Beer Chocolate Cake

I've been experimenting with beer in my cooking and baking for a while now. I don't drink much of it coz it leaves me sleepy and bloated, but I do love the mild bitterness and depth it adds to food. Before I started the marathon experiments, I had only a layman's knowledge of beer. Pop a can or pull a draught at the microbrewery and really all beer was the same! Right? Wrong!! 

I actually got talking to a brewmaster and was boggled at all the subtleties and methods that differentiate each brew. Roasting, hopping, brewing, maturing... they all combine in limitless combos to bring the perfect aaahhh to your sip! 

When I baked my Beer Bread, I was completely clueless and just reached into the fridge for a Bud. But this time round I was better educated, and now that I understood the flavour profiles, i was confident of pairing the right beer with the right ingredients. 

This particular cake uses the English Brown Ale. The dark colour boosts the chocolate tones. And the roasted nutty malts carry an undertone of chocolate that just enhances the taste of the cake to an altogether different level. 

The best part about adding beer to your bakes is the texture. This cake in particular has a gorgeous moist crumb that makes you just reach for slice after slice. If you think I exaggerate, just bake a batch and try for yourself! 

Now I wish this was an original recipe, however, my inspiration comes from The Beeroness. I tweaked a few ingredients around. Added some and subtracted a little. After all, what's life without a little twist?!

Ingredients:

Eggs                         1

Butter                       1/2 cup

Granulated sugar     1 cup

Muscovado sugar    1/2 cup

Vanilla essence        1/2 teaspoon

Ginger powder        1 teaspoon

Beer                         3/4 cup

Oil                           1/4 cup

Flour                       1 1/2 cups

Cocoa Powder        3/4 cup

Baking soda           1/2 teaspoon

Salt                         1/2 teaspoon

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 180 C. Sift all the dry ingredients together. Beat the butter and the two sugars till pale and fluffy. Add the egg and the essence. And beat well. Gently stir in the beer and oil till combined. Do not beat or the beer will get too flat. Now fold in the dry ingredients a little at a time. Gently mixing till all is just combined. Pour into a well greased cake dish. Bake for 60 minutes. Let cool a little before cutting in!

Kheer Komola

The new year is upon us. A whole 365 days filled with opportunities. And given the blogosphere trend, this post should be about resolutions and hope. But I am perennially optimistic and I really don't do resolutions. If I did I would have long ago vacated my warm couch, and walked out battling the real world. Instead I choose happily to sink further into my warm spot, snuggle my dog and monster munchkin closer and go tap tap on my browser.

Its not that I don't like interacting with the physical world. It is jus that I am plain lazy! I remember when my friends raved about the benefits of retail therapy, all I could think was why anyone would abandon their pajamas and blanket to battle crowds and look at racks and racks of the same boring stuff!

Then online shopping came along and my brain went Aah! This makes more sense. So there I was indulging in some post festive, end of reason sales therapy when I chanced upon Santrawale. They sell, well, oranges! Not just any oranges though. Organic, sustainable, sourced from farm oranges. They had me at Organic! So tappity tap and I had two dozen juicy Nagpur oranges on their way. 

Now if you've browsed my previous orange post you will know that I was suddenly struck with the question again. What the heck do I do with all those oranges. The marmalade batch was still going strong so that option was out. Wine was option two. But that was really a long term project. 

The new year demanded a new approach. (There I've done my bit of following blog trends) I needed something different. Something unexpected. Out came the journals and cookbooks. 

Kheer Komola popped up twice. Milk and Oranges? Sounds like a recipe for disaster right? And yet there were people out there enticing me to give it a swing. It was too cold for a souffle, but a dessert was definitely on my mind. Did I dare to try? 

It wouldn't be my first attempt at Orange Kheer, to be honest. A long time ago I had ignored mum's words of wisdom and experimented for a dinner party I was hosting. The recipe had been tried and tested by Good Housekeeping so what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as it turned out! Instead of the refreshing, creamy dessert I ended up with a bowlful of dense gloop with a bitter aftertaste. To their credit, my guests actually ate their dessert and assured me it wasn't that bad. That disaster still loomed large in my food memories. And I do have this annoying need to conquer all peaks. So I geared up for round two of Kheer Komola challenge.

This time I was better prepared. I turned to friend Google and read every variation I could find. I said a short prayer. Brushed aside mum's skepticism and dad's ribbing. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Ignoring the monster munchkin's calls I concentrated completely on my kheer karma. And it paid off! I was finally rewarded with a creamy yet light dessert that brought with it the promise of a refreshing spring with its delicate citrus touch. (Yes I can poetically romance food.) This was Kheer Komola the way I had imagined it. And so you can put away your search results. Go on and benefit from my Experiments with Oranges! And be prepared for friends and folk to be wowed by your brave and unusual dessert masterstroke.

Ingredients:

Milk                              2 litres

Oranges                         7

Sugar                             10 tablespoon

Green Cardamoms         5 or 6

Saffron                           a few strands

Method:

Heat the milk in a heavy bottomed pan. Once it boils, reduce the flame to the lowest and let it simmer. Soak the saffron stands in a tablespoon of the warm milk and keep aside. In the meantime, separate the segments of the oranges. Carefully, split the segment and discard the thin outer membrane. The white membrane is what caused the bitterness in my previous attempt. Remove all seeds as well, taking care to preserve only the pulp and juices of the oranges. It is a monotonous and exacting task, but then that's what makes this kheer so special. It is actually a labour of love! Powder the cardamoms, and don't forget to stir the milk every once in a while, scraping the bottom to ensure it doesn't stick and burn. Once the milk has reduced to less than half the quantity, blushing with a creamy hue, stir in the sugar, cardamom powder and the saffron soaked in milk. Let it simmer for another five minutes and then turn off the heat. Let the milk cool to lukewarm and then gently stir in the orange pulp. Allow the milk to be infused with the citrusy goodness overnight or for atleast four hours, If you are in warmer climes, serve this chilled and topped with pistachios. If like me you are freezing and need a reminder of the spring to come, serve the kheer at room temperature. And if like my father you want everything piping hot, just zap a bowlful in the microwave for 30 seconds. Either way, you won't be disappointed. 

Bread Gulab Jamuns

Gulab Jamuns could truly be the most pan-Indian dessert. Found in every corner of the country, big and small, the flavour rarely varies despite the regional twists. Rose, kewra, cardamom, saffron... the gulab jamun still tastes just like home. 

I have yet to meet a person who doesn't like gulab jamuns. Or G-Jams,  to borrow a term from my cousin. Even those who prefer savoury over sweet can rarely resist the call of the G-Jam! Really, what's not to like? Golden, fried dumplings soaked in cardamom scented sugar syrup. Exotically delicious, yet endearingly simple!

The commercially available G-Jams are usually made of khoya. And homemakers like mum choose the less complicated route of instant G-Jam packets that use milk powder for a smoother, lighter version that is a lot less complicated than the original. And then there is a third, more unorthodox version. The Bread Gulab Jamuns!

I was first introduced to the bread version during my college years. Homesick on diwali, one of our friends surprised my roomie and me with a huge box of gulab jamuns. Made by his fauji mess cook. As we popped the first one into our mouth, he dropped the B-word! These were made with regular white bread! Despite being a foodie and a cooking enthusiast, I would never have guessed had he not told us! As for the taste? Suffice to say I disappeared with the entire box, coz, " Joey doesn't share food!"

I've been looking for the perfect recipe ever since and after many years of trial and error, I've created one that would have made the old Cook baba proud!

Ingredients:

Bread                        12 slices (I used wholewheat)

Custard Powder        3 tablespoon

Baking Soda             1 teaspoon

Milk                          2 cups

Sugar                        1 1/2 cup

Water                        1 1/2 cup

Cardamoms              3

Oil                             to deep fry

Method: Trim the edges of the bread. Soak a slice of bread in milk and squeeze to remove the excess. Repeat with all the slices. Run the crumbled, wet bread with the custard powder and baking soda in the food processor. Gently pulsing twice to obtain a smooth yet firm paste. Heat the sugar, water and crushed cardamoms in a deep pan till the syrup reaches a sticky, one string consistency. Take off the heat. Meanwhile, gently form the bread paste into smooth balls. Take care not to press too hard while rolling them or the consistency will not be spongy. Heat oil and gently drop the bread jamuns few at a time. Cook over medium heat so that the outside doesn't brown before the inside cooks. Once they are evenly golden, drain on kitchen paper and transfer to the warm syrup. Repeat with all the G-Jams. You can eat them warm or chill them in the refrigerator to serve later. Either way, they are easy to make and are always a blockbuster hit!

Chocolate Rum Cake

  

Drunk texting? Sure! We've all done that at some point of time. But drunk blogging? Well, that's definitely a first for me! Blame it on my mum's birthday. Yes, you read that right! Its my mum's b'day and her b'day cake that's gotten me here. Not that I am complaining! I could probably go for a couple of slices more, though the blurred edges of the words warn me otherwise.

Let me start by saying that my mum's favorite present are those beautiful boxes of dainty liqueur chocolates. With very little time to shop, I am embarrassed to say I came up with naught. This would have been acceptable had I a heartwarming present on standby. But alas! I failed there as well. So I thought of the next best thing. Make her some liqueur chocolates. And as my brains unfroze they decided to take it a step further. Chocolate and liqueur in a cake. An all in one dessert! 

Now it would have been great had I stuck to the thought and used one of my regular recipes. But no when you go big, why not go grand?! That's when we went from dainty to drunk! In my quest for the best ever chocolate rum cake, Google kept pointing me towards the Caribbean inspired dark chocolate and rum cakes. And the more I read, the more I knew I just had to make the most chocolatey, most boozy ever rum cake. Decadent and degenerate. 

Enter the recipe on foodinmybeard. After having devoured hundreds of rum and choc recipes, I can honestly say that this was hands down the booziest and easiest cake around. I knew I wouldn't rest till I made it. And well, ate it! Now the cake came out of the oven looking all normal and innocuous.

 

 

And then it was subjected to this. Now the bottles on top are merely to add weight to the lid, and don't actually form part of the recipe. But below the lid is a sinful, booze addled rum butter sauce that with the extra weight squishing it down, permeates every crumb of an already very rummy cake. The result? Drunk Blogging!

Ingredients:

Dark Chocolate Compound     170 grams

Butter                                       1/2 cup

Dark Rum                                1 cup

Flour                                        1 cup

Eggs                                         4

Sugar                                       1/2 cup

Brown Sugar                            1/2 cup 

Baking Powder                        1/2 teaspoon

Baking Soda                            1 teaspoon

Cocoa Powder                        1/2 cup

Salt                                          1/2 teaspoon

Rum Butter Sauce

Butter                                      1/4 cup

Sugar                                       1/4 cup

Dark Rum                                1/4 cup + 1/2 cup

Method:

Microwave the butter, chocolate and rum for 30 seconds. Whisk. If it hasn't melted completely, microwave again for 30 seconds. Whisk till smooth. Add the sugars and whisk well. Now add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition. Sift all the dry ingredients together. Add half the dry mix to the wet batter and mix well. Now add the rest and mix till combined. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Pour the batter into a greased and lined cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes or till done. Once the cake is done, take it out and poke holes all over with a toothpick or skewer. Gently pour over the entire butter sauce. Cover with a lid that touches the surface of the cake, and weigh down with additional bottles. Once the cake cools completely, flip onto a serving tray and for once, you can drink your rum and eat it too!

Rum Butter Sauce: Heat together the butter, sugar and 1/4 cup of rum. Bring to a boil and let it boil for a minute more. Take off the heat and whisk in the remaining 1/2 cup of rum. Pour warm over the cake. This is the lethal weapon that turns your cake from decadent to drunk! 

Mocha Layer Pudding

Everybody loves dessert. And if you are me, you probably skip the main course to make room for dessert. But be warned! You can't serve me ice cream and call it dessert. Ice cream is ice cream. When I was younger, parties always meant light citrus souffles and decadent mousses. There were multi layered trifles and warm, gooey flans. Ice creams were for weekdays when mom was too busy to whip up dessert. 

Of late though, desserts have vanished from the dinner parties. Too complicated and tedious, say the ladies. Trust me, it doesn't have to be. I am no superhero domestic diva, but I do manage to serve up a duo of desserts at the dinners I host. This Mocha Layer Pudding is almost always a permanent on my menu. And it only takes me five minutes. Honest! 

Give yourself a treat today and go ahead and try this blockbuster hit. I promise you will never fear once you've tried this dessert dare!

Ingredients:

Bread                          10 slices

Cocoa Powder             6 tbsp

Coffee Powder            1/2 tbsp

Sugar                           6 tbsp, powdered

Fresh Cream               500 gms

Walnuts                       1/2 cup, chopped

Rum or Brandy          2 tbsp (optional)

Method:

Run the bread in the mixer to make bread crumbs. Whip the cream lightly and add 2 tablespoons of sugar and the brandy or rum. To the bread crumbs, add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. In a serving dish, spread a layer of the bread mix. Then pour a layer of the cream. Repeat layers till the ingredients are used up, ensuring the last layer is of the cream. Garnish with chocolate bits and shavings and some walnuts, Refrigerate for an hour. And you have yourself an easy dessert to indulge!