Xmas Fruit Cake (Kerala Christmas Fruit Cake)

BM# 63: Journey through the Cuisines 

Week 4: Kerala Cuisine 
Day 24: X for Xmas Fruit Cake

So here we are at probably the most difficult letter of all, X. There are very few dishes or veggies that start with the letter X, so this must have been a tough letter for everyone except for those cooking from Spanish or Chinese cuisines. I was initially planning to go with an adjective or a verb but finally ended up making this Kerala Style X mas Cake.

I was thinking of doing a post like xplore Malabar cuisine, xperience Kerala sadya or something on those lines. I even asked Rajani for her input and she said try a sadya meal by making dishes over couple of days. I was tempted but the amount of work involved seemed too tedious and with the husband traveling, it was way too much food for just me. It is one of my dream meal to make in my lifetime.

Read more »

Chai Spiced Pound Cake

Using different spice mixes in baking gives the baked goods different taste and feel. So by changing the spices used in a base recipe, you can make recipes appropriate for any season. For example use pumpkin pie spice in this pound cake and you have a perfect fall cake. Or use just one spice that you really like, may be cinnamon and cardamom for another tasty twist to the basic pound cake.

This Chai spiced pound cake recipe is from King Arthur flour catalog. The cake is perfectly tender and mimics the flavor of a cup of chai. I can never understood what 'Chai-Tea' means. It is on almost all of the bakery, coffee-shop and juice bar menus. I want to tell them that Chai and tea are synonymous and it makes no sense saying tea-tea. Well I guess it's gourmet or fancy way of saying tea.

Read more »

Sourdough Chocolate Cake

Bake-a-thon 2015: Day 13

Bake of the day: Sourdough Chocolate Cake

I'm going to end this year and Bake-a-thon on a sweet note with this Sourdough chocolate cake. Sourdough is usually associated with rustic breads but it can also be used to make delicious cakes like this one. I already made carrot cake with sourdough and it was quite a hit. That reminds me to make that one again sometime.

I made this cake twice -- first time for my cousins birthday, but I couldn't take pictures and second time to take pictures and enjoy it again. The cake doesn't have any tell tale sign taste of sourdough and everybody liked it a lot. It is a very moist and chocolaty cake that needs just a little bit of planning. 

Read more »

Orange-Cranberry and Nut Fruitcake

Blogging Marathon# 59: Week 4/ Day 2

Theme: Holiday Bakes

Dish: Orange and Cranberry Fruitcake

Merry Christmas to all of you.
We had a fun filled Christmas eve party with friends last night and today it's going to be another great to spend with family. My sister and my cousin are coming over for Christmas lunch, so the post is going to be rather short today :-)

I made this fruitcake to give as gift and this recipe is great for people like me who are not great at planning ahead and decide to make a fruitcake in the last minute. Recipe comes from King Arthur Flour and like all their bakes, this one turned out great. Here's the 90 minute fruitcake I made last year and here's the Vegan fruitcake I made the year before.

Read more »

Eggless Fruit & Nut Cake

Bake-a-thon 2015: Day 6
Bake of the Day: Fruit & Nut Cake without Eggs
We are just 12 short days away from Christmas and I'm sure everyone is in full gear with holiday decorating, shopping and baking. We just put our Christmas tree up yesterday and the decoration is still work-in-progress. My 3 year old is very excited about Christmas and has been actively helping me in decorating the house :-)

This fruit & nut cake reminds me of Britannia snack cake with little specks of tutti fruity in it. I have made this cake about half a dozen times already and it has been quite a hit every time I make it. Recipe is from Nisha Madhulika's site. Recipe needs just a few basic baking ingredients and a few minutes of stirring, voila you have a delicious cake in less than an hour.

Read more »

Apple Ricotta Cake

Blogging Marathon# 57: Week 2/ Day 3

Theme: Food52 Contest Recipes from here

Dish: Apple Ricotta Cake

I'm ending this week's marathon on a sweet note with this Apple Ricotta Cake from Food52. We went apple picking couple of weeks back and I had quite a few apples left. I also had some ricotta cheese that needed to be used up in the fridge. So I looked for recipes with apples and ricotta in Food52 and found this delicious cake recipe which happens to be the 'Best recipe with Fresh Ricotta' contest winner.

This recipe uses only 1 apple and doesn't really taste like an 'apple' cake. I'm not a big apple fan so that is totally fine with me, but if you are looking for an apple cake that tastes like an apple pie (or more apple'y'), then this is not for you.

Read more »

Eggless Date & Walnut Cake

Blogging Marathon# 53: Week 4/ Day 3

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes -- Veena's Veg Nation

Dish: Eggless Date & Walnut Cake
For the final day of this month's blogging marathon, I picked this yummy looking Eggless Dates Cake from Veena's blog. I recently bought a bag of seedless dates from Costco and have been snacking on them almost everyday. So when I saw this recipe, I knew it would be perfect to use some of the dates.

This cake is eggless and can be made with just a few basic ingredients. If you are using dates with seeds, then the dates need to be soaked in milk overnight to help in removing the seeds. I used seedless dates, so just warmed it in the microwave to make them a little soft.

Read more »

Tres Leche Cake (Vegan Recipe)

I have a rich, decadent and indulgent dessert today, Tres Leche cake or 3 milk cake. I made as a part of Mexican lunch I had with some of my blog buddies last weekend.

My husband is not a big fan of desserts like these, but I love them a lot. Since I can't make them for myself, I'm always looking for opportunities to make them. So when I decided on the Mexican theme for our blogger's lunch, I knew this Latin American dessert would be a great addition.

Read more »

Perfect Chocolate Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 26

Bake of the Day: Perfect Chocolate Cake

It's the final day of the month long mega marathon and I wanted to end it on a sweet note. I made this perfect chocolate cake for my husband's birthday, but the pictures I took looked awful, so I made it again couple of days back.

When I started planning for the marathon, I listed about 40~45 recipes that I wanted to try. I wanted to bake dishes that I've never made before like meringues, panettone, flat breads and so on. But when actual reality set in, the list got shorter and the dishes got simpler. I am happy with the baked dishes I posted in the marathon and hopefully I'll get to the dishes I had on my list along with the long list of bookmarks from my fellow marathoners.

Read more »

Lemon Almond Ricotta Bundt Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 22

Bake of the Day: Cakes -- Lemon Almond Ricotta Bundt Cake

I am not a health freak but I do look at what a eat. My motto is everything in moderation is OK. There was a phase in my life, few years back, when I tried making 'healthy' foods that really tasted 'healthy' (you know what I mean, right??). I'm glad that phase has passed and now I try incorporate healthy ingredients into my dishes but try to make them taste as normal as possible.

Coming to today's dish, I had a container of ricotta in the fridge waiting to be used up and a quick search landed me on this Lemon almond Bundt cake recipe. I loved the pics and decided to bake it.

Read more »

Fresh Strawberry Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 21

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes --  Fresh Strawberry Cake

I first saw this strawberry cake on Siri's blog. This cake recipe was making rounds in Facebook couple of months ago. A Strawberry Winter Cake movement was also started because it was strawberry season in India. All the cakes shared looked so amazing that I had to jump on the bandwagon and make this cake right away. This cake celebrates Summer in a delicious way!!

Even though it wasn't really strawberry season then (I still remember the super cold winter -- brrrrr), I found some decent strawberries and made this cake. It is a very pretty cake with whole strawberries beautifully arranged on top. I should have put the strawberries a little closer on top -- they seemed to have drifted apart after baking.

Read more »

Eggless Vanilla Cake with Condensed Milk

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 20
Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Vanilla Cake with Condensed Milk

As I was organizing the recipes to post for this week, I was surprised to see that I was missing my daughter's birthday cake. Then I realized that I made an extremely small (6") cake and it was all gone by the end of the night. I only had one good picture of the cake. So I made it again recently.

It is a very basic eggless vanilla cake with condensed milk. Using cake flour makes the cake soft and gives it a great texture. It is not a very moist cake, but is not totally dry either.

Read more »

Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream) -- Peppa Pig Fondant Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 19

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream)
After my son's birthday cakes (Cookie cake & Dulche de Leche cake), I made this eggless berry cake for my niece. I was volunteering to bake cakes left and right, so I can bake new cakes for the marathon. I think some of my friends & family were even creeped out on how obsessed I was to bring a cake to the party -- poor people ;-)

I asked my niece what flavored cake she wants -- she wasn't really worried about the flavor, she just wanted a princess cake that was pink. So I accepted the challenge and even found a recipe and instructions on making a nice Barbie princess cake. Initially it seemed easy enough to make but as I kept thinking about it seemed like a daunting task, so I changed my mind and decided on making this Peppa Pig cake instead because she is a big fan of Peppa. Good that I didn't promise her a princess cake in the first place. She was definitely excited to see Peppa on the cake.

Read more »

Eggless Dulche de Leche Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 18

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Dulche de Leche Cake

After yesterday's giant chocolate chip cookie, I made this Dulche de leche cake for my son's birthday that weekend. My husband travels on business to Argentina frequently and gets this amazing local dulche de leche from there which I use in all kinds of different desserts, like this creme caramel and this yummy cake. You can make your own dulche de leche at home or you can buy the canned variety or you can use just regular condensed milk (it will taste different but it will still be good).

This is an eggless cake and is sweetened with just the dulche de leche. I always tell myself not to experiment a new recipe for a party. But I always do that -- I'm too bad that planning ahead of time. 

Read more »

Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 17

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

I can't believe it is the third week of our month long mega baking marathon, after making breads, breakfast dishes, the next two weeks (or week and a half) are going to be focused on desserts -- cakes, cookies and so on.
I have been planning for this marathon for almost 6 months now. So I've been saving all the special baked recipes for this week. First up, is the cookie cake I made for my son's birthday. It is a giant chocolate chip cookie that is decorated like a birthday cake.

My son's birthday was on a weekday last year and I had planned to make a birthday cake for the party over the weekend. So on his actual birthday, I decided to keep it simple and made this cookie cake instead of an actual cake. That decoration was supposed to be a dinosaur because my son is a big dinosaur fan :-)

Read more »

90 Minute Fruit Cake

Bake-a-thon 2014: Day 11

Bake of the Day: 90 Minute Fruit Cake

Christmas is just 1 day away. If you didn't make a fruitcake and think you don't have time to make it, think again. This 90 minute fruitcake is just for you. Instead of making loaves or round shaped fruitcakes, these mini bundt cakes are very easy to put together and taste almost like the regular fruitcake.

Last year I made an eggless Christmas Fruitcake that involved soaking in the dry fruit and nuts in orange juice or some kind of alcohol for at least 1 day or more to get the best flavor. This year I wanted to make something different and when I saw these mini bundt cake recipe in the King Arthur catalog, I knew I found myself a good recipe.

Read more »

Russian Honey Cake -- Medovik (with Eggless Custard Filling)

For this month's International Cooking Challenge, Saras @ Saras Yummy Bites is taking us to the world's largest country in the world, Russia. Russia's cuisine is very diverse just like the country and she gave us 3 traditional recipes to choose from. I picked this irresistible Russian Honey Cake from the list.

I made it as a part of my Russian meal I did earlier this month. This honey cake is very different from any cake I've ever made. The cake part is not a cake after all, it is basically rolled out dough that is baked in the oven to make somewhat like thin pancakes. These thin cakes are then layered with creamy custard filling and then chilled to make a delicious cake.

Read more »

Ice Cream Cake

Today's dessert is so simple to make that I feel silly posting a recipe for it. But it tasted amazing, so I felt I should share it here just so I remember to make it in the future. So if you are curious to know what it is, then let me tell you that it's nothing but softened ice cream with candy, cookies and nuts mixed in. 

I made this ice cream cake to serve the kids at our BBQ party last weekend. As I was looking for recipes, I found Nigella Lawson's ice cream cake and I loved the idea of mixing crunchy and chewy mix-ins into good old vanilla ice cream. Come to think of it, vanilla ice cream is like a blank canvas that can be flavored with just about anything.

Read more »

Middle Eastern Date & Honey Cake

We are travelling to the Middle East for this month's 'Home Baker's Challenge'. Rafeeda, our lovely host for this month gave us some delicious sweet and savory dishes from Arabia to choose from. Since my family loves sweets, I made a deliciously sweet Arabic cake.
I wanted to bake this cake last month itself, but I ran out of dates and the whole month passed by before I realized it was the deadline to post for the event. So I rushed and bought some dates and made this cake last night. My husband who has a very big sweet tooth, absolutely LOVED it. It was a little too sweet for me, since it has all the sugars you can possibly think of. May be next time I cut down on the other sugars and use only honey.

Read more »

Sourdough Carrot Cake

I made this cake first time more than 3 years ago when I first got the sourdough starter. I took it to work and everyone loved it there. But I haven't had a chance to make it again until now. I saw the recipe in the King Arthur Catalog and it reminded me of the moist and delicious cake that I made years ago.

Sourdough starter makes this cake very moist and there are no tell-tale signs of sourness or the addition of sourdough starter anywhere. I halved the original recipe and made 1 8" round cake. Then frosted the cake with a very simple cream cheese frosting.

Read more »