Merry Christmas 08

A Merry Christmas to All!

Although I might seem a little late with the cheer, the spirit of Christmas surely lingers around till New Year and hence it cannot be late.

As usual I did a quick tour down memory lane to see what I had been doing during all those Christmases in the past.

When we were growing up, Christmas meant 10 days of holidays at school, nothing more. We knew of only one Christian lady teacher in our local primary school whom we affectionately called “Christiani teacher”. To date, I don’t know her real name. I also do not know if she and her family celebrated Christmas and if so how. It was so until I went to college when there was a bang. Suddenly I was surrounded by Christians all around and that too, who in Malayalam are known as “Sathya Christianikal” (true Christians), for I went to a Jesuit college far far away from home (2 days and 2 nights by train) where all my close Malayali friends were Christians. My best friend was Sister Regis. It was there that I learnt about the true spirit of Christmas. All the girls in the hostel went to the college chapel everyday and knelt before the altar. I went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve along with my friends. We had plum cake and ginger wine after the mass. I don’t think I had tasted cakes before (cakes had eggs and moreover our village did not have a bakery then).

After marriage and arrival of the children, being in Bangalore, we got to see lot of happenings during Christmases. The most important ritual during those days for Christmas was a visit to the “cake exhibition” organized by Nilgiris. With children around, we started buying cakes for Christmas and New Year and their birthdays. Around this time, we were served home baked biscuits just out of oven during one of our visits to our cousin. I was surprised that some one could bake such crunchy biscuits at home. We immediately asked her from where she learnt the art and she told us about the course she attended in baking and confectionery. Without much ado, I joined the course also and the rest is history.
We started baking cakes on all occasions, Christmas, New year, Easter, Birthdays, Anniversaries, you name it.
So this year also, we baked a cake for Christmas, well in advance, as I was coming back to Hyderabad before Christmas. We have now standardized on the procedure . Only this time, we made a smaller cake. We used the following ingredients.

Maida : 80 gms
Eggs: 2 (large)
Sugar: 65 gms
Butter: 65 gms
Baking powder: ½ tsp.
Baking soda: ½ tsp.
Cinnamon powder: 1 tsp.
All spices powder: 1 tsp (I used home made garam masala)
Mixed nuts and fruits: 250gms (marinated in rum)
Caramelized sugar : 2 tsp

We used walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans, cashewnuts, chestnuts and hazelnuts, raisins, figs, cherries, dates and candied peels. My handsome and charming son enthusiastically poured in liberal amount of rum into the jar of nuts, I might have exercised a little more caution.



Merry Christmas to All Once again.

PS: Turns out that around the Blandings Media Empire, Just Landed is also trying to spread some Christmas cheer.

Recipe: Date and Walnut cake (eggless)

I have been planning to make an eggless cake for quite sometime now but kept postponing it. Finally when I located some milkpowder in the fridge, I thought, “let me make eggless cake using the milkpowder”. Except, of course, I had no idea how to incorporate milk powder in a cake recipe. Neither the Internet nor my handy book was any help. But now that I'd decided to bake a cake, I decided to go ahead and do that anyway, except instead of using the milkpowder, I stayed traditional. (If anybody knows how to use milkpowder in a baking recipe, I'd like to know). Instead of eggs, I decided to use curds (yoghurt)

As always, I was going to make use of the things I already had at home. I had just one cup of flour. So that would be the quantity of flour I would use. Accordingly, I sliced and cut the dates and walnuts (2 tbsps. each). I had only ½ cup of powdered sugar. The baking guide, to which I have been returning recently, says, “castor sugar helps to trap the air better than powdered sugar," so I decided to use castor sugar to fill the cup. I always have homemade butter in the fridge , so that was no problem. Even after slicing the fruits and nuts, I did not find the time to bake the cake for two days. So the next day, in between my cooking I started the cake also. The preparation and baking took exactly one hour (slicing the fruits not included).

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

Flour: 1cup
Butter : 1 cup
Powdered sugar : ½ cup
Castor sugar : ½ cup
Cocoa powder: 1 tbsp.
Walnuts(sliced into tiny bits): 1 tbsp.
Dates(sliced into tiny bits): 1 tbsp.
Thick curds: 1cup
Baking powder: ½ tsp.
Baking soda: ½ tsp.
Rind of one lemon
Juice of one lemon
Milk to get the required consistency

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 deg. centigrade (390 F).

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the curds and cream some more. It may curdle a little, don’t worry. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda twice. Mix the fruits in a tbsp. of sifted flour and keep aside. Gradually fold in the sifted flour into the creamed mixture alternating with the fruits mixture. When all the flour has been added, mix in the lemon rind and lemon juice. The dough should be of dropping consistency. If not, add little tepid milk (not very warm) to get the right consistency.

Pour into a 9" dia baking dish (well greased and dusted) and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes clean.

My cake came out just right. Fluffy and soft and melting in the mouth.

HAPPY BAKING.

Recipe: Christmas cake

I have baked my Christmas cake well in advance this year. At first I thought I would follow the same recipe as I did last year for Anand’s birthday cake. I looked into the recipe and to my shock I realised that I had not included flour in the recipe. Uh Oh. I have since corrected it.

Since I did not have all the ingredients I had listed in last year’s recipe and did not feel like rushing to the store, I modified the recipe to include available ingredients. Hubby dear had cut the dry fruits (cashew, almonds, pistachios, dry pineapple, dry ginger, dates, raisins, walnuts, pecans, plums and prunes) and soaked them in plenty of brandy a month ago. Usually I would add cherries,which I did not have this time. I remembered how I enjoyed my trips to Whole Foods where I could pick up all dry fruits at one counter.

I had been using margarine or hydrogenated vegetable oil or butter according to availability at home. Since my (handsome and charming, natch) son recently prohibited me from using hydrogenated oil (contains transfat, he says) I used home made butter.

As I did not have brown sugar this time, I used 1 tbsp. of caramelised sugar to get the color. To caramelise sugar, heat 1 tbsp sugar in a heavy bottomed pan, stirring continuously. When it starts melting, reduce heat until the color changes to dark brown. Remove from heat and extract the caramel with 1 tbsp of water or milk.

The following is the list of ingredients.

Mixed dry fruits marinated in brandy :400 gms
Eggs: 3
Butter: 150 gms
Flour: 125 gms
Sugar: 150gms
Grated chocolate: 1tbsp
Caramalised sugar: 1 tbsp
Cinnamon powder: 1tsp
Mixed spices: 1tsp
Sodium-bi-carbonate: 1/2 tsp
Milk: 1tbsp

Method:

Pre heat oven to 180 deg C (350 deg. F)

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one by one to the creamed mixture and continue creaming till the mixture is light. Add the caramelised sugar and melted chocolate. Cream some more.

Sift the flour twice with cinnamon powder, powdered spices and sodium-bi-carbonate. Transfer the marinated fruits to a bowl and mix with 2 tbsp of sifted flour (this will prevent the fruits from sinking to the bottom of the cake).

Fold the sifted flour into the creamed mixture gently, alternating with the fruits mixture. Pour into a well greased and dusted baking pan and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hr. Reduce the temp. to 150 deg C (300 deg F) and bake for another 15 min. Test with a skewer.

Remove from the oven. Rest for 10mins. Invert onto a wire rack to cool completely.

ENJOY

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.