Banana Walnut Cake

 Occasion: Children's Day

Banana walnut cake was one of the first cakes I tried when we moved back to India. Though I don't believe that Children's need a day to celebrate, for them its all play and no work, yet another reason to me. What made the occasion special? I had my friends coming home with their kids. What more reason do I need. I baked this for the kids and special brownies for the grown up kids. End of the day not sure whether kids enjoyed their cake but we thoroughly enjoyed our brownies :).

Like I always say this is yet another easy cake to bake. Minimal effort maximum taste and satisfactions. What else one could ask for. But this time I just didn't stop with baking the cake, had put some effort it making it look pretty.

Here goes the procedure

-Cream 1/3 cup of butter and 3/4 cup of sugar with 1 tsp of vanilla essence
-Beat 1 egg separately and add it to the butter and sugar mixture (if you are feeling lazy just beat in the egg :) )
-Sieve 1 1/2 cups of Maida and 1 tsp baking powder together
-Add the flour to the mixture
-Mash 3 or 4 ripe bananas separately in a bowl and mix it to the cake mixture ( Don't Panic or Don't throw the mixture if you see any lumps)
-Chop 1 cup of walnut and add to the mixture.
-Now bake it in moderate high (190 degree) for about 20- 27 minute.

To Decorate:

-1 Packet of wafers
-Sugar syrup (to stick wafers to the cake)
-Seasonal Fruits

Rich Chocolate Cake - For My Little Darling Who Loves Chocolate :)

                                                                                    

Occasion: Daughter asked for a cake.

When your daughter asks for a cake how can you say no? No you can't, especially when you know that she will go and tell everyone that her mom is the best baker in the whole world and can bake anything she likes :). For her I am the queen of baking. Once when her aunt baked a cake she tasted it and told her "This cake is nice but not like my Moms cake". When I start baking she comes and stands in the kitchen with me just to watch and she loves to help me in anything I want.

So for my little admirer I decided to spend sometime to bake a cake.

But why this cake? Because this little admirer of mine loves eating chocolate and anything that has to do with chocolates. And one more main reason is my time constraint. I started to bake the cake at 8 so I wanted to stick with an easy cake which also will make her Happy.

This cake is pretty much similar to one pot cooking. Take everything in one bowl, mix and bake and its done. Since I have tried this cake quiet a lot of time I chose to stick to this easiest cake. I generally love doing things in mini sizes for my kids simply because the wastage is less.

So for those who want to try this cake,

- Take 185 gm butter, 1 3/4 cup of castor sugar, 3 eggs, 2 cups self raising flour, 2/3 cup of cocoa powder, 1 cup water in a bowl.
- Mix everything in low speed until its combined and beat in medium speed for 3 mins or until it turns smooth.
-Now what more can make a chocolate cake more chocolaty than choco-chip and chocolate essence. Add these according to your wish. I also added cinnamon syrup as I love the combination of these 2 flavors.
- Bake it in moderate oven (160 degree) for 1.5 hours.
- For mini muffins like above bake it only for 15 mins.

When its done your cake should look like this or better :)

Chocolate Brownie - dedicated to Vidya Vasagam

Occasion: Had invited some friends for dinner ( but got cancelled).

Baking Brownie has been a dream to me from the time I started baking. I can also say that I started baking because of my love for brownies. I had my first "Hot Chocolate Brownie with Ice cream" from Pizza Hut when I moved to Cyprus 12 years back. One of my friend suggested it to me and I can never forget the way it melted in my mouth. It took me 12 long years to gather my strength :-) and bake this wonderful Brownies. For some reason I always thought I will screw it up. Trust me I never even searched for brownie recipe.

When I decided that I will bake a brownie I ran to my most trusted cookbook for recipe and guess what, it didn't have one :-). And then it was Google time. Bingo!!My favorite site had the most easiest recipe. So went ahead with the recipe. Prayed to all Gods after keeping it in oven - not that I haven't screwed up anything so far, its just the fear that I will stop loving brownie after tasting my own :-).

Anyways....after 12 long years of wait I got to taste my very own Brownie with Ice cream. Though it didn't taste like the one I had the first time it definitely tasted better than the ones which I had from other places. I wish I could rewind my life, go back to the same place with the same people and share the yummy Hot Chocolate Brownie.

For those who love Brownies the recipe follows.

- Melt 1/2 cup of butter, beat in 2 eggs, 1 cup of sugar and vanilla essence or chocolate essence.
- Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup of self raising flour and 1/4 spoon of salt.
- If possible mix everything by hand and beat egg separately before adding it to butter.
- I also added 1/2 cup of broken dark chocolate just to give more chocolaty taste.
- Now bake it at 160 degree for 25 to 30 mins.

Now its time to enjoy it with vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate syrup.

Caramel Date Wholemeal Cake

 Occasion: I managed to upset my friend :)

How?? By not feeding her the first 2 cakes. Pretty good reason to bake another one isn't it. And why a wholemeal cake (though not completely wholemeal) ? Because we have all registered ourselves for Marathon and trying to work hard around it :-). Another good reason is I ran out of self raising flour.

I had only limited choice of ingredients at home, as usual, and had to decide the recipe accordingly. Thanks for those great cooks who wrote such good recipes with such limited ingredients. So when I had pick my main ingredient I got confused - as if I had lots of choices :-). I asked my friend and gave her 4 options and I went ahead with a "completely different one".

Initially I had no plans of posting recipes but some of my friends who apparently happen to think that I am a great cook asked me to post it. Since its not my own recipe you all know whom to blame if it doesn't turn up good.

Here are the choice of ingredients I had

-Stir 1/2 cup Sugar, 125 gm Butter, 1 cup Chopped Dates and 2 tsp of Golden Syrup.
-Add one slightly beaten Egg (I know the photo shows 2 as I did double measure).
-Shift 1 cup of Wholemeal flour and 1 cup of Self raising flour with 2 tsp of Baking powder.
-Stir in the shifted Flour alternating with milk.
-Pour in tray and bake at 180 degree for 50 mins.

                                                     

Apparently the cake turned out very sweet due to the amount of dates in that. Either you can reduce the amount of dates or you can chose to have the cake with salted butter or green tea without sugar. Both worked well with the cake. Now it's your time to bake . Enjoy Baking.

                                                                       

Pear & Almond Cake

Occassion: Inauguration of my new OTG

Nothing compares to the mouthwatering homemade cakes.

 The day I bought my OTG I had to prove a point by baking. So I tried this cake :).Took an hour to decide what cake should I bake first and from which cookbook I should take the recipe. Finally after deciding to bake an upside down apple cake I realized there were no apples . So decided to give my twist to the cake and made it Pear & Almond with some dates and sultanas.

Once the mixture was ready and the oven was preheated I was too excited. My first ever cake in my first ever OTG - felt awesome. The next kick was when the cake started rising. Couldn't wait for the cake to be baked and cut. I wanted to check out the inside to see how much of a difference it makes to bake in an convection and in an OTG.

When you do things which you love you are always in cloud 9. When I took the cake out it felt the same. I had my darling cut the cake as she is always ready to taste whatever crap I cook and gives me a genuine feedback with lots of sorry in the end.

So here goes the story of my Pear & Almond Cake. Now for those who want to try this scroll down.

- Cream 185 gm Butter with 2/3 cup of castor sugar and 2 tsp of lemon rind.
-Beat in one egg at a time ( 3 Eggs).
-Add shifted flour (1 cup of self raising and 1/2 cup of plain flour) alternating with 1/3 cup of milk.
-Add any essence you like.
-Add 1/2 cup of grated almond and sultanas and dates if you want. Plain cake will do to.
-Be it apple or pear, peel it and cut in quarters. Slice them and place them in the bottom of the pan and pour the mixture. You can decorate the to as well- no harm :)
- Bake it at 180 degree for nice one hour. If you see it browning before you know what to do :).

Enjoy baking.

Orange and Carrot Muffin

I love baking - not that I am professional but I do it a lot. I love it so much that I create occasion to bake rather than waiting for an occasion- A friend invites me for lunch I bake, a friend drops by I bake, my friend gets pregnant I bake :). But this one is very special because this is the first muffin I baked in my new OTG, which I am so proud off  (till now i was using a microwave convection). After 7 long years of wait when I finally got my OTG it was just unbelievable for me. I love the end product from the OTG than the ones from convection oven.

I baked twice so far and both of them turned out yummy. I  normally follow recipes from my collection of cookbooks or Google (which is endless & confusing) and add my mild twist and turns - yes I do dance when I cook :-). Though most of the time it turns out good sometimes it becomes unbearable even to me. And to make it worse my old convection sometimes forgets to do its twist and turn which makes extremely unbearable cake and of course that straight away goes to my bin - that's normally the actual bin or my husbands tummy :-).

Coming back to the muffin, this was baked for a friend who invited us for lunch. In case you are interested in the recipe, here you go

- Mix Butter, Sugar and Orange rind together until its fluffy. Add egg one by one and beat well.
- Once its mixed well add Dried Grapes, Carrot and 1 tsp of Mixed Spice (coriander, cinnamon, cumin, ginger and nutmeg).
- Slowly add the shifted flour into it. Once its mixed well add the Orange Juice and twist and turn.
- The mixture should be kinda semi solid.
- Now put them in muffin molds & bake for 40 mins (low moderate heat - 160 degree).

If you don't have a muffin tray at all no issues use a baking pan and bake it for 1 and half hr. Please do check in between if you screw it I am not responsible.

Once its bake let it cool down and then enjoy it.

You can add icing if you want.....Since I am not a big fan of icing I didn't bother to do it. Posting the recipe of icing below for icing fans. Add the icing only after the muffin is cooled thoroughly or else it is gonna run on the tray.

Butter cream Icing: 60 gm Butter, 1 cup Icing sugar, 2-3 tsp of orange juice, 2 drops of Orange food color