odzer's blog

Open up your pie holes for tis is the day of the pie. Priyank tagged me to bake a pie on March the 14th for some reason or the other. He has some weird mathematical reasoning behind it but any excuse to bake or eat a pie is most welcome. I had settled on baking a cherry pie for this day but unfortunately I could not find cherries anywhere because it is still not the season for this fruit. So I decided in the end that it had to be definitely a custard pie for this occasion.

Custard pies, not be confused with custard cream pies (which are normally thrown at celebrities and politicians) are an old fashioned dessert and really do not require a lot of ingredients. Most of the flavouring in these pies comes from the ample use of Nutmeg a spice that is normally not used in very copious amounts in any other dish as far as my recollection goes. As there is no such thing as “frozen pastry dough” available in Chandigarh you would appreciate the effort that I put in creating pastry dough in 25ºC weather. If it was the peak of summer here I would be running between the freezer and the kitchen a couple of times to make sure the butter does not melt in the dough. Anyway the results are for all of you to view. I am certainly enjoying my pie day and I hope so do all of you!

Chocolate Cake

I have made a chocolate cake yet again. This time I made a cake that I deliberately kept moist. Usually I like dry cakes but since I was expecting guests for dinner I decided to do a different variety. I could not cut the cake to show it up for the blog because it was for a special event. Anyway It came out pretty nice. It made an excellent combination with some vanilla ice cream.

I am thinking about doing a similar coffee cake sometime. The secret to a moist cake is simple though. Liquid. It can be any liquid but in this case it was just plain old water. Usually such cakes employ oil instead of butter but I would rather not use oil. So in case of a coffee cake something like liquid coffee would do the job of having a softer cake.

Sometime ago I made a Rum ‘n Raisin cake. I love dark Indian rum that they manufacture here in India. I have often said that it is perhaps the best liquor that comes out of here. So It was nice to pour down a quarter in to the cake and it gave it this lovely deep and nice flavour. In fact I had soaked the raisins in the liquour for a while but not for a long time. I wanted them to still have their chewy texture. Over all it was quite a success and I have enjoyed baking this particular cake.

In fact it seems that I might do this recipe again because I liked it so much. I think for one reason or the other I love baking cakes over other things such as cookies but one of these days perhaps I should do something for a change as well. As for now it does not really matter. I think a bit of candied orange peel would have been good in this cake but I did not have any. Perhaps I should buy some or make my own.

Some days ago I have made a chocolate cake. I used 80% cacao chocolate and added even some cocoa to it. It came out fairly well. So you can say that I like my chocolate cake quite ‘chocololaty’. I usually like non-frosted chocolate cakes but I suppose a black forest cake can be good occasionally if it is done properly. One of the most amusing things is what happens if you keep a cookie jar full of this cake around. It seems that it keeps disappearing on its own. It’s almost magical. Although I suspect it may have something to do with my mother.

I have decided that I am going to bake a batch of brownies soon for a change and it may be as early as today because I plan to host a dinner party tonight. So just keep watching this space for yet more cakes…

I made Earl grey tea cup cakes. I love earl grey tea. In the summer tea I usually drink it iced. Sometimes though in winters I like it in the evening with a spot of milk. I had never used any earl grey tea in cooking before until I came across this recipe that I really liked and I tried my hand at making some earl grey tea cup cakes. My feeling towards cup cakes is sort of mixed. It is easy to eat them of course and you do not have to bother slicing them but at the same time spooning dough in to individual cup cake thingies is sort of sissy if you ask me. 

However if you do have cup cakes its great to have a couple lying around for breakfast the next day. It beats muffins any day. The whole bran thing is just okay not that great. If I need fiber I would rather drink a glass of isabgol as a medicine rather than eating something that tastes like sawdust. So the cup cakes had this nice bergamot flavour due to the earl grey tea and the flavour became even more intense after I came home from a movie and had let a few cool down. I can normally not help wolfing down some cake while it is still hot. The tea leaves also gave them a nice speckled look. 

I am sure to make some more of these excellent cup cakes in the future and since this time it was nearly an experiment I deliberately kept the size small. I also plan to do some chocolate chip cup cakes soon.

You either love a fruit cake or you hate it. Personally I find it nice and as khelljuhg pointed out to me other day quite gay. I have made two fruit cakes this Christmas. Why two fruit cakes? Well because you can never have enough of fruit cake and you do not make it every day. It can keep forever and in this season it does not even need refrigeration considering my whole house feels like a fridge. In north India unless you sit in your own house with a fleece jacket I do not see how you can survive the winter.

Now coming back to the cake, I had soaked a couple of black and white raisins for around 1 1/2 days in dark Indian rum to get them nice bloated and soggy. Indian rum is in my opinion one of the best things that comes out of this country. The other spirits produced in this country I am afraid are mostly good enough only to be flushed down the toilet. The rum is sweet, flavourful and on its own makes an excellent drink. Add a bit to your hot chocolate at night and its an excellent nightcap.So the cake again since I have wandered off…

I also added some dates, a heap of walnuts and almonds, some nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon and of course half a bottle more of rum. Oh and a bit of Van Houten’s excellent cocoa as well not so much for the chocolate effect but for the heat and spice of it. One of the cakes was shaped liked a bundt and the other was baked in the regular round tin. Over all both of them cakes turned out to be veery nice and I enjoyed baking a lot. Of course as usual taking out a bundt is never an easy task but I seem to have managed it quite well. The end results can be seen by clicking the pictures in the gallery.

This weekend I did something with my spare time. I made two green tea cakes. Out of all the green tea cakes that I have made these ones were perhaps the best. Japanese powdered green tea has a unique flavour that is both light as well as aromatic. The reason why I did two cakes were because I wanted to give one to the parents of one of my friends because they sent me some Indian sweeties and some other food on some previous occassions. Food for me is a very social thing. I love to cook with my friends or even to exchange different eatable things.

As I have already done a blog before on Green Tea cake I have decided to give my recipe out so that you can have a try sometime.

50 grams of Salted Butter

3 Eggs

1 cup Castor Sugar

1 1/2 Cups Flour

1-2 tsp. Maccha

1 tsp. Baking Powder

Some oil

Melt the butter or if you have more patience cream together butter and sugar. Melting the butter in a microwave in no way comes in the way of baking a cake. Unless of course you have good biceps and you do not mind struggling with a cold slab of butter. Add all the eggs one by one and keep stirring till you have a nice creamy mixture. In another bowl sift together the maccha powder, flour and the baking powder. Now all you need to do is mix lightly and not with a heavy hand the dry ingredidents in to the wet mixture. If the batter is quite dry it may be advisable to add some milk. Grease a metal pan with some oil and dust it with flower. If you so prefer you can also line it with some butter paper. Now you need to bake it in a preheated oven at 200ºC till the crust is golden brown.

Today keeping up with the Apple theme I have made an apple crumble. Mostly due to the fact that I am overrun with apples. This dish I suppose is a result of one of those curious British disaster recipes that actually turned out to be good. It is an easier varient of apple pie and it can be done in far lesser time and with more fruit and less flour. I used Indian brown sugar to flavour the base instead of regular sugar and also added some cinnamon. Although I was in a hurry and thus the crumble may not seem to be crumbly enough.

The idea is to rub butter in to flour till the crumble resembles breadcrumbs. Then all you have to do is toss it over the apple, sugar and cinnamon mix and leave it in the oven at 180ºC for around 45 – 60 minutes depending upon your oven. This dish needs an eager eye because it can burn rather quickly if you stop paying attention to it. It came out rather nice dark and crumbly enough.

Today I made an Apple cake. They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I sort of believe it. Anyway I macerated around one apple in some brown sugar and some cinnamon and then used that to make a cinnamon apple upside down cake. It came out better than I had expected and to I have today documented the cake extraction process which is always the worst part for me because I have to wait for the cake to cool down and the aroma of cinnamon and apple’s is simply irresistible. I had originally planned to add some walnuts to this cake but I could not locate any in my fridge so I wonder whatever happened to them, may be I just need to clear it out. Fridges have this nasty habit of gobbling up things that never return back.

There is something very Dutch about Cinnamon and Apple’s. It is something that I have always related with the culture of The Netherlands. Somehow ever since I was six years old I have almost always had something or the other to do with that country. Anyway after the cake cooled down I enjoyed a slice with my afternoon tea and put the rest away for the weekend and hopefully beyond.

One of my favourite cakes!

I was sitting blissfully after dinner when a friend of mine and a regular commentator on this blog mentioned cake. Well though she wanted to order it I have no such luxury so I ended up making my own. I have made a Maccha (Japanese Powdered Green Tea) Cake. I love the flavour of Maccha and I may be actually addicted.

I did not wait for the cake to cool down because I wanted to have it immediately. This resulted in the slices being well not “perfect” but who cares at 11 pm at night! Since it has been raining here since the last 3 days and it has not stopped even for a minute the whole day today I am stuck at home so I am sure that I can use it instead of bread for the mornings breakfast as well too.