MOIST EGGLESS VANILLA CUPCAKES

I don't usually care for the amount of eggs in a recipe I am about to try because I love eggs,especially hardboiled eggs.When I say hardboiled,it should be perfectly hardboiled.No rubber like yolks for me,please!Okay,now lets get back to the topic. Well,Kannur is not a place where you can get wonderful ingredients for baking.I know it,so Amma and myself stock up really well. But on how on earth will we know that there will be shortage of eggs,especially in a place where there are atleast 3 bakeries on a street!

Well,it happened.Kannur town was out of eggs,for almost a week and that was too long for me to wait,without baking a cake of some sort. Our house is swamped with guests these days,to see our Ian vaava. So we need something,and when I say something,it has to be homemade because Amma & I cannot think of serving  anything storebought to our guests.

The hunt for something eggless started.I found way too many recipes online but only a few grabbed my attention. When I chose this recipe,it reminded me that I had tried out the same a few years ago and found the cake to be very oily.I thought of giving it a second chance and it worked just fine.

I had some buttercream with me,from the movie star's cake,so tinted it pink and used it to decorate the perfect cupcake tops.I usually don't go for such lavish decor on my baked goods for our daily consumption but since it's for the lovely folks who are visiting us,I didn't think twice.

MOIST EGGLESS VANILLA CUPCAKES
Recipe by Nita Mehta as seen on Recipe on Click


Ingredients:
300g all purpose flour
250 ml thick plain yogurt
150-180 g granulated sugar
125 ml oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Method: Preheat oven to 180 C/ 350F. Line your 12- cup cupcake tin.

In a large bowl,beat the yogurt until smooth.Add granulated sugar and beat till dissolved completely.Add baking powder,baking soda and mix to combine.Leave aside for 5 minutes or until frothy.Add oil,vanilla and beat to mix.Spoon in flour little by little and fold it into the batter.Beat with beaters for 30 secs to make the batter smooth and lump free.Pour into tins and bake for 25-30 mins or till done.Cool in the tin for 5 mins,remove and cool completely before frosting.

For the Vanilla Buttercream recipe,click here.

Ritchie loved the frosting and mentioned that he likes cupcakes with eggs better.I found these to be really moist and perfect for eggless days!

A CAKE FOR A MOVIE STAR!

The past few weeks have been excitingly busy with baking classes,cake orders,friends and family calling by & me coming up with another original recipe for a cake.So in between these, I recieved an order for a cake for the newly married movie star,Samvritha Sunil. They wanted a layered chocolate cake with Vanilla buttercream,for the chocoholic star! She celebrated her birthday a day before her wedding day,October 31st to be precise.
So that's the cake,you just saw above :-)

HEARTS & ROSES CAKE... as we turn 2!

Time sure flies! We both observe a moment of silence when we think of how fast the time flew by! It's just because we both still cannot believe it's been 2 full years! I am sure every single one of you, who are happily married,feels the same.It's been a year since I found out a way of doing that checkerboard cake without adding another set of baking tins into my already bursting drawer.It's been a year since we went for a ride on a dog sleigh! Life's is beautiful!

Whenever I bake a cake for any personal occasions, I look forward to having a twist in it.If it was a checkerboard cake last time, it's something else this time. I am just loving how my brain can think and my heart wanting to do it even if I lose my sleep over such petty issues :-) Really! I go to sleep thinking of colours,combinations or even what platter I should place the cake on! Aren't these supposed to be the little things that we shouldn't be worrying upon? Actually, I always feel, life is all about tackling the small issues that come by us and not waiting for that big one,which we think is the most important.

Anyway, why waste this good day on such thoughts! Let's move on! So, I got this idea from my fellow Minneostan food blogger, Amanda.  Somehow, being the lazy self that I am, I didn't want to bake another cake for the centre part instead wanted to get away with a filling. I was just hoping that my idea wouldn't break my heart when we cut into the cake on this BIG day! I asked Amanda what she thought about it and got a green signal with a 'chill it well' advice.

Now, this is how it looks like :-) What do you guys think about it? We felt it was really cool! I enjoyed piping the roses over the cake and filling with a girly pink frosting. I wondered if Jobin would pass a comment on the colour but he didn't!

BLACK MAGIC CAKE with PINK BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
Recipe source for the cake: Hersheys
Recipe source for the frosting & filling: Alice

Ingredients :
Cake
1 3/4 c flour
2 c sugar
3/4 c cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 c oil
1 c buttermilk
1 c strong black coffee
1 tsp vanilla

Method: Pre-heat the oven to 350C and line two 9 inch baking tins.
In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients to it and beat well for 2 minutes. Pour into your baking tins (halfway) and bake for 35-40 mins or till done. I used three 6 inch baking tins but used just 2 cakes for the final assembly.


Frosting:
1 c /2 sticks unsalted butter,softened
3 c powdered sugar,sifted
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla
upto 4 tbsp milk

Method:In a large mixing bowl on high, beat butter for a minute until it's soft and fluffy.Add the sugar and beat on low till well combined. Add salt, vanilla and 2 tbsp milk and beat on medium for 3 minutes.Add colour if needed and beat for a minute. I needed a stiff frosting for the centre filling and a soft frosting for the roses, so after I filled the cake, I added another tablespoon of milk to the frosting and beat  it for a minute.


Assembly: Cut the cakes as shown below and fill it with buttercream.

Sandwich the two edges using melted chocolate.The cake with the pyramid goes on top. Give it a crumb coating with the buttercream and then pipe roses with 1M tip from Wilton. 

Our celebration cakes are always meant to be a surprise for Jobin. Therefore he was banned from using or even touching the refrigerator starting from last evening. Indeed that had it's effects when he saw the cake this morning !

This cake is super moist and the buttercream perfectly sweet.It compliments each other very well!

WE TURNED ONE...It's time to celebrate! :)

It was our 1st wedding anniversary on the 15th, yes, time sure flies! If you have been thinking that's the reason for my absence here, no,it was because our laptop battery and charger decided to die almost on the same day so we had to get it replaced.Now getting back to blogging is quite tough...I was slowly comfortably getting used to not typing a hundred words in one minute :)

I still remember the confusion and stress I went through on the same day last year when I iced our wedding cake! Ah, I think I should tell you all that story! I think I drove everyone around me crazy...I think sometimes I'm the 'Monica' (FRIENDS) types in my family. I can be really rude at times and give orders without even thinking what the other person might think or feel. When I look back at it, it was fun, for me :) It was Amma's dream that I bake/decorate my own wedding cake which later got into me and became my dream as well :) Amma and I baked the cake the previous day and kept the icing part for the big day. It's not that we didn't know it would drive us nuts but it was just a prevention from driving us nuttier! You see, I have a HUGE family of no less than 100 people (counting immediate family only ;)We had our engagement and wedding back to back (14th Feb and 15th Feb) so we had a houseFULL of people ALL the time. It included infants to 80 year olds. We didn't worry about anybody elder than 12 years, but it was the younger ones that we were scared of. Imagine your nephews and nieces licking off bits and pieces of the buttercream roses that you painstakingly piped out one by one ? :) Whatever it was, no matter how many told us...we (Amma & I) knew that I am going to do it, all by myself. People around me thought we were crazy, but we know the fun we had! I wouldn't have missed it for anything!! Given a chance, I would still do it :)

If you were thinking what cake it was...it was Amma's Honey Soaked Date & Nut Cake.I decorated it with buttercream and piped roses in different shades of pink (I told ya I love pink!! ;) It did suffer some injuries while transportation but it was still in one piece :-D

Coming to the present scenario, I was throughly confused as to what to bake for the BIG day! Whenever I logged into FB, I had 100's of questions to answer to about the same thing and I had absolutely no idea as to what it would be :-D It's because I can do things only in the last minute.I'd start planning maybe a month back but I know myself very well...in the end when the time approches I would do something very different from what I though I would do before! This time it was no different. I knew one thing for sure...I'd be baking a cake, a layered cake. That's it. I had no further idea as to what to do with that piece of cake or what flavour it would be.This thought haunted me since January. I think of it day and night. I breathe it day and night . I dream about it so much that I wake up feeling tensed! Anyhow,on the day I was supposed to be baking, I wrote down a recipe and started with it. But I couldn't go on...I wanted to do something of my own and I did. That's what you just saw above :-)
Do you feel like reading more about my wedding prep? Click here!

Haven't I told you all that I love trying out different techniques? I actually search for them...I find that challenging.This is probably the only challenge that I go forward with without any hesitation, baking/cooking. Somehow I've always been able to produce a decent thing out of it.The anxiety that I go through when I cut through it is something I cannot explain using words...you should feel it for yourself :) It's FUN and I love it, totally!

CHECKERBOARD GATEAU
Recipe source for the sponge- Amma



Ingredients:
For the vanilla sponge:
3eggs
1/2c sugar
1/2 c flour minus 1 tbsp
1tbsp cornstarch/cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract

For the chocolate sponge:
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 c flour minus 3 tbsp
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1tbsp cornstarch/cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract

1 portion soaking syrup
11/2 heavy cream,whipped (If you wish,you can whip it up with some sugar to taste, too)

Method:
For the sponge (Vanilla & Chocolate)
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C
Butter and flour/line a 8' round cake tin with parchment paper.

Sift the dry ingredients together.Reserve.
Beat the eggs and sugar together till mousse like and almost tripled in volume. This will take about 10-12 mins of beating on high using an electric beater. DO NOT skimp on this as we are not using any leavening agents (baking powder/baking soda). Otherwise the cake WILL NOT rise.
Fold  the dry ingredients into the egg mixtures, carefully. The mixture will deflate a little,don't worry.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 28-30 mins or till the top is springy to touch and the skewer inserted comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 10 mins and then invert it onto a rack and cool completely. 

To make the checkerboard pattern:


First of all, you need 2 round cakes, one dark and one light.
Instead of cutting it horizontally, this time you need to cut it vertically.

Imagine a cake having 2 more concentric circles in it .Cut accordingly. I used a round cookie cutter for the innermost circle and my saucepan lid for the middle circle as the template. So now, you have 3 rings out of one cake. Similarly do the same with the second cake.

Now, interchange the middle ring. While you do so, be careful and try to spread some whipped cream/jam/ganache so that the rings sticks together.Now you will be left with two black and white cakes.
Place one cake (with the interchanged rings) on the serving plate and soak it using half the soaking syrup.
Spread some whipped cream over it and place the second cake over it.
Spoon over the remaining soaking syrup over it.
Cover the top and sides with whipped cream and decorate as you desire.

This whole process is made so much easier if you happen to own a 'checkerboard pan' which I don't. I don't think I would want to because this method is really simple and with another tin, I will have to throw away some stuff to find a place for it in my cupboard!

Verdict: A very soft and spongy cake with perfect sweetness. We really loved it. I served it chilled which I feel is always better when it comes to gateaux.
We were away for the weekend so basically we gorged on all possible food,both junk and healthy.That way when I look at this cake I'm happy, it's butterless and  you wouldn't even miss it!