Eggless Date and Walnut Choco Mocha Tea Cake

Eggless Date and Walnut Choco Mocha Tea Cake

I love collecting muffins liners. I have a cupboard full of beautiful and decorative liners of all shapes and sizes. I open the cupboard once everyday and feel happy. Nowadays I look at my collection and then start thinking what to bake in them. What cake would best suit these beauties? Weird much??

So today I took out these rectangular cases. They are perfect for a birthday party because they look so festive. Unfortunately no birthdays or anniversaries are coming up. Where to use them? Then I thought they will work perfectly for high tea. So here are my little tea cakes in festive liners.

Ingredients

1 ½ cups flour

½ tsp baking powder

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup cocoa powder

2 tbsp coffee powder

½ cup dates, chopped

¼ cup walnuts, chopped

1 cup yogurt

½ tsp baking soda

1 cup oil

¾ cup milk

Few almonds, slivered

Heat the milk. Add the cocoa powder and coffee powder and mix well so that no lumps remain.

Sift the flour and baking powder. Mix in the chopped walnuts and dates so that they are well coated in the flour. This will prevent them from sinking to the bottom while baking.

Mix the yogurt and baking soda and keep aside.

Whisk together the oil and sugar. Add the milk-cocoa-coffee mix. Mix well. Now gently fold in the flour. Add the yogurt and mix.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Pour the batter into square cases. Garnish with few slivered almonds.  Bake for 25- 30 minutes.

Christmas Cake

Christmas Cake

Yo ho ho!! It’s the season to be jolly!! 

Christmas cakes are basically fruit cakes with loads of dry fruits soaked in rum for about a month. The dry fruits swell up nice and plump. The cake is infused with the flavour of rum and each bite is a delight. A time consuming process because you have to plan and start much ahead; but worth every minute spent on it.

Ingredients

½ kg mixed dried fruits soaked in rum
 ( I used whatever I had in my pantry. These included munaka, almonds, walnuts, apricots, dried cranberries, kish mish, tooti frutti. You can use whatever you have handy. Just make sure that the weight finally comes to half a kilo.)

½ kg flour
½ kg sugar
½ kg butter
½ kg candied peel
1 tbsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp baking powder
10 eggs

Spice powder
15 green cardamoms
15 cloves
3 “ cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp nutmeg powder 
2 tbsp sugar 

Black syrup
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp water+ ½ cup water

First of all soak the dry fruits in rum for about a month. Don’t have time? No issue! Try to soak them for at least a week.

For the spice powder grind together all the ingredients.

Now make the black syrup. This is actually homemade treacle. Treacle is an uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar. It is often used for flavour in baking. 

Mix together 1 cup of sugar and 3 tbsp of water and put on a medium flame. When the sugar starts to turn dark brown turn off the heat. Slowly add ½ cup of water.
 Be very careful at this point because when you add water to hot sugar it will splutter. 
The sugar will become rock hard. Not to worry. Put it back on flame and keep stirring. Slowly the sugar will melt and it will become a smooth syrup. Keep cooking till it thickens a little. 
Sift together flour, baking powder and spice powder. Keep aside. 
Beat together butter and sugar. Add the eggs one by one beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla essence and black syrup. Mix well.
Now take a serving spoon and start adding the flour one spoon at a time. Since you are using half a kilo of flour if you dump in all at once you will end up with a lumpy batter. So add one spoon at a time and mix well after each addition. 
Add the candied peel and soaked dry fruits. 
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Reduce the temperature to 140 degrees and bake for about 60-70 minutes. 
The batter is large enough to make 2x9” cakes. So bake in two separate pans or reduce the ingredients accordingly.