My experiments with cooking

Happy holidays! As such in India, Christmas is not that festive as it is elsewhere but we are catching up. For the first time we celebrated Christmas at home. As in we had a party at home. There was Santa at office. I was very happy to shake hands with him and take chocolates from him. I was glad to watch the movie “Miracle on 34th street”. So ho-ho! christmas is here!

Coming back to the post of the day… I had read this recipe since long but was not much interested in baking a cake without eggs. Dates? I was not sure!

Suddenly our friends said we are coming. I had all the ingredients for this one and thought maybe I can give it a shot. Also.. It is shilpa and I had that confidence in her! Her carrot cake was still fresh in my mind.

 I have followed her recipe to the T but just added more sugar as my husband has a very BIG sweet tooth. It came out almost like her second photograph shown here. Except that my cake had a light brown crust and very dark brown inside. The cake tasted like a chocolate cake even without a drop of chocolate. It was not like a date cake at all…

I had 8 guests so I had to double the quantity for every ingredient. It came out fabulous. I am confident in my cake baking skills now. I can recognize the batter consistency for a cake correctly. I have a long way to go though. Now bread baking is my next goal. I have got 2 books and also shilpa’s recipes. So hopefully I should be baking a bread next year.

My inferences:

• The cake was very soft… maybe because of the milk in it.
• This time it was not oily like the carrot cake. Again I guess because of the milk.  

 Verdict:

Awesome! Very Nice! Very Tasty! “Please give me the recipe”. These were the few comments from my guests. I am sure I have forgotten a few compliments but Shilpa, all the credit goes to you.

Till the next post…

C’est votre coquette!!

I’ve baked this cake on 31st night. This was my first new year celebration with my in-laws and I wanted it to be special.

More than that we don’t own a normal OTG and my in-laws own one so whenever we visit them, I make sure that I bake something.

So far my experiments were good enough and they yielded good results.

Now…I own a microwave oven but not an OTG. I got to know that cakes bake better if they are baked in an OTG rather than a microwave oven with convection mode. I’ve to see that as I didn’t bake a cake in my oven yet.

I’ve followed Shilpa’s recipe to the T but just skipped the apple filling and icing.

Verdict:

What a cake!!! I got so many compliments!!! People liked it a lot and it was finished withtin no time. It was so soft and amazingly sweet!

You know what happened after that? My husband told me if you promise me that you’ll bake a cake for me every weekend then I’ll get you a Microwave Oven. I said that I will and that’s how I got my new Micrwave oven. I didn’t keep my promise though. I’ll soon bake one as I’ve the recipe ready. This one I’ve picked up from some site and not a food blog.

Inferences:

• Maybe the presence of oil and eggs made it extremely soft.
• It was very sweet. 1 cup maida and 1 cup sugar. So I’ve to reduce the amount of sugar to atleast 3/4th cup.
• After a while…The cake left an oily trace on the plate…that made me think …maybe the oil amount also should be reduced. Maybe to half a cup?

Do let me know if you have made this cake and how did it come out. I would be really glad to share the experience. Also… Do let me know your views about the difference between Microwave oven and OTG for baking cakes…That would be really helpful.

PS: I got 2 comments on my blog. The first one is from Lulu and second one from Trupti. I was so happy!! I hope to get more visitors soon…

Till the next post…

C’est votre coquette!!