Orange Cranberry Loaf

As a kid, I never really had the opportunity to eat oranges because my father hated them. My initial hate affair with oranges began when I was subjected to bioterrorism by my cousin. She used to take the orange segments and squeeze it in front of my eyes, such that it unleashed a spray that wreaked havoc in my eyes. But like so many things that we used to hate as children and ended up loving them once we grew up, I eventually came to love oranges.

As far as baking with oranges goes, the flavor really lies in the peel/zest rather than the juice. That's because of certain oils and alcohols with intense aroma and certain glucosides that contribute to its bitterness. The idea behind this loaf/cake is to get a very intense orange flavor and complement it with something that goes well with it.

Cranberries and oranges are a popular combination. They're often used in breads, muffins, scones...even cookies! But I chose them because they are commonly used during thanksgiving and I was planning to take this to a friend's place during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 stick (8 tbsp/4 oz) butter, at room temperature

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

juice and peel from two oranges

2/3 cup sugar*

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup water

1/2 cup dried cranberries (Craisins)

* the amount of sugar really depends on how sweet the juice from the orange is. Please adjust accordingly.

1) Keep the juice from the oranges separately. With a knife, remove the pith from the peel as much as you can. Using a peeler to peel the oranges works great for us.

2) Simmer the peels into a saucepan with 1 c water and the sugar. Make sure that the peels are fully submerged in water. Simmer until the liquid reduces and the peels become really soft, about 10 mins or so. Remove from the stove.

3) Strain the liquid 'syrup' and let it cool. Once the peels have cooled down, chop them into tiny bits. Add the orange juice to the syrup once it has cooled down. The total liquid should come to 1-1 1/4 cups. Which is why I recommend adding the orange juice into the mixture after the syrup is done. You could always drink the excess juice. The syrup....not so good for you ;)

4) Preheat the oven to 350 F.

5) Sift the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) into a bowl. Add the cranberries and toss them just a little.

6) In a larger bowl, cream the butter with an electric beater for 3-4 mins. Add 1 egg at a time and beat for a good 2-3 mins. The mixture may look and be curdled. That is fine!

7) Add the dry and wet components alternately, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. after each addition, fold gently with a spatula until you stop seeing 'dry' lumps of flour.

8) Pour the batter immediately into a 9X5 greased loaf pan

9) Bake in the middle rack for ~35 mins. or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Do not open the oven door until you see the top start to crack. In case your oven doesn't have a light, you can forget about it for at least 25 mins.

We personally loved this cake. It certainly had the intense orange flavor that N was looking for

and small bites of orange peel that I was looking for. The cranberries proved to be a good addition too. They were well distributed throughout the loaf so apparently the 'coating with the flour' trick worked in this case. You could further 'enrich' the cake with some orange-sugar icing or even serve it with some whipped cream or orange scented whipped cream.

Thanksgiving...its supposed to be about sharing; another thing I used to hate as a kind but have grown fond of now ;)

P.S. - Something's wrong with Blogger and its taken us hours to post this recipe and format it! Any clue what?

Sour Cherry Cake

Spring is in the air, so says Meeta and so, we listened. A is ever-ready to bake. Always. Every night. And when I mentioned that Meeta had an event and we had to bake a cake. A sprang (no pun intended :D) upon the idea and raided the Farmer's Market for berries. While we went looking for berries, we came back with some cherries. We initially thought of baking Mahanandi's Chocolate Cherry cake- a winner of a recipe which has been tried and eaten umpteen number of times by me. A, very obviously, wanted to try out something else and also use our hardly used bundt/tube cake pan (I'm not even sure if that is what it is!)

The cake was moist, speckled with cherries, made for a great dessert after an Enchilada meal :D Here is the recipe. Its as easy as a cake can be!

Ingredients

1 c AP flour (set aside 2 tbsp separately to coat the cherries)
1/2 c chopped cherries
1/2 c + 2 tbsp sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c sour cream
1/4 c milk
5 tbsp butter
1/4 tsp b.soda
1/2 tsp b.powder

1. Preheat oven to 350 F

2. Melt the butter and allow it to cool. In a separate bowl, toss the cherries with 2 tbsp of flour.

3. In the meantime, beat the eggs, one at a time with an electric beater. After adding the third egg, add the sugar gradually and beat well at medium speed until creamy.

4. Add the melted butter slowly. Beat for another two minutes.

5. Whisk the sour cream and milk in a bowl. Sift the leavening agents and the flour alternately with sour cream/milk. If you still see lumps, take a whisk and beat the batter until they disappear.

6. Fold in the cherries gently. Do not beat.

7. Pour the batter into the fluted pan and bake for about 25 mins. or until a skewer comes out clean. Take it out of the oven immediately. Invert it on to a flat plate and let it cool completely.

8. Run a knife along the edges and try to pry it if it doesn't want to come out. This is exactly what happened with ours as the cherries sank to the bottom. But well, it still tasted good ;)

However, we had a couple of problems. One, the cake was REALLY soft and was tough to take out without breaking it! And two, though we dusted the cherries with flour per popular baking advice, they still sank to the bottom. There were a few in the middle of the cake too, but nothing on the top! We do realize that the more liquidy the batter is, the more the cherries sink. And thicker the batter, lesser they sink. But, still, we'd like to know if we should know something else about sinking berries or cherries!

Oh, like we mentioned, this goes to Meeta of What's for Lunch, Honey? for Monthly Mingle # 32. This month, we are celebrating the season's offerings! And this cake is a great cake for any and all sorts of berries. Do let us know if you try it! And hey, try it!

Simple and Citrusy!

Happy New Year to all of you! For everyone who left messages for us, thanks so much for remembering us! We've been away for a long long time now, and its been a difficult time. Job search during recession sucks is what I've learned in the past 4 months and decided to plunge into academics all over again after a good 5 years! And it did not help that I was on diet after diet to try to do something about my 2008 resolutions :P Of course, I have almost the same resolutions for 2009 also. Hopefully, this will be a lighter year on everything, literally ;)

A loves to have a dessert after every meal if possible. And especially after dinner. Thanks to our baking obsession, we bake something almost every single day. Lately, we stopped doing so thanks to a change in the weighing scales for me. It did not seem to affect him, strangely! However, we still have our days when we go crazy and bake at 10 PM in the night. This is one such lemony cake that we came up with two hours ago. It is now 12.56 AM! Thankfully, we baked an XS cake - super small in size but huge in flavour and the zing :) I love citrusy flavours and can never tire of them. A is not too fond of them, but then :P who is the life of our family? Me! So, we baked this cake for me and here you go, here is the recipe for a simple lemon cake!

Ingredients:

1 egg
1/4 cup +2 tbsp All-purpose flour or Cake flour
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp lemon essence
Pinch of salt

1. Beat the egg. Cream melted butter and sugar. Add this mixture to the beaten egg.

2. Add the baking powder and the baking soda

3. Add sour cream and beat one more time

4. Fold in lemon zest and the lemon essence

5. Fold in the flour little by little. Sift the flour if it is AP flour. Cake flour can be added as it is. Do NOT overbeat/mix.

We poured it into a 4 inch (1 inch deep) ramekin making the cake small, just enough for the two of us- a late night lemon-sweet craving :) This cake is fairly light too because it needs just 1tbsp butter and we used fat-free sour cream! So, there! Keeping up with the resolutions and all that ;)

It is quite citrusy and comes out beautifully moist and a fresh yellow in colour. We had ours with some warm blackberry sauce. We had some blackberry-raspberry preserve that we added some hot water to, and thinned it to bring it to a sauce-like consistency. While the cake was mildly sweet, the sweetness of the blackberry sauce added a new dimension to the cake. I loved the mild sweetness and preferred the lemony zing in the cake. You could add more sugar if you wish!

This piece of cake specifically goes out to Nags :) for encouraging to come back to blog all over again. Thanks man!

South of the border...

N and I love to try out different cuisines when we hit the road. When we were returning from a trip to Anna Ruby Falls, we went to this place called Uncle Julio's Casa Grande. The thing about Mexican restaurants is that the food tastes great (I am absolutely nuts about guacamole and salsa!) but unfortunately, there isnt much variety for vegetarians. Some of the restaurants just offer beans, rice, lettuce and tons of cheese....stuffed within bread in different shapes and sizes (Tacos, Chalupas, Burritos, Quesedillas). But when I ordered one of their platters, this exotic looking thing wrapped in corn leaves came along, and I was certainly intrigued by its appearance. As I unfolded the leaves, I was pleasantly surprised to see something totally different! It had no rice, no beans and no cheese! I immediately enquired the waitress about the preparation. She told me that they were called Tamales. They looked and tasted like upma, a common South Indian preparation, except the base was corn instead of rava. It tasted fantastic and was a pleasant deviation from the usual Mexican dishes. I learnt more about it by reading online and wanted to make it on my own, of course ;)

Tamales need Masa Harina or a form of corn-flour which is prepared in a very special way. This is used to make the Masa dough which forms the base for Tamales. But thanks to my tongue that likes to experiment, I found a quick-fire way to make Tamales. They came out a bit harder, but they tasted pretty well....mucho delicioso ;) Check 'em out....

Ingredients (10-12 Tamales)

Cobs from 1 1/2 corn kernels (make sure to save the leaves)
1.5 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp cornstarch ( the more you put, the harder it gets. So, be careful!)
1/2 cup finely chopped onions
1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms
1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1 tsp red chilli powder
2 tsp oil
Salt to taste

Vamos a empezar! (Lets begin!)

1. Blend the corn cob, cornmeal, salt and the cornstarch until a coarse paste is formed. Set aside. This is our quick Masa dough. The corn starch will help the dough harden as it is steamed.

2. In a pan, add the oil and saute the onions followed by the vegetables. Add salt and chilli powder to taste. I also added some cumin powder and some Taco seasoning to give it a spicy kick :) The spice and the veggie bit is totally optional, and depends on your choice/palate.

3. Take a corn leaf and divide it into several long strings.

4. Take 2 corn leaves and make a "+" sign out of them. Apply some dough in the middle and put some of the sauteed veggies on top. Close the leaves and then tie them with the strings. When all the Tamales are done, steam them for 15 mins or until they are hardened enough to look like upma.

5. Untie, open the leaves and enjoy the steaming hot Tamales with sour cream or guacamole or any dip.

Terminar (finished) :)

I personally loved the taste of steamed corn. Tasted rich and yet there was very little oil so they were pretty healthy.

Err...I have a confession. I have to have something sweet after every meal :D The origin of this idiosyncracy is unknown, but I must have something sweet after lunch and dinner. So while a tired N decided to take a siesta after the Tamale-lunch, I was itching to tingle my sweet buds. And I decided to surprise N by making a quick sponge cake. I guess quick is the common theme between the Tamales and the cake ;) Sponge cake recipes can be found all over the internet. I adapted one such recipe.

It came out moist, fluffy and tasted pretty good. I also gave it a citrusy touch by adding lime zest, some orange juice and some lemon extract. N loves citrus ;)

All in all, we had a day filled with adventure, fun and food and we capped it off with a sweet touch ;)

Mucho Gracias!

Banana Muffins!

As I was posting my Thai Green Curry recipe, I could smell the rotting bananas on the dining table. Bananas have a strong smell and taste and I wanted to get rid of them somehow. I love bananas. They always bring back one memory for me. Of my paternal grandfather who is no more. From the time I was a baby, he fed me bananas :) We had this huge house in the center of the city. My grandfather would worship the Gods and his mother's photo(!) every morning and serve juice and bananas to all the kids around the area. Some of these kids were street urchins. In fact, my sisters and I were asked to serve juice and hand out bananas to these kids. After this ritual, he'd go on to dress up and leave home for work. When he came back for lunch, irrespective of whether I'd eaten or not, he'd feed me bananas. He'd make sure I ate them. He'd stuff them in my mouth and I loved them! These bananas were generally the over-ripe ones, with the black spots on the bananas :) I still love them that way. I treasure this particular memory of mine with him. I feel proud to date that I ate these almost rotten bananas while the same ritual with my ever-particular sis turned out to be a failure ;) I was proud that I was closer to my Granddad this way. Frankly, I no longer remember him that well. Except for very ripe bananas, chillies in his food (which makes me tolerant to very spicy food), the flowers he used to bring, so all of us could tie it up for God the next day, his generosity with those street kids, him making me write all the words I knew with all the letters in the alphabet. Aaah, memories... So, this banana muffin post really goes to my Granddad. Thank you, Thatha :)

Note: This recipe was adapted from a Food Network recipe. I did not adapt too much though ;) I'm not a great baker and wanted to be careful. I hate measuring stuff, so I usually bake with what I have in hand. It comes out quite well, though not perfect. This time, they were perfect. Patience pays, I've learned :) I added more vanilla essence, omitted the nuts because I did not have any and added more bananas and used a little less oil than recommended.

Of course, it helped that I bought new muffin trays and was dying to try them ;) Also, the batter was a lot for 12 muffins, so I also filled up the new RED (see! I told you about my obsession with colour) ramekin I bought with this batter and popped it into the oven! So what if ramekins are not used for banana cakes/muffins ;) We are all trying to be different no? Also, for the batter that I used in the ramekin, I topped it with a crumbly mixture of this:

3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 tbsp butter

Mix these well, make sure its crumbly. Make sure that the butter is soft.

(all this done in a hurry since I suddenly saw this bit from Ina Garten's show on Food Network on TV then :P She did this for a blueberry crumb cake. The impatient me, sigh! I did this in the last minute. Almost put the ramekin in, sighed, washed my hands, came out to the drawing room, saw the show, went back into the kitchen, took out the ramekin, and did this topping. Phew!)

All the impatience created these muffins and I was done with the whole thing including cleaning (and eating while clicking as you can see!) in an hour :) I do not see anything wrong with these results. Neither did A, for whom it was a surprise evening snack. Whaddya think?

P.S. - We bought new bakeware for DIRT CHEAP. So, this blog is going to see a flurry of baked food :D Yay!

The Easiest Eggless Cake Ever!

For us, cake stands for: Cant Avoid, Keep Eating!

They are the cynosure of a birthday party (more than the kid at times!), the crowning jewel of many weddings and an irresistible indulgence if you like to sink your teeth into this fluffy fulfillment! Have it in its most decadent form as a moist piece of spongy sin or go wild with icing, whipped cream, chocolates, fruits and nuts! In any form, shape, embellishment or not, a good cake is truly hard to resist!

Besides, there is the conundrum of adding eggs. I think fellow vegetarians can identify with us on this one :) So we saw this awesome recipe online, tweaked it a bit and gave it a try. So here it is, the EASIEST eggless, butterless chocolate cake you'll ever bake! We baked one for N's birthday and she was pretty impressed! Here's a peek.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups All purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 whole orange's zest

P.S - Do not miss on the orange zest. . In N's words: The zest brings such a zest to the cake. This said with a priceless, 'I'm going to binge on this' expression ;) My wife is very talented with words, I must say!

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Mix the dry ingredients well.

3. Add the oil and milk and mix. There is no need to over-mix. So no food processor, no mixer....how much easier can it get ;)

4. In a greased baking tray, pour the mixture evenly and let it bake for 25-30 mins. Check on it regularly using the 'poke the knife' trick. For those who dunno this secret, elaborate trick ;), here you go: take a butter knife and gently pierce through the cake and take it out slowly. If the knife comes out clean, you can turn the oven off.

5. Take it out and allow it to cool for a few minutes. In the meantime, you can either decide on the adornment (whipped cream, fruits, icing, chocolate glaze) or choose your weapon to guard it from predators :) like N who can never resist a cake. She was plain trouble wanting to eat the cake then and there. Sigh, the things I had to do to keep the cake intact until the clock struck 12. It was like entertaining a kid! And we had ours with whipped cream. Want another look?