Banana Buckwheat Cake

We're at home thanks to the corona virus advisory and we're trying to keep ourselves entertained and well fed. Since I really enjoy baking I have cake and bread plans for this period of voluntary social distancing and so does the hubby! He had picked up some bananas a few days ago - some to enjoy as is and some to put in a banana bread/cake :)

Today the bananas looked ready to be used up and so we set out to bake with them. In an effort to experiment and to use up stuff in the pantry we decided to add buckwheat flour instead of using plain maida and so we ended up with a Banana Buckwheat Cake. The cake is dense thanks to the mashed bananas and the buckwheat but taste-wise this was a winner. The hubby plans to go get bananas today so we can make this again in a few days, lol.


Banana Buckwheat Cake  

100 gms buckwheat flour
100 gms maida/all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

100 gms butter
100 gms dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
4 very ripe medium bananas

1 egg
3-4 tablespoons milk
a pinch of salt

Set your oven to preheat at 170C

Prepare your cake tin - grease and lightly flour the inside or spray with a baking spray.

In a bowl mix the two flours, baking powder and cinnamon powder.

In a saucepan melt the butter with the sugar over a low flame. Do this slowly till the butter and the sugars have melted and blended without the sugar caramelising. Add vanilla and stir well. Set it aside.

Peel and mash the bananas and add to the sugar-butter mix. Add the egg and mix it well.

Pour this mix into a mixing bowl and add the dry ingredients. Add the pinch of salt.

Add as much milk as required and combine - you must have a thick gloopy batter that can be easily poured. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and put it in to bake. Bake the cake at 170C for around 35 minutes. Test with a cake tester for doneness - the tester should come out clean.

Cool the cake in the pan for around 10 minutes before you tip it out.

Enjoy your cake with tea or coffee. Once cooled, store the cake in an air-tight tin for three to four days if it doesn't get eaten up first!

How to Make Apple Pie

Some desserts are ridiculously easy to make and they're really delicious too. I made a slightly tweaked cheat's apple pie today for a potluck with friends. The theme was Chinese food and I spiced my pie with Chinese 5 Spice powder instead of just cinnamon. I also used ready puff pastry to top the pie as I didn't have the time to make short crust pastry this morning in time for the potluck lunch. Since no one complained about the pastry I'm confident the results were quite palatable!
Here's how to make an easy apple pie with ready puff pastry.

Apple Pie with Puff Pastry

4 red apples
4 granny smiths
1.5 tsp Chinese five spice powder or Cinnamon powder
3/4 cup brown sugar
50 gms butter
A large pinch of salt
A little milk
1 sheet puff pastry, enough to cover the pie
Vanilla ice cream to serve

Peel and chop all the apples into large chunky pieces. Don't chop them small as they will turn mushy when you cook them for the filling. 

In a large pan heat the butter. As soon as it's all melted add the chopped apples. Stir well to coat all the fruit with the butter and cook for a couple of minute on medium heat. 

Sprinkle the five spice/cinnamon powder and the brown sugar onto the apples, stir to mix evenly, add salt, and then let it cook for a few minutes till the apples are cooked but not completely mushy. Leave some 'bite' in the fruit. 

Pour the apple mixture into your pie dish and let it cool. 

In the meanwhile get your puff pastry sheet out of the freezer. As soon as it's soft enough to work roll it out till it's larger than the surface of your pie. Trim from one side so you have a large enough piece to cut out decorations to put on top of your pie.

Cover the pie and cut out flowers or any other shape from the trimmed piece with a cookie cutter. Place the cut outs on the pie. Brush the top with milk and bake the pie in a preheated hot oven - 200C- for 15 minutes or till the pastry is a lovely golden colour. 

Serve the pie with vanilla ice cream. You can have it hot or cold. 

On My Love-Hate Relationship with Fruit

In the years at Deccan College I encountered many people. And among them was Mrs Misra, Dr V N Misra's wife. Dr Misra was the hubby's PhD guide and the hubby therefore spent a lot of time with him in his office, and at his house too. The ties were closer than that of the other students with their guides because Dr Misra had also been my mother in law's PhD guide - probably a unique occurrence among guides and students the world over.

My memories of Mrs Misra are of a typical Indian housewife immersed in her husband, her family, and her household. And like most women of her generation, immersed in her kitchen. It goes without saying that she saw a steady stream of students at her table over the decades and must have cooked countless meals and made gallons of tea! And of course I heard stories about her cooking.

What intrigued me the most was the fact that she was a staunch vegetarian but would often cook chicken when there were guests at her table, be they students or Dr Misra's colleagues. I used to wonder how she cooked with ingredients whose flavours she had no idea about.

A few days ago I'd baked this blueberry and lemon cake and on an impulse I took some over for my friend Deepa. She said something to me that somehow explained how Mrs Misra cooked chicken without knowing how it tasted. Deepa said she was amazed at how in spite of my deep dislike for fruit I looked forward to fruits of the season, sought them out, lovingly photographed them, cooked or baked with them, and in fact, enjoyed them so thoroughly without needing to eat them.

The hubby loves fruit and desserts and I love baking and cooking. Somehow fruit would always get left out because of my dislike but somewhere along the way as I spent hours on Pinterest, friends' blogs, and various websites, seeing beautiful cakes and desserts my interest was piqued. Alongside my friends would get excited over the variety of fruit as the seasons changed - mangoes, berries, stone fruit, citrus, the list was ever-changing and endless all the year round. There they were squealing over cherries or mulberries, planning strawberry trips to Mahabaleshwar, posting pictures of rambutans and dragon fruit, going ga ga over mangoes and pineapples - I felt left out.

And thus began my love/hate affair with fruit. The first fruity thing I baked was probably a banana cake - the hubby mashed the bananas and I was just this far from putting a clothes peg on my nose to keep from breathing in that banana-y smell (oh LORD!). But now you will nearly always find fruit in my house waiting to be flung into a cake, pie, or clafoutis, turned into a compote, zested within an inch of its life, or cooked in some form or other.

The journey is exciting. From learning how to buy fruit to learning how to prep, to anticipate flavours, think of combinations, and to finally create something edible - but with stuff I don't eat - the experience wasn't strange, I never felt handicapped. There's so much information out there to tell you what works and what doesn't. You just find that starting block and you go on from there.

And now I understand how Mrs Misra did it. It made her man happy and yeah, it makes mine happy too. And that is the biggest motivation indeed.

Sukeli and Jhola Gur Upside Down Cake

This cake has been on my mind for months. I hadn't heard of sukeli till one of the staff brought us some from his village in the Vasai region of north Mumbai. As it is I don't eat fruits and am unfamiliar with most things fruit - but this was way, way out of my ambit! 

Sukeli is a kind of preserved banana, peeled and sun dried, then wrapped in banana leaves. The fruit gets dehydrated and takes on a golden hue with a toffee-like sticky texture thanks to the natural sugars getting concentrated. 

What I liked about sukeli is that it doesn't have that strong banana smell (something I dislike very strongly). The hubby munched on one packet of sukeli just as they were and I asked him to leave the second one for me to play with. Life got in the way and it took me a couple of months till I found the time and the mental bandwidth to get back to the sukeli. 

I had decided I would make some sort of upside down cake using the sukeli. I only had to work out what else I would put in that cake. On my last trip to Kolkata I picked up nolen or jhola gur, the liquid jaggery that's a winter specialty and it occurred to me that sukeli and jhola gur would work really well together. 

As I thought about the adjustments to a straightforward pound cake recipe that would be my starting point I wondered if I would have a cake or a disaster. I experiment very confidently when I cook but not so much when I bake. I like to have the support of a recipe even if it is something I have baked a zillion times already. But this time I felt I must be confident and just go for it. The 40 minutes that this experiment sat in the oven were the longest in my life! And then the interminable wait for the cake to cool, the hubby to wake up from his post-lunch nap and give his final report on the cake - that was an exercise in patience for me. The story had a happy ending after all which is how you get the recipe for a delicious Sukeli and Jhola Gur Upside Down Cake. 

Sukeli and Jhola Gur Upside Down Cake

1 cup flour 

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup jhola gur

125gms butter

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essesnce

1 packet sukeli (there will 3-4 in the packet)

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp brown sugar

Set your oven to preheat at 180C.

Separate the sukeli carefully and then slice them into 1/2 cm discs. Keep aside.

Combine the 1 tbsp butter with the 2 tbsp brown sugar in a bowl and zap in the microwave for a minute in 30 second bursts. Whisk together with a fork and pour into your baking tin.I used an 8 inch round tin. Spread the mixture all over the base covering as well as you can. Place the sliced sukeli pieces to cover the entire surface. Don't worry if there are gaps. Keep this aside.

In a clean mixing bowl sift the flour and baking powder together. 

In another clean bowl cream the butter with the 1/2 cup brown sugar. Use a stand mixer or a hand held electric mixer and mix for at least two to three minutes till the sugar is smoothly blended and not grainy. 

Add the eggs one by one along with the vanilla. 

Now add the sifted flour and the jhola gur in alternates till you have a smooth thick batter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan over the layer of sukeli. Tap the tin to remove any bubbles and then put it into the preheated oven to bake for 35-40 minutes. Test the cake for doneness with a long tooth pick and remove from the oven when done.

Let the cake cool completely before you take it out of the tin. Be patient and let it cool or the caramelized sukeli will remain stuck to the tin. If you look closely at my cake you will see evidence of my impatience!

The cake itself will have a pale coffee colour and a slightly dense crumb. Don't worry about the nearly black colour of the sukeli on the cake, it's perfectly caramelised and not burned at all. 

You can try this recipe with kankvi or any other variant of liquid jaggery too. I think it will work quite well. 

Chocolate Buttermilk Bundt Cake

This turned out to be one of the best cakes I've ever baked in my life. I was browsing around on Pinterest looking for something new to try out. I also had a new bag of Callebaut cocoa powder that I was waiting to play with. As I looked around I chanced upon this recipe on the Taste and Tell blog by Deborah Harroun. I had most of the ingredients and the recipe was the kind I like - straightforward and uncomplicated. What I didn't have I could make or replace easily and so I decided to try it out.

I didn't have cake flour so I made some - all you do is replace 2 tbsp of plain flour with 2 tbsp of cornflour for every cup of flour and sift it well. I made more than required for the recipe and stored the extra cake flour in a labelled canister in my baking supplies cupboard.

I didn't have Dutch processed cocoa so I just used the Callebaut cocoa I had.

For buttermilk I put in a dash of white vinegar into the required quantity of milk and let it sit for a few minutes.

Instead of unsalted butter I used normal Amul butter and didn't add salt as the recipe demands. Most of us are used to baking with Amul butter and so am I and I don't stress out when a recipe asks for unsalted butter because usually the recipe also required you to add salt. I just use good old Amul and no one has complained about my cakes yet!

I used a Nordicware bundt pan instead of a regular 'boring' cake tin to get a fancy looking cake. This was also because I didn't want to ice the cake and therefore wanted it to look nice on its own. Since the pan I have is quite large I doubled the recipe. You will find the original recipe in the link above.

Chocolate Buttermilk Bundt Cake


2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup hot coffee
3 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Set the oven to preheat to 180C.

Butter the bundt pan well and dust with loose flour.

Mix the hot coffee and the cocoa powder till you have a smooth thick mixture. You can brew fresh coffee or simply use instant coffee and hot water like I did.

Now sift the cake flour with the baking powder into a clean mixing bowl and set aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large mixing bowl if you're using a hand held mixer) cream the butter and sugar till it's pale. This should take around 5 to 8 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time and keep mixing between each egg. Make sure your eggs are not cold from the fridge because the batter might curdle. Don't panic if it does, though - just proceed with the recipe and it will sort itself out on its own.

Add the vanilla after the eggs and then start adding the cake flour. I use the smallest measuring cup from my set and slow the speed of the mixer as I drop in the flour a little at a time. Once the flour is all in and is just about combined it's time to add the coffee-cocoa mix. Keep the speed of the mixer slow so you don't splash everything with the liquid.

Once it's mixed in pour in the buttermilk. Mix and then finally add the chocolate chips and mix further till just blended into the batter.

Pour the cake batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake till the cake is cooked through - around 35 to 45 minutes depending on the size of the bundt and your oven. Poke the cake in the centre with a cake tester or long satay stick to check. If it comes out clean your cake is ready.

Let the cake cool in the tin for a while - at least 20 minutes - and then unmould carefully. Let the cake cool completely before you cut it or it will break while cutting.

You can serve the cake with a dollop of plain vanilla ice cream to balance the rich dark flavours of coffee and cocoa, or have it as it is like my family did.

No Mess Tandoori Chicken with Asahi Kasei Foil

This summer we're facing quite a severe water shortage here in Kharghar with water in the taps for less than an hour in a day. One of the biggest fall outs of this situation is that I can hardly cook or bake and that can become really difficult for me to deal with. In the mad dash to fill up water to last through the day, deal with laundry, dishes, and drinking water, not every chore gets done in time. I'm often left with unwashed dishes and half done laundry that takes a couple of days to deal with. There have been times when all I've managed to wash is one coffee mug and the water has gone...

In this situation it's natural that one looks for solutions because eating takeaways and one pot meals for nearly three months is sure to drive us nuts. Yes, I'm using biodegradable disposable plates already and I'm seriously considering paper glasses for coffee/water. But I need to figure out ways to be able to cook interesting things but keep the washing up easy and minimal.

Then I remembered the Asahi Kasei products that I had used at the APB Cook Studio a few months ago at a pot luck event Rushina had hosted. I'd made this Roast Chicken using the cooking foil to fry the potatoes on. I had some of that foil at home and I realised this could be the answer to my prayers!

I decided to make a simple no fuss Tandoori Chicken using the foil in the oven. If you think about it Tandoori Chicken is one of the simplest things one can make at home and that too, with great results. All you really need to do is marinate the chicken for a few hours and then cook it either in a tandoor if you have one, or an oven like I did.

In normal circumstances I would have placed the marinated chicken directly into my baking dish or tray. This time I lined my baking tray with the Asahi Kasei foil and then placed the chicken pieces on it. Not only did I end up with perfectly cooked tandoori chicken thanks to a good recipe, I also had a spotless baking tray with no scorched bits of marinade or cooking juices stuck on it. I could have actually just put that tray back in the cupboard, it was that clean.


For the Tandoori Chicken -

6 full chicken legs - thigh and drumstick
1 cup thick curd
Salt
1/2 tsp Amchur powder
2 -3 drops orange food colour (optional)

Grind together in a little vinegar -

8 - 10 Kashmiri chillies
1 tsp Peppercorns
1/2 tsp Cloves
2" piece Cassia bark
2 Black cardamoms
8 - 10 cloves Garlic

Cut deep slashes into the chicken legs. Mix the ground paste into the curd with the remaining ingredients and marinate the chicken pieces for at least 6 hours in the fridge. You can put the marinated pieces into a sealed plastic bag and freeze till you need them. Just make sure you thaw the pieces properly before you cook them.

Preheat your oven to 180C.

Line a baking dish or metal cookie sheet with Asahi Kasei cooking foil. Turn up the edges along the sides of the dish/cookie sheet.  Place the chicken pieces on the foil leaving room around the pieces so they cook properly. Bake in the hot oven for around 40 minutes. Turn the pieces over and cook for another 10 - 15 minutes.

You can also cook this in your frying pan lined with the Asahi Kasei cooking foil. Line the pan with foil covering the cooking surface and the sides of the pan. Place chicken pieces on the foil and then cook covered on a slow flame. Turn the pieces to cook evenly on all sides. The advantage of cooking this dish in the oven is the light charring that gives the tandoori that nice smoked flavour but the pan cooked version is not far behind on the yumminess scale.

Serve hot with rotis, naan, or bread, and sliced onions and fresh lime wedges.

The thing about tandoori chicken is that it's quite a low fat preparation as there's no cream in the marinade and no oil is used in the cooking process. With variations in the marinade one can make quite a range of delicious yet low fat versions of this simple recipe. And of course, the Asahi Kasei foil is quite a boon that makes the washing up woes simply go away.

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Grana Padano Pull Apart Rolls

If there's one thing that cheers up the hubby it's the smell of bread baking. He'd been bugging me to make bread at home for quite some time but for one reason or the other it just wasn't happening. This morning I decided nothing was going to get in the way - I was going to bake some bread no matter what. Something simple, comforting, and easy to put together with whatever I had in the fridge and pantry. 

After rooting around I found a jar of sun dried tomato pesto and a wedge of Grana Padano cheese among a whole lot of other things and thought of using the two in pull apart rolls. Pull aparts are among the easiest breads you can make at home, and if you're a beginner with breads, these rolls will boost your confidence for sure. Simply make the basic dough, knead for a bit, let it rise, roll out, slather with filling, roll up, slice into portions, place in baking tin, let rise again, and bake. That's it. It's just the initial kneading that requires some attention, and once that's done it's a matter of following a simple procedure step by step.

I've made pull aparts with many different fillings - some sweet, some savoury - and there's no end to the variety of possibilities. Tomato and cheese is a classic combination and it works very well in breads too. In these rolls I used Grana Padano, a hard cheese from Italy that is similar to Parmesan. In fact, you can use Parmesan instead if you prefer. 


Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Grana Padano Pull Apart Rolls


200 gms all purpose flour
2 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp sugar
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp butter, softened
1 tsp salt
3-4 tsp sun dried tomato pesto
1/2 cup Grana Padano, grated
extra butter for brushing

Mix the sugar and yeast in a bowl and then pour the luke warm water over both. 

Take flour in a clean mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast-sugar mix. Bring it all together with a pastry cutter (it's less messy) or simply mix with your fingers. You will have a sticky dough. Remove from the bowl to your floured work surface. 

On the side of your work surface mix the butter and salt with your fingers, rubbing in a light circular motion, fingers parallel to the surface. Once the butter looks pale and foamy mix it into the dough. Now knead gently till you have a soft pliable dough, stretching and folding as you go. Dust with dry flour as required if the dough is too sticky. Knead for 10 to 12 minutes. 

Roll the dough into a ball and place it in a clean bowl to rise. Cover with a damp cloth and leave it to double. This should take around 20 to 30 minutes depending on the weather. 

Once the dough has doubled remove it onto your floured work surface. Deflate it gently and knead it for a minute. 

Roll out the dough into a largeish rectangle. Try to get a uniform shape or you will have lop-sided rolls. Spread a generous few dollops of the sun dried tomato pesto going to the edges of the rectangle. Try to drain out as much of the oil as possible from the pesto (when baking, the oil will settle to the bottom of your baking tin and you will end up with 'fried' bits). Grate the cheese over the pesto uniformly. 

Now carefully roll the rectangle Swiss-roll style. Do this gently or your roll will be lumpy and loose. Tighten the roll as you go. You will have a long roll of dough. Cut into rolls with a sharp non serrated knife or a dough scraper. Arrange the rolls loosely in a baking tin, cut sides horizontal, leaving enough room for the rolls to prove and swell till they are double, or just squashed up closely with each other. Use more than one tin if they don't all fit into one, but don't crowd them. 

Once they have proved pop them into a preheated oven at 200C and bake for around 20 minutes till the tops are a nice golden brown. Brush with a bit of butter as soon as you take them out of the oven. 

Serve them warm or enjoy them at leisure with a bowl of soup. 

Pahadi Limbu infused Hot Buttered Brandy Pound Cake

I have become a little obsessed with citrus - every sort of citrus fruit seems to occupy my mind these days. And of course, the cosmos conspires to provide me with plenty of variety! Not only have I had top quality sweet limes or mosambis as we call them, from Luv Thy Farmer, which I used to make this amazing Mosambi Cake, I got Meyer lemons from Imtiaz and Sue which I used in these beautiful Lemon Cakes, and then Rushina gave me a couple of Pahadi Limbus that she'd got from her in laws' village in Garhwal! My cup of happiness was overflowing. Did I mention I have been haunting gourmet stores, making a beeline for their fresh veg sections and getting busy scratching and sniffing the lemons looking for the fresh and flavourful ones?!

Anyway, coming back to the pahadi limbus. They are huge. Bigger than your average apple, in fact. The skin is thin and must be zested carefully. But what a burst of freshness when you give it that light scrape against the microplane!

The limbus waited patiently for me to find a recipe worthy of them and I chanced upon this Hot Buttered Rum Pound Cake recipe. The recipe uses oranges but I thought the pahadi limbus would shine here, and oh they did!  A look in the drinks cabinet for something instead of rum, a hunt through the pantry cupboard for the rest of the ingredients, and I was set.

The recipe has three elements - the pound cake, the soaking syrup, and the hot buttered brandy. I'm going to give you the recipes in the order they are made so you're not going back and forth between ingredient lists and the methods, thereby giving you less room for error and confusion. Though I have largely followed the recipe above, I have made a few adjustments and replacements to make it more suited to what the hubby likes.


Pahadi Limbu infused Hot Buttered Brandy Pound Cake

Brandy syrup for soaking cake

1/2 cup sugar
zest from one pahadi limbu
2 to 3 tbsp brandy
water

Mix the zest into the sugar with your fingers and help them release their oils. This gives more flavour.

In a small pan heat the sugar-zest mix with the brandy and a little water. Bring it to a boil stirring gently till all the sugar is dissolved. Boil the mix on a medium flame for another minute and then leave it to cool as you make the cake.


Pound cake

1 1/3 cups ground sugar
zest from one pahadi limbu
2 cups maida, sifted
1 tsp cinnamon powder
6 green cardamoms, seeds pounded
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups Amul butter
6 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Set the oven to preheat at 180C.

In a clean mixing bowl combine the flour, salt, cinnamon powder, and the crushed cardamom seeds with a whisk.

In a small bowl mix the zest into the granulated sugar till it starts getting clumpy. This step helps release the oils from the zest and extracts maximum flavour from it.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, or in a regular mixing bowl beat the butter on medium speed till it is light and fluffy. Add the sugar-zest mix to the butter and beat for a few minutes till it's all mixed and light. Beat at a high speed for a few minutes. Make sure you stop the beater and scrape the sides of the bowl and the paddle to mix everything properly at least once.

Now it's time to add the eggs. Add one egg at a time and beat well to mix completely before you add the next one. Once all the eggs are added in  pour in the vanilla extract. The original recipe has zest and a flavour extract - I opted not to use the flavour extract because I was sure it would mask the flavour from the zest completely. I'm glad I did because the cake was full of natural lemony flavour and didn't need any help at all.

Once the eggs and vanilla have been fully incorporated add the flour mix next. I do this a little at time with the help of my 1/4 or 1/3 cup measuring cup, whichever is clean and at hand. Keep adding a scoop of flour and continue beating till you have a smooth batter. This cake has a thick batter beautifully speckled with the crushed cardamom seeds and cinnamon powder.

Though the original recipe says a 9x4 loaf pan will do, I found it was not big enough. I used a disposable loaf case for the leftover batter and had two beautiful bars of pound cake. I think two medium loaf tins should work well. Line the tins with parchment or grease well and dust with flour before you pour the batter in. Level the top with a spatula and it's ready to be baked

Pop into the preheated oven and bake for roughly an hour at 180C, till the cake is a nice golden colour. It should ideally split along the middle too. If your cake is browning too fast reduce the temperature to 160C and bake it longer till it is cooked through. Test with a skewer to check for done-ness.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin for around 10 mins or so and only then remove to a wire rack to cool further. Place a tray under the rack to catch any drips, poke the surface of the cake with a thin skewer and then brush it with the brandy syrup you have left to cool. Be generous and keep slathering the cake - it will absorb a lot of that syrup. Do this while the cake is still quite warm. Let it cool on the wire rack.

Hot buttered brandy glaze

50 gms Amul butter
1/3 fine sugar, preferably brown
2-3 tbsp brandy

Heat the butter in a small pan till it begins to foam and turns brown. It will start to smell nutty. Stir with a wooden spoon or heat proof spatula to brown the butter evenly. Take off the heat and let it cool for a minute. Now add the sugar (preferably brown) and then the brandy. Stir nicely to combine. Use a fine grain sugar for a smoother glaze.

Spread the glaze on top of the cake with a pastry brush. Slice and serve your Pahadi Limbu infused Hot Buttered Brandy Pound Cake immediately. Keep any leftover glaze in a covered jar and warm it slightly to serve with any remaining cake.

This is another beautifully flavoured tea cake that has the freshness of lemon and cardamom along with the warmth of cinnamon. Since the pahadi limbu is difficult to get, you can use regular oranges as in the original recipe. The cake has many sugary elements and therefore I have cut down the sugar slightly in the cake. You can adjust the sugar according to your preferences. Meyer lemons would also work very well in this recipe as would mosambis or sweet limes. Use more zest if you're using mosambis as they tend to be quite mild in flavour.

You might have noticed there's no baking powder or baking soda in this recipe. As in the classic old pound cake recipes, this one has none. Yet, I had a wonderfully light and well aerated cake. It's all in the slowly added ingredients and the many minutes of beating. In spite of a thick 'heavy' batter, the cake rises perfectly. The more recipes I explore, the more I learn :)

Of Microplanes, Meyer Lemons and Lemon Cake

It's no secret that I love baking. It's no secret that I love kitchen gadgets. And it's no secret that I like playing with new ingredients either.

I had wanted to add a Microplane to my small tools drawer for a long time but somehow never actually got around to it. This year the hubby gave me a stash of money to spend on random things I wanted, as a birthday treat. I bought that Microplane finally! I'm not fond of fruit in general but I do love the citrus ones. I saw Meyer lemons at a gourmet food store and decided to indulge myself, their steep price-tag notwithstanding.

And there I was! Armed with the ultimate zesting tool in creation and a variety of lemons I'd been drooling over from a distance for a long, long time - it was time to bake!

I have spent many hours looking at lemon cake recipes and even bookmarked quite a few to try out once I had everything in place. But somehow, I couldn't settle on any recipe when I set out to bake. After hours of back-ing and forth-ing between recipes I decided to just wing it and do my own thing. After all, I'd been baking for as long as I could remember and how hard could it be?

Lemon Cake

1 cup Maida or APF
3/4 cup Sugar, powdered
3 Eggs, at room temperature
125 gms Butter, softened
1 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 Meyer lemon, zested, and juice extracted
1 -2 tsp Sugar for the drizzle
a little zest, reserved for the drizzle

Grease and flour an 8 inch cake tin. Set your oven to preheat at 180C.

In a clean bowl sift the maida with the baking powder.

In the bowl of your stand mixer or in a mixing bowl using a hand held mixer cream the butter with the sugar till it's smooth and pale.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue beating. Add the vanilla extract too.

Once the mixture is smooth, chuck in the lemon zest. Mix till it is combined nicely.

Add the flour into the mix in small amounts. I use the 1/4 cup measuring cup from my set, and whisk well after each addition. Mix in all the flour to get a smooth batter.

Pour batter into the cake tin and bake at 180C for 35 to 40 minutes. Check with a cake tester in the centre and if the tester comes out clean your cake is done.

In the mean time make the lemon drizzle. Combine sugar into the lemon juice and mix well till the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the reserved zest. Taste and check for a good balance of sweet and lemony sourness.

Sprinkle the drizzle randomly on your cake while it's still warm. Let the cake cool completely before you unmould it. I didn't soak the entire cake with the drizzle but just randomly splashed it on the surface. This resulted in surprise lemony explosions of flavour while eating the cake, which I loved.

Serve this beautiful cake at tea time, add slices to lunch boxes or, like me, make them in disposable cases and distribute to your friends. Deliciousness, like happinesss, must be shared. So go on, get baking!

Irish Barmbrack - A Tea Flavoured Sweet Fruit Bread

I haven't been able to bake the monthly breads on We Knead to Bake through most of 2015 much to my disappointment, and have only watched as others baked a variety of beautiful breads. Luckily I managed to do the October bread and I am so happy I did!

The Irish Barmbrack turned out to be one of the very best breads I've ever baked in my life. Not only was it quite easy, it also had enough unusual things going to make it quite different from any bread I've done before. But then, that's the beauty of the WKTB group - we bake breads from all over the world learning new recipes, new techniques, new flavours, and new breads, of course. The Barmbrack is full of fruit and is mildly sweet. Commonly made a Halloween, the bread is often filled with charms that are fun to find while eating the bread.

This is the recipe shared by Aparna for us to follow. However I did make a few changes according to the ingredients I had at hand. I followed the technique as given in the original, of course. Most of the kneading was done in my stand mixer but once I added the soaked fruit to the dough I hand kneaded only.

Here's what I did.

1 cup Tesco's Presoaked Mixed Fruit

1/4 cup sultanas

a scant handful cranberries

1 1/2 cups Tulsi Ginger tea

1/4 tsp dried ginger powder

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 1/2 cups plus extra maida or APF

2 tsp instant yeast

2/3 cup powdered sugar

30 gms butter, softened

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup milk

In advance soak the dried fruit in the hot tea in a bowl and let it steep for a couple of hours or more. I put the tea leaves in a fine mesh strainer and left the strainer in the bowl to steep so that the tea flavours could be absorbed to the maximum by the soaking fruit. Once the fruit becomes quite plump discard the tea dregs and drain the fruit carefully. Reserve the tea liquid. Put the fruit in a strainer and let them drain while you get the dough going.

In the bowl of your mixer mix in the flour, yeast, sugar, spice powders, and salt. Give it all a stir. Add the beaten egg and the butter and mix again.

In a measuring jug mix milk and the tea liquid to make up one cup. I had loads of the tea liquid so I used half milk and half tea liquid. If it's gone cold warm it a little in the microwave. We're going to use this liquid to make the dough so it should be just warm enough to help the yeast bloom, not too hot or the yeast will die.

Pour in the milky tea and start the mixer at a slow speed till dry and wet ingredients are mixed well. Increase the speed by one level and, using the dough hook, knead the mix till you have a sticky but smooth dough. Add dry flour if required.

On a floured surface turn out the dough and knead for a minute or two by hand. Flatten out the dough and scatter the drained fruit on it. Fold over the dough and knead to mix the fruit into the dough. I added the fruit in a couple of batches to distribute it better - add the initial lot, knead to mix, flatten dough again, add fruit and knead again to incorporate.

Oil a proofing bowl and place the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp napkin and leave it aside to double.

Once it has doubled remove again to your floured surface. Divide the dough into two and knead gently for a minute each. Place in greased loaf tins or shape into freestyle loaves and place on your baking sheet. Cover again with a damp towel and leave to rise for another hour or so. I used a well floured banetton for my loaf.

Bake the breads at 180C for 30 to 40 minutes till golden brown on top and hollow sounding when tapped. If your bread is browning too fast cover loosely with foil.

Cool on a wire rack completely before slicing. We had our Barmbrack for breakfast and tea, slathered with butter, jam and honey. This bread toasts well too.

*Use any dried fruit to make up that 1 cup of fruit - raisins, prunes, apricots, sultanas, cherries, cranberries - whatever mix you like. I had that bag of Tesco's fruit so I used some of it.

*Use regular strong tea. I didn't have any so I used the tulsi ginger tea a friend had sent a while back. How nice that some of it got used!

*The original recipe calls for allspice powder. I didn't have any so I used more cinnamon. A mix of clove and cinnamon with a star anise thrown in would work quite well too.

We Knead to Bake #32

Luv Thy Farmer and Mosambi Cake

Mosambi (Sweet Lime) Cake

I noticed a post on Facebook where a friend was making an effort to help a fruit farmer get a decent price for his produce (mosambis or sweet limes) by selling it via the social network. The usual route for farmers to the retail customers is through multiple middlemen which means the farmer gets paid a fraction of what you and me, the end users, actually pay for produce. In Mr Gaikwad's case he was getting roughly INR 12- 15 per kilo while we were paying around INR 70 per kilo. My friend Ranjit decided to try to bridge this enormous price gap and thus Luv Thy Farmer was born.

I bought a 5 kilo bag of mosambis for INR 300 - that's INR 60 per kilo for mosambis which turned out to be far better than the ones I'd bought from my online grocery store, and cheaper too. I did juice quite a few of them but these fruits were so fragrant I wanted to make something more than just juice. A cake was the most obvious thing that came to my mind and I set about looking at a few recipes to see what I could do.

I liked this recipe for Moist Lemon Bundt Cake on a blog called Amy Kay's Kitchen and I adapted it to include mosambis instead of lemons. I have also reduced the sweet elements that make up this cake. Here's what I did -

Mosambi Cake

2 1/4 cups maida, sifted
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups castor  sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 2 large mosambis
1 1/4 cup milk
150 gms butter

Preheat the oven to 180C. Prepare a baking tin, either a Bundt pan or any regular shaped cake tin, by coating the inside with butter. I used a pastry brush to spread the butter evenly.

In a large bowl combine the sifted maida, salt and baking powder and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer crack the four eggs and mix on medium speed till thickened. The eggs should turn a pale lemon colour. Add the sugar in small amounts beating continuously.

Add the zest and the vanilla extract and continue to mix.

Slowly add the dry flour mix, a little at a time incorporating completely into the egg mix.

Heat the milk and add the butter to it. Stir to mix and let the butter melt. Remove from heat. The milk shouldn't get too hot or boil.

Slowly add the milk-butter mix into the batter and let it all combine. You will get a runny batter.

Pour batter into the prepared cake tin and set it in the oven to bake for 30 to 35 minutes. A cake skewer inserted in the middle should come out clean.

You can drizzle the cake with a mosambi juice and icing sugar glaze if you like. I didn't because we are now a house full of diabetics and this cake is stretching the limits as it is! I just sprinkled some extra mosambi zest on top of the cake. The fresh burst of flavour from that zest was just superb.

White Sandwich Bread - My Little Rebellion

Everywhere I looked there was an obsession for what is perceived as healthy - recipes that boasted of being egg free, gluten free, fat free, no white flour, no sugar, no butter - only oil, and a zillion other 'healthy' claims. The sad thing is most people have no idea of what genuinely is healthy, or rather relatively healthy, and what is actually quite far from being good for anyone. That's not to say all things touted as healthy or good for you aren't - one just has to realise that blindly substituting and replacing, often with synthetic substitutes, is not the path to healthier or nutritious eating.

Tired of this I decided I had to have my own little rebellion. I was going to make that terrible. terrible thing - white bread. Made with no compromise to the all purpose white flour. No whole wheat flour or any other 'healthy' flour would even be allowed to come near. If the recipe asked for a pound of butter I was going to put in a pound of butter. If eight eggs were required eight eggs it would be. You get the drift...

I asked my friends to share tested recipes and I went looking around on my own. I read quite a few recipes and finally decided to use one by Julia Child. My main motivation to use her recipe was that I'd never made anything from a Julia Child recipe and this was the perfect opportunity. And the recipe was simple and straightforward, perfect for an amateur like me who needs a recipe to bake bread. Always. Even for breads I've made many times over. So I made my date with Julia and we made white sandwich bread from here.

I'm not rewriting this recipe as I didn't change anything in it. Just replaced the 1 tbsp Active Dry yeast with 2 tsp Instant yeast.

The dough for this bread is quite sticky and I was quite sure it was not going to work out. But it did. I was nervous because it took time to come together and I had to struggle not to add too much flour beyond what the recipe called for. Don't worry, this recipe works! And the stand mixer did most of the work ;)

Make sure you have a couple of loaf tins ready before you start. I didn't have two of the same size so I divided the dough accordingly instead of blindly halving the dough.

Make the bread the evening before and have it for breakfast the next morning. It tastes much better after resting for those hours. Don't slice the bread unless it is absolutely cooled. Patience is the key here.

As it turned out all this recipe requires is APF, yeast, and water, with a little bit of butter to help it along. Not so evil after all! So bring out the butter, Nutella, the jams, marmalades, honey, cold cuts, fry and egg or two and have yourself a feast.

Kahlua Chocolate Cake

I have great ambitions about baking cakes. I love cakes. I sit for hours on Pinterest looking (and drooling) over the myriad cakes that call out seductively. Some are so beautiful, in fact, that I don't even care that they're fruity cakes - I want to bake each one some day. Baking, like cooking, is something I find incredibly relaxing and today I really needed that therapeutic dance of measuring, mixing, and baking till a magical cake appeared.

Usually I simply throw together the basic sponge or pound cake that I learned when I was just a kid, and the most I do with that recipe is add booze soaked fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, preserved fruits, etc., to make it a little different. Today I needed more than that comfortable, familiar, and nearly mindless recipe. I needed to be involved. I needed to be wholly occupied with baking a cake leaving no room in my head to think about anything else. So went on to Pinterest to look for something that suited my needs and what I had in my pantry.

I found this Kahlua Chocolate Cake recipe and it fit the bill perfectly. A simple enough recipe with no branded ingredients that I would find impossible or expensive to procure, and with enough to do to keep me fully occupied, this chocolate laden cake was destined for me today!

I'm reproducing the recipe here with easier measurements and a slightly more detailed method keeping in mind the hiccups I had while making this beautiful cake. This recipe has several steps so read the entire recipe first and get your ingredients and equipment together before you start.

Kahlua Chocolate Cake

For the Cake

2 1/4 cup Maida
1/4 cup Hintz cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

110 gms chocolate

1 cup Kahlua
1 cup sour cream

125 gms butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar

3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup boiling water
1 cup chocolate chips

For the Glaze

110 gms chocolate
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 or 2 tbsp fine sugar (if required)
Kahlua

Start with the cake -

Preheat the oven at 180C.

Prepare a 12 cup Bundt pan by greasing it with butter. To figure out the capacity of your Bundt pan simply pour in water using your cup measure and count how many cups fit in. If your pan is small you will have left over batter. No worries, make a small cake in a suitable cake tin or make cup cakes with the leftover batter.

Melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl. I zapped it in the microwave till it was silky and melted.

In a measuring jug pour a cup of Kahlua. Now add enough sour cream to take it up to the 2 cups mark. I used Amul sour cream and needed one full tub which I beat lightly with a fork before adding to the Kahlua. Mix the two with a fork till they have blended.

In a clean large bowl mix the maida, cocoa, baking soda and salt till all are well combined.

Place the butter in the mixing bowl of your stand mixer or in any mixing bowl and use your hand mixer. Use the paddle attachment if you're using a KitchenAid. Add the brown sugar and cream it well till the sugar and butter are blended, light and fluffy. Now add the eggs one at a time, mixing well with each addition. Pour in the vanilla now along with the melted chocolate and continue to mix.

Get the boiling water ready.

Alternating between the dry flour mix and the Kahlua-sour cream mix add the two to the butter-sugar-eggs mix till everything is incorporated.

Now add the boiling water and mix carefully. Slow down the speed of the electric mixer as the water can splash out. It takes about half a minute to get incorporated so be careful. Add the chocolate chips and mix them in gently.

Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan and bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes till a skewer poked in comes out clean. Let the cake cool completely in the mould before you remove it. This is a soft moist cake and it might break. So be patient. Cool further on a rack before glazing it.

My cake had risen while baking so I had to trim it to get a flat bottom. It was easy enough, all I did was wait for it to cool and then went at it with a large serrated bread knife. We scarfed the scraps quite happily (there was no way I was letting anyone near the cake before I'd taken photographs, obviously!).

To make the glaze -

In a small pan bring the cream to a boil. Have the chocolate ready in a jug. Pour the just boiled cream over the chocolate and let it stand undisturbed for a couple of minutes. Mix with a spatula till you have a smooth glossy glaze. I added a couple of tablespoons of fine sugar as the chocolate I used was quite bitter. Add a tablespoon or two of Kahlua and incorporate fully till you have a satiny smooth pourable glaze.

Place the cooled cake on the rack over a tray to catch any drips and drizzle the glaze over the cake. I spooned the glaze over and 'helped' it dribble down the sides attractively ;)

Let the glaze set and your Kahlua Chocolate Cake is ready to serve.

Dinner Rolls and Friendship Day

The Hallmark holidays pop up every time you turn around and the latest one was Friendship Day. Social media was flooded with pithy sayings and mushy pictures celebrating friendship and a fair number of cynics wondering what the need for a special day was. Though I didn't post anything about Friendship Day I did think about it. And I felt grateful for the Internet where I have met most of my current friends and created some very close bonds that have taken us beyond the online space and deeply into each others' lives.

Among them is Saee who started me off on my bread making journey at a class at Rushina's Studio. Rushina is another Internet friend who is now among my close buddies. Her blog is the first one I ever read and where I discovered the concept of a blog. I have been a devoted follower of Saee's blog and YouTube channel for the bread recipes simply because they have never failed. What better reason does anyone need?!

No friendship related post can be complete without K, the centre of my universe, my best buddy. It's been a crazy few days, so busy he's barely had time to think... and as the day progressed I thought to myself, why not make some bread for the fellow. I remembered the dinner rolls we'd made at that bread class I'd attended with Saee and Rushina and decided to make those again. A Friendship Day gift for my bread obsessed best friend :)

I followed this recipe to the T barring the kneading for which I used my stand mixer. Take a look at the video and you will see just how easy it is to make fun shaped dinner rolls for the family. I topped my rolls with black poppy seeds which another very dear friend, my Santa Claus in London, Manish sent me.

Start at least three hours before you want to serve - the rolls must rest for an hour before serving. Of course, K refused to wait at all and scarfed down a few rolls hot out of the oven! But they do improve with the resting, so wait.

Serve with soup, with a curry or stew, or have them for breakfast with an assortment of spreads. Make a big batch and share with friends. So, Happy Friendship Day after all :)

Cherry Chocolate Cake

My pantry was suddenly full of cherries. No, not fresh ones though it's the season for them now, but bottled cherries. I'd bought a couple of kinds from my favourite shop in Crawford Market where I shop for goodies occasionally, and then Saee gave me some more. While I'm not a fan of fruit the hubby loves them and always waits eagerly for me to make something exciting with fruit in it. With such a flood of cherries it went without saying that I'd be making something with them soon.

I browsed around on Pinterest, my favourite source of ideas and inspiration, and came across this exceptionally simple yet delicious sounding recipe for Cherry Chocolate Cake on this lovely blog called Tutti Dolci. I ran it by the hubby and once I had his approval I set about making it. It goes without saying that I have made my own adjustments and changes to the recipe and here is what I did, though I followed the method exactly.

Cherry Chocolate Cake

3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup or 60 gms butter
2 tbsp preserving syrup from cherries
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk with a tsp of lemon juice stirred in
enough cherries preserved in syrup to decorate

Preheat the oven at 180C.

In a clean mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients.

In another bowl whisk the sugar and butter till light and creamy. I did this in my stand mixer. You can do it in a bowl with a hand held electric mixer or even by hand with a whisk. Use small grain sugar. I added a couple of tablespoons of the cherry syrup at this stage.

Once the sugar and butter are creamed well add the egg and the vanilla and beat well. Slow down the speed of the mixer and pour in a bit of the flour mixture and mix. Add some of the lemon and milk mix. Beat to mix. Add the dry mix and the liquid in alternates and blend it all in well to make a smooth satiny batter.

Smear the insides of an 8 inch round cake tin thinly with butter. Pour in the batter. Dot the top with as many cherries as you can but don't squash them too tight. The cherries will sink into the cake and, since they're preserved and not fresh ones, might even disintegrate into the cake. Don't worry, the cake will be delish anyway. Bake for around 25 minutes. Check with a thin skewer to see if it's done -the skewer should come out clean.

Cool the cake in the tin before removing. Ideally, use a loose bottomed tin so you can unmould it more easily. If, like me, you're using a regular tin wait patiently till the cake is cooled before you try to remove it or the cake might break.

Dust the top lightly with powdered sugar if you like and serve. A scoop of vanilla ice cream alongside a warmed slice of this cake would also be magical!

Marathon Bloggers

Jamie Oliver's Roast Chicken in Milk with Orange Zest

You know how it is sometimes - you see that much recommended recipe, it's hailed by everyone who's ever tried it, it looks simple, the photos look smashing, the ingredients are easily procured, all seems perfect and there's no reason not to just plunge in and do it. And you do.

With me the problem is I don't. I prevaricate, I hesitate, I make excuses, I avoid it for reasons even I don't understand. All this is mainly because deep inside somewhere I just don't believe. Now I can't really decide if it's the recipe I lack confidence in or in me and my abilities in the kitchen. It's silly after all these years of turning out a pretty successful string of meals, some quite ordinary and everyday, some special, and some actually spectacular. And yet there is that kernel of doubt that stays stubbornly lodged right there and I give in, and procrastinate again.

This time it was Jamie Oliver's recipe for Chicken in Milk. A recipe so simple even someone not very experienced in the kitchen can execute it with success. But I hesitated. It has milk. The milk WILL curdle. There's only sage to flavour it. Oh and a stick of cinnamon. How can it possibly be good? As you can see, the excuses piled up as usual.

I think it is my love for roast chicken that finally made me take this particular plunge. Roasting chicken has to be one of the easiest ways to put together a fabulous meal with minimal effort. And this recipe was even easier than my usual minimalist recipes that involve seasoning the bird, stuffing butter under the skin, stuffing the cavity with garlic and fresh herbs, putting the bird on a bed of chopped veggies and potatoes, and letting the magic happen in the oven thereafter. There were no veggies to chop. No need to peel the garlic even. This was hard to resist!

So here's chicken in milk with some adjustments as usual.

Roast Chicken in Milk with Orange Zest

1 whole chicken with the skin
a handful of fresh sage leaves
a handful of garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 tsp orange zest
1 cup milk
1 stick cinnamon
salt
pepper
olive oil or butter

Season the chicken inside and out with salt and fresh ground pepper.
In a pan heat the olive oil or butter. Sear the chicken nicely till it's a lovely dark gold all over. Do this a little patiently.
Now transfer the chicken to a deep baking dish. Pour in the milk. Scatter the sage leaves, drop in the cinnamon stick, and then sprinkle the orange zest all over the chicken and around it.
Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil and bake in a hot 180C oven for around 40 minutes.
Remove the foil carefully. There will be some steam inside so be really careful. Steam burns hurt like hell and are deep burns. Cut the foil open if you prefer to let the steam escape first.
Cook the chicken for another 30 minutes in the oven. Reduce the heat to 150C. Slide in a sharp knife near the thigh joint to see if the bird is cooked through. If the juices run clear it's done.

We had this with toasted sliced bread. We needed nothing else!

Jamie's original recipe asks for lemon zest. I realised I didn't have any lemons at home but we did have oranges so I used the zest of one full orange. I also used cinnamon and not cassia bark. I don't think they are interchangeable and I wouldn't substitute one for the other.

Judging from the hubby's response to this version of roast chicken I can safely say this one's going to feature on my dinner menu quite often!

Marathon Bloggers

Roast Chicken with Za'atar, Ghee and Pomegranate Molasses with Lebanese Stir fried Potatoes

I signed up with a bunch of enthusiastic young bloggers who are exploring a new cuisine every month, called Chefs Across Boundaries. Here one of us selects a cuisine of the month and members pick a recipe that fits the theme and present it once they have cooked it in their own kitchens. Sometimes the dishes stick to the original and sometimes there are interpretations and tweaks; either way, it's an adventure with something unknown or deeply familiar.

For a variety of reasons I haven't been able to participate in the last few months but I was determined to complete the challenge this month no matter what cuisine was chosen. Luckily Lebanese was the flavour of the month chosen by Garima of Cafe Garima and I was quite confident that I would be able to come up with something.

As I browsed through the Internet looking at various cookery websites and blogs I was finding it difficult to settle on a recipe that was doable yet interesting, and involved at least one or two ingredients I'd never used before. I had sumac and pomegranate molasses in stock and had eagerly ordered a pack of za'atar. Most other ingredients like garlic, onions, and the commonly used whole spices are available in Indian pantries anyway - like cinnamon, black pepper, Indian bay leaves, lemons, etc.

After a few days of Googling and wandering around on Pinterest I settled on two dishes that I thought would go well together. The first involved chicken and had pomegranate molasses and za'atar among its main ingredients. The second was a simple stir fried potato with plenty of fresh coriander and lemon, not too far off from the quick aloo subzis made in households across India.

I loosely followed the chicken recipe from here and the potato stir fry recipe from this site.

It was the inclusion of ghee among the main flavours that attracted me to the Roast Chicken with Za'atar, Ghee and Pomegranate Molasses recipe. Though I didn't follow the recipe to the T I did use it as my main guideline with a couple of variations. This recipe is a keeper and I know I will make this again for sure.

Roast Chicken with Za'atar, Ghee and Pomegranate Molasses

4 full chicken legs or a whole chicken, jointed
4 Indian bay leaves (tej patta)
2 allspice leaves
5 cardamom pods
1/2 tbsp freshly crushed pepper
water
salt to taste
pomegranate molasses
ghee
za'atar powder

Marinate the chicken pieces in salt for 10 to 15 minutes.

In a large vessel bring the water to a boil with the spices and the chicken pieces added. Remove any scum that rises while boiling the chicken pieces. Once the chicken is cooked, in around 20 minutes, remove the chicken pieces to a baking dish draining out all the water and leaving out the whole spices too. Reserve the stock for soup or other gravies.

Lay out the chicken pieces in a single layer in your baking dish. Pour the pomegranate molasses over the chicken and mix well, but gently. Coat all sides of the pieces and then let the molasses get into the pieces leaving it to rest for around 10 minutes. Cover the dish so the chicken doesn't dry out.

Set your oven to preheat.

Baste the chicken pieces in a reasonable amount of ghee. You don't have to go overboard but be generous. The ghee lends a superb flavour to the final product. Sprinkle za'atar powder generously onto the chicken pieces and arrange again so they are all in a single layer.

Cover the dish with foil and seal. Now bake the chicken for around 15 minutes at 180C. Remove the dish carefully and take off the foil. Bake for another five to seven minutes after having turned the pieces once. Sprinkle more za'atar before you pop it in to bake again.

If you can get chicken with the skin on you will get a fabulous crackly skin and super moist flesh inside. However, covering the baking dish for the initial bake also gives great results.

I served the chicken with these very simple

Lebanese Spiced Potatoes

3 to 4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 large onion, minced
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
salt
pepper
1 cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped
1/4 cup lemon juice
olive oil

Heat olive oil in a skillet and fry the potatoes till they are nearly cooked and have turned a beautiful golden brown. Remove to a plate. Add more olive oil to the skillet if required and heat it up. Fry the mined onion and garlic for a minute or two. Add salt, chilli powder, coriander powder and half the fresh coriander that you have chopped. Give it all a good stir and then add the potatoes. Mix well. Crack in fresh pepper generously. Let it all cook for a couple of minutes. Add a good splash of lemon juice but don't let the lemon overpower the dish. Toss well and remove to a serving dish. Garnish with the remaining fresh coriander and serve hot with the roast chicken

The next time I make these potatoes I'm going to sprinkle a hefty pinch of sumac instead of using lemon juice. I think I will prefer that.

Chefs Across Boundaries

Marathon Bloggers

Black Forest Buns - We Knead to Bake #25

The chosen bread for February, being valentine's month, for the We Knead to Bake group was Black Forest Buns. These buns have cherries, chocolate cake and chocolate sauce incorporated into bread in the form of buns. The idea appealed to me instantly and I got the ingredients together to make them on a Sunday.

Since K loves jams, jellies and preserves, he has quite a collection and I had his permission to raid his stash for something suitable. I did. I also made my easy pound cake with a whole lot of cocoa powder added to the mix for a home made chocolate cake that I could crumble and use for this recipe.

The Black Forest Buns are basically bread rolls stuffed with a cherry preserve or compote, and crumbled chocolate cake. Ideally they should look like cinnamon rolls and should stand individually instead of turning into pull apart rolls as mine did. The hubby certified the taste to be outstanding, so I'm glad I got that right at least!

To make the chocolate cake I followed the same Basic Sponge Cake recipe that I've been making for many years, with around 3 to 4 spoons of cocoa powder added to the flour. You can add a little milk to the batter if you feel the cocoa is making the batter too dry. Let the cake cool completely before you take it out of the tin. I used a little less than half the cake for crumbs. The rest will be slathered with Nutella and enjoyed with coffee :)

Black Forest Buns

The recipe is quite the same as given by Aparna here.

1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 heaped tablespoon soft butter
1 and 1/2 tsp Instant yeast
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups plus extra maida

For the filling

Crumbled chocolate cake
Cherry preserve or compote or any berry jam. Chunky will give good texture.

For topping

Melted cooking chocolate


Start by mixing the milk and water in a pan. Heat the two till hot but not boiling. Remove from heat. Add the sugar and let it dissolve. Let this mixture cool considerably and then put it into the mixing bowl of your food processor or stand mixer. If you're kneading by hand then just use a large mixing bowl.

Add the egg and the yeast into the still warm liquid mix and stir to combine. Then add a cup of maida/white flour and start your machine. I used my stand mixer with the batter paddle attachment. Gradually add the remaining flour till it all combines. Don't forget to add the salt early enough.

I changed to the dough hook once the ingredients were combined and left the machine to knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes. Once the dough was more or less together but still a tad sticky I took it out onto my work surface and kneaded it by hand till it was soft, smooth and very lightly sticky. Add loose flour little by little as you knead to get there. Use the stretch and fold method to work the dough.

Take an oiled bowl and set the dough aside to rise. I will take a little more than an hour to double. Leave the bowl covered with a damp cloth.

Once the dough has doubled get all your filling ingredients together.

Punch the dough down gently. Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough to make a large oblong around 18" x 12" Try to make it as neat and uniform as possible so you have nicely formed rolls at the end. Work quickly so the dough doesn't rise too much as you work.

Once the oblong is rolled out spread the cherry preserve (or whatever you are using) generously all over, leaving a small border around.

Next spread a generous amount of the cake crumbs covering as much of the dough as you can. Try to make the layer as even as you can.

Now comes the tricky part. Start from one long side and roll tightly to form a long log creating a spiral as you go. Tuck in the dough gently and carefully so the roll is not loose. The sides of my dough were a bit too thick so I had a really fat centre so remember to roll it as thin as you possibly can.

Use a dough scraper or a really sharp non serrated knife and cut out individual buns from the rolled log. Arrange these in a tall sided baking tin and leave them to prove for another hour. They will double.

Bake the risen buns for around 30 mins at 180C. Keep an eye on them so they don't become too brown.

 I also topped the buns with dried cranberries before putting them in to bake. Melt a little chocolate and drizzle on top of the buns. Serve them still warm or enjoy them later with your evening coffee or tea. These will be great as tiffin fillers for the kids.

We Knead to Bake

Marathon Bloggers