It’s something of a challenge to have to learn to cook for yourself every day, even for a person who likes to cook. Besides I’ve only really been baking all this while. Before coming here I was worried about several things: how far would my fellowship payments go toward buying fancy cheese? What sort of kitchen would I have? Would I have time to cook?

I ended up with a couple of really nice roommates who have most of the things I need in a kitchen. And by really nice I mean they constantly compliment me on my cooking even when I slightly burn or oversalt things and are generally very adorable. So yay, I have been cooking!

Among the several things I have cooked (I’ll leave out the sweet things): my aunt’s amazing chicken biryani, David Lebovitz’s French tomato tart, Smitten Kitchen’s spinach quiche, alu matar, yellow daal (without a pressure cooker), chicken curry, numerous batches of fairly acceptable fried rice, this amazing pasta sauce, spaghetti carbonara, an eggplant and feta cheese salad, and some other stuff I can’t remember.Then there are the things I plan to cook: bœuf bourgignon, my aunt’s amazing lamb stew, egg curry, a tomato and corn pie, mutton biryani, sambaar, chicken kebabs, pork spare ribs, palak paneer . . .

I’ve realised that I can afford to eat well if I just make the effort, and for the most part I have been. It’s also interesting how careful I’ve been about monitoring my food, making sure I’m eating my veggies and so on. Already I feel like a grownup. Even grocery shopping has become less and less of a problem. At first I didn’t know how to buy things. I only finished my first bag of potatoes, which I bought more than a month ago, today. I also have a bag of green chillies lying unused. On the other hand I’m constantly running to the nearest (and least enticing) grocery store to pick up eggs and milk.

A month plus later, I sort of know how much food I need. But I just keep buying more. This past week I’ve been to at least five different grocery stores. I don’t have a car, so people with cars very kindly let me know when they are going shopping and I hop along. I always intend to only look and buy very few things, and come away with several bags of often unnecessary things. I know I can always say no, maybe next time, I’m all fooded out this week, but I don’t. Do you have any idea how much fun it is zooming a trolley down a cheese aisle? You do? Then you understand.

Right, let me not bore you further and get to the recipe. I’m going to just tell you how to make this instead of writing a bulleted version because, honestly, this is a potato salad. It’s sort of like telling a person how to fry an egg. I’ll leave an ingredients recap at the end of my recipe telling.

Potato dill salad

The story of how I got this recipe is both sad and sweet. A month before I left home my grandmother died of cancer. She was 87 and we knew she wouldn’t make it, but it was still a terrible time for us. Where we come from (by that I mean the community of Mangalorean Catholics) it is customary to bring the grieving family food. I don’t know how or why this custom began, but I think it has something to do with the idea that the grieving family is too busy mourning to cook. It’s a little annoying because Indians, being Indians, will bring food to you without asking if someone else has already offered to bring lunch that day (seriously, people call and ‘book’ a meal to bring to you) and if you don’t have multiple refrigerators and/or multiple family members, you’re screwed.

The other strange thing is that people will bring you fancy food. In some cases, the kind of food you would eat at weddings. It’s strange, but, well, I discovered an amazing fish curry and this salad because of that, so I’m not complaining. Overall I think it’s a sweet tradition. Often one doesn’t know what to do or say to a person who has lost a loved one, and food can be a way to show you care. It’s a communal thing. I can see myself bringing a nice warm rice pudding to a grieving home and not having to fumble through my condolences. I might not do that here, though; I don’t know what that would mean in a different culture. Better to find out first.

Right, the potato dill salad. Somehow I managed to get the recipe (my cousin’s wife knew the lady who made it). It was one of those mix some of this with some of that affairs that I don’t like, simply because it doesn’t allow me to substitute or halve things safely. But never mind, I edited it to include quantities (for the most part) and also reduced the number of ingredients to the bare essentials so that a student such as myself will be able to make it without too much hassle.

So. You start with four medium potatoes. Wash them, peel them, chop them into cubes. Boil them in salted water until just right. Be careful with this and test the cubes every few minutes. Mine ended up being too soft; a little more and I could’ve made mashed potatoes. Drain and cool. (Note: you want the potato to reach room temperature before you mix it with the mayonnaise, so consider popping it in the fridge for a few minutes.)

Peel and chop a medium red onion. You can also substitute part of this for scallions or use white onions. I know some people find red onions too strong, but here’s the thing: they’re tasty. They also offer great textural interest for something as plain as potato salad. Plus, they’re red. Your salad will look pretty.

Now for the dill. I’ll say it now: if you don’t like dill, don’t make this salad. It’s a strong herb, and I use a generous amount because I like it. The problem is: I don’t know how to measure it. So I’m going to say a handful. Or better still, about half the amount shown in this picture.

You should definitely only use fresh, very green dill. Besides flavour, it’s great for visual contrast.

So wash the dill. Break off the large stems and roughly chop the leaves.

The original recipe called for two green chillies (deseeded and finely chopped), but that sounds wrong to me. I don’t like Indianising non-Indian recipes. Chicken tikka pizza? Wrong. Just wrong. I’ll eat it, but it’s wrong. So yeah, ditch the chillies.

Now put everything (potato, onion, dill) in a bowl. Add half a cup of mayonnaise. (I used full fat. I’m sure low fat would do as well. Oh, and the original recipe said ‘a few tsps.’ WTF? What’s a few? Three? Four? Ten?) Also add half a teaspoon of mustard. (I used Dijon.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Ta da! You have your salad. You may or may not want to chill it before serving.

There are a couple of things you can add to this to make it better: half a green capsicum (bell pepper), finely chopped, and/or a quarter cup of fresh peas, lightly boiled.

This gave me what looks likes three or four generous helpings of salad, but I don’t know how much other people eat, so I won’t say definitely. I do, however, have an excellent suggestion, not for how much, but for how:

Heap some potato dill salad on your plate. Take two slices of nice bread and put it in your toaster. This will give you toast. Rub a clove of garlic on your toast, then butter it. Even low fat butter substitute will work. Put this fancy garlicky toast next to your salad. Spoon some salad onto the toast. Bite. Eat. Repeat.

So that’s

4 medium potatoes
1 medium red onion
a handful of dill
½ cup mayonnaise
½ tsp mustard sauce
salt and pepper to taste

(variations: scallions, capsicum/bell peppers, peas)

That’s all for now. I promise to update my recipe index soon. As you can tell, grad student life is somewhat busy (when I’m not cooking or shopping for groceries or shopping for books). Oh also, did you know that some people making a living off writing a food blog? I thought it was just an amusing way to make some extra money to buy shoes, not the main money with which you pay your bills. Maybe I should shut down my real blog and turn this one into a money machine.

But I am not Jhumpa Lahiri and I  don’t have any other description.

Anyway, kheer is also known as payasam and it has lots of variations. Broadly, it’s either made with rice or with vermicelli, but again, different people from different parts of India have different ways of making it. Some people put dates, some put different kinds of sugar and spices. I almost always love kheer, and eat tons of it during Eid, when our lovely neighbours send us biryani and kheer. We usually end up tasting three or four different kinds and I become a kheer gourmande.

The recipe I’m posting here is a Nestlé Milkmaid (sweetened condensed milk) kheer, which means it’s much easier and  much less laborious to make since you don’t have to thicken all of the milk yourself. It’s also a good recipe to have because it’s so standard; you can afford to do your own variations without ruining it. Being standard, though, all its ingredients are easily available and not very expensive.

I really want to try this with dates, but I’d have to add a lot more milk because the sweetness of the dates will definitely enter the milk and thicken it. An experiment for another time.

You can try the recipe from the scan below or use my version, which is slightly different. Naturally I recommend my version over Nestlé’s.

I made this for last night’s dinner. It was my friend Philipp’s last day in Bangalore before he moved back home  to Germany and we gave him a nice Indian dinner. I made palak paneer (my mother and aunt did the rest of the cooking) as well and he was all ‘That must be so easy to make: it’s just cottage cheese and spinach.’ Someone please tell him it’s not so! Palak paneer isn’t the most difficult thing to make, but it’s not exactly easy, especially when you have all of two Indian curries in your repertoire. (But tell him nicely; I already gave him all the dirty looks.)

Anyway, the kheer: it’s not difficult at all, but it does require some patience.

Milkmaid kheer

Doesn’t mention cooking time, does it? I hate to say it, but I didn’t time this either. (Off hand, I’d say 45 minutes to an hour.) Most Indian cooking requires instincts that I don’t entirely have, but my mother and aunt were around while I was doing this, and I shall pass their ancient wisdom (seriously ancient: they have more than a hundred years between them) on to you.

The two variables that are extremely important are the the amount of milk and the cooking time. Start with the recommended amount of milk, but some more on standby and add as required. The sugar level is decided by the condensed milk, so if you want the kheer to be less sweet, you need to add more milk.

As for the cooking time, really, don’t bother using a timer. Instead, cook on a slow/medium fire and keep checking on the kheer. You also want to use a heavy-bottomed vessel so that the rice doesn’t catch and burn at the bottom. My mother says kheer tastes great when the rice is over-cooked and quite soft. I say she’s right.

1 litre (4 cups) whole milk, plus more as required
100 g (3.5 oz) good quality white rice*, washed and drained
1 tin (400 g/14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
5 – 6 pods cardamom, peeled and crushed
½ cup mixed dried fruit and nuts**
1 tbsp ghee (or butter)

*I used Basmati, which was good, but next time I want to use rice with a shorter grain.
**I used raisins and cashew nuts.

1. Cook rice in milk in a large, heavy-bottomed vessel on medium-low. Cook till the rice is done, stirring occasionally so that a skin doesn’t form on top. Try not to cover the vessel.

2. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk and crushed cardamom. Keep cooking till the kheer is quite thick. (Here’s when you want to check the sweetness and add more milk if it’s too sweet.) The volume should have decreased visibly. Turn off heat.

3. Heat the ghee (or butter) in a small kadai (wok, whatever you call it) and fry the dried fruit and nuts for a minute or so.

4. Mix about three-fourths of the fruit and nuts into the kheer. Pour the kheer into a serving dish. Sprinkle the rest on top. Serve warm or cold. (I prefer it warm.)

Serves 10 to 12***

***I completely reject Nestlé’s notion that this quantity serves six people. You would need very large bowls, very large appetites and very high sugar tolerance levels to eat that much kheer. In moderation, people!

]]> http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/milkmaid-kheer/feed/ 0 aditimachado Milkmaid kheer http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/cashew-nut-cake/ http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/cashew-nut-cake/#comments Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:11:14 +0000 Aditi Machado http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=93 ]]> I invented a cake!

Almost.

What I did was combine David Lebovitz’s almond cake recipe with this recipe for almond paste and substitute, very carefully, with cashew nuts. I got a beautiful, beautiful loaf cake, with the most perfect crumb — moist, but not icky and dense. I had to do a lot of math (the almond paste recipe makes double the quantity required for the cake), the kind of math I love, so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself.  I’ve also changed the instructions slightly.

Why did I think of making a cashew nut cake? To be honest, I just wanted to make the almond cake. It looks amazing, it’s approved by David Lebovitz, and I know for a fact that almonds are great in cake. (Ever tried making a torte?) But I didn’t have any almonds and I was too lazy to go out and buy them. I had kilos and kilos of cashew nuts (yay for people who go to Goa and bring me the only thing I could ever want from that godforsaken place), and I’ve made marzipan with both almonds and cashew nuts, so why not trying making cashew nut paste?

Honesty time: While this is one of my favourite cakes of all time (in my top five, if you should know), it’s bit complicated to make as you have to make your own cashew nut paste. I don’t think you can buy it anywhere. (I’d stick with David Lebovitz’s recipe for the almond cake, which I haven’t yet tried myself but am certain will be excellent. He recommends buying almond paste, but if it’s not available, you can use my instructions for cashew nut paste and substitute with an equal quantity of almonds.)

The second bit of honesty is that the cake doesn’t have the strongest cashew nut flavour. It’s sort of like a very rich, delicately accented pound cake. I chalk this down to my not finding anything in the way of cashew nut essence. (The almond cake uses pure almond essence.) But I don’t find this a problem at all. The cashew nut paste is light, but contributes heavily to the cake crumb. Now I get why ground cashew nuts and savoury cashew nut pastes are used in curries.

Enough with the preliminaries.

Cashew nut cake

How pretty is that cake? I have a thing for rustic looking loaf tins and well, loaf cakes. I don’t know what makes them better than ordinary round or square tins*, but if I can make something in a loaf tin, I will.

(*I have a hunch it’s the slices they make, and these were so beautiful, I wanted to take pictures of them, but I couldn’t find my photographer and um, we kind of ate them up. The slices of cake, I mean.)

for the cashew nut paste

1 cup (150 g) unsalted cashew nuts
½ cup sugar
¼ cup water
1 tbsp light corn syrup or honey

1. Preheat oven to 120°C/250°F. Place cashew nuts on a baking tray and roast for 8 – 1o minutes.

2. Meanwhile, combine the sugar, water and syrup/honey in a pan. Cook on medium low, stirring only occasionally, until the mixture begins to boil and the sugar is completely dissolved. Let it boil for 20 seconds more and then turn off the heat. The syrup should be a pale yellow.

3. While the cashew nuts are still warm, grind in food processor until you get a fine powder.  With the processor going, pour syrup in a slow, steady stream. Process till the paste is uniform. If you’re not using the paste immediately, store in an airtight container and refrigerate. Take it out a couple of hours before you plan to put the cake together and bring to room temperature. This makes approximately 225 g (8 oz) of paste — perfect for this cake. You can measure it out before using, but it’s not necessary.

for the cake

1½ cups sugar
225 g (8 oz) cashew nut paste
1 cup flour
1½ tsp baking powder
a large pinch of salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp almond essence
6 large eggs, at room temperature

1. Grease and flour a 9″/10″ round cake tin (or an 8″ square tin or two 8″ x 4″ loaf tins).

2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Using an electric beater or a food processor with paddle attachment, beat the sugar with the cashew nut paste and ¼ cup of the flour mixture. The mixture should be smooth, with no lumps in it.

4. Add the butter, and vanilla and almond essences. Beat till the mixture is smooth and fluffy.

5. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure the ingredients are evenly mixed. Also: the mixture may look curdled.

6. Add the remaining flour in two additions, mixing until just incorporated. Do not overmix.

7. Pour the batter into the tin(s). Preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F. Bake the cake(s) till the top is a yummy-looking brown and feels set. The baking time for the round or square cake is approximately 65 minutes and for the loaf tins is about 40 minutes. Cool completely before removing from tins.

*

PS I just realised that the picture was taken on the washing stone in our backyard. No one uses it anymore, but we have a washing stone! Next time I hope I remember to get pictures of our super authentic stone grinders (also not used anymore, which makes me sad).

]]> http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/cashew-nut-cake/feed/ 7 aditimachado Cashew nut cake http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/nan-khatai/ http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/nan-khatai/#comments Sat, 26 Jun 2010 03:30:57 +0000 Aditi Machado http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=86 ]]> Nan khatai is one of those evil things brought to earth to make you fat. It’s a biscuit (in the British sense of the word) and because I can’t find anything on the internet to contradict this, I’ll say it’s of Indian origin. I don’t know exactly where it’s from, but my aunt says my version tastes a bit like Mysore Pak.

Besides being perfectly delicious, nan khatai is also extremely easy to bake. My recipe has five ingredients in all and you don’t need an electric beater or processor, which makes this easier than your standard cookie recipe even. It is also eggless. Yay for vegetarians.

Looking at my ingredients and the ingredients of other nan khatai recipes online, I’m beginning to think mine is a bit unconventional because it uses a mixture of flour and besan (gram flour). The other recipes I’ve looked at use only flour and some add sooji (semolina, read ew). Whatever. All those people are crazy. How you can make nan khatai without besan is incomprehensible to me.

Nan khatai

I’ve made this sound really easy, and it is, but there is one tricky aspect. Getting the dough to be, well, dough. You can use dalda instead of ghee (Indian clarified butter), and I suppose things would be easier. But ghee, the best fat you can find in the world, has all kinds of consistencies. I suggest using it at room temperature, when it’s sort of semi-liquid. If it’s hot where you are, refrigerate for a few minutes before using.

So there are two ways to get your dough right. The first is to start with less ghee (i.e., less than the recommended one cup) and add more towards the end, if the dough doesn’t come together in a ball. But of course, I never want to cut down on ghee, so I do it the second way: combine the ingredients as mentioned in the recipe, and add more flour if the dough is too sticky.

The story of this picture: once again, I felt extremly lazy taking one, but realised that if you’re not Indian, you may not know what this is supposed to look like. So I took a picture. Then my Aunt Rose walked in and she said, ‘That’s not how you take a picture! And she got me a place mat and a cup of tea and a weird tribal vase thing.’ How adorable is she?

1 cup ghee
1 cup finely powdered sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup besan (gram flour)
¼ tsp baking soda

1. In a large bowl, mix ghee and sugar together.

2. Sift the flour with the baking soda. Mix in the besan.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the ghee mixture. Stir together until a soft dough forms. If the mixture is too sticky, add more flour, a tablespoon at a time. You know the dough is right if you can roll it into balls, like so:

Not the prettiest picture, but what can I say, it gets the job done.

4. So, naturally, you must roll your dough into small balls as shown above. Make a cross-cut on top with a sharp knife. Place them an inch apart on a greased baking sheet (or an awesome silicone baking sheet) and bake for about 10 minutes at 180°C/350°F. Let them cool for ten minutes or so before transferring on to a wire rack to cool completely. Drink with tea, seriously.

Makes 36

These are summery dishes and they are very easy to make, but unlike most easy dishes, these feel and taste special. Fruity but decadent. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve this to guests, especially with piped whipped cream.

The shortness of these recipes (and the fact that I once tweeted them) testifies to their simplicity.

Wiki tells me that fruit fool (or foole) is an English dessert containing a mixture of puréed fruit, whipped cream and sugar, and that it was traditionally made using gooseberries. Naturally, this combination of ingredients wouldn’t work for all fruit, but it does for mango and papaya (separately, as far as I know).

Mango fool

These are the last of my recipes adapted  from 1001 Essential Recipes (Bay Books, 2003) — for the time being. If you’re worried about the texture, I would say it should come out sort of like  mousse. Traditional chocolate mousse has a bit of a gummy texture; this doesn’t, but it does share the creaminess and the fact that it is firm to the touch. You definitely want to keep this refrigerated until it’s time to dig in.

3 large mangoes
1 cup custard*
1 2/3 cups heavy cream, cold

*See note on ingredients  below.

1. Peel and stone the mangoes. Purée the flesh in a food processor.

2. Add the custard and blend until the mixture is smooth and even. Pour into a large bowl and keep aside.

3. In a cold bowl, whip the cream till soft (not stiff) peaks form.

4. Fold the whipped cream into the mango custard. Try not to overmix as you get a lovely marbled effect if you don’t.

5. Pour into a serving dish or individual glasses. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Serves 6

Optional:

This recipe is open to interpretation and also to decoration. Although I didn’t bother, I think it would be lovely served with more whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Note on ingredients:

Custard: Can’t say I’ve ever  made custard from scratch before. I use Brown and Polson’s custard powder. For this recipe in particular, I increase the amount of sugar they recommend on the pack because there’s no other sugar to be added to the fool.

Papaya lime fool

Image from the recipe book. Imagine if I could do this, though.

2 ripe papaya (about 1 kg)*
1 – 2 tbsp lime juice
3 tbsp fine or powdered sugar*
1¼ cups heavy cream, cold

*See note on ingredients below.

1. Peel the papaya and remove the seeds. Mash the flesh until smooth. (The book says not to use a food processor or the fruit will be too runny. I used one anyway. It turned out all right.)

2. Stir the sugar and lime juice — to taste. Indian limes are quite strong, so I’d recommend starting with 2 tsp and going up gradually. The amount of sugar will depend largely on the sweetness of your papaya.

3. In a cold bowl, whip the cream till soft peaks form.

4. Fold the cream into the papaya mixture.

5. Pour into a serving dish or individual glasses and refrigerate for an hour or two before serving.

Serves 4

Note on ingredients:

Papaya: The book suggests two variations, neither of which I can personally recommend because I don’t know what they are and can’t imagine what they taste like. The first variation is using 2 red pawpaw instead of the papaya; the second is 500 g (1 lb) of stewed rhubarb. Try it and let me know how it turns out.

Sugar: The book recommends vanilla sugar. I didn’t know where to find it, so I used ordinary sugar powdered fine and added a splash of vanilla essence, but I don’t think the vanilla is necessary.

]]> http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/mango-fool-papaya-lime-fool/feed/ 0 aditimachado Papaya lime fool http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/date-and-walnut-cake/ http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/date-and-walnut-cake/#comments Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:27:05 +0000 Aditi Machado http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=72 ]]> Firstly, this cake has the most beautiful smell when it’s baking. Like butter — no, sweet butter melting. It’s a warm, home-y cake that I remember my mother baking back when she used to.

Secondly, kids are dumb.

And I was no exception. I used to refuse to eat this cake. Otherwise not a fussy kid, I thought dates were icky and walnuts were bitter and they didn’t belong in cake. I wonder if kids have underdeveloped taste buds or something. Because the food I really liked included all of three things: ice cream, Coke (actually, back in the day it was Thums Up) and tandoori chicken. I still love tandoori chicken, especially if it’s actually cooked in a tandoor, but I can go months without wanting ice cream or any sort of black fizzy drink. I think I only liked ice cream and Thums Up because I wasn’t allowed (I was asthmatic).

I also  thought cucumbers tasted horrible –what? they’re mostly just water — and because we ate meat so infrequently, I would confuse chicken and lamb. That’s how dumb I was.

Anyway, turns out dates are icky, but not if you treat them nicely and put them in cake; and walnuts are only bitter if they’re bad. I’m so glad I rediscovered this cake, which happened like this: I was thinking how perfect dates and walnuts are as complementary ingredients and how awesome it would be if they could be put together in cake. Then ping! this weird light went on in my head and I remembered my mother baking a date and walnut cake. I looked up her  recipe book and found the ingredients scribbled down with some very arcane instructions, which I then dutifully deciphered and followed. Voilà! Delicious cake!

Date and walnut cake

According to my mother’s notes, a certain Mrs Alka Uppal is responsible for giving her this recipe. But I get credit for figuring it out, OK? I also get credit for, um, taking this passable picture of it.

I went through a phase of trying to learn photography. After a couple of years of being all artsy and visual, I realised two things: 1. I don’t have 20/20 vision even with my glasses and contact lens and probably never will. 2. I suck at taking pictures. Anyway, I found a camera and did some lame arranging in the background. The important thing about this picture — other than it telling you not to be afraid of this recipe: what comes out of the oven is actually cake — is, well, see how uneven and crumbly the edges of the piece I’ve cut out are, that means the cake looked and smelled so good I had to cut it before it cooled completely and that’s what you get if you cut a cake before it’s time. God, I love comma splicing, almost as good as slicing onions.

This recipe does a very smart thing. The chopped dates are soaked in hot milk while the other ingredients are put together. This softens the dates and allows their flavour to get into the milk. When the milk mixes with the rest of the batter, the flavour very gently goes through the entire cake and isn’t restricted to the little bits of date. So it’s not just a vanilla cake (actually, there’s no vanilla in it at all) with bits of other stuff in it. You can taste the dates throughout and the walnuts offer a wonderful textural relief.

1 cup (150 g) walnuts, chopped
1 cup (200 g) dates, finely chopped
1 cup whole milk
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
a big pinch of salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups sugar
4 eggs

1. Grease and line a cake tin. These quantities make a pretty large cake. I used an 8″ x 12″ tin. A more conventional 9″ x 13″ should also work. My feeble powers of estimation tell me you could also get two 9″ x 5″ loaf tins — I love loaf tins! — out of this batter or you could halve the quantities and just make one loaf cake.

2. Heat the milk until it just boils. Remove from heat and add the dates. Stir a little and then let the mixture stand. This is important: before you add the date mixture to the batter in step 6, it should be room temperature or only barely warm.

3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

5. Add the eggs one at a time. Make sure to incorporate each egg fully and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula before adding the next.

6. Alternately whisk in the flour mixture and date mixture in two or three additions, ending with flour.

7.  Stir in walnuts.

8. Preheat your oven to 150°C/320°F. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for about an hour or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the cake. Cool on a wire rack for five or ten minutes before removing the cake from the tin. Then let it cool completely before you cut and serve. Or, you know, be human and just dig in when it’s warm.

: )

My favourite chocolate cake is this Mexican chocolate cake — cinnamon does great things to the cake — but sometimes you need something super extra decadent. That’s when you eat mud cake.

[This may be the only five star hotel chocolate cake I've ever eaten, but I once ordered a chocolate mud cake at The Park and it was one of those molten cakes. Cake outside, sauce inside. What's with that? It was yummy, though. Yay for free desserts!]

Chocolate mud cake

Yet another recipe adapted from 1001 Essential Recipes (Bay Books, 2003) with a scanned image. For such a big book it’s not all that essential, but yes, this is one of the recipes I liked. It has cocoa and melted chocolate, butter and oil.

I’m running out of things to say, so: 1. Please use good quality dark chocolate. There’s a lot of it in this cake and if you use something funky, your cake will taste funky. 2. If you’re anti-instant coffee,  you could go without it, but coffee generally helps the cake achieve its chocolate potential. *cough* 3. I reduced the amount of sugar, but if you want to go with the original, it’s 2¼ cups. A lot, I know.

250 g (8 oz) unsalted butter
250 g (8 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp instant coffee powder
¾ cup hot water
150 g (5 oz) self-rising flour*
150 g (5 oz) all-purpose flour
½ cup cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ cup buttermilk*

*See note on ingredients below.

1. Grease and line a deep 9″ round tin. The paper lining should extend at least 2″ above the edge of the tin.

2. Place butter, chocolate and coffee powder in a pan. Pour hot water over the ingredients and stir over low heat until smooth. Remove from heat.

3. Sift  the flours, cocoa powder and baking soda into a large bowl.

4. Stir in sugar and make a well in the centre.

5. In a small bowl, combine the eggs, oil and buttermilk.

6. Pour the egg-mixture into the flour-mixture and stir slowly with a large metal spoon.

7. Gradually stir in the chocolate mixture.

8. Pour batter into the prepared tin and bake for about an hour and 45 minutes at 160°C/315°F. (Note: if you use an 8″ tin instead of a 9″, increase the baking time to two hours. Also note: my cake did not take this long to bake. I suggest checking on it after an hour with a skewer, and every 10 or 15 minutes after.) Cool completely before removing from the tin and frosting.

Storage:

This cake can be refrigerated in an airtight container and/or plastic wrap for up to three weeks, or frozen for up to two months. That’s what it says in the book.

Frosting, if you want one:

I’m a plain cake freak and only make icing for birthday cakes, so I’ve not tried this. The cake is pretty rich and dense all by itself and I don’t think it needs anything extra. It may be nice to serve each slice with a spoon of barely sweet whipped cream. If you’re still not satisfied, melt 150 g (5 oz) of unsalted butter (chopped) and 150 g (5 oz) of dark chocolate (chopped) over low heat; stir continuously until smooth. Pour over cake and let it run down the sides.

Note on ingredients:

Self-rising flour: You can make your own, if you like. It’s 1 cup all-purpose flour + 1¼ tsp baking powder + a generous pinch of salt, sifted together two or three times. For this recipe, you can make 2 cups, then measure out of that quantity.

Buttermilk: You can substitute this with ½ cup of slightly warm milk left standing with 1½ tsp of lime juice or white vinegar. When it’s curdled, you know it’s ready for use, but make sure it’s at room temperature before adding it to the batter.

]]> http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/chocolate-mud-cake/feed/ 9 aditimachado Chocolate mud cake http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/a-note-on-carrot-cake-and-muffins/ http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/a-note-on-carrot-cake-and-muffins/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:55:03 +0000 Aditi Machado http://bpsrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=44 ]]> I have more than one carrot cake recipe (and one muffin recipe) in my index and I feel I should explain why. I mean, how is anyone to know how to pick the right one to try out?

I used to hate carrot cake when I was a kid. It had more to do with the idea of putting a vegetable — and a vegetable as mundane as carrot — into cake than with its actual taste. In fact, I’m not sure I ever tasted carrot cake, though my mother would make it all the time. Maybe I had a nibble and then cast my plate aside in a fit of histrionics. Out of character for me, though, because I was never fussy about food. We weren’t brought up that way.

Today I love carrot cake and am obsessed with trying it out. Despite the bleached flour, sugar and fat content, it seems healthy somehow. Or at least healthier than most other cake. It probably is, since most carrot cakes use oil instead of butter, and I hear carrots are good for your eyes.

So here goes.

My go-to carrot cake recipe: Sigrid’s carrot cake (The Pioneer Woman/Ree Drummond)

The reason this is my go-to recipe is that the ingredients (sugar, oil, eggs, flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, carrots) are always readily available — often I don’t even need to go out shopping — and that it’s very easy to put together. Grating carrots is a pain, but that’s something you have to suck up and do when you want carrot cake. I also love beating eggs. I realise this is not something I share with many people, but it’s fascinating to watch eggs change form and texture. This recipe requires you to beat eggs with sugar for quite a while (not a pain if you have one of those cake mixers, but I always use electric beaters because it’s so much more personal) until they form a thick, pale yellow, ribbon-y liquid. I’ve seen this step in many fruit/vegetable cake recipes. It gives the cake a particular texture and taste — indefinable but it’s there, at the back of your throat somewhere. I love it.

I haven’t tried the cream cheese frosting that comes with this recipe, but you really can’t go wrong mixing cream cheese, butter and sugar. Just — be careful with the sugar. I wonder if Indian sugar is sweeter than American sugar, because whenever I make frosting I end up using much less sugar than is recommended. Sometimes I even halve the amount of sugar.

My go-to carrot cake recipe when I have oranges: One-bowl carrot cake (Baking Bites/Nicole Weston)

Nicole Weston mentions a bunch of possible problems with carrot cake and this recipe doesn’t suffer from any of them. I like this cake plain and warm (10 – 15 seconds in the microwave). It’s denser and more varied in flavours than the previous recipe, which means you need more ingredients. But orange accents are lovely in carrot cake, and judging by the comments on the recipe, you can do some variations of your own, like add raisins.

The recipe I tried by accident: Carrot apple muffins (Joy of Baking/Stephanie Jaworski)

I had a gigantic apple lying around the house and no one was eating it. So I wanted to make apple muffins. Then I realised I had some carrots, so I thought why not make apple muffins with flecks of carrot in it? I found a recipe online from a site that looked rather suspicious but I ignored my intuition and made the batter anyway. It looked like cookie batter. Muffin batter should not look like cookie batter. Even newbs like me know that. I panicked. I did another search and thankfully, found a recipe at joyofbaking.com. I’ve tried Stephanie Jaworski’s recipes before and they’ve always come out well. Luckily the math was right: I only had to add more ingredients and this was saved. A horde of people came over — Indian relatives, what can I say? — and I’m glad I didn’t have to serve them weird cookie-muffins. These were lovely and everyone loved them. Oil + eggs + sugar creates a  flavour similar to the one I mentioned in Sigrid’s carrot cake. Plus this has nuts and apple — yes, this turned to be a carrot apple rather than apple carrot muffin — and you can even add coconut. What I need to figure out is whether I can use freshly grated coconut, which is what all self-respecting Mangaloreans use. Most of these recipes suggest some sort of dried/processed coconut. Fresh coconut might interfere with cake’s moisture. Any ideas?

The most fabulous carrot cake I’ve eaten to date: Carrot cake with lime mascarpone frosting (Jamie Oliver)

Holy god of carrots. This is the best thing ever. It is also not at all healthy and a part of me is making that connection,  you know the one: not healthy → food orgasm. It’s got a gigantic list of ingredients, one of which requires work to hunt down/make yourself. (I’ll come to that later.) It’s got five eggs and a ton of butter. Not oil. Butter.Yum.

Just a suggestion: keep this for special occasions, all right? Don’t waste it on some ratty aunt who comes by with holy water. This is for people you love and cherish. And for me, it’s way up there with comfort food. It’s that good.

This cake also pleases me with its long list of things to do. I realise this is not an attractive prospect for a lot of bakers, but whatever. The egg whites need to be beaten separately. You also need ground almonds. I haven’t seen this around anywhere, but this is how I make it myself. I’m worried the almonds will turn into marzipan on pulverisation. (Horrible word. Makes me think of mass murderers. I’m a mass murderer of almonds.) So what I do is I toast them in the oven for 5 – 7 minutes at 180°C/350°F. I let them cool. Then I grind them in my food processor. Again, you have to be careful with grinding them too much and turning them into a paste. I suggest taking a portion of the brown sugar required for this cake — a couple of tablespoons — and adding it to the almonds just before grinding. This way you get a powder or mostly powder, perfect for mixing into the batter.

Yep, that’s it! Have fun baking.

(I may come back to edit this if I find any more awesome carrot recipes.)

I’m not a fan of gluten free/whole wheat/multi-grain cake, and most of the recipes I find online go that weird health route, or they have fancy variations of some other nature. This is a good, tasty cake that uses readily available ingredients. There.

Banana cake

This recipe is adapted from a big, fat book called 1001 Essential Recipes (Bay Books, 2003) and I’ve scanned the picture from the book, so you know what it’s supposed to look like.

I get the feeling I need to sound nicer and cheerier and ever so in love with my baking ingredients and implements for anyone to read this.

Bananas! Flour! Butter! Sugar!

125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened*
½ cup caster sugar*
2 eggs, lightly beaten*
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 medium bananas, mashed*
1 tsp baking soda
½ cup milk
2 cups self-raising flour
½ tsp ground mixed spice*
½ cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
a pinch of salt

*See note on ingredients below.

1. Lightly grease an 8″ round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy,

3. Add the beaten egg gradually, beating thoroughly after each addition.

4. Add the vanilla and banana. Beat until combined. Keep aside for a moment.

5. Sift together flour, spice and salt.

6. In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda into the milk.

7. Using a metal spoon, gently fold the flour mixture and milk mixture alternately into the banana mixture. Stir until just combined and smooth. Do not overmix.

8. Pour batter into the prepared tin. Bake at 180°C/350°F for an hour or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake. Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes or so before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool.

Frosting, if you want one:

I like my cake plain, so I’ve never bothered to make frosting (icing, whatever you call it) for this cake. I can’t vouch for the recipe, but here it is anyway:

125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened*
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar*
1 tbsp lemon juice
¼ cup flaked coconut, toasted

See what I mean by fancy ingredients? I don’t even know where I can get flaked, toasted coconut. Can I flake it myself?

Anyway. What you do is beat the butter, confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Spread it over the cake (only when it is absolutely cool) with a flat knife and decorate with the coconut flakes.

Or you can just use your favourite cream cheese frosting.

Note on ingredients:

Butter and eggs: It took me a while to figure this out, but softened butter means you shouldn’t use butter straight from the fridge. Leave it out until it reaches room temperature and then measure. If you don’t think it’s soft enough, move it around with a spatula a bit. It’s fun.

In general, all ingredients should be at room temperature before you use them, unless otherwise mentioned. So yes, keep your eggs out as well.

Sugar: Caster sugar can be bought, but it’s easier (and more economical)  to just powder it in your blender. As fine as possible, please. Confectioner’s sugar is the same as icing sugar and can also be bought, but again, it’s just easier to blend it with a bit of cornflour/cornstarch (1 tbsp to a cup of sugar).

Bananas: Over-ripe, spotty, mushy bananas for cake, always. Oh, and don’t use those silly small bananas every one eats in the south of India. Or green or red bananas. Ordinary yellow ones are best.

Ground mixed spice: I’m sure this can be purchased. At home, my mother makes a tiny bottle every six months or so. Equal parts cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg, I think. But I wouldn’t worry about this much. Just take whatever spices you have and grind them. I use cinnamon and nutmeg for the most part.

For some reason not quite clear to me, bread pudding is a favourite of Mangalorean Catholics (that’s my more specific cultural identity within India) even though it’s not typically Indian. Bread pudding and caramel custard — any Mangalorean household worth its salt knows to make these two dishes besides the more traditional sweets. Turns out there are very few such households. Shame.

Things I don’t like in bread pudding: a big pile of mush; soggy bread texture masquerading as a dense cake; egginess; too strong a citrus flavouring; any other kind of strong flavouring. I see no point in chocolate bread pudding, for example. Bread pudding has a distinct taste and chocolate messes with that. If you like chocolate so much, make chocolate pudding. Or eat a bar of chocolate.

Just handing out some tough love.

The perfect bread pudding, besides being a minimum fuss preparation, is soft and sweet on the bottom and crisp and slightly salty on top (because of the butter). It does not taste eggy. It has very light citrus accents to counteract any possible egginess. For an extra kick, it has a tiny bit of nutmeg and lots of raisins ready to burst in your mouth. The following recipe produces just such a bread pudding.

Milkmaid bread pudding

The name of this recipe comes from the brand of sweetened condensed milk I use. This may be because the recipe was taken off its tin; I’m not sure. This fact has some bearing on the recipe because two of the ingredients are measured in the tin. But no worries, I’ve offered an approximation. (OK, be a little worried.)

6 thick slices of day-old bread
50 g  (2 oz) salted butter
½ tin Nestlé Milkmaid (i.e. 200 g or 7 oz sweetened condensed milk)
1 Nestlé Milkmaid tin filled with milk (approx. 1½ milk)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
juice and zest of 1 lime
25 g (1 oz) raisins, washed and dried (optional)
a dash of ground nutmeg (optional)

1. Generously butter each slice of bread on both sides. Cut the slices into halves and arrange in an appropriately-sized* glass dish. I like to place them with the corners facing upwards, so they get nice and toasty in the oven. (*Appropriately-sized means the halves of bread should just fit in it. For this quantity, I use a 6″ x 8″ x 2½” dish.

2. Whisk together the condensed milk, milk, eggs, lime juice, zest and nutmeg (if using).

3. Pour the milk mixture over the bread and let stand for 15 minutes. Sprinkle the raisins on top of the bread.

4. Preheat the oven to 200°C/350°F. Bake the pudding for about 45 minutes. You can start checking on it at 30. The pudding is done when the top looks a little brown and crispy, but not burnt. Let the pudding cool for ten minutes and serve warm.

Serves 4

A final note:

I don’t support it and it pains me to consider it, but feel free to try this recipe with whole wheat or multi-grain bread. You may even try using low fat milk. *shudder*

Oh, and, once again, I don’t have a picture of this pudding. But look! Raisins!