My Husband's Recipes: Cakes

About My Husband

Prologue by my husband Sandeep 'mashoor'

"Basically I love food, not just to eat but love to do everything about food

To think, to read, to view, to listen, to smell, to cook, to serve, to imagine, to explore, to ‘dream’, to understand its historical aspects and different foods of different ethnic groups, to know science of cooking, to search hotels, restaurants offering good food; in short all about food

I was very thin long back. Although I belonged to well to do family in Thane, Mumbai (खाते पिते घर का) but I had not developed my ‘taste’. Later on my passion to learn Urdu took me to Qasim Shaikh who became my close friend. Qasim introduced me not only to Urdu literature but to many Muslim delicacies such as Biryani, Dabba Gosht, Reshami Kabab, Afalatoon and so on. He taught me to enjoy food in perfect combination of food items of complimentry taste. His company made me realize immensejoy even in small things such as eating curd and sugar at Brijwasi, Thane. He truely developed a ‘kahavaiyya’ in me.

Gradullay I travelled from just exploring in kitchen to have complete possession of kitchen. Women get this knowledge passed on by their mother and could easily know many referal tasks in the process. I did not learn from my mother but ofcourse observed her cooking. Observation, trial and error were the methods through which I became a cook. I relied on ‘Annapurna’ by Mangala Barve and eventually cookery shows, columns, blogs on internet, clips on Youtube, short cookery courses done after settling in Pune all contributed in this creative journey.

I enjoy cooking by all senses. My joy doubles if people like my preparation. This joy made me understand that I can ‘express’ through this. One of the forces behind this blog is ‘Preeti’ (wife is formal relationship but a closest friend of mine). Sometimes I used to publish snaps of my recipes on my facebook profile and used to get good response. But once Preeti published it under the title ‘My Husband’s Recipes’ and she got action packed response. Therefore she insisted on starting a blog by same name.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Cakes

Joy in having homemade oven fresh cake is exclusive. Without getting entangled in icing business, let’s know the basic cake.

Ingredients for Basic Cake

Eggs 2
Vanilla Essence: 1 Tea spoon
Baking Powder: 1 tea spoon
Sugar: 1oo gm
Butter//Makhkhan (लोणी): 100 gm
Milk: half bowl
Maida/wheat flour: 100 gm

Microwave oven with convection facility, Electric beater, silicon moulds are the pre requisites for best results.

Beat the eggs in a bowl little bit. Add vanilla essence and beat. Add baking powder and beat again. After adding sugar, beat it till the batter has ribbon fall texture. If you are using makhkhan add a pinch of salt while mixing it. No need of salt if you use branded butter. Butter gets blended well if defrosted before mixing. After beating little bit add milk and beat again. Keep the beater aside now. This is the time to keep oven for pre-heating. Set the oven on 180⁰on convection mode.

Add sieved maida or whole wheat flour in the batter and mix it well with spoon. Through Silicon spatula it can be done very well.

Pour the batter in the moulds. If moulds are of aluminium, grease it well before putting batter. By this time, Oven gets preheated. Put the moulds in the oven and keep for baking for 26 to 28 minutes.

Mawa cake

Ingredients and procedure is almost same. Instead of 100 gm Maida, get 75 gm maida and 25 gm khoya (खवा). Add khoya beofre putting milk and mix it well. Defrosted khoya gets blended very well.

Chocolate Cake

Instead of vanilla essence used in basic cake, add chocolate essence.