Mung Daal Wada And Zebra Cake

Mung Daal

After a long time, I thought of trying out something from my so called 'bible' - a cookery book gifted to me during wedding :) This recipe though not exactly similar but is inspired from there. It is easy to digest yet spicy enough to enjoy, making it a good breakfast.

Ingredients

1 Cup Mung Daal

2 Spoon Besan

6 Garlic Cloves

1 Inch Ginger

2 Green Chillies

1 Spoon Jeera

1/2 Spoon Red Chilli Powder

1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder

A Pinch of Eating Soda

Salt

Oil

Method

• Soak Mung Daal in water for 5-6 hours
• After the mung daal is soaked, add garlic cloves, ginger, green chilies and jeera to the mixer with couple spoon of water and grind to rough paste
• Add mung daal without water in it and grind the paste
• To this paste add in besan, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt and eating soda and mix well
• Heat oil in pan and fry small quantites of the paste we preapred earlier to get crispy wadas

Notes
Recipe had some more items like coconut, onions, curry leaves etc to be added but I think I liked this way better. It went really well with the coconut chutney

Zebra Cake

I remember around a year back I had received a mail from a colleague here about tasting the check box cake. She had described a lot about its procedure so when I was looking for something similar yet something where I wont need those card boards etc to make those check box texture. Then I came across the very famous concept of zebra cake. So today I gave it a shot and result was very impressive :)


Ingredients
3 Cup Maida
2 Cup Sugar
4 Eggs
2 Cup Milk
2 cup Oil
1 Spoon Vanilla Essence
8 Spoon Coca Powder
4 Spoon Baking Powder

Method

• In a bowl add eggs and sugar and blend them together till the mixture is fluffy.
• Add in Milk and Oil keeping two spoons of each aside. Blend well
• Sieve in maida gradually in the mixture. Blend well for a smooth batter
• Blend in vanilla essence and baking powder.
• Separate 4.5 cup of batter into other bowl and add in sieved coca powder in the separated batter. Blend well
• In the coca batter, add the remaining milk and oil (2 spoons each) into the batter and blend again
• Preheat oven to 350F/180C
• Grease the baking pan
• Add 1/4 cup of white batter in the center alternating with half cup of coca batter. Keep adding till the pan fills in half in quantity. Repeat same for other pan. The batter would spread on its own in layers
• Bake the cakes in oven at 350F/180C for 40 minutes

Notes
If you are going to make the cake in single big baking pan, then instead of adding 1/4 cup of mixture, add in 1/2 cup to make the correct sized strips. I noticed that if the layers are too thin then after baking they wouldn't be too clear to mark out the layering clearly.

Chocolate Cake

This week I had to bake two cakes one for fondant decoration class and one for flowers decoration class. So this is the cake i made for flowers decoration class. I wanted to decorate it with white flowers which would have tinge of pink/yellow but I ended up with bad icing.. Thats when I decorated with whatever flowers I had made over last month in the class. So here is yet another simple cake recipe that came out so well.

Ingredients

1.5 Cup Maida

1 Cup Butter

1 Cup Sugar

1 Spoon Coca Powder

1 Spoon Baking Powder

3 Eggs

Method

• Preheat oven to 325F/160C
• Sieve through maida, coca powder and baking powder in a bowl
• Add in melted butter, sugar and eggs and mix well till the mixture is uniform
• Grease the cake pan and add in the batter
• Bake at 325F/160C for 30 minutes
• Let the cake cool down the cake for 5 minutes and then take it out and cooling grid. Let it cool completely. Serve

Notes

I made two batches of this cake in a 8 inch loaf tin and them i used melted chocolate between them to make a tall rectangular cake. Covered with chocolate flavored butter icing and decorated with royal icing flowers

Red Velvet Cup Cakes

I had made these when mom dad were around but they weren't perfect especially they were little on drier side. So this time I made little bit change in quantities and they come out perfect. I frosted them with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting.

Ingredients

2.5 Cup Maida

1/4 Spoon Coca Powder

1/4 Spoon Baking Soda

1/4 Spoon Salt

1.5 Cup Sugar

1 Egg

1.5 Cup Oil

2 Spoon Curd

1 Spoon Liquid Red Food Color

1/4 Spoon Vinegar

1/4 Spoon Vanilla Essence

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C
• Sieve Maida and Coca Powder in a bowl
• Mix in baking soda, salt and sugar in it
• In separate bowl add in egg, oil, red food color, vanilla essence and vinegar.
• In a cup add in the curd and fill it with water. Mix well with the fork and add it to the wet mixture (oil-egg mixture)
• Beat the mixture on low speed till smooth
• Add in sieved dry mixture of maida-coca powder a cup at a time and beat slowly till it accommodates in the mixture.
• Line the cupcake pan with the paper cups. Divide the mixture in 12 cups.
• Bake the cake on 350F/175C for 22 minutes

Notes

I normally turn around the cupcakes after 70% of baking time in this case around 15 minutes. It helps in even baking of the cakes.

Eggless Chocolate Cake

Atul's mom had asked me for egg-less cake recipe almost 6 months back but every time something or the other came up and I didn't get chance to try out anything. Today that we are going to his place for snacks I thought that it would be perfect time to try out and see how she likes it. The cake looks, tastes awesome. It is perfectly moist and fluffy, i think i like it better than this chocolate cake with the eggs or this birthday chocolate cake again with the eggs.

Ingredients

4.5 Cup Maida

1 Cup Coco Powder

3 Cup Sugar

1 Cup Oil

1 Spoon Baking Soda

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Spoon Salt

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C
• Sieve together maida and coco powder in a bowl.
• Add in baking soda and salt and mix well.
• In another bigger bowl, add in oil, 3 cups of water, Vanilla Essence and beat it together until frothy.
• Add in sugar and blend again.
• Sieve in the maida-coco mixture into it and beat till mixed well.
• Grease the baking pan and pour the mixture in it.
• Bake the cake for 50 minutes on 350F/180C, turning it after 35minutes.

Notes

I drizzled it with Chocolate Ganache and decorated it with the saved white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

If you are going to decorate on top of Ganache then let it set down for 3-4 hours because i didn't and the decoration kept sliding off the place i intended it to stay.

Chocolate Buttercream

Chocolate Buttercream

Almost 3 years ago I took classes from Wilton about cake decoration where they taught us lots of basic plus advance decorations along with their standard recipe for icing. I modified it a bit to get this chocolate butter cream.

Ingredients

2 Cup Vegetable Shortening

1.5 Cup Coco Powder

1 Spoon Vanilla Essence

10 Spoon Milk

450g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

Method

• Mix shortening, essence and milk together till smooth
• Sieve together icing sugar, coco powder together.
• Add it to the shortening and mix well with the hand mixer till ingredients mix in properly.
• Add salt and blend for about two minutes till creamy.

Notes

Cream lasts almost half an year if stored in airtight container in the fridge.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes

This was one of my impromptu attempt to bake something that turned out quite great. It had been long time since I had the frosting in the fridge so thought about baking something to use that one and these cupcakes worked perfectly well with the frosting.

Ingredients

2 Cup Sugar

2 Spoon Vanilla Essence

1 Egg

1/2 Cup Oil

1 Cup Milk

1.75 Cup Maida

1 Cup Coco Powder

1 Spoon Baking Powder

1 Spoon Baking Soda

1/2 Spoon Salt

2 Spoon Instant Coffee

Method

• Preheat oven at 325F/160C
• Mix together egg, sugar and vanilla essence.
• Add in oil and milk and whisk the mixture over medium speed.
• Sieve maida, coco powder, baking powder and baking soda couple of times to form homogeneous mixture.
• Add the sieved contents and salt in the egg-oil-milk mixture and whisk on low speed till well combined about 2 minutes
• Warm 1 cup of water with coffee in microwave for about a minute.
• Add the coffee to the cake mixture and whisk on low speed for another 2 minutes.
• Line around the cupcake pan with around 14 cup cake liners and fill them with the cake mixture about 3/4th level in each.
• Bake in the oven for 18 minutes.
• Allow the cakes to cool off for at least an hour and then serve with frosting and optionally filling

Notes

I didn't use the filling but chocolate ganache would be great option.

I used chocolate butter cream that I have made previously to frost another cake as the frosting and it went well.