Apple Raisin Cake

Tags

apple, baking, cake, Friday Feast, maida, raisin, recpie, whole wheat

Baking was off from quite sometime in our household because of the neck but now from sometime Ojas wants the baked goodies with a vengeance… as if he wants to make up for the missed time 🙂

I baked honey raisin cake from Tara’s blog in a loaf tin and we had it all for breakfast… ojas with jam, N with honey and me as it is 🙂

And as soon as that got over, he started the story yet again “mumma make cake” sigh… So I made Apple Raisin cake… I love fruit cakes… they are moist, soft and u dont need to put in too much sugar…

All of us really enjoyed this cake (yeah I am so guilty of eating everything under the sun since the workout has stopped due to the neck, gosh… someone please stop me)

Ingredients

• 3 apples
• 1 cup maida
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder

Method

• Cut the apple and grind them to a paste with the peel , add the oil and milk while grinding
• Add sugar to the apple and mix well
• Add the vanilla essence
• Add one egg at a time mixing well
• Mix the flours and baking powder together and sift
• Add half the flour mixture to the apple egg paste and mix, then add the rest of the half and mix well… dont over mix
• Add the raisins, mix gently
• Bake for about 40 mins at 175C or till the cake its done

I was surprised at how the apple peel turned green after baking… does it happen with everyone or did it happen with me only

Recipe Adapted from Aayi’s Recipe. Check the original too, I have replaced the maida with half maida and half atta, reduced the oil and put some milk. Also reduced the amount of sugar which worked very well as my apples were really sweet. Thanks Shilpa for the brilliant recipe

Plum Cake

Tags

baking, Friday Feast, plum cake, recpie

Note : I had scheduled this post for 25th Dec Xmas before leaving for Pune… as I thought that would be a perfect day to post a plum cake recipe… Only thing I think I had scheduled it only in my head 😦 anyways here it is with the title changed from Merry Xmas to Plum Cake and the various wishes 🙂

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup demera sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 4 tbsp rum
• juice and zest of one orange
• 3/4 cup ground almonds
• 1 cup mix of walnuts and cashew chopped
• 650 gm gms of dried fruits (I used raisins, dates, prunes)
• 2 cups maida
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

Method

• Heat the over to 160 degrees
• Beat the butter and sugar till light and fluffy
• Add eggs and beat some more
• Add the rum, orange juice and zest
• Fold the almonds, cashew, walnut and the rest of the dry fruits in it
• In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder and fold this into the cake batter
• Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) and continue to bake the cake for another 1 hour 30 minutes or until a long skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out with just a few moist crumbs. enjoy!!! It was so yummy that it got over in a day and ojas digged in it too much too… I made one more for him with very very less rum

PS: original recipe from here which BTW is an excellent site for baking recipes… somethings I changed in the recipe are I used rum instead of brandy… I dont like brandy and neither does N… I also used demera sugar instead of light brown and dark which is mentioned

Where I secure my place in mommy heaven

Tags

., baking, birthday, cake, icing, mommy heaven, Ojas, recpie, train

Isn’t there is this rule that you if you bake a fancy cake for your son you go straight to mommy heaven 😀 well then I have secured my place there he he

I made a train cake for Ojas this time…  and here I present it to u….

Last time when I asked you guys for some icing recipes in my mind I was wanting to make a car cake but when I searched the internet for some pictures and TMM sent me this link, I got really scared of the shaping involved. This being the first time I was going to try anything so elaborate I was just not getting confidence on looking at those cakes

Then I remembered that she had made a lovely train cake for the munchkin’s first birthday and I told her I might just pick up her idea and generous soul that she is smiled and said go ahead 🙂 thanks avanti  (its a different story that my cake is not half as pretty looking as her’s but I am happy with mine too 😀 )

So with that lead and the icing recpies you lovely guys had sent me… I started out to bake the cake for Ojas….

The bogies and the engine are actually all baked in rectangular break tin’s or tea cake moulds. I bake in total of 5 such cakes and assembled them together.

The engine is Chocolate Temptation (for those of you who asked I have updated the post with the rec) in which I have layered half of the second cake on top of the first to give it the engine look.  There is a ginger bread man sitting as the driver of the bogie on the side and the chimney is half cut ice cream cone filled with gummy bears and on top of that I put the 2 year candle

The three bogies are plain pound cakes with this butter cream icing (which I modified to replace shortening with white butter as the shortening was not really available anywhere near my house and later when A sent me her frosting recipe I realized its the same :D) flavored with Green Apple essence and green color

On the first bogie I put some chocolate rolls as logs, the next one I lined up with gems and wrote Happy Birthday, the next one had Ojas written on it…

The last one the guard box is the left over half of the chocolate part of what I put over the engine… again there is a ginger bread man sitting there as a guard and the icing is the same as above but an orange flavor.

All the bogies and the engine are joined together with chocolate wafers and the wheels are the coin chocolates.

I would be kidding if I say that oh it was very easy there was a lot of effort that went into it, I baked all the cakes and made the icing ready on Sunday evening and then put together the cake on Sunday afternoon but the end result gave me an amazing amount of satisfaction and ofcourse the place in mommy heaven 🙂 may be next time I will really be brave enough to try the car cake.