Tag: recipe

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Hobbies

The ‘unrefined’ cake


For over three years now, we’ve tried to keep certain items out of our kitchen — refined flour and refined sugar. Refined flour was easy to keep out. Sugar, is a different matter — because we occasionally make sweet dishes, and guests shouldn’t be forced to drink sugarless tea or coffee. And so, we buy sugar, in the least possible quantity at such times, letting the stock remain in the kitchen cupboard.

A little over a year ago, we added another item to the no-stock list — refined oil. And I’m happy to report, I haven’t missed it at all. We now have a range of oils — mustard, sesame and coconut — to add richness to different dishes. And yes, there is white unsalted butter and homemade ghee.

Now, I love cake. And it seemed difficult to make cake without these three ingredients. I also didn’t have an oven, or a cake tin. My pressure cooker wasn’t big enough for a decent size bowl.

So, I did what everyone these days does — ask the internet. I found some makeshift alternatives for the baking apparatus and tried out a wholewheat recipe for my mother’s 60th birthday. It turned out decent.

There has been a pattern to some of my Instagram food posts — with friends asking for the recipe. And so, going forward, I’m going to start posting some recipes that I’ve tried out — for my friends, and my own future reference — with due credit to the original chefs, of course.

The credit roll

A big part of this recipe is borrowed from a recipe on YouTube by Piya’s Kitchen. I replaced some ingredients and the result was not so bad! I recommend going through the video for the original recipe.

Step 1: Going nuts

  • Chopped dry fruits of your choice (I used cashew, almonds, pecans, raisins and assorted berries)
  • 1/2 tbsp wheat flour

Coat the dry fruits lightly with flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom and keep aside.

Step 2: Just beat it

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup jaggery (I used honey — turns out, it gives the cake a richer colour)
  • 1/4 cup curd

Beat the ingredients till they form a smooth mixture and keep aside.

Step 3: Shaken, not stirred

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon powder (or cardamom powder) for flavouring (skip this if using vanilla)

Sieve the dry ingredients together two times to ensure there are no lumps and they are nicely mixed.

Step 4: All mixed up

  • 1/2 cup milk

Fold the dry (step 3) and wet mixture (step 2) and add half of the milk.

If you’re using vanilla for flavouring, add 1 tsp in at this stage.

Add the chopped nut mixture (step 1) and the remaining milk.

Note: When mixing, make sure you stick with one direction; clock-wise or anti-clockwise, your pick — don’t ask me why.

Step 5: Time to bake!

Pre-heat the baking apparatus of your choice as you would normally do for any other cake: oven / pressure cooker / heavy-bottomed pan with lid. I heated a tawa on high flame for ten minutes.

Grease the baking tin (in my case, a saucepan) with butter and dust the greased tin with a little flour.

Pour the batter and tap gently to level the cake.

Garnish with more more nuts.

Place in baking apparatus (I placed the saucepan on the tawa and covered it with a glass lid so that I could see what was going on; and cooked it on low flame)

Cook for 45-50 minutes (or till you get the sweet scent of heaven)

Check if it’s done by inserting toothpick / knife – if it comes out clean, it’s cooked.

Patience, my friend — let it cool.

Transfer to a plate, and then, dig in!

Categories
Hobbies

A ‘date’ with a cake


Baking fascinates me — especially when the aroma of fresh cookies and cakes fills up the home.

Growing up, birthdays were made extra special with home-baked cake. I’d eagerly wait for my mother to whip up the cake batter. When she transferred the batter to the greased cake tin, I’d grow impatient. ‘Why are you being so thorough! Let me have the joy of cleaning that up!” As soon as the mixing bowl left her hands, I’d dip my finger to scrape out every last drop!

Unlike my mother, I have zero knowledge of what goes into baking. It’s the end result that truly matters (and the batter, yes!).

I find it hard to remember the chemicals involved in the process — is that baking soda or cooking powder — what proportion are they to be used and when should they be added, most importantly, what are the chances that the mixture will explode?

Most recipes are handed down generations, and when in doubt, I simply pick up the phone and ask, either my mother, or my mother-in-law; sometimes asking the same questions over and over. Thanks to the internet, I now also have advisors who don’t mind my asking the same questions repeatedly.

With the help of the food blogging community, I have got answers to some questions, such as, “what if I want to bake a cake without eggs… and without refined flour?” and “what if I don’t have an oven, and what if I’m off refined sugar too?” And I think to myself, how did people remember recipes before the internet?

I posted a few pictures of my experiments with different types of cake and some friends asked me for the recipes. This gave me an opportunity to document my own scribbled notes for future reference.

But first, the credit roll

The original recipe for this cake is by the food blogger / YouTuber ‘Hebbar’s Kitchen’. I replaced some of the ingredients with what was available with me, and it worked out just fine!

If you’d like to see a detailed step-by-step process, I recommend visiting the website, or better yet, check out the YouTube video.

And now, here’s my version:

Step 1: Soak ’em up

  • 2 cups of dates, without the seeds
  • 1 cup hot milk

Soak the dates in hot milk for half an hour. In the meanwhile, read ahead, gather up the rest of the ingredients and then soak yourself up under the winter sun.

After half an hour, blend the soaked dates and milk into a fine paste.

Step 2: Going nuts

  • Handful of your favourite dry fruits
  • 1/2 tbsp wheat flour

Coat the dry fruits lightly with flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the batter

Step 3: Just beat it

  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup curd

Beat the ingredients till they form a smooth mixture

Combine with the date paste from step 1 and mix well

Step 4: Shaken, not stirred

  • 2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp cooking / baking soda
  • 1 pinch salt

Sieve all the dry ingredients together

Step 5: All mixed up

  • 1/2 cup milk

Mix the date paste (step 3) with the flour mixture (step 4)

Add milk, mix well

Add the chopped dry fruits (step 2) and mix lightly

Step 6: Time to bake!

  • Pre-heat the baking apparatus of your choice as you would normally do for any other cake for ten minutes.
  • Grease the baking tin with butter and dust the greased tin with a little flour.
  • Pour the batter and tap gently to level the cake.
  • Garnish with more more nuts, as per taste.
  • Place in baking apparatus.
  • Cook for 45-50 minutes (or till you get the sweet scent of heaven).
  • Check if it’s done by inserting toothpick / knife – if it comes out clean, it’s cooked.
  • Patience, my friend – let it cool.
  • Transfer to a plate, and then, dig in!

Coming up in the next post, the very first cake I baked, without an oven or pressure cooker.

Categories
Hobbies

The food channel comes home!


Having spent two nights in a hospital room with a poor WiFi signal, needles piercing my arms and eating some rather bland food, coming home was a heavenly feeling.

The hospital wasn’t all that bad. For starters, atleast we didn’t have to cook, or worry about household chores. Then there was a large TV – a device we have chosen not to include in our house. After all, who needs another screen and another monthly subscription for something we neither have time nor inclination to watch. So there we were in that homely room switching between food and science channels for pretty much all our waking hours. I have to say it had a little bit of an impact on me.

I’m not really a foodie. I know lots of people who are – they know which is the best place to eat in pretty much any part of town; what is the speciality of those food joints; and are even willing to travel a fair distance just to taste that one flavour which has the perfect contrast of textures and smells. For me, all that is Greek and Latin. But after a prolonged exposure to the micro waves of the TV shows, I decided to turn into a chef for a while.

The recipe – a tower of biscuits layered with creamy chocolate and dunked in coffee – was one my mother had been wanting to try out for long.

I took pictures along the way and noted down all the steps – detailing everything a TV chef would likely mention. Taking pictures meant that it took us four times the time it would normally take to make this sweet.

This week, Jen Hooks asked bloggers where their heart is. Right now, it is set on devouring this delicious piece of home-made tower of biscuits!

The tower of biscuits

To see how other bloggers interpreted this week’s photo challenge, head over to the Daily Post.

For those who are interested, here’s the recipe:

  1. Whip some milk cream with chocolate sauce.
  2. Add cornflour and heat the mixture over low flame, stirring constantly, till it thickens into a smooth paste.
  3. Spread the mixture over 6 Marie biscuits and place them one on top of the other.
  4. Cover the tower with an extra biscuit and press lightly.
  5. Pour coffee decoction over the tower, ensuring that the biscuits are fully soaked. Drain the excess coffee and place it in the freezer.
  6. Remove it after about half an hour, or till it becomes stable. It should be soft and have the consistency of cake. Make sure it does not freeze completely, or it will be nearly impossible to eat it!
  7. Serve as is, or sliced.
  8. Consume immediately – we did not keep it to test its shelf life 😉