Banana Walnut Choco Chip Cake

Though I bake everyday, it has been ages since I posted anything new on my blog. Last year saw lots of changes in my life and somehow I lost the drive to type and type and post. I had to close down my website due to maintenance issues. Got back to blogger platform. And then yesterday I received a message on fb messenger. Someone had bookmarked my website and naturally she could not find it anymore. She asked me if I was still baking. Yes, I am always baking but had somehow lost the will to post them. Her sweet words made me realise that there are people out there who love my recipes and are looking forward to them. It was a great lift-me-up. So now I am back to posting and I will really try to be regular about it.

Starting off the new year with a Banana cake. A rich one too!! And of course a yumm one!

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ cup choco chips

1 cup walnuts, roasted and pounded ( should resemble pebble shape)

1 cup oil

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 medium sized ripe bananas, mashed

2/3 cup yogurt

1 tbsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Line and grease a loaf tin.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Add the choco chips and pounded walnuts and mix well.

Beat together sugar and oil for 2 minutes. Add one egg at a time and keep beating well till the batter looks pale and fluffy. Add the mashed bananas and beat. Add the yogurt and vanilla essence and beat well again. Fold in the flour mix. Pour the batter into the loaf tin. Bake for 40 minutes.

Vanilla Dream cake

Some cakes are just happy coincidences. I am always on a baking spree. My dining table always has some cake on it.

When at times I am unable to bake due to whatever reason I buy cakes to eat. Though I hate most of the commercial store bought cakes yet it goes to show how important a place it has in my life. And then I love tweaking the recipes. Many a times it has ended in disaster. My fur baby Leo has helped me finish off those disasters of mine. And sometimes those tweakings work like a dream.

I was all set to bake a cake. I knew I wanted something basic and simple. My son always..and like always…wants only chocolate cake. It is fine for him. He is young with a strong metabolism and he can digest anything and everything. But I have to keep in mind that I am not getting any younger. That does not mean that I start baking all those healthy vegan stuff. I love my cakes the old fashioned way. But yeah a little concession here and there. So I decided on a vanilla pound cake. But I quailed at the idea of equal amounts of butter and sugar. I reduced those two a bit. Then the batter got pretty thick. So I added milk. I had trepidations. But then I though milk, butter, sugar, flour and eggs. I mean how much could go wrong?

And nothing went wrong. Everything worked like a charm. The cake was baked very evenly. And the texture..OMG!! It was as if I was eating a cheesecake. The texture was a bit dense but it was soft, warm and melt in your mouth. And the biggest testament was that my chocolate loving son ate chunks of this white cake which he would otherwise have shunned. So I christened this cake the Vanilla Dream Cake.

Ingredients

½  cup butter, softened

¾ cup milk

¾ cup sugar

1 ¾ cup flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Sift together the flour and baking powder. Beat the butter and sugar till creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla essence. Fold in the flour gently. Pour into a greased and lined baking tin. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Salted Caramel Donuts

This is an issue which I sure worries all moms.

One just can not escape the brunt of fast foods nowadays. I cringe every time my son demands and eats those greasy fat filled chemically dosed burgers, pizzas and pastries. How many times can you say no and we have to give in once in a while. The best I can do is to make the healthier versions at home. At least I know that there are no chemicals or preservatives added. Thankfully now my son no longer eats cakes and pastries from the shops. And also pizzas. He prefers homemade pizzas every time. 
Now Doughnuts are another attractive items on the menu. To increase shelf life the doughnuts have to have preservatives. You can not run a business otherwise. Making Doughnuts at home is a cakewalk (pun intended). 

Sonny boy's exams have started and he needs bribes to make him study. Donuts three ways. The classic ringed one at the sides, Caramel filled one with spirals and Donut Burger in the centre. Salted caramel and white chocolate ganache toppings. Happy baking !!

PS : I have added one egg. You can skip that if you wish.

Ingredients

For the Donuts

1 ½ cups flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 ½ tsp dry instant yeast

1 egg

2 tbsp butter, melted

A pinch of salt

Milk to make dough

Mix the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl. Add the melted butter and beaten egg. Use some milk to make a pliable dough. Remember the dough should not be hard. In fact if it is sticky then that is better. Mix well together. Then turn out the dough on your clean kitchen counter and start kneading till it becomes smooth, silky and glossy. Oil a bowl and put the dough in it. Cover with a clingfilm and leave for 2-3 hours till it doubles up in volume.

Once it has doubled up then make three balls. Since I have done the donuts 3 ways I have divided the dough into three. If you want to make the simple ringed donuts then you done divide the dough.

For ringed donuts you roll out the dough about a quarter inch thick. Use a donut cutter to cut out shapes. Keep the donuts on a plate.

For the caramel filled donuts you again roll out a quarter inch thick and cut out roundels using a round cookie cutter. Again put on a plate.

For the Donut Burger you roll out the dough a ¾ th inch thick. Cut shapes with a round cookie cutter. Put on a plate. Now cover your plates with a kitchen towel and leave for 20 minutes.

Heat oil in a kadhai. Deep fry the donuts. Remember to fry on low heat because you want them to fry from inside too.

For Salted Caramel

1 cup sugar

½ cup cream

¼ cup butter

Take a big pan and put the sugar in it. Splash some water on it and then put on medium flame. After some time the sugar will start turning amber and small bubbles will start appearing around the sides. When all the sugar has turned brown take the pan off the heat. Gently add the butter and milk and mix well. Be very careful as the sugar is very hot. Return the pan to heat for a few minutes. Add a generous amount of salt and mix. Keep aside to cool.

For the white chocolate ganache

100 gms white chocolate, chopped

¼ cup cream

Melt the chocolate on a double boiler and then add the cream. Mix well.

Decorating the donuts

For the ringed donuts you can use your imagination. I have dipped them in caramel and piped some white chocolate ganache on top.

For the caramel filled donuts you have to fill a piping bag with caramel. Use a small pointed tip. Now push the tip inside the donuts and fill in as much caramel as goes inside. Drizzle ganache on top.

For the Donut Burgers you need to slice the donut into half. I have applied two layers of caramel and ganache in between the  burger. Again decorate as you want.

Mango Semolina Cake

The Mango Semolina Cake has been doing the rounds of social media for quite a while. And since the mango season was upon us I decided to make one too. The semolina basically absorbs up the mango puree and the grains become soft. After you bake it the texture remains a bit sticky but then the texture always changes depending on whether you are using all purpose flour or whole wheat flour or in this case semolina. The cake turned out quite interesting. Definitely something I would bake again.


Ingredients

1 cup semolina
2 mangoes, skinned and pureed
¼ cup oil
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup+1 tbsp sugar ( the mangoes add to the sweetness)
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Mix together the semolina, sugar and baking powder. Now add the oil and mix. Add the mango puree and mix well. Let it sit for half an hour so that the semolina soaks in the mango. Now pour into a greased loaf tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Eggless Wholewheat Brownies

Life is a learning process. You learn something new everyday, every moment. No, this is not a philosophical moment I am having. A few days ago I came across a post about brownies. The brownies were nice but what was more interesting was the pan. It had a cutter that would cut the brownies into even shaped squares. Small neat little packets of fudginess. And I learnt that this is another innovation that is very helpful to bakers.
So started my hunt for this pan. And I found it on Amazon. A few days later I had it in my hands. Adequately named Perfect Brownie Pan it turned out to be purrfecttt!! You can adapt any brownie recipe. It easily bakes a 2 cup flour batter. It has a loose bottom. Then there is a cutter frame. And a stand on which you place the pan to pop out the loose bottom. Cut the brownies while they are warm and you have nice square brownies.


Ingredients

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour (atta)
½ cup cocoa powder
¼ tsp baking powder
1 cup castor sugar
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup milk
1 cup Greek yogurt
¼ tsp baking soda
¼  cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Sift together the atta, cocoa powder and baking powder. Keep aside.
Beat together soft butter and castor sugar. Whisk together yogurt and baking soda and add to the mix. Now add atta and milk alternately, mixing well after each addition. Start with 1/3 flour, then ½ milk, 1/3 flour, ½ milk and finally the last 1/3 flour. Spread the batter in the pan. Tap the pan a few times. Sprinkle the chopped walnuts on top. Bake for 30 minutes.

Yellow Marmalade Cake

There has been a long hiatus in my baking. For the last two months life has been hectic. Packing and moving to a new place, setting up home, adjusting, compromising. And in midst of all this chaos my baking stopped. But I cant live without cake. So I had to buy cakes to satiate my soul. I realised, again, how bad the store bought cakes are. Sure if you go to a gourmet patisserie you will get wonderful bakes. But the everyday bakeries and mass produced commercially packaged stuff is horrible.
All my stuff was still packed. I had no weighing scale, no butter paper, no whipping cream, no spatula. But I had to bake. So i bought a jar of marmalade, some flour and eggs. I had one basic round tin with me and my trusty oven. I looked up Julia Child’s recipe, tweaked it a bit and finally let out a sigh of relief. Life is good again!


Ingredients

1 ¼ cups flour
2 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp melted butter
2/3 cups sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp orange marmalade
2 tsp sugar

Beat the egg whites till foamy. Add the 2 tsp sugar and whip till soft peaks form. Keep aside.
Sift together flour, cornflour and baking powder. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar till pale and frothy. Add the marmalade and whip some more. Now add ¼ of butter, mix, then ¼ of flour, mix and then ¼ of egg whites and fold. Slowly incorporate these three in the same way in four batches. Do ot whip or over mix. The egg whites should not deflate.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 8” cake tin. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 30 minutes. After the initial 20 minutes cover the cake tin with an aluminium foil so that the top does not get burnt.

Hot Cross Buns

Baking bread is something that has been on my mind for a long long time. I would see the awesome bread posts posted on facebook and would wish to be able to bake like them. However my whole life I have been staying in small cities with names you have not heard of. Opportunities were less even though the desire was there. Then finally we got to live in a sprawling metropolis, the business centre of our country. And this was a moment I seized with both my hands. Even before settling in I was googling for baking classes.
The four day bread workshop I attended was an eye opener. Both theory and practical was taught extensively. We were made to practice at least four kinds of breads everyday. Buoyed by the experience I decided to start baking on a regular interval.
The first bread I wanted to bake was Hot Cross Buns. I had heard this nursery rhyme so many times and I always wondered what is so special about this bun that you have a nursery rhyme dedicated to it. I started looking at different recipes and found myself getting more and more confused which one to follow. Met with a few disasters.
I have basically flowed the recipe by Joe Pastry. I have halved the recipe because I didn’t  need 18 buns. Also, thankfully, I didn’t add all the liquid at once because I was left over with almost ¾ cup of milk and yet the dough was quite sticky. It depends a lot on the quality of ingredients you use. What kind of flour you use determines how much liquid you need. So main point to keep in mind is not to use all the wet ingredient at once to make the dough. After the bread workshop I had an idea how sticky a dough should be and I used that much milk accordingly.
And while baking bread remember not to give up. The sticky dough will get together. Just keep kneading. If things seem hopeless dust your hands with a little flour, oil the working surface a bit. But keep at it!!


Ingredients 

Makes about 10 buns
2 ½ cups flour
½ tbsp instant yeast
¼ tsp nutmeg powder
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
½ tsp salt
1 cup milk, lukewarm
2 tbsp honey
1 egg(optional)
2 tbsp soft butter
½ cup raisins

For making the crosses
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
Water to make a thick paste

Pour enough water on raisins to cover them and boil for 10 minutes. Keep aside.
Sift together flour, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder and salt. Mix the yeast with a spoon.  Whisk the egg and honey together. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.

Add the whisked milk and honey and mix with a spoon. Slowly add the milk and keep mixing with the spoon.

 Stop adding milk as soon as you get a sticky dough.

Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and start kneading. It is going to be really sticky and will stick to your palms and the working surface. Keep at it for 5 minutes. Scrape your hands if you need. Now add the softened butter and raisins.

Start kneading again. The butter and sticky dough will make a real mess.

Do not panic. This is where you need your best friend, the scraper. Use it to scrape the dough off and keep kneading. After a long time that will seem like a life time the dough will come together. It will still be a sticky dough.

 Put it in an oiled bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth. Do not let the cloth touch the dough or it will stick to it. Keep aside for 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.

 Lightly punch the dough to knock out the air.

 Divide the dough into 10.

Now comes the rolling part. Do not roll between your palms. Remember the dough has air which shouldn’t be squeezed out. Put the ball on the working surface, place your palm over it like a cage with the dough lightly touching your skin. And start a rolling movement with the only pressure being between the base of your thumb (the fleshy mound) and the working surface. As you roll the dough keep lightly pushing with the base of your thumb.

Do these with all the balls.

Place a parchment paper on the baking tray and put the balls on them keeping some space between the balls. Cover and keep for about an hour till it grows in size.
 Now make the crosses. Once the balls have doubled up in size, mark an X with a kitchen knife. Now make a thick paste with the sugar, flour and water. The paste should fall slowly when you pick it up with a finger. Using your finger slowly trail some paste on the X you have marked on the buns. If you are an egg eater then do an egg wash.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake the buns for 18-20 minutes.
After 10 minutes your house will be filled with an amazing aroma. Trust me !!

Pizza Bread Bowls

I wanted to learn the art of bread making. I had made bread rolls, pav, burger buns etc earlier but I wanted to learn the tricks of the trade from a professional. So I attended this four day workshop on breadmaking. It was a wonderful experience. I learnt so much about the technicalities of bread, yeast, proofing, scoring, knock backs. We were taught about 6 different recipes and each day we would practice that. Now practice is a good thing but then we would end up with scores of bread that we would take home everyday. After 2 days my family refused to have any more bread and I was left with these delectable things. What to do with them?? So I started improvising!!
I had lots of Kaiser rolls. I decided to make pizza bread bowls out of them. I had seen something on similar lines on facebook and I improvised on it.


Ingredients

4 Kaiser rolls/round bowl shaped bread
4 tbsp pizza sauce
1 cup grated mozzarella
½  cup chopped onion
½  cup chopped capsicum
Few olives, chopped
Chopped paneer or sausages or salami  as per your choice
1 tbsp pizza seasoning


First slice off the top of the Kaiser rolls. Now scoop out the bread from inside so that you are left with a hollow bowl. Apply 1 tbsp pizza sauce in each bowl. Now start layering with cheese, salami, chopped onion, capsicum and olives. Sprinkle some pizza seasoning on top. Layer with cheese and put the tops back on. Press down with a heavy plate or chakla. Bake at 220 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. Your pizza bread bowls are ready.

Double Streusel Cake

There is streusel cake and then there is double streusel cake!!

Double the fun!!

Streusel is a German word meaning “sprinkling” or “topping”. Streusel is a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, sometimes with cinnamon or coconut mixed in it. It adds a crunch to the soft cakes. Use it on cakes, cupcakes, pies and see the difference it makes!

Ingredients

For the cake

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

¾ cup castor sugar

½ tsp vanilla essence

¼ cup oil

1 egg

¾ cup milk

For the streusel mixture

¾ cup brown sugar

4 tbsp flour

3 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp cinnamon powder

Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line and grease an 8” cake tin.

Mix together the streusel mix ingredients and keep aside.

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add the oil and mix with your hands till it looks like breadcrumbs. Beat together milk , sugar and egg. Gently add to the flour mix.

Pour half the batter in the tin. Spread half the streusel on top. Pour rest of the batter and then sprinkle rest of the streusel. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Banana Coconut Cake

Eating fruits is a good habit. Specially bananas. Unfortunately we are not a fruit loving family. Dozens of oranges and bananas keep lying on the table. As the bananas keep getting blacker ad spotted i console myself thinking that spots are good. The spottier the banana the healthier it is. And finally they turn mushy. Sigh!!!
But this cloud does have a silver lining. We might not be a fruit eating family but we sure are a cake eating one. I try to incorporate all kinds of fruits and vegetables in them. Carrots, pineapples, oranges, pears, mangoes, bananas,  zucchini everything goes into my cakes.
This is a banana and coconut cake. I have used desiccated coconut here. However i have found that freshly grated coconut tastes better. You can add walnuts and raisins if you want. I have not because my son does not like them in his cakes.


Ingredients

1 cup desiccated coconut
¾ cup milk
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup castor sugar
½ cup oil
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
Mix the coconut and milk and keep aside.

Sift together  flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.

 Beat together the sugar and oil. Add eggs one at a time and mix well. Add the mashed bananas. Add the coconut and milk mix. Beat well. Fold in the sifted flour.

Pour the batter into a greased and lined loaf tin. Bake for 50 minutes.