odzer's blog

Some days ago I tried to make a cheese cake, this was result of the fact that I was given a free packet of Ricotta by a local store. Actually between me and a friend we had two packets but due to some curious incident we ended up with one. I was a bit wary of what would happen when I try making it with one pack but over all the result was not that bad. Originally I had wanted to do a strawberry cheese cake but because I could not find any strawberries I setteled on making a lemon cheese cake. This unbaked cheese cake had a layer of digestive biscuits and the filling was composed on lemon juice, zest, double cream and the cheese of course. I was a bit scared to take out the cake out of its shell because i was afraid the base might crumble but it held on steadily and strongly.

So the results were okay but I could have done much better with more cheese. I decided to add some shaved chocolate to the top of the cake for a bit of a twist. I liked the cake but I will do somethings differently next time I try it. A cheese cake is best if it is cheesy!

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…

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.

It was my mother’s birthday yesterday so I have baked her a carrot and walnut cake. You either love a carrot cake or you hate it. I happen to be one of those who like it a lot. I think addition of a few nuts does help the cake overall. India is lucky in the sense that it has many types of carrots. We get the usual orange carrots when it is a bit warmer because they are grown in the mountains and the red ones grown locally in winter and mid winter. There are also black carrots which some people used to make a drink called Kanji. Actually the orange carrot has a bit of history, it was invented by the Dutch in the honour of the House of Orange during the reign of Willam the Orange (1533-84). So even if the Dutch did not manage to rule the whole of the world the carrot they invented has taken the world over.

In any case I have used the good old Indian red carrot for this cake but the trouble with that variety is that it is very stalky and the yellow stalk inside the carrot can sometimes be bitter. However I had made sure to pick young carrots for this cake. Brown sugar is usually used for this recipe but I used white sugar because I like the colour of the carrots to show up. A bit of cinnamon was the only spice used in the cake.

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.

Today I baked a Walnut and Almond Tea Cake. We had a sort of a power problem while it was baking and I was fearful that it will not come out nicely but it did! I really liked the way the cake came out and tasted. We had it around tea time and it was a huge success. What I am really looking forward to is to buy a loaf tin for making sliced cakes so that I can experiment with some new things. It has been a long time since I have baked anything mostly because of the sick weather that we have been having here. It is so humid and hot that I never really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I hope to do some more experiments as the season turns cooler.

Today I have baked a Mango Cake. This is dedicated to one of my friends who reminded me of it. You know who you are! Anyway I used a bundt pan for it because I have not used it in a while. I have also added some Nutmeg and finished it off with Cinamon sugar to give it a spicy touch. I used two varieties of Mangoes, one called Sindoori and the other called Safeda. One is a bit on the tart side and the other is extremely sweet, I macerated the fruit in brown sugar to give it an earthy feel. It has turned out to be quite nice.