Sinful Dark chocolate Fudge cake

This is my first cake recipe in my blog and I took the privilege to bake my own cake for my Birthday...I know it sounds strange but I didn’t want to miss the chance to bake the first one for the blog. And I feel happy for not missing it as this is such a wonderful, moist and fudgy chocolate cake recipe, which is needs to be shared with you all. click here for the original cake recipe. I just substituted white sugar in the original recipe with brown sugar, just to make it a little healthier.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

All-purpose flour - 1 3/4 cups

Brown sugar - 2 cups

Unsweetened cocoa powder - 3/4 cups

Baking soda - 2 tsp

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Salt - 1/2 tsp

Buttermilk - 1 cup

Vegetable oil - 1/2 cup

Eggs - 2 Nos

Vanilla sugar – 1 Tbsp

Coffee – 1 Cup

For the icing:

Fresh heavy cream – 150ml

Eggs – 1

Softened Butter – 100 g

Icing sugar – 1 cup

Vanilla extract – 1 tsp

Unsweetened cocoa powder – ¾ cup

Preparation:

Baking the Cake:

·         Pre-heat the oven at 180°C.

·         Butter the cake pan and dust with flour.

·         Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

·         In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla extract and whisk rigorously till combined

·         Beat the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients until nicely combined and then slowly incorporate the fresh coffee (at room temperature) into batter.

·         Pour batter into the prepared cake pan and bake in for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick / knife inserted comes out clean.

·         Remove the cake from the oven and cool it completely and proceed to the next step of icing. (After cooling the cake to room temperature, I chilled it in the refrigerator for about 2 hours)

Dark Chocolate Icing:

·         Whisk the egg in a sauce pan and cook on the steam over boiling water in another saucepan, whisking continuously and take care that the pan do not touch the surface of boiling water(otherwise you may end up having scrambled eggs), till the egg turns creamy. Remove from heat and cool it by placing the saucepan in a ice bath.

·         In a saucepan, heat the cream until bubbles are formed but not boiling. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature and combine with the egg.

·         In a bowl, bring in the softened butter, icing sugar, cocoa butter and vanilla extract and beat with an electrical beater or hand whisk until nice and fluffy.

·         Now bring in the egg and cream mixture and beat till nice and fluffy.

·         Chill the icing for about an hour in the fridge and then spread it evenly over the cake and decorate it accordingly. You can also put the icing in a piping bag and decorate.

Pumpkin Halwa

This is what I made for this Diwali. Diwali is the Indian festival of lights celebrated by wearing new clothes, lighting fire crackers and exchanging sweets back home. Usually my mom prepares this sweet with Ash gourd. But since I didn’t find it here, I wanted to try with the yellow pumpkin which is readily available during this time of the year and searched in the internet if it is allowed to use it to make this dish . To my surprise, it tasted equally great and love the colour of the dish. Traditional halwa uses khoa or khoya or mawa (milk that is cooked down so most the moisture is evaporated). This adds texture and richness to halwa. I used sweetened condensed milk to the recipe to thicken the halwa. Instead, you can also cook the grated pumpkin in milk and then fry in ghee till we get the required consistency.

Ingredients:

Pumpkin – 1 kg

Ghee- ½ cup

Sugar – 1 cup

Sweetened condensed milk – 50 ml

Cashew nuts – ¼ cup

Raisins – 2 Tbsp

Cardamom Powder – 1 tsp

Method:

·       Cut, deseed, peel and grate the pumpkin.

·       In a heavy bottom pan, add about 2 tbsp of ghee and fry the cashew nuts and raisins till golden brown and keep aside.

·      Add the remaining ghee to the pan and fry the grated pumpkin on medium heat till all the moisture is gone and the ghee oozes out.

·      Stir in the condensed milk and sugar, milk well and cook on low heat by constantly stirring (so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom and get burnt) till the milk is totally absorbed in and the ghee oozes out of the halwa.

·       Stir in the cardamom powder, mix well and remove from heat.

·       Garnish with fried cashews and raisins.

·       Serve hot or cold. It tastes great in either ways. It can also be refrigerated in a closed container for about a week and can be reheated before serving.

Pistachio Custard

I am here with the very  first desert recipe in my blog. As I am really not a sweet-loving person, I rarely prepare them. But this particular recipe changed my inclination towards deserts.  I tasted it for the first time at my friend, Lakshmi’s place and became a fan of it from that very moment.  Immediately, I took the recipe from her and made very few modifications to it. It’s really a wonderful, tasty, yet simple recipe. I am very happy to share it with you.

Ingredients:               

Pistachios - 1 cup shelled

Evaporated milk - ½ litre

Sugar - ¾ cup

Custard powder – 2 Tbsp

Method:

Crush the pistachios in a mortar or a food processor to a coarse powder.

Mix the milk, sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring it to boil. Now add the pistachios and bring to a light boil

Mix the custard powder with about 4 to 5 tbsp of cold milk to make it a smooth paste.

Now add this to the boiling milk and stir continuously. After adding the custard to the boiling milk, it starts to become thick and creamy.

Allow it to simmer for 5-10 minutes, then remove from the heat and chill in a refrigerator for about 2 hours and serve.