15 scones for me and I have used small ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough.
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!!!
