Madeira Cake, my birthday bake.

Ashu’s version of the Madeira Cake.

The month of October dawns with loads of anticipation, excitement and lots of parties lined up. Yup, for me this is one of the favorite months of the year. This unique individual was born in this month, happens to be the birthday month of my dad as well as sisters. In fact, their is a long list of family members celebrating birthdays in October. Thus this is a a month of celebration, and calls for a recipe to post as the cake -of-the-month!

For this mother, baking cakes and organizing birthday parties comes in stride as annual events that are looked upon with great eagerness. This birthday I took special efforts to bake a cake for myself, something that I am very much fond of eating. Since my trip to my motherland India, I had not baked cakes as frequently and hence was eager to taste my handmade cakes, and what better day to make than for one’s own birthday! I have taken the recipe from a cookbook and adapted it a little with regards to the taste. I believe each person is different and tastes differ and there is always room for little changes in any recipe. It is a rich, dense, buttery-tasting cake to which I have added the juice of one orange, that gives it an orang-y flavor that I liked. The top of the cake is layered with my choicest dried fruits instead of the fruit peels as per recipe. The whole process from assembly of the ingredients to the actual steps of baking the cake, fond memories of my late Dad, the self love and feelings of happiness, all resulted in quite an enjoyable process of baking, and not to forget the divine buttery aroma that engulfed my senses and made the wait for tasting it an exceptionally long one.

This birthday was special, the people connected to me, those who are far yet near, who love me made it special in their own unique ways. I feel blessed to have my wishes fulfilled and to be surrounded with people who make it special. My Jr. gave me some precious moments of the day that brought happy tears to the eyes. His effort in shopping gifts for his mamma brought to notice once again his excellent taste. My week long celebrations saw me enjoy different food preparations, something that is of interest to me. Arabic cuisine dinner, homemade South Indian snacks Brunch, Barbecue dinner and finally my wish of eating at my favorite chef Vikas Khanna’s restaurant Junoon at Shangri La Hotel, Dubai. It was a notable eating experience at Junoon. Chef Vikas Khanna with his humble and down to earth quality has won over many hearts, and to experience the most friendliest and excellent service at his hotel be it the dish presentations, the taste, the different flavors creating a riot, the food cooked to perfection, the ambiance all that made the eating experience worth the money spent. Thanks to dear hubby who made this birthday dinner my most special and memorable evening. I loved the open kitchen concept of this restaurant and the friendly staff was well aware of the numerous ingredients that went on to make those special dishes on the menu.

Arabic cuisine

South Indian dishes made by me for friends

@Absolute Barbecue

Birthday special Dessert for me from Junoon Restaurant, Dubai.

Let us get ready to bake this Madeira cake. It is a simple, tasty and a good choice of cake for serving with tea, dense, and quite similar to a pound cake. The ingredients used are as per my taste with modifications from the original recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Butter: 180 gm (Unsalted, softened)

Grated Orange Rind- 1 Tsp

Orange: 1 (Juice)

Sugar: 150 gm (little less if you prefer less sugar)

Eggs: 3

Refined Flour: 225 gm

Baking Powder: 1 1/2 Tsp

Mixed dried fruits of choice: 50 gm (Finely chopped)

Sliced Almonds:  25 gm or (as per own wish)

(I used a mix of dried apricots, cranberries, figs, raisins, and a red cherry)

METHOD:

Preheat the oven to 160 deg C (Fan assisted). Grease a square tin and keep ready for use. (Line with parchment paper, as it is easier to remove the cake.)

Sift the refined flour and baking powder together.

Beat the softened butter and sugar together using a hand mixer. Then add the orange rind and juice of the orange. I used orange rind instead of the lemon as per the recipe. Mix until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Beat the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time and continue beating batter for sometime.

Fold in the flour with the batter mixture. Pour into the greased and lined baking tin. Bake for 10 min and remove tin from oven and sprinkle with the dried fruits mix and again return the tin to the oven. Bake for 35-40 min or until done, a needle inserted into the batter should come out clean.

Cool the cake in the tin for sometime then remove and let it cool on a cake stand or wire rack.

Sprinkle or arrange the dried fruits on top of the cake and bake till done.

Enjoy this delicious buttery delight with hot cups of tea or coffee, or as a dessert after meal.

NOTE: As I baked it the previous night of my birthday, the picture quality is not very great, do bear with me.

I hope you would like baking this sweet delight and enjoy it as much as I did. It was nice to share with you all a few memories of the extended birthday celebrations. I chose this day to post in remembrance of my late dad who was fond of the cakes that I baked for him. All feel the loss of the dear departed ones, but moments like these make us relive the old memories that one shares with them. While baking the cake I had thoughts of my dad with me and was recollecting our old October celebrations, and made a small heart-shaped cake too along with the square one, one mine and one dads. I cut this one when my friends visited for the birthday brunch.

Heart shaped cake for myself 🙂

Have a wonderful day dear readers.

ashu.

Mixed Fruit and Vegetable Salad

The month of March brings with it the Indian festival of Holi, which is a  festival of colours that creates an atmosphere of fun and joy all around. This festival, a celebration of arrival of Spring, brings together people of all age groups enjoying throwing and splashing colour and water on each others. It is one of my favourite, and I definitely had lot of fun moments this year too.

Friends, just as the colours in Nature marvels our mind and soul, a couple brush strokes of paint on a white canvas brings out life in form of a picture, so does the different coloured vegetables and fruits in our diet work their wonder on our body. They are power packed sources of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, dietary fibres etc. adding bulk and fullness. Just with mixing of couple raw vegetables and fruits we too can create something wonderful in our kitchen to give us a reason to raid the refrigerator without a guilt, on a hot summer afternoon. My food plate has to have a splash of colour in terms of the food choices and today sharing here one of my favourite salads, a very colourful one for the sight that definitely draws our attention and tickles the taste buds with its combination of sweet and tangy flavours. The combination of fruits and vegetables added purely depends on personal taste, and one could make it as versatile as one wants it to be. To get a nutty taste do not forget to throw in some dried nuts of  choice.

INGREDIENTS:

Bell peppers: 1/2 Yellow, Green, Red, Orange

Carrot: 1 Small

Cucumber: 1 Medium

Strawberries: 3-4

Blueberries: a handful

Grapes: few (preferably seedless)

Apple: 1/2

Orange: 1

Pomegranate: 1

Nuts: Almonds or Walnuts: A handful.

Salt and Pepper- For seasoning.

Olive oil: 1Tsp

METHOD:

1. Wash and towel dry all the vegetables and fruits.
2. Remove the pearls from the pomegranate.(Click Here to see how to do it) Remove the skin of the apples and orange.
3. Cut all the vegetables and fruits into small even size and put into a bowl. Mix the pomegranate pearls into this.
4. Sprinkle sliced almonds or any roughly crushed nuts of choice into the bowl mix. Add the olive oil.
5. Season with salt and pepper and toss all the ingredients together to mix properly so the different flavours are infused together.

I like the salad cold and hence use all vegetables and fruits that are just taken out from the fridge. Use fresh fruits and vegetables to get the crunch in the bite. One could also add sliced pistachios or cashewnuts. Chat masala can also be added, but I prefer only salt and pepper.

Go ahead, try eating this fresh salad after a good workout😉, you will definitely feel refreshed.

Enjoy!

Almond Trutti Frutti Raisin Cake

It had been almost a month with no cake baking since the Marble cake post, hence the foodie in me was constantly sending reminders to bake something sweet. This was all way back early November. I did bake, but then home tour happened resulting in delay in writing and publishing the post. Therefore before I totally forget about it, here I post the Almond Trutti Frutti Raisin cake. With the Xmas season approaching, a favourite time for cakes, I baked another of the dried fruit soaked in coffee liqueur cakes on 14^th, well that would be a future post as I did not take all the step-wise pictures while making it.

During one of my shopping Mall visits I happened to come across a mini loaf cake tin, liked it, and it got added to my cake tins collection. I am sure many of you too must have done something similar sometime. This time I used this tin to make a couple mini loafs from the cake batter instead of one big cake. The individual loafs were a delight to the eyes, delicious and enjoyed to the last morsel with hot cups of spiced tea.

Back home we get sliced trutti frutti cakes, they were always part of the school annual sports day food packet. Slices from these mini loafs brought back the old memories.

Lets get baking these Almond Trutti Frutti Raisin mini loafs.

INGREDIENTS:

Sliced Almonds: 50gm

Trutti Frutti: 50gm

Raisins: 50gm

Eggs: 3-Medium range

Sugar: 175 gm

Refined Flour: 225 gm

Butter: 200 gm

Vanilla Essence: 1Tsp

Milk: 50 ml

Baking Powder: 1Tsp

Note: The dried fruits can be adjusted according to one’s preference.

METHOD:

1. Assemble all the ingredients together, they should be at room temperature. The cake tin should be greased with butter and kept ready to use. The oven should be pre-heated to 170 deg C, fan assisted.
2. Beat the butter soft.
3. Add ground sugar to the soft butter and beat well.
4. Add one egg at a time and beat the mixture with a hand blender or spatula.
5. Fold in the baking powder mixed refined flour into the batter and add the milk along while mixing the batter. Add all the raisins, trutti frutti and some part of the sliced almonds to the batter.
6. 
7. Pour the batter into the greased cake tin using a spoon or spatula. Tap the tin so that the batter is even and flat in each loaf tin and then cover the top of the batter with the remaining sliced Almonds.
8. Insert the tin in the preheated oven and bake for 45 min or until a needle inserted into the loaf comes out clean.
9. Cool the mini loafs in the tin and later place on a wire rack.Make your tea time special with these mini loaf cakes. Serve them as it is or cut them into thin slices.

Enjoy!!

 

 

Christmas special Dry Fruit Cake

Today being Christmas,  I decided to bake a cake using dry fruits and a cup of red wine.

Ingredients:

1 Bowl each of Raisins, Apricots, FigS, Dates, Mixed peels, and Sultanas

½ bowl of Almonds, ½ bowl of Walnuts.

1 cup of Red wine.

25 gm Butter/2 tbsp Castor sugar (use fine sugar)

225 gm Unsalted Butter

225 sugar: Firmly packed Dark brown Muscovado sugar

1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

1-2 tsp spice ( I used nutmeg/cinnamon/clove/pepper/cardamom )

250 gm All purpose flour (Maida)

5 eggs.

Method:

1. Chop and combine all the raisins, sultanas, dates, figs, apricots, and mixed fruit in a bowl.
2. Place the castor sugar in a thick sauce-pan over slow heat until sugar melts, add 25 gm butter and 1 cup of wine . Stir it.
3. Add the 225 gm butter, the brown sugar, and the mixed fruits, and stir so all gets mixed, bring to boil and remove from heat.
4. Transfer this into large bowl, stir in the bicarbonate of soda and cover the bowl to let it stand overnight at room temp. (pic#5 show how it looks)
5. Pre-heat the oven to 150 °C (fan assisted). Grease and line the cake tin with parchment.( I used 2 cake tins, different shapes)
6. Beat eggs in a bowl, add the spice to it and then mix it with the fruit mixture. Add the nuts. Fold in the all-purpose flour into the mixture.(pic#6 shows the batter after adding the eggs)
7. Pour the batter into the lined cake tin and bake for 1 hour and 30 mins.
8. Cool the cake on wire rack.

Fruit juices can also be used as an option instead of wine. The Muscovado sugar imparts a nice color and flavor to the cake, hence I used it for this cake. I had fun baking it, go ahead and try it out.

.

ashu 🙂

Dry fruit laddu

Hello to all the readers of my first blog. It is a happy day today, as after contemplating for a long time to create a blog, but not working upon the thought, here I am, finally, writing before the year ends.

We all love good tasty food, and when anything favorite is cooked, we tend to overindulge. With kids who are foodies, variety of menu is essential. When winter approaches, eating more dry fruits is what I try to enforce, but it is an activity that they tend to avoid. Hence the best and easy method I follow, is to grind the dry fruits and make laddoos. The first recipe that I am sharing today is dry fruit laddoos, without sugar. Cooking is a personal style, hence it’s always good to try out the recipe according to one’s own preference.

Dry fruit laddu without sugar:

Ingredients:

250 gm each-Pistachios, Cashew-nuts, Almonds, Walnuts.

500 gm of dried dates, with seeds removed. (I use both types of dates -the dried as well as ripe depending on availability)

200 gm each -Dates, Figs, Apricots, and Raisins.

Depending upon personal preference for sweetness desired and the quality of these dry fruits used, the quantity needs to be adjusted. I love the crunch in the bite that the  figs add to the Laddu.

Note: This mentioned quantity of ingredients make too many laddus. You can  adjust all the dry fruits and use only as much as are required for consumption for your household. It is not essential one has to use all listed ingredients, but if done so then taste is very yum. Sometimes I totally avoid the dried form of dates and use only the ripe ones. We get very good quality and lots many varieties of dates here in the UAE.

Method:

Grind the nuts in the mixer to make a coarse powder. Chop the dried dates into very small pieces. Try to hunt for deseeded dates in the market; I had to deseed all the dates and chop them into very small pieces, since I could not find deseeded ones. Grind these small pieces to a near-fine powder state. Chop the other Dates, Figs, Apricots and Raisins into small pieces and grind them in the mixer. Since these fruits are not completely dry, it appears to be a difficult task to grind them as they stick to the mixer blades.  To make this easier, mix them with the coarsely ground nut powder and then together grind at a higher grinder adjustment. The fruits now get completely mixed with the nuts, forming a somewhat of sticky mass, which must be kept aside. After mixing all the ingredients, add little cardamom and nutmeg powder to the whole mix, and make round laddus of desired size.

I enjoyed making them, an easy and not a very time consuming recipe. Go ahead and try them. One can incorporate any dry fruit as per taste to the recipe.

ashu 🙂