Recipe: Anand's birthday cake

Also christmas cake. Huge. Plenty of nuts and so forth. First off I had about 2 lbs of fruit (walnut, cranberries, raisins, almonds, cashew nuts, lemon rinds, pineapple, dried ginger, figs, pecans, cherries, dates) marinated in plenty of rum sitting there for about a month. Rest of the recipe:

Flour: 250g
1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
6 eggs
1/2 oz. baking (unsweetened) chocolate, melted
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp garam masala

Cream the butter and brown sugar until fluffy and then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the chocolate, nuts and marinated fruit and stir. (You'll likely need to do this by hand.) Add the flour and remaining dry ingredients. Mix well - the batter wil lbe heavy.

Packed the batter into the largest pan we had (13 x 8 i think). Bake at 300 degrees for 2 hours plus 10 - 15 minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick at the two hour mark; when it comes out clean, it’s done. When the cake is cool enough to handle, remove from the pan and move to a rack to finish cooling.

Westerners usually spend the next month pouring brandy into the cake. we've done our brandy pouring into the fruits.

Stolen from here: http://www.martinirepublic.com/item/bourbon-fruitcake/

Cake mix

I made some cake mix for Anand so he can bake his own cakes while he's by himself. I just mixed 4.5 cups of flour, 31/8 cups of sugar, 2 tbsp baking powder. To bake his cake all he needs to do is: cream half a cup of shortening, 1 egg, 1 cup of the mixture, add flavoring agents, some milk for the right consistency, bake in a 4 inch pan for 15 minutes at about 350 degrees.

Chirotti

This is a Kannadiga delicacy. Great at any meal, but usually served as a dessert. Except it takes forever to prepare. Eaten with sweet badam milk.
Recipe:
For dough:
1 cup fine sooji (sometimes called chirotti sooji)
1 cup maida
3 tbsp ghee
1/4 tsp salt

Oil to deep fry

For the paste:
3 tbsp ghee
3 tbsp rice flour

For badam milk:
40 badams
1 ltr milk

For the seasoning:
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cardamom powder
1 tsp clove powder

Preparation time (including dough resting): 4 hrs
Knead the maida, sooji, ghee and some water. The dough should be soft and tight. Let the dough sit for 2 hrs. Roll it out into some 8 or so chappattis. Now mix the ingredients for the paste together to make a glue. Glue the chappattis together with the paste between them. Roll the resulting chappatti into a log. Let this sit for a cpl hours. Now, cut this log laterally so that you get little circles of dough each with little spirals inside. Now roll out the little dough circles gently. Heat the oil. Now deep fry the chirotti until golden brown on medium. Mix the cardamom powder, sugar and clove powder together. Sprinkle on the chirottis.
To prepare the milk: Soak the badams for 6 hours. Skin the badams, and grind to a paste. Add to the milk and boil to a thick consistency.

Serve the chirotti with hot badam milk. Delicious.