Homemade Cake. – Less Salt More Love

The week seems so long (thanks to the self-isolation period) that I have been learning and trying a lot of new recipes. Of course, I can’t buy or hoard any exotic vegetables/ingredients during this time, so the cake is prepared with very minimal ingredients and easily baked in a Kadai. Super convenient and easier.

Preparation time: 60 minutes

Ingredients required:-

Ripe Bananas – 2

1 cup of sugar

1/4th cup oil

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

1/4th tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup all purpose flour/ wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

Chocolate chips- (used Hersheys) – Optional

Walnuts- chopped

Cashews- chopped

Dry raisins – chopped

Almond strands

Olive oil – for greasing

Begin with chopping the ripe bananas
Add them to a blender. In the blender, add 1/2 cup milk, 1 cup sugar, 1/4th cup oil, 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder, 1/4th tsp salt. Blend well.
After Blending, in a bowl, sieve and add the all purpose flour/ wheat flour to the above mixture.
Add 1 tsp Baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, chocolate chips and the nuts mentioned (according to your choice). Mix the content well.
Grease the Kadai with olive oil and pre-heat in medium flame.
Pour the batter in the Kadai.
Allow it cook under medium flame and close the Kadai in a Glass lid.
Cook for 50 minutes.
Check if the content is thoroughly cooked by placing a tooth pick in the middle of the cake or a knife, if it is sticky then let it cook for some more time.
If it is cooked, allow it cool. Cut corners and place a chop board on top and invert the kadai.
Serve the cake during tea time. It can also be had with Vanilla ice cream or some whipped cream or maybe chocolate cream.

Every year I pay a customary visit to my relative’s place to have her Christmas cakes. This year I also helped in making her delicious rich fruit cake. This is a variant of the typical plum cake in that it has a lot of other fruits as well. So, now I will take you all through the steps involved in making this cake. My collaborator in this article is Shekar Talkies. Who took all the photographs.

Preparation time :- 1hour

Ingredients required

For the Rich fruits (according to your requirement)

1. Tutti-fruity

2. Cherries

3. Candied peels

4. Ginger preserve

5. Plums

6. Raisins

7. Cashews

8. Cucumber seeds/ walnuts (Optional)

9. Cake seeds (Optional)

For Cake mixture (for 1kg cake)

1. 1/2 kilo Maida

2. 12 no of eggs / for eggless use milk(1.5l) +Oil

3. 1/2 kilo sugar (fine powdered)

4. 1/2 Butter or Margarine

5. Pinch of Salt

6. 500 ml Caustic Caramel / Burnt Sugar

7. 2 TSP of Baking soda

To begin with, mix all the fruits in a bowl and sprinkle some maida or some flour on top to ensure they don’t stick on the moulds.

Keep the above mixture aside and now start to mix the butter and sugar in a processor to ensure they are soft to a paste consistency. If you feel butter is expensive you can use the margarine. For healthier option, I always prefer butter. Sugar has to be powdered well so that there’s no granules in the paste mixture. Add a TSP of salt.

While processing keep adding the eggs and mix well

Ensure you whisk and beat the egg mixture well nefore you add to this mixture.

Meanwhile, seive the maida to a fine powder and grade them to third level.

Now keep adding this maida base on an alternate basis along with the whisked egg mixtures. Add 2 TSP of Baking soda. Let the processor continue beating the whole mixture until a soft paste (Batter) consistency.

Transfer the above mixture to a big vessel and add the first rich fruits mixtures to this.

Once after adding all the rich fruits and mixing them well, add the caustic caramel or burnt sugar (for the top layer turn brown after being baked) and mix them well.

Now, pre heat the oven prior to baking atleast 20 minutes before. The oven used for this cake was an old fashioned chamber oven where you do not set any time or temperature; you light up the oven and you let the cake to bake.

You can notice that the color being turned to this dark brown. Grease the moulds (add butter paper on the base) and add the mixture.

After 25 minutes, the aroma of the completely baked cake will spread throughout the place. You can check if the cake is baked by placing a knife in between.