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 180⁰ on 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.

Secondly instead of 100 gm Maida, combine 80 gm maida and 20 gm coco powder. If you like bitter taste this proportion can be 75-25.

Add sieved maida and coco powder and mix it well.

Put cashew nuts on the top of batter in moulds. Cashews get roasted in the process and add taste to the cake.

Useful appliances: Silicon Moulds and measure/Cup/T/table spoons

Neyyappam (नैय्यप्पम)

Neyyappam is a tasty sweet from South India. Neyya means Ghee and appam, we know pancakes. It is a common preparation in kerala and Tamilnadu. It is made on the occasion of ‘karhikai deepam’ celebrated on kartik pournima (full moon night in the month of kartik) Neyyapam is often given as Prasad especially in the temples of Krishna.

There are regional differences in the recipe of Neyyapam. I am giving here one quick recipe of Neyyappam from Kerala.

Banana is integral ingredient of Neyyapam. It makes neyyappam full of flavor.

Generally neyyappam are deep fried but it can be made in aappe patra and as such to make it little less heavy.

In traditional recipes, rice is soaked to make paste. But here we will be using rice flour to make it faster.

Ingredients

Rice Flour: 1 and ¼ cup

Ripe banana: two

Jaggery: one cup

Coconut: 1 tablespoon

Cardamom powder, cashew nuts and ghee

Heat ¼ cup water and add jaggery. When it starts boiling add coconut. Remove from the heat when it starts thickening and keep it aside.

Mash bananas, preferably in mixer, add cardamom powder while mashing the bananas.

If you like, add cashew nuts (broken) in rice flour and mix it well with jaggery. Before mixing please ensure that temperature of jaggery is normal. Mix it well clearing lumps in flour.

Heat the aappe patra, put ghee in the moulds and pour batter. Fry it well from both the sides.

In traditional kerala recipe, black jaggery is used. We can get it in kerala stores. But if black jaggery is not available, one can use kolhapuri gul or kanak gul powder but avoid yellow jaggery. Same with banana, its good if long yellow bananas from kerala are available. But if it is not, we can use the bananas we regularly get, but don’t use velachi keli for this.

Multi grain Dosai/बहुधान्य डोसा

Generally everybody likes dosai. We have our own versions of dosai such as धिरडे or घावन in Maharashtra. Innovation here is use of different grains and not just Rice and Urad, it adds on nutrition value.

Ingredients: 2 measures (bowl, cup whatever as per the requirement) of rice and 1 measure of Mung, Urad, Lentil (masur) and chana dal each. Wash it properly and soak overnight. Grind it in the morning, texture of batter should be like regular dosai batter. Mix it well adding salt and little bit sugar. We can add half measure of soya, Finger millet and corn flour each. If these flours are not available, rawa can be used. Mix it well and keep the batter for 4-5 hours for fermentation. (म्हणजे पंचधान्य धिरड्याऐवजी अष्टधान्य धिरडे तयार होईल.)

After 4-5 hours it will be ready to make dosai. The batter doesn’t get stick to tawa (Sometimes things get stuck to non stick pan also, but it doesn’t) so can be made without oil or if you prefer you can use butter or cheese. You can serve it with chutney.

आप्पे पात्र असल्यास ह्याचे आप्पेही करू शकता. To make appe, add green masala in the same batter. Grind chili, coriander, ginger, garlic, coconut and 1 small onion together and add it in batter. You can make tasty appe with this.

Curry: half coconut grated, 5-6 bedgi mirachya, coriander, 1 small onion, 4-5 garlic cloves. Make tadka with ghee, cumin seeds, asafoetida and pour on these ingredients. Grind all the contents. Fry chopped onion on coconut oil, add gravy paste. Add necessary water and salt. Cook it well. Curry goes very well with the dosai. One can try it instead of sambar some times for different taste.