Old Fashioned Banana Cake

Looks like I am becoming a hard core Ina Garten fan. This is another one of her recipes from the Barefoot Contessa book series "How easy is that?". Now what is the difference between banana cake and banana bread? The only thing I know of is that the banana bread is made in a loaf pan and the other one in a regular cake pan. If one of you has a better answer than that, let me know. This is a super moist 'n soft cake recipe and the taste reminds me of the unniyappams (a traditional fried snack made with rice flour, banana, etc). I have slightly altered the recipe to reduce the amount of sugar.

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Makes a 9" Cake

Very Ripe Bananas	- 3 (mashed)
Granulated Sugar	- 1/2 cup
Light Brown Sugar	- 1/2 cup (lightly packed)
Vegetable Oil	- 1/2 cup
Eggs	- 2
Sour Cream	- 1/2 cup
Pure Vanilla Extract	- 1 tsp
Grated Orange zest	- from a small orange
All Purpose Flour	- 2 cups
Baking Soda	- 1 tsp
Salt	- 1/2 tsp
Coarsely chopped walnuts	- 1/2 cup

1. Using an electric mixer or blender, mix the mashed bananas, granulated sugar and brown sugar on a low speed until combined. The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup granulated sugar. So if you want it to be sweeter, you could add 3/4 cup.
2. Add the oil, eggs, sour cream, vanilla essence and orange zest to the banana-sugar mixture and mix at low speed until smooth. If you do not have orange zest, you could avoid them.
3. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking soda and salt to combine them well.
4. Add the dry ingredients slowly to the wet ingredients in a slow speed and combine well.
5. Stir in the chopped walnuts to the cake batter.
6. Pour the batter into a greased 9" baking pan.
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 50-55 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. The heating time varies by the oven, so keep checking towards the last 10-15 minutes.
8. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes and turn on to a cooling rack and cool completely.

You should also be able to bake it in a loaf pan or even make this into muffins.  This is a perfect snack which has the goodness of bananas and the crunchiness of the walnuts. You could also make this cake without the walnuts, if you do not like them.

Blueberry Coffee Cake Muffins

Muffins are like cupcakes, except that they are a little bigger and it is a widely accepted breakfast item in this part of the world (US). Also cupcakes normally come with frosting and muffins do not. When I think muffins, I think of blueberries, may be because I love blueberry muffins. I feel that muffins are at its best with blueberries; somehow I have a feeling that my 4 year old son believes so too. This recipe is from Ina Garten's book Barefoot Contessa Family Style. Even though it is called Coffee Cake muffins, coffee is not an ingredient; may be they call it so as it is eaten with/or intended to be eaten with coffee at the breakfast table.

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Makes 18 muffins

Unsalted Butter	- 1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) at room temperature
Sugar	- 1 1/2 cups
Extra Large Eggs	- 3
Pure Vanilla Extract	- 1 1/2 tsp
Sour Cream	- 1 cup
Milk	- 1/4 cup
All Purpose Flour	- 2 1/2 cups
Baking Powder	- 2 tsp
Baking Soda	- 1/2 tsp
Salt	- 1/2 tsp
Blueberry	- 2 cups

1. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy for about 5 minutes using an electric mixer.
2. With the mixer at low speed, add one egg at a time to the butter-sugar mixture.
3. Add in vanilla, sour cream and milk to the batter and blend well.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. With the mixer at low speed, add the flour mixture to the batter and beat until just mixed.
6. Fold in the blueberries using a spatula and mix it slowly and uniformly into the batter.
7. Preheat the oven at 350 degree F.
8. Line the muffin tray with paper liners and scoop the batter into the paper liners in the muffin pan, filling each cup just over the top.
9. Bake for 30 minutes until top of the muffins are lightly browned and a cake tester comes out clean.

A tip from the book to scoop equal quantity of batter for the muffins was to use an ice cream scoop and to grease the top of the muffin pans to make it easier to take the muffins out. Both the tips worked out well for me.

This is a must-try bakery style muffin which would be a sure hit among the kids. My son liked it so much that he was not happy about me taking a few to office for my friends.

Chocolate Bundt Cake

Chocolate Cakes have a special place in everyone's heart. When I think of chocolate cakes, I think of Ambrosia (a Bakery in Trivandrum) whom I think has one of the best chocolate cakes and one of my friend's mom, who used to make awesome chocolate cakes. This is the kind of chocolate cake that is not too sweet with a coffee flavor and is best eaten with the plain vanilla ice cream. I have been looking for the perfect recipe for a long time and happened to see one in Bharathy's blog - Spicy Chilly. The picture looked awesome and decided to try it out. That was a wise decision and I have been making this for sometime now in different forms - cup cakes, round cakes, etc. 

This time I decided to try it out with the Bundt pan that I got from CSN stores as part of a review for them.  As mentioned in my prior CSN Store review, if you are looking for a specific cooking tool/gadget that you cannot find anywhere else, try CSN stores as they offer a wide range of products from twin beds to cookwares. 

Now moving on to the Chocolate Bundt Cake recipe, I have made very slight changes to the measurement and here is my version:

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Makes a 12" Bundt Cake

All Purpose Flour (Maida)	- 1 cup
Milk Powder	- 1 tbsp (heaped)
Cocoa Powder	- 4 tbsp (heaped)
Baking Soda	- 1/2 tsp
Butter	- 11 tbsp (145 gms)
Sugar	- 1 cup
Egg	- 4
Coffee Powder	- 1 tbsp (heaped)
Yogurt	- 4 tbsp
Vanilla Essence	- 1 tsp
Salt	- 1/4 tsp

1. Sieve the Flour, Cocoa Powder, Baking Soda, Milk Powder and Salt at least 4 times to make sure that the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed well. I used Hershey's Cocoa powder. Avoid salt if using salted butter.
2. Beat the sugar and butter well until they become smooth.
3. Add the eggs to the butter and beat well for 2-3 minutes.
4. To this, add vanilla essence and coffee powder (make sure that you are using fine coffee powder; if they are in the crystal form, powder it before you add it) and mix well.
5. Now add the yogurt to the batter and blend well. When adding the yogurt, make sure there are no lumps.
6. Now slowly fold in the flour mixture to the batter and mix well.
7. Grease a 12" bundt pan with butter and pour in the batter.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degree F for 30-35 minutes.

This cake is best eaten with a scoop of plain vanilla ice cream - yum! It is great on its own as well! Thanks Bharathy for sharing this recipe.

Sending this to "Virtual Party - Chocolaty Dreams" Event hosted by Shabitha.

Rosebud Madeleines

Madeleine was on my list since long. These are very small sponge cakes with a shell like shape, which is obtained using the special madeleine molds. These are described as French butter cakes cause of their French origin and yummy buttery taste. I was looking around in most local stores in my area since sometime to find the madeleine pan, but without much success. That is when CSN stores contacted me to do a review of some of their products. I was looking at the wide variety of products that they had to offer, ranging from twin beds to cookwares to pick the perfect item for my review and guess what, I found the Madeleine pan on their cookware website. They do have a wide selection of all kinds of specialty cookware. Something definitely worth checking out!

Once I received the Madeleine pan, I started going over the 5 to 6 recipes that I had shortlisted for making madeleines. One of them was the Rosebud Madeleine recipe that was in the book "How to be a domestic Goddess" by Nigella Lawson. That sounded perfect, one of the reasons being the use of rose water which I love the flavor of.

Makes 12 Madeleines

Salted Butter	- 1/4 cup + Additional for greasing
Eggs	- 1 large
Sugar	- 2 tbsp (level)
All purpose flour (Maida)	- 1/3 cup
Rosewater	- 1 tbsp
Confectioner's Sugar	- for dusting (optional)

1. Melt the butter at a low heat and then leave to cool. You could also use unsalted butter (that is what the recipe actually calls for and then add a pinch of salt to the batter).
2. Beat the Egg and Sugar in a bowl for 5 minutes using an electric mixer, until it is as thick a mayonnaise.

3. Sieve in the flour into the egg-sugar mix shaking a sieve that is held above the egg-sugar mix.

4. Fold in the flour smoothly into the egg-sugar mix.
5. Add the melted butter and Rosewater and mix smoothly in.
6. Keep the batter in the refrigerator for an hour and then leave at room temperature for 30 minutes. (This is an optional step; I tried it with and without this step; did not feel much difference).
7. Preheat the oven at 425 degree F.
8. Brush the insides of the madeleine molds generously with butter.
9. Fill the molds with the batter (this would be 2+ teaspoons full for each). Do not worry about filling the indentations completely with the batter. The batter will spread as it heats up.
10. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Keep checking in between. It will be ready as the sides start to brown a bit.
11. Remove the madeleines from the pan and let it cool on a rack.

 12. You could serve by dusting confectioner's sugar. It is awesome even without dusting the sugar.

These are a perfect tea time snack and for munching anytime. It is also an easy recipe with not too many ingredients. If you do not have rosewater, you could use some other essence like vanilla. But I would suggest getting rosewater if you have an option.

Showing off my newly acquired possession from cookware.com.

Christmas Fruit Cake / Plum Cake

It is that time of the Year again...Gifts, Santa, Holidays, and Fruit Cakes...Christmas time...

Fruit Cake is something I have always missed after coming to the US. Not that we don't get fruit cakes here, but not the kind that you get back in Kerala. These fruits cakes are also known as Plum Cakes. These cakes packed with dry fruits and nuts and the caramel flavor always has been one of my favorites. Last December I happened to taste the fruit cake made by one of my friends, which brought back those same old memories to my taste buds. The first thing I asked her was the recipe. She gave me 2 scanned pages of a book which I do not know who the author is, neither did she. I tried it out with some modifications last Christmas and turned out be a great success.

This year I planned ahead and soaked the dry fruits early November and made the cake after 5 weeks. So it was much more tastier. So here goes the ingredient list for the Fruit Cake/Plum Cake:

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Makes a 5 lb Cake

All purpose Flour	- 2 cups
Salted Butter	- 1 cup
Sugar	- 1/2 lb
Eggs	- 5
Pineapple Jam	- 1/2 lb (I used Kissan Jam)
Candied Peel (Tutti fruiti)	- 1/2 lb
Raisins	- 1 1/2 lb (Minced)
Cashews	- 1/2 lb (chopped)
Baking Powder	- 2 tsp (level)
Nutmeg Powder	- 1 tsp
Cinnamon & Cloves Powder	- 1 tsp
Caramel Syrup	- 3 tbsp
Orange Juice	- 3 tbsp
Vanilla Essence	- 3-5 drops
Rum	- 700 ml (optional - I used Myers's Rum)

1. Mix the minced Raisins with the Candied Peel in a storage bowl. Add Rum to this. Close the bowl. Keep this for a minimum of 3 days. I kept this for 5 weeks. Shake the bowl every other day. Again this is an optional step. You could make this cake without soaking the raisins in Rum as well.
2. Drain the rum out from the dry fruits and keep the fruits aside.
3. Separate the Egg White and Yolks. Beat the Egg yolk well.
4. Sift the Flour, Baking powder, Nutmeg powder and Cinnamon and Clove powder together.
5. Mix the drained dry fruits and chopped Cashew Nuts with the flour using a spatula and ensure that the fruits/nuts are well coated with the flour.
6. Beat the Butter and Sugar together with a blender and add the beaten Egg yolk to this. Beat the mixture until it becomes light and fluffy. If using unsalted butter, add 1/2 tsp salt.
7. Add the Caramel syrup, Jam, Orange Juice and essence to the Butter mixture and beat again until everything is mixed well.
8. Add the Butter mixture to the flour and mix well. You could use the blender.
9. Beat the Egg whites until still. There should not be any moisture in the bowl or the blender to ensure that the Egg whites would become stiff.
10. Fold in the Egg Whites to the flour mixture slowly using a spatula.
11. Pour the cake batter into a butter smeared baking pan (I used 14 x 10.5 inch) or a pan lined with parchment paper.
12. Pre-heat the oven at 325 degree and bake for around 1 hour. The time would vary depending on your oven. So keep checking.

Once the cake is out of the oven, let it cool. The cake would taste good, if you could resist the temptations and eat it the next day. This recipe would yield around 5 lbs of Fruit Cake. I am not sure whether the picture I have given here does any justice to the taste of the cake. If you like fruit cakes, this a must try.

Sending this recipe to the Cakes'n Cookies event hosted by Sara's Corner and Show me your Cake Event hosted by Dil Se.