Dutch Apple Cake

Bake !
I love using fresh fruits in my cakes, be it bananas, oranges, pineapple , apples. there is something about those freshly baked cakes that is hard to resist for your evening tea.
So when i saw this rachel allen recipe on TV, i immediately wanted to try it out. especially since you didn't even have to mash the apples, just slice them up and arrange them on top.
so i got busy trying out this recipe as soon as i could.
But me being me i made a few changes, i switched the white sugar with brown and switched half the refined flour for whole wheat, and voila, a healtheir take of the same cake !

Ingredients:

2 eggs

150 g brown sugar + 1 tbsp for dusting

½ tsp vanilla

2 ½ tsp baking powder

75 ml milk

50 g butter, melted

65 g refined flour

60 g whole wheat flour
½ tsp cinnamon powder

1 apple, peeled and sliced (can use any other fruit)

Method:

Beat the sugar, vanilla and eggs at high speed in a stand mixture until very thick and four times the initial volume, add the melted butter and milk and mix well. Fold in the flour, baking powder and cinnamon powder.

Pour into a well greased pan, arrange the sliced apples on top and sprinkle with 1 tbsp of sugar.

Bake at 200°C for 10 mins and then lower the temperature to 180°C and bake for another 20 minutes

Orange Mousse Cake

Long time pending......

Yes !!! this blog has been sitting in my draft list for a long long time. What with ramadan and then eid and then a visit to my mom's place, i couldn't find the time to complete this recipe. this was a special dessert that i made for my third anniversary (which was in July, that's y the long time pending).

the worst part about this recipe - you have to wait for it to set overnight. (yes, that long)

the best part - Well, its worth the wait.

and also good, that I was free on my anniversary and not stuck in the kitchen.

the other thing I found out. as i had made this recipe in Ramadan, and we were all fasting, i could only taste my mousse after breaking my fast, and when i had that first bite of the mousse ( i had set it in a bowl separately to taste). i really didn't like it all that much. it tasted a bit too orangy (this coming from someone who loves citrus fruits) and a bit too sweet, and something weird. But When we had it the next day, layered with the chocolate cake, It was absolutely amazing, the chocolate totally complements the orange mousse. and I must say, it was perfect for our anniversary.

Ingredients :

For orange mousse:-

200ml orange juice

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp gelatin

200 ml cream

1 packet whipped cream powder

2 egg whites

1 tbsp grated orange zest

For chocolate cake:-

See recipe for Chocolate moist cake.

Method:

prepare your chocolate cake in a round springform pan. cool completely and slice into two parts horizontally and keep aside.

For orange mousse:- soak gelatin in 2 tbsp water for 5 minutes

add gelatin, orange juice, and sugar to a sauce pan, and heat on medium to low flame. stir constantly until sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved. remove from heat and cool.

whip cream and whipped cream powder until stiff peaks are formed.  fold in the gelatin mixture.

whip to eggwhites till soft peaks form and fold into the orange cream mixture. if too runny refrigerate for 10 to 15 minute. if it holds shape on a spoon then you can use it to layer with chocolate cake immediately.

allow the cake to set overnight. demould after it is completely set and decorate with chocolate curls, chocolate syrup or orange slices.

Cinnamon rolls

Thank you Artisan Bread In 5

I cannot recall, since when I've been wanting to try out cinnamon rolls, really, its like forever been on my to make list, but i could never find the right time or the simplest recipe.

but all that was at the time when i used to shy away from yeasted recipes, Not anymore. Ever since i found the book "Artisan bread in Five minutes a Day" my view on yeasted recipes has completely changed, because according to them you don't need to work too hard to get a yeasted recipe right.(just my style). so now i welcome the challenge of any yeasted recipe, without putting it at the back of my to make list.

although i haven't used their exact recipe, as we don't get all the same ingredients over here in India, but i did follow their quantities and techniques to get my cinnamon rolls rigtht. so thank you Jeff and Zoe

absolutely yummy !!! whole wheat yummy !!!

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup oats flour

1 tbsp yeast (active dry )
1 tsp salt

3/4 - 1 cup lukewarm water

1/4 cup butter, melted

2 eggs

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

for filling:- 

1/2 cup butter softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp cinnamon powder.

Method:
Soak the yeast in half of the lukewarm water with some dissolved sugar.(keep in a warm place)
mix all the dry ingredients. add the rest of the ingredients, mix with a spoon, and bring together with your hands, you may have to wet your hands a bit.
and keep for proving for two hours, in a cool dry place. If you are using the dough the same day then remove as much as required and shape. you can store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge, or you can even freeze it if you want.

Here is the secret to getting the right texture for the buns. you need to fold the dough over a few times and get that gluten all linked up and excited. Just 3 - 4 turns will to the trick, an extra 30 secs of work will make all the difference.

let the dough rest for 10 - 15 minutes. Once the dough is ready, roll it to 1/4-inch thick rectangle.
Brush the melted butter onto the entire surface.
In a small bowl mix together the sugars, cinnamon and zest. Spread the mixture over the butter topped dough. Use your hands to make sure you have an even coat of the sugar.
Roll the dough up, starting at the short end. Cut the log into 8 - 10 equal pieces.

Set the buns on a parchment lined baking Pan. Give them about 1 1/2 to 2-inches between them. It is ok if they rise together in the oven.

Loosely cover the buns and let them rest between 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The long rest will insure that you have a fluffy bun.(You can set these up the night before and let them rest overnight in the refrigerator. In the morning take them out and let them sit on the counter for about 45 minutes to an hour.) You may get away with slightly shorter rise, but the buns will not be quite as soft.
Preheat the oven to 180°C and place the rack in the middle of the oven.
Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, just until the centers are set when poked with your finger.
They should be caramel colored. Let them cool for about 10 minutes.

 whats more I used the leftover dough to try out some baked beignets, although i can't say they turned out as great as the cinnamon rolls. as i had tried filling them with chocolate ganache, which flowed out of the beignet while they were baking. (what can i say, not all experiments are a success)

chocolate cinnamon buns

Chocolate cinnamon buns, just add chopped chocolate or chocolate chips to your filling and..voila...you might not go back to the plain ones.
Next maybe i'll try some with caramel in them..or caramel and chocolate...drooling already !!!!

Chocolate Swirl Cake

Forgotten Recipes

Its been a long break from blogging, as i was at my mom's place for a whole week (long but lovely), only to find that my nets not working for two whole days after i come home.

Anyways being at my mom's place i made this batch of chocolate swirl cake which turned out really great.

its a recipe that I've had since ages, i mean really ages ( like since i was in school), but haven't actually made that often.i don't know why though..as it turned out absolutely scrumptious.

This was initially a chocolate chunk cake recipe, but I adapted it to make a chocolate swirl cake.

its a very simple white cake recipe that i think can actually be adapted for making a lot of variations. (can think of quite a few at the top of my mind )

Ingredients:

175 g butter, at room temperature

350 g flour (2 ¼ cups)

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

175 g powdered sugar

2 large eggs

150 ml milk, warmed

1 tsp vanilla essence

100g of dark or milk chocolate

50 ml fresh cream

1 – 1 ½ tbsp of powdered hazelnuts or almonds (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs, stir in the sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla.

Mix until well combined.

In a separate bowl prepare a ganache from the milk, cream and almond or hazelnut powder.(can use nutella or any fruit jam or fruit puree instead)

Pour ⅓ of the batter in your prepared baking pan. Spoon ¾ th of the ganache on the batter, in 3 -4 separate blobs.

Pour the remaining batter and ganache in the pan. Insert a wooden skewer or knife and swirl the batter and ganache in the pan.

Bake for 35 -40 mins or until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Puff Pastry

Demystifying the Puff

I love puff Pastry...there is no other way to put it.

But what happens when something that was readily available to you, is suddenly not around. For many years after moving to mumbai from the gulf I satisfied myself with hogging on my mom's puffs when I used to go back to Abu dhabi for a break. B'coz in India you don't get puff pastry sheets( sob sob).

then one day when I saw rachel allen on tv, making puff pastry from scratch, i thought maybe I can do it too.

and whats more, on further surfing the net I found many easier versions, called rough puff, which were more to my liking than the classic version. (anything simpler is better ). the basic recipe is pretty simple, its just the rolling and turning and chilling that has to be taken care of.

I took the basic recipe from this video and then made some further changes, referring to some other sites.

Puff pastry palmiers

Chicken Puffs, Yumm!!!

Ingredients:

150 g whole wheat flour

150 g all purpose flour

250 g butter

100 – 150 ml chilled water

Salt

Juice of half a lemon

Method:

most important point while making puff pastry, especially rough puff pastry.

your flour, your water, and your butter, put everything in the freezer for 10 - 15 minutes.

cut the butter into large chunks and keep in the freezer. squeeze half a lemon in the water and keep aside, make sure everything is handy and ready before you start mixing the flour.

blitz the flours, and salt in the jar of your food processor for 3 seconds.

Add half the butter and blitz for 5 seconds, add the rest of the butter and blitz for another 5 seconds. you should be able to see smaller chunks of the butter in the flour, the flour has to be courser than breadcrumbs.

slowly add half the chilled water and blitz again for 3 -4 seconds. add the rest of the water and blitz again, if you feel it will become too wet, you can reserve some of the water (use your judgement). the flour will not form into a single ball, but will start clumping together.

at this point, you have to empty the dough onto a nicely floured surface or a wax paper, for easy handling.

Shape the messy, shaggy dough into a rough rectangle and roll it out until it's 1/2 inch thick. Resist the temptation to overwater or overwork the dough; it will eventually hold together.

Use a pastry scraper or the edges of your wax paper if rollling on wax paper to fold the dough in thirds like a business letter. Don't worry if it folds in pieces. Turn the package of dough 90 degrees so the folds run vertically. Square off the edges of the dough as you work. chill the dough for 20 minutes, at this point if your kitchen is really warm and if you feel the butter is starting to melt.
Roll the dough into a rectangle that's 1/2 inch thick, always rolling from open end to open end. Continue rolling, folding, and turning until the dough looks smooth. By four or five "turns," the dough should hang together well. remember to chill for at least 20 minutes between each turn

For even more layers, fold the smooth dough up like a book. To do this, fold the two shorter sides into the center and then fold the dough like a book. Brush off excess flour as you fold. Wrap the dough and chill it for half an hour before giving it two final turns. At this point, you can then use the dough, though another short rest will make rolling and shaping easier.
for the final rolling you have to roll it a little thinner. and shap as you like, you can also just cup it into squares and freeze the sheets for later use.

for Baking - bake for 15 - 20 minutes in a well preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius.

100% whole wheat puff. Didn't puff

After My puff turned out a success i tried to use the same technique with an all whole wheat flour dough. they puffed very little and the layers didn't separate

Partly Whole wheat puffs, Success !!!

Third try - 50 % whole wheat and 50% all purpose flour -  and we have a Winner

Baklava

Baklava with a twist

growing up in the UAE, I can never remember a time when we did not have baklava at our home. You could always find a tray of these bite sized golden sweets on our kitchen counter.
After moving to Mumbai....No more baklava on the counter (missing UAE ).
so what to do when you crave baklava in Mumbai..the simple answer for me would be - Make your own. Alas, live is not so simple, because we don't get filo pastry sheets readily over here. And as filo is the main ingredient in this Arabic sweet,  my thought and craving for baklava were put on hold for a long time. Until I thought of substituting the filo with, yes its true and i'm not mad......Spring roll sheets.
You see last year in Ramadan when i made spring rolls i found that these sheets are way too thin and absorb a lot of oil ( my spring rolls were practically filled with oil, ick ), so when i was thinking of a substitute for filo, my mind went to these ultra this not good for spring rolls, spring roll sheets. and I thought to myself, why  not try making baklava out of these.
the outcome, they weren't flaky like the filo, but the basic taste was similar, and for people who have not had baklava at all, or very few times, they really liked it. For me I still miss the actual baklava.
but until the time that I have the patience and confidence to make my own filo sheets (that's a bit too much rite now) I think these will do.

A tray full of golden delights

Ingredients:

for syrup :-

1 cup water

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp honey

1/2 a lemon, squeezed

1 tsp vanilla extract/ 1 tbsp orange blossom water

for baklava:-
1 1/4 cups butter melted
11/2 cups pistachios or walnut or almonds ( or can use a mix of all nuts)
1/8th tsp nutmeg
1/8th tsp cloves
1/8th tsp cinnamon
14 -16 spring roll sheets / filo pastry sheets

Method:

coarsely chop the nuts with spices and 1 tbsp sugar in the food processor or chopper. make sure that it doesn't get chopped too fine.

for syrup:- add water, sugar and honey to a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. simmer for fifteen minutes . add lemon juice and essence and turn the heat off. let cool

to assemble baklava:- take a springroll sheet and butter it generously and cover with another spring roll sheets, again spread butter on the top sheet.

add two to three tablespoons of your chopped nuts mixture near one edge of the layered sheet, in a narrow line. roll up the nuts into a tight rolls so that u have a long cylinder of rolled nuts. slice into 5 or 6 pieces ( 1-1 1/2 inch pieces approx). and arrange on a buttered tray. repeat the same with the rest of the spring roll sheets until your tray is filled. don't leave space between the peices, they should be more or less tightly packed.

bake for 25 - 30 mintues in a preheated oven at 180 degrees. should be golden brown. if required turn the pieces and bake for another 10 minutes.

pour the syrup on the baked baklava as soon as it comes out of the oven. let it soak the syrup and cool for atleast 1 hour before serving.

Something for those cravings..

these also gave me the idea of making Baked spring rolls.
I baked them at the same temperature as the baklava, and they turned out really good, without any of the extra dripping oil.

Lamingtons

Eid Mubarak

Ramadan is already over...and i know i'm a little late with an Eid post, but didn't really get time before this, what with Eid coming on a long weekend for a change.
So this year I decided to make lamingtons for eid. And talk about a mammoth task, especially since Eid came early this year,and i was short of time.
I adapted my moist chocolate cake recipe to make a moist vanilla cake (which i wanted to try since a long time). the cake turned out ok, but not the best as it did not rise as much as the chocolate cake does. although I couldn't pinpoint why.
 I made both chocolate and jelly lamingtons and with the frosting and the coconut the lamingtons tasted really fine..

• Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 
  
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup vanilla custard powder
• 
  
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2  eggs
• 
  
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• 
  

Method:
Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, custard powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

For chocolate lamingtons:

Chocolate Frosting:

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

5 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp melted butter

1/3 cup boiling water

Sift icing sugar and cocoa powder together, add melted butter and boiling water and mix till smooth and not too thin.

dip vanilla cake squares in chocolate icing, let it rest on a wire rack, so that all the extra chocolate sauce can drip out. roll in desiccated coconut.

cool for the icing to set.

For jelly lamingtons:

1 packet of strawberry jelly

Mix jelly in 2/3 of the water mentioned on packet, and let it set at room temperature. use a fork to break up the jelly.

dip cut pieces of cake in jelly and follow same procedure as the chocolate lamingtons, and enjoy.