A very simple cake - my first bake

 My sister , the baker in the family used to make very simple yet delightfull cakes. Suddenly she lost the inspiration to do any more baking and thus my annual quota of cakes from her also stopped.

I had always wanted to bake cakes but somehow i had an impression that its a herculean task. I saw Deeba's site and was overwhelmed!

Then one of my collegues at office i discovered was equally gungho about baking and shared with me a very simple recipe and thus i started baking.

Ingredients

1 Cup all purpose flour/Maida

1 Cup ground Sugar

1 Cup unsalted cooking Butter (in liquid form)

3 eggs

1 tsp Vanilla essence

1 Tbsp of Sugar (for caramelizing)

1 tsp Baking powder

25 - 50 gms Raisins

Method

1. Sieve the flour along with the baking powder 2-3 times.
2. In a deep bowl  break the 3 eggs and beat it till fluffy. It will rise to 2-3 times its initial quantity.
3. Add the Butter and beat again.
4. Add the sugar and mix again.
5. Add the flour 2 Spoonfuls at a time and mix well.
6. At the end add the essence.
7. Now take a work and heat it at full flame. Add the 1 Tbsp of sugar and let it melt and attain that very dark brown colour. Once done reduce the flame and add 1/4 cup of water to it slowly and mix well.
8. Add the above caramelized sugar to the cake. Make sure that you don't add any solid pieces that might have formed on adding water.
9. Mix well.
10. Coat the raisins with some flour and add them as well to the cake mix. This will prevent them from sinking to teh bottom.
11. Pour the cake mix into a baking container lined with butter paper and bake at 180ºC for 30-40 mins or until the knife comes out clean

Few things to take care of:

• If you have a electric hand mixer use that. you will be able to work up the cake more and it will turn out better.
• Take care while caramelizing sugar. It should not turn black lest it will introduce a bitter taste into the cake. Also do not add too much of it to the cake mix. Add and mix to test  the colour.

Now enjoy the cake and the aroma it spreads!

I am sending this over to Cookies and cakes for Xmas and Vandana's Baking for Beginner's Part-II

Chicken Lollipops

Last 1 year has been very hectic .There have been a variety of reasons in the order as below:

1. House recce, buying and then settling in (still in the process!!)

2. Travelling (trip to home after 3 long years)
3. Continuous stay in guests (to the tune of 13 people at a time)

So I thought that this saturday i am definitely not going have anyone come over. But as fate would have it, A and friend decided to discuss visiting each others abode on friday. In such scenario A is predictable , friend has to visit us first before we take the step to his place!.

I again ended up having guests for dinner on Saturday.

I therefore relied on my time tested recipe of Chicken Lollipos The recipe from Chicken Lollipops is adapted from Tarla Dalal's Samsung Microwave Cooking.The original recipe is a microwave version with some ingredients different from what i use and microwaved instead of deep fried.
Here comes a recipe that cannot go wrong!

Ingredients:

750 gms of Chicken Lollipops (store bought)

5 Tbsp of Heinz tomato ketchup (or any other brand, I happened to have this one)
2.5 Tbsp Cornflour
3 Tbsp All Pupose Flour (Maida)
3 Tbsp of Lemon juice
2 tsp Red Chilli powder (or as hot as you want it)
2 Tbsp Garlic Paste
1 tsp oil
Salt to taste
Oil to deep fry

Method

1. Wash and clean Chicken Lollipops and drain all water from it. Add to it all the ingredients mentioned above and mix well.
2. Keep the marinated chicken for 10 mins at room temperature and then in freezer for 30 mins.
3. Heat oil in a deep wok and fry the pieces till they are deep red in colour.

Few things to note:

1. Pour in enough oil so that the lollipops are well immersed.
2. Oil should be heated very well. (drop a little piece of marination , it should come up imediately)
3. Reduce the heat after you add the pieces, such that they fry with bubbles but do not burn too soon.
4. Do not put in too many pieces together. They should be well spread in the oil. I fried 5 pieces at a time in amedium sized wok/Kadhai.
5. One point to note keep the recipe on the sweeter side by adding red chilli as recommended or less. This makes it very appealing to kids.

Easy ? Now enjoy! :)