Chocolate and cherry cream cake

This was an amazing dessert. Finally I got whipped cream from Hypermarket. I think only my friend Sahana can appreciate what I mean by that. It was so yum! Although the heat in my city played spoilsport! The cream kept melting and I had to speed up things. Presentation-wise, it didn't look the way I wanted it to look, but taste wise it was purrr-fect!!

Ingredients

• 1 chocolate sponge cake divided into two (you can find my sponge cake recipe on this blog here: )
• 3 cups whipped cream
• half tin canned cherries
•  cherry syrup
• chocolate shavings to garnish

1.  Slice the sponge cake mid-way into two. Place the lower half on a serving plate.
2. Pour some of the canned cherries' syrup on the lower half to soak it. 
3. Use 1/3rd the whipping cream to cover the top of the lower half. Sprinkle half the chopped cherries on the whipped cream.
4. Place the second half of chocolate cake on the first. Once again repeat the steps from 1 to 3. Garnish with chocolate shavings, decorate with more swirls of whipped cream and top it off with a few whole cherries.
5. Serve chilled.

Happy Cooking!

Healthy Carrot and Raisin Muffins

Might I say these taste really good, and you absolutely must must try them on your own. It is just so satisfying to bite into a spongy, soft and sinfully moist muffin, that is a healthier version as compared to most other muffins available in the market. I made these from wheat flour and plain flour combined and they turned out really good. Happily I watched my kid bite into her second cake and love, absolutely love the raisin when they made their mushy sweet appearance in her mouth.

Ingredients

• 100 g sugar (you can have 120 g for a sweeter version or 80 g for a less sweet alternative)
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• 3 tsp butter
• 130 ml buttermilk
• 1 egg (if you are a vegetarian, substitute with 1/2 cup condensed milk)
• 1/2 cup grated carrot
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 large pinches cinnamon powder
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 75 g plain flour
• 100 g whole wheat flour
• 1 level tsp baking powder
• 1/2 level tsp soda bicarbonate
• 1/2 tsp salt (it brings out the rest of the flavors so well)

In a large mixing bowl, whip the sugar, oil, butter, buttermilk, egg (or condensed milk), vanilla and cinnamon powder. Once they are well blended and the sugar has dissolved, add the carrots and raisins and give them a good mix.

Sieve together the flour, wheat flour, baking powder, soda bicarbonate and salt directly into the above mixture. With a rubber or wooden spatula, carefully mix the batter. DO NOT OVERMIX. About five large mixing strokes in a figure of eight motion (give or take one or two more strokes) should suffice. You mix the batter too much, and your muffins will go rock hard. It doesn't matter if a little dry flour remains here or there.

Spoon it out into prepared muffin tins. Fill the muffin tin about 3/4th full. If you fill the cup to its full capacity the muffins will have a flat top.

Place in the oven and bake for about ten to fifteen minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin emerges clean.

(As an alternative, I also made chocolate puffins. Dip the back of your spoon into melted butter and make a well in the center of the batter. Fill this well with chocolate syrup or a jam of your choice. Place in the oven and bake as usual.)

Good to eat freshly made in the morning with tea!

Happy Cooking!

Strawberry Cheesecake

One of the best things to happen in the recent times with regards to food, is that Britannia has now launched their own cream cheese. It is readily available in most stores. I found it irresistible to try itout in making a cheesecake then. Still, I found that the cream cheese is slightly salty. I don't know if it is supposed to be that way, but it has lent a tanginess to my cheesecake.

The cake turned out technically perfect. There were no cracks on the surface, and neither was it undercooked. The best part is that the process of making the batter lasted only about ten minutes. So I can safely claim that it is easy.

Overall rating for the cheesecake is 8.5

Ingredients

• 225 g cream cheese
• 1 and 1/4th cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tbsp strawberry crush
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/4th cup fresh cream

For the crust

• 3 cups crushed digestive biscuits
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 4 tbsp melted butter

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease the baking tin with  a little butter.

Mix the ingredients for the crust in a mixing bowl. Pat it compactly in the baking tin and push the baking tin in the oven for about 4 minutes. Remove it from the oven and keep it aside.

Now in a large bowl, take the cream cheese and sugar and beat on a medium speed for about three minutes till the cheese is uniformly creamy. Add the vanilla essence, strawberry crush and beat again for thirty seconds. Now add the eggs one at a time and beat on a medium speed till they are completely incorporated into the batter. Add the cornstarch, and the cream and beat on a very low speed for about 30 seconds. You don't want to overmix the batter.

Pour this batter into the baking tin on top of the crust and push it into the oven. Put a small container containing water at the bottom of the oven. This helps to prevent cracks in the cake. Technically, the recipe said I had to bake it for 50 minutes. However, I found that in my OTG the cake got baked in 20 minutes. So instead of telling you how much time it should be in the oven, I'll tell you how to know when it is baked.

The edges of the cake become raised and completely set, and the exact center of the cake is very slighly wiggly. You know your cake has baked then. Remove it and cool it on a wire rack. Chill overnight in the freezer.

Serve cold with fresh cream and sliced strawberries!

Happy Cooking!

Zebra Torte Cake

Or something like that. I didn't get the whipped cream right. It was just too runny. Not that I cared, this cool weather is pleasant enough to make you forget all your worries.

The making itself was not as difficult as finding a good recipe. I didn't find many recipes that were really good but Nigella Lawson's Basic Chocolate cake recipe was good. So that is what I made for the basic cake. As far as the icing was concerned, there was the whipped cream which didn't fluff up. There was the chocolate ganache topping which was heavenly but so darned messy you want to slap it. Then there was the decorating which didn't go exactly as you see in all those videos you have been spoiling your eyesight over.

I even dreamed of making cake last night. That is to say, I failed to get any sleep at all. Not that I could sleep in the morning either. Getting up early is a bad habit. Everyone else is sleeping fast, and you are wandering around the house on tiptoes like a ghost, afraid to wake anyone up. What's worse, a person who could sleep throughout the day without wanting to eat or drink anything, like me, is now so used to waking up early that the alarm rings about ten minutes after I am done brushing. It's almost as if I am shushing the alarm to go back to sleep!

Then there is the news of one of my closest friends completing her post graduation. In dentistry. It is an achievement. I know, I am a post grad too. But it just doesn't feel like it. Everyone else around me is going places, and I am stuck with a day that is nothing but home, family, peanuts-for-work job, and a blog. The blog is the only adventure I am having right now. But I am not sure if I am that good you know? There are so many other blogs with so much worth! There are so many good cooks in the world. What am I doing that is any different?

I know, the grass is always greener. There may be people around me who might be thinking that I am the luckiest girl alive to have such a great husband and a wonderful daughter. I feel that too, truly. But somewhere I think I strangled my career the day I got married, buried it when I got pregnant, and put a concrete slab on the grave when I delivered.

Husband is finally happy that I am keeping myself busy throughout the day. Mom in law is happy that I am finally waking up at 5.30 a.m. everyday. Saee isn't too happy about me going to work. Mom is happy that I am happy. The truth is, I don't know what I am doing. It's as though I am walking through life with a blindfold on my eyes. Just trusting everyone else around me to show me the way. The only reason I keep myself busy throughout the day is so that I don't have any time to think. That at the end of the day I am tired enough to be dead, and every morning I wake up from the dead.

There is something really soothing about knowing how your whole day is going to unfold. It is as soothing as knowing that the clock will tick and your life will tick with it, with alarming regularity.

The cake turned out okay. I am not sure if I am so much a cake person. I love cakes and I definitely want to make them. Maybe I must do a course. If anyone can suggest a good weekend course in Mumbai where I can learn how to make cakes and decorate them, please tell me people.

As far as this cake is concerned, today, instead of writing down the ingredients, I am going to post the link for Nigella's  recipe. This IS her recipe after all. I'll just post the picture of my cake.

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/old-fashioned-chocolate-cake-119

Happy Cooking!

Vanilla cupcakes

This morning my family woke up to the most amazingly soft cupcakes with the world's most horribly-gone-wrong buttercream icing. I don't know what went wrong. First of all, it didn't peak. The margarine turned lumpy and clumpy. I added more sugar, but it kept going runny! Please someone, anyone, if you know how to make a good butter cream icing and know how to get it exactly right, please please guide me.

Nonetheless, I'll post the cupcake recipe. They turned out quite fantastic actually.

Ingredients

• 160 g flour
• 120 g sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 and 1/2 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Sieve the flour with the baking powder and keep it aside.

Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. Beat the butter with the sugar till soft. Now add the egg and the vanilla extract and beat some more. Add one fourth the flour mixture and beat again. Now add one third the buttermilk and beat again. Keep alternating between the flour and buttermilk, ending with the flour.

Line a cupcake tin with individual cupcake liners. Spoon out the cake batter into each till they are about three-fourth filled with the mixture. Push the baking tray into the oven and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes till a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Cool for ten minutes before icing them. (If you get the icing right)

Serve with tea, or eat them just like that.

Happy (sob) Cooking!