Yellow Cake with Caramel & Browned Butter Frosting

This cake was this year's "Happy Birthday" cake for my husband who didn't care what cake he got as long as it had browned butter in it (essentially ghee) and caramel. I balked as my internal calorie counter burst into flames, but finally succumbed and made this.

The cake just serves as a vehicle to deliver the delicious frosting. In terms of taste, the caramel flavor dominates, followed by the warm taste of ghee.

Strawberry & Peanut Butter Crumb Cake

Continuing my recent experiments with crumb cakes, this one is yet another addition. One of my friends described the taste of this cake as similar to taking a bite off a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, which is pretty much sums up the cake!

The crunchy topping has peanut butter while the spongy cake has strawberries and strawberry jam.

Coconut-Lime Chocolate Cake

A fun cake with tropical flavors of coconut and lime, and for extra measure, there is chocolate to round out the lovely taste! The punch of lime ties the flavors of coconut and chocolate very nicely.

Take a mini tropical vacation at home with this treat!

Strawberry-Shortcake Cake (Chocolate Almond Cake)

This was a birthday cake for a dear friend's daughter who is a fan of the Strawberry Shortcake cartoon character, but loves chocolate more than anything related to actual fruits :)

Baking a chocolate cake was pretty straightforward. I used a good quality baking chocolate instead of regular cocoa powder, and made a simple whipped cream frosting with a little almond extract, instead of regular vanilla. Pardon the sub-par frosting application! The hot weather was not helping my lackluster skills.

Orange & Blackberry Loaf

Everyone in the family is a fan of oranges. We will always resort to orange/citrus based treats any time of the day/year. Having tried some successful orange based loafs/pound cakes, I adapted the recipe slightly to incorporate olive oil and yogurt (instead of butter), and added a liberal cup of blackberries. 

Citrus and berries go well together, so it's little surprise the baked blackberries melded so well with the orange flavor!

Candied Ginger-Honey Cake with Lemon Frosting

The flavors of ginger, honey, and lemon are soothing to the throat, the palate, and sometimes even the soul! It's always good to luxuriate in the extra warmth generated by these flavors. This cake was a special request from the husband who loves candied ginger, and all things lemony and sweet. 

The cake has a strong ginger flavor (along with crunchy bites of ginger candy), and the frosting delivers a lemony zing. 

I was quite stingy with the frosting - focused more on the lemon flavors than the butter and sugar (at least I tried, much to my husband's disapproval for cutting out the butter!). So adjust the frosting to your liking - make it a full blown buttercream, or keep it simple with just a drizzle of lemon juice (sweetened with honey).

Espresso Cake

For a while now, I have been trying to experiment with a coffee-flavored cake. Most coffee/espresso flavored cakes usually have the bulk of the flavor coming from the coffee-flavored tiramisu-eque frosting. But what if some coffee is added to the cake itself? Does the flavor transfer over? Intensify?

The answer is - when coffee is added to the cake batter its flavor is bright and great on the palate. However, upon baking, the coffee flavor turns very mild and smoky, and thus hard to discern. So, you do need some form of frosting to impart the coffee flavor. (I tried drizzling some coffee to the freshly baked cake and let it soak in the flavors, but it ruined the texture and consistency of the cake). I'm not sure if adding more coffee to the cake is the solution, or if there is some secret ingredient that will help the coffee retain its composition and flavor while baking. Please let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions!

The cake by itself has a warm and smoky flavor (especially if brown sugar, molasses or honey is added). So, it's definitely worth a try for something different!

Chocolate Chip and Mocha Ice Cream Cake

What do you give someone that delights in the most simplest things in life? A combination of some of their most favorite things: cookies and cream, chocolate and coffee, ice cream and cake, and all the melodious sweet notes of tiramisu. If I could have included caramel and peanuts, it would have been ambrosia on a plate for him.

Instead of searching low and high and complicating things, the best gifts are the most simplest, easiest of them all - provided they come from the heart. 

So, here is a very easy "cake" that is a breeze to make.

I baked Nestle Toll house chocolate chip cookies (the best kind of cookies that I have baked and that's been approved by my husband) and layered them over mocha-mascarpone cream for a lush and lip-smacking cake. Just follow the recipe that comes on the package of Nestle chocolate chips to get a perfectly baked cookie that's chewy in the middle, crisp on the outside, and that melds the flavors of sweet and salt with the perfect amount of gooey chocolate chips. 

Eggless Black Forest Cake with Whole Wheat and Finger Millet Flour

That's a long title for a post!

My mom has a sweet tooth and is also a chocoholic. So, I knew I was going to make a classic chocolate cake for her birthday to keep it simple and enjoyable. However, as much as she loves sweets and chocolates, she is also very particular (and sometimes obsessive) about eating healthy and staying away from refined flour and sugar. Since millets have always been her favorite, I knew I had to make this incredible cake when I saw this recipe. Prior to this, I'd never heard of finger-millet flour used in baking, so it was quite intriguing to me! I adapted the recipe a little and made a black forest cake with cherries and cream. I was slightly wary about my adjustments to the ingredients, and also a tiny bit skeptical about whether the cake would hold itself and taste ok. 

I needn't have worried. I was beyond amazed and happy with the results (and so was my family) that such a healthy cake could be baked! Let me list the ways in which this is really a "healthy" cake: 1) it has no butter (just 1/4 cup of olive oil), 2) it has no refined sugar (just some palm sugar), 3) it has no refined flour (just a combination of multi-grain whole wheat and finger millet flours), 4) it has yogurt and milk, and 5) bonus points: it has chocolate!!

Such a cake sounds mythical doesn't it? But it exists! In terms of texture, the cake holds well, and it looks and tastes moist and spongy. However (you knew there was one such a pause...), experienced and sophisticated palates can tell that the cake was not made with regular flour. You can taste just a hint of earthy, grainy texture in the cake. But, in the grand scheme of things, this is not really such a flaw!

So, without much rambling, here's how it's done. 

Strawberry & Cherry Yogurt Cake

We were babysitting one of our friend's daughter who, like most young girls, is obsessed with pinks! Anything she wears or owns has to have pink on it :). She is like the pink-riding-hood of our group. Starting with her adorable boots to her hair accessories, everything is pink! She also wishes to have Rapunzel-like pink hair.

Since she also loves cakes and desserts, I thought of baking a strawberry cake. I have realized that baking home-made strawberry cake with just fresh strawberries and no artificial color or flavoring doesn't turn out as pink as you would like. Natural strawberries do not impart that beautiful pink color to baked goods. But I still tried! I just went along and made up this recipe. I wanted to grind strawberries with yogurt for a moist, pink cake. And the cake was indeed really moist, even if it was not as pink as I wanted. Next time, I should try cooking down the strawberries with a little sugar to make a compote. According to experts, the cooked strawberries impart a brighter color and flavor. So, an experiment for the future.

Anyway, here's what I did this time.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

We celebrated one of our friend's birthdays last weekend, and I was in charge of baking a cake. Since our friend likes pineapples and is a fan of pineapple upside down cake, I was requested to bake one. Pineapple upside-down cake is such a classic, and a favorite classic at that. Here's how I make it.

This recipe works well for me. I used Betty Crocker's classic recipe as a starting point. I then increased the volume of the batter to make a 9x13 inch cake, decided to use oil to keep the cake moist, and added buttermilk to make the yellow cake more fluffy and soft.

Ingredients (serves 12):

1. 1/2 stick unsalted butter
2. 1 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar for a deeper flavor)
3. 12 round pineapple slices
4. 12 marachino cherries, stems drained
5. 2.5 cups all-purpose flour
6. 1.5 cups sugar (I added 2 cups, but felt the cake was a tad too sweet, so I recommend cutting down the sugar, but people who have a sweet tooth thought the cake was good with 2 cups of sugar)
7. 1 cup vegetable oil
8. 1/2 teaspoon salt
9. 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
10. 2 teaspoons baking power
11. 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
12. 3 eggs, at room temperature
13. 1.5 cups buttermilk, room temperature

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter a 9 by 13 inches cake pan (a metal pan). If using a glass pan, reduce the temperature to 325 F.
2. Mix dry ingredients together - flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. 
3. Add eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat/whisk until pale-yellow colored. Add oil and vanilla extract and beat to incorporate. 
4. Starting and ending with the dry ingredients, alternately add the dry ingredients and buttermilk in 3-4 batches (very important step for a light fluffy cake) and mix with a spatula or a mixer on low-speed until just mixed. (Just to make this very clear, add 1/4 of the flour mixture, mix. Add 1/3 rd of the buttermilk, mix. Repeat the process until buttermilk is over. Then add the remaining flour mixture and  mix).
5. Meanwhile, melt the butter in the cake pan (takes about 7-10 minutes). Remove from the oven and evenly sprinkle brown sugar on top of the melted butter (else heat butter and brown sugar on the stove top until sugar melts, and pour this onto the baking pan). Arrange the pineapple slices on top of the sugar, and place marachino cherries in the center. Finally, pour the batter on top and even it out with a spatula
6. Bake for 50 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. 

Rest/cool on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. Gently loosen the sides and carefully flip onto a serving tray.

Serve with some whipped cream!

Eggless Molten Chocolate Cake

The most fun lab (yet) in an online course I'm taking has to be this one - baking molten chocolate cake! I tried an eggless version and it turned out pretty well! The cake was not as chocolately as some other cakes I've baked, but this was still a nice treat. The specialty of this cake is its warm gooey molten chocolatey center! The perfect chocolate dessert in this horrible arctic winter. So, the most important variable in baking this cake is the temperature and time. Keeping temperature at a constant 350 F, it takes just a few minutes before the cake turns from molten-in-the-center to fully baked. Even if you miss the molten center, not to worry. You still end up with a perfectly baked chocolate cake!

The experiment to figure out when the center gets molten and the sides are baked; extreme left: cake is uncooked; extreme right and front: cake is completely cooked.

Ingredients:

1. 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2. 3/4 cup white sugar
3. 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4. 1 teaspoon baking soda
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 1/2 cup vegetable oil
7. 1 teaspoon vinegar
8. 1 teaspoon baking powder
9. 1 teaspoon instant coffee powder. The coffee intensifies the chocolate flavor
10. 1 cup water

Preparation:
Mix dry ingredients together. Gently mix in all wet ingredients except vinegar. Add vinegar, stir a few times, then pour into eight 2" inch wide oiled ramekins (up to 2/3rd full) or a 9 inch buttered baking pan. Or you can use a cupcake pan. Bake at 350 F for 12 minutes if baking in ramekins, and about 10-11 minutes if using a cupcake pan. I am guessing it will take about 14-15  minutes or slightly longer when baked in a  cake pan. The center will be molten when you dig into the cake, but the top will look baked, especially the sides of the cake.

Enjoy!

Eggless Lime & Ginger Cake

On a certain day at the grocery store, I couldn't find any individual limes. So, I got a big bag of limes to make some salads and juices. But after numerous salads and juices, the limes were still aplenty. My husband was constantly fretting over the limes going bad and kept subtly suggesting that I make something sweet with them - perhaps a cake or a cupcake? Hint received.

When the holidays rolled around and I had some time on my hands, I tweaked my lemon cake recipe to prepare this version of a lime & ginger cake.

The limes I had were unusually sweet and not as tart as usual. They were quite mild, actually. So check the tartness and sweetness of your limes to adapt the measurements as required.

Ingredients:

1. 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
2. 1 cup sugar
3. the zest of 3 limes
4. 1.5 tablespoons lime juice
5. 1 tablespoon of grated ginger
6. 1 teaspoon baking soda
7. 1/2 teaspoon salt
8. 1 cup milk (2% is fine)
9. 1/3 cup vegetable oil

Glaze: 

1. 1/4 cup lime juice
2. 1 tablespoon sugar
3. the zest of 1 lime
4. 1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger 

Preparation:

1. Prepare dry ingredients: Sift and mix - flour, baking soda and salt. Mix sugar into it.
2. Prepare wet ingredients: Whisk lime zest and grated ginger with milk. Add oil and mix/whisk.
3. Slowly add/fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. 
4. Finally stir in the lime juice. 
5. Pour batter into a buttered 9 inch cake pan. Bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes until a tester comes out clean.
6. For the glaze:
1. Mix lime juice and sugar and heat for 5-7 minutes until sugar is dissolved and the syrup is warm. Stir in powdered ginger to the syrup.

Let the cake cake cool for 15 minutes. Since I didn't want the glaze to upstage the ginger by turning the cake too lime-y, I didn't let the cake steep in the glaze.

Serve by drizzling some of the glaze on top of the cake and sprinkling some lime zest on top. Lime and ginger make a lovely pairing. Enjoy!

Cocoa Cola Cake

Cocoa cola cake? As in Cola flavored cake? Coke Cake?

Maybe you're intrigued with the name of the cake and are mentally asking those questions, or maybe you are not. I sure was! I came across this cake in some book at some point. It caught my interest and I had made a note to look in to this cake at some point. That "some point" came in the guise of a friend's birthday gathering last month. I offered to bake the cake, and while pondering on what to explore this time, I remembered this cake.

This cake is popular in the south (southern United States). Much to my surprise and mild disappointment, the cake doesn't taste like coke (despite the claims made by some recipes) nor is it cola flavored. That said, this is one delish cake. It is extremely moist and soft - the moistest cake I have ever baked, and extremely fluffy, light and tender, thanks to the carbonated cola that does all the leavening action. Although the cake doesn't taste like cola, it tastes good and sort of unique. Despite the addition of cocoa, it is not chocolatey. It has a subtle caramel and cocoa flavor.

Everyone at the party loved this cake so much that they demanded that I re-bake the same cake for our New Years' party. I didn't expect it to be that popular! I wanted to tweak the recipe to infuse some cola flavor, but nobody wanted me to mess with the recipe - they all wanted the exact same cake! So no experimentation for a while... wonder what occasion I can concoct to bake a revised version of this cake - I have some ideas to make it taste coke-like, but let me not confidently divulge it before experimenting! If you have any suggestions, please share!

As is my obsession, I browsed through tonnes of recipes for coco(a) cola cakes and I realized that they are all pretty much the same... same set of ingredients and quantities except for a couple of deviations in the procedure. So, I eventually settled on this recipe because it promises that the cake would taste Coke-like. But it does not :( 

Thoughts on the recipe:

Note that the recipe calls for a lot of sugar. So I cut down the sugar to 1.5 cups (from 2 cups) to prepare the cake. I also used regular Coke, not diet Coke.

Also, while everyone loved the cake, I was not a fan of the frosting - it was again way too sweet for my liking. However, most people loved the frosting as well, so it's a matter of personal preference.

Personally, I would halve the frosting recipe or cut down the sugar to probably half the amount. It might throw off the consistency of the frosting, so this is one other place where some experimentation is required. I also cut down on the cocoa added to the frosting (I added just 1 tablespoon), because I desperately wanted the Coke flavor to come through. Didn't help, though.

And a final note on the recipe - the only difference between this recipe and most other recipes is how the Coke is treated. This recipe calls for heating/boiling the Coke with butter and cocoa, for both the cake batter and frosting. Not sure why it has to be heated... maybe it helps make the cake more moist, but I suspect it also interferes with imparting the cola flavor... how I wish I could spend a day just experimenting on all the different variables!

Anyway, all that analysis later, here's how the cake looks!

Tada!

Fresh from the oven with the marshmallows poking out

with the sweet and warm frosting

Eggless Apricot & Pear Crumb Cake

My husband and his family have a dog back home in India. Today is his birthday, and a milestone one at that! So here's celebrating the loyal pet that fears nothing except thunder and lightning.

Bhairav, giving his "don't mess with me" look :)

Although Bhairav and I have a predator-prey kind of relationship (me being the meek prey that runs for her life, of course), I have been regaled with several stories of him stealthily stealing mangoes and food from the kitchen, so he is a foodie himself. And what more, as a true member of the family, he also loves all things sweet! On our birthdays and special occasions, my mother-in-law prepares yummy sweets like burfi and halwa, and sensing the lovely aroma wafting from the kitchen, he will poke his head through the window and demand that he get a share :). So on our birthdays, it is Bhairav that gets to eat the delicacies in India. This time, as a reversal of how things are done, I baked a cake on Bhairav's birthday, so that we get to celebrate and vicariously eat on behalf of him ;)

 "Hey! What's cooking?"

Bhairav loves sweet fruits like mangoes and jackfruits (his favorite), so I wanted to bake a fruit-based cake. I decided to use pears because the husband was certain that Bhairav would relish pears. In addition to pears, I also added some apricot preserves because I was sure Bhairav wouldn't complain if I added an extra bit of fruit and sweetness. To do something slightly different, I baked a crumb cake with a soft and sweet base and a crunchy exterior. And it was a successful experiment!

Ingredients:

For the Cake

1. 1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
2. 1 cup all-purpose flour
3. 1/2 cup sugar
4. 1 teaspoon baking powder
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 1 tablespoon ground flax seed + 3 tablespoons water, whisked together (as an egg substitute)
7. 1/2 cup yogurt
8. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
9. 1 1/4 cups chopped pears (I used Bartlett pears)
10. 3 tablespoons + a few dollops of apricot preserves / jelly/jam

Crunchy topping

1. 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2. 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
3. 1/2 stick cold butter, cut into pieces
4. 1 cup coarsely ground almonds
5. 1 teaspoon cardamom powder 

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan
2. Warm the flax seed mixture in a microwave for 30 seconds. Take it out, whisk well (it will start to become thick and gloopy) and let it rest for 10 minutes
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and keep aside
4. Beat butter for a minute. Then add sugar and continue beating for about 3 minutes until soft and creamy
5. Add the flax seed mixture (it would have become viscous and eggy by now) and beat until incorporated.
6. Add yogurt, vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.
7. Add apricot preserves and stir gently into the batter.
8. Add the dry ingredients and gently fold into the wet ingredients.
9. Finally, add the pears and give the batter a gentle mix. The batter will be thick. Transfer the batter into the baking pan.
10. Prepare the topping
1. Using your hands, mix brown sugar, cardamom and flour. 
2. Add butter and using your hand or a fork crumble and mix the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is the size of peas. Remember the butter should be cold, so you have to work it in to the flour
3. Add the coarsely ground almond and give a final mix.
11. Spread/pile the topping on top of the batter
12. Finally, spoon a few dollops of apricot preserves onto the crunchy topping
13. Bake for 45-50 minutes until a tester comes out clean. I actually baked for 52 minutes, if that counts.

Before baking

Let the cake cool. When cool, cut into pieces and serve! Do not try to invert this cake from the pan.

Fresh out of the oven

The cake itself doesn't rise because the crunchy topping would then fall apart. It is a soft and moist cake studded with pears in every bite - if you notice, I added more pears than even flour. So the cake is predominantly structured by pears. The topping is my favorite - it is crispy and flavorful and not too sweet. 

Animals have a unique sixth sense. I hope Bhairav senses this gesture of mine and will be appeased by it sufficiently to not want to maul me the next time I meet him! I hope we have a deal ;). 

Happy Birthday Bhairav. May you have many more happy and healthy birthdays!

Gingerbread Cake with Orange Mascarpone Cream

Holidays without gingerbread? Never! 

For one of the holiday parties this year, I baked this robust, hardy and gently spiced gingerbread from Piece of Cake. I should probably get something for promoting this book so much ;). I love the range of flavors presented in the book. It's a treat to browse through the recipes and go through the pleasant dilemma of deciding which cake to bake.

For once, I didn't change anything much to the recipe. I used the exact same ingredients and measurements... well, almost. I used room temperature butter, not melted butter. The recipe uses vegetable oil in addition to butter, which I thought was interesting. It also includes boiling water. The other ingredients are pretty much the same as most standard gingerbread cakes - brown sugar, molasses, flour, eggs, baking soda. However, I didn't follow the prescribed one-bowl procedure :).

Here's the general procedure I followed. If it helps, you can use it to tailor your gingerbread recipe. I am specifying the spice measurements alone because that's the best aspect of the cake.

1. Sift the dry ingredients - all-purpose flour, 2.5 teaspoons ginger, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom, baking soda and salt. 
2. Beat butter, add brown sugar and beat until pale and creamy. Adds eggs, beat until incorporated. Add molasses and beat until mixed. Whisk/beat in vegetable oil.
3. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and gently mix. 
4. Finally whisk in boiling water until just mixed. 
5. Bake at 350 F for 55 minutes. 

This cake is very mildly sweet and spicy. And that's what everyone liked about it. It was not heavy or cloying. And the frosting was really really good, and easy. 

Here's how I slightly adapted the frosting: Whip together 3/4 cup whipping cream, 8 ounces mascarpone, the zest of two oranges, 1 tablespoon orange juice and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar until soft peaks form. 

Spread on top of cake and serve.

Sticky Toffee Cake

This was the cake I baked for our anniversary this year. Again, my husband picked out the cake, and knowing him, I wasn't surprised that he picked one that involves toffee flavor (aka caramel).

I adapted the recipe for this cake from Piece of Cake. There are so many different kinds of flavors of cakes to explore from the book, and I use it as a guide to venture into new flavors. 

Ingredients:

1. 15-20 pitted dates, chopped and soaked in 1 cup hot milk for about 1 hour
2. 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3. 6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
4. 1 teaspoon baking soda
5. 1 teaspoon baking powder
6. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
7. 2 eggs, at room temperature
8. 3/4 cup brown sugar

Frosting:

1/2 - 1 can Dule de Leche!( 1 can = 13.4 ounces).

Preparation:

1. Cream the brown sugar and butter until soft and fluffy. 
2. Add eggs and beat until well combined
3. Mix the dry ingredients - the all purpose flour, baking soda and baking powder. 
4. You can either blend together the dates soaked in milk, or just add them as is to give a bit of texture. I didn't blend them this time, but I would blend them the next time I make this cake.
5. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
6. Then add 1/2 of the dates + milk mixture and mix.
7. Add another 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix until just combined
8. Add the remaining dates + milk mixture
9. Finally add the remaining dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
10. Transfer the batter to a greased & floured 8 or 9 inch pan and bake in a preheated oven at 350 for 35-40 minutes or until a cake-tester inserted comes out with a few crumbs. 
11. Remove the cake and let it cool on a wire rack. When cool, invert the cake onto a plate and frost with warm dulce de leche

This was a yummy cake! Sticky and sweet and caramel-y! If you are a fan of caramel or dates, you would like this cake. 

Dulce de Leche Cheesecake

My husband loves cheesecake. For his birthday this year, I asked him to pick a cake that he would like me to bake, and sure enough he picked a cheesecake, and not just any cheesecake, a rich dulce de leche caramel cheesecake!

Indulgences are meant for birthdays, so I scoured a lot of different sources to settle on a recipe to make this cheesecake. It is a slight adaption of a recipe that I thought sounded decadent and awesome, and sure enough it didn't disappoint. 

And I was thrilled that the cheesecake did not crack or over-bake in parts! It was perfect. Here are the tips to ensure that your cheesecake doesn't crack. 

1. Wrap the spring form pan in which the cheesecake bakes with a generous round of aluminum foil. 
2. Do not over beat the eggs. Gently beat the eggs just until combined. 
3. Bake the cheesecake in a water bath. Place the aluminum wrapped spring form pan inside a baking tray filled with about 1 inch of hot water. This allows the cheesecake to bake gently.

I made a standard graham cracker crust using the below ingredients

For the Crust:

1. 2 cups worth graham cracker crumbs (plain honey graham crackers)
2. 3 tablespoons sugar
3. 7 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

Preparing the crust:

1. Mix the graham cracker crumbs with sugar. Slowly pour in butter and mix well (I used a spoon and my hand to mix everything). Mix until the crumbs are moist and start to clump when you press.
2. Transfer to a 9 inch spring-form pan and pat the crumbs down the bottom of the pan and a little above the sides of the pan. 
3. Bake for about 10-12 minutes in a preheated oven at 375 F. 
4. When baked, let it cool completely on a cooling rack. 

Filling was adapted from this recipe
For the filling:

1. 3, 8 ounce packages of soft, room temperature cream cheese (total of 24 ounces)
2. 3/4 cup sugar
3. 1/4 cup 2% milk
4. 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6. 3 eggs (at room temperature)
7. 1 can Nestle's Dulce de Leche (13.4 ounces) + 4 tablespoons extra dulce de leche

Preparing the cheesecake:

1. Beat the cream cheese and sugar until fluffy and smooth. 
2. Add milk, vanilla extract and flour and beat until combined
3. Gently warm the dule de leche in the microwave (about 15 to 30 seconds) until it is soft and pourable. Add one can of dule de leche into the batter and beat until combined.
4. Add the eggs one at a time until just combined. Do not over beat. 
5. Pour filling into the cooled crust
6. Finally dollop 2 tablespoons of dule de leche into the filling and swirl it around with a knife. 
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 F for 60 minutes until the center is jiggly when you shake it. Refer to my tip above on baking this in a water bath. Add hot water to a deep enough baking tray, transfer the aluminum wrapped pan into it and bake.
8. Let cheesecake cool on a wire rack for 1 hour. When cool, pipe out some more dule de leche onto the cheesecake in a pattern of your liking. 
9. Run a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen the cake. Then refrigerate it for at least 8 hours before serving. 

Eggless Beet Cake / Eggless Red Velvet Cake

There are those times when you hanker for something baked and sweet despite your hardened resolution against baking. I am someone who happens to love the process of baking. I love baking for itself. Most times I bake just to create something divine and beautiful and flavorful. I am satiated just by the process, and have no need to eat the creation. I am happy seeing others eat. Others don't like this habit of mine.

Enough of the rambling. I am now a fan of "quick baking" that results in small quantities of desserts. It (sort of) indulges my craving to bake, and it creates a small portion of dessert, perfect for two. Mug cakes are my recent favorite. Along those lines, I came across a healthy, easy recipe for a red-velvet cake. It literally takes 15 minutes to make this little cutie. How could I resist?

Slightly modified and adapted from this recipe

Ingredients (4 servings):

1. 1 small beet, peeled and chopped
2. 1/3 cup + 1/4 cup low-fat milk 
3. 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
4. 6 teaspoons sugar
5. 1/8 teaspoon salt
6. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
7. 1 tablespoon butter - melted
8. 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
9. 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
10. 1 teaspoon baking powder
11. 1.5 teaspoons olive oil/vegetable oil

Preparation:

1. Heat the olive oil/vegetable oil in a small pan. When hot, add the chopped beet and saute on low-medium heat until the beet is slightly tender. It takes about 7-10 minutes. When done, remove from heat and let it cool. When cool, grind the beet with a drizzle of milk (no more than 1/4 cup milk). Reserve the ground beet puree to be added to the batter. 
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the beet puree, milk, flaxseed, sugar and salt. Add in the melted butter and whisk it in. 
3. Add the vanilla extract and mix well.
4. Add the cocoa powder and gently stir it in. 
5. Finally, add the baking powder and all-purpose flour and gently fold everything into the batter.
6. Grease a 4 inch microwavable bowl (glass works well) and transfer the batter into it. 
7. Microwave for 3 minutes (or a little longer) until a tester comes out almost clean with just a few crumbs attached.

Let the cake cool. When cool, loosen the edges of the bowl and invert the cake onto a plate. Enjoy with a cup of coffee or with fresh fruit.

A word of warning: This cake is not as sweet as the regular cakes. It is not super yummy either. What else can one expect from a "light" version? It is a compromise, okay? You get to eat cake that is almost as sweet and almost as good as the sinful ones. But you get to eat cake! And bake!

Eggless Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Whipped Cream Frosting

I baked two layers of eggless chocolate cake with raspberry whipped cream frosting for a special occasion recently. I decided not to cover the cake with a rich and heavy frosting or icing, because my family is not a fan of heavy frosting. So I chose to decorate the cake with some light, fluffy whipped cream flavored with raspberry jam. 

I baked two layers of 9" by 13" cakes, and sandwiched the two layers by smearing 1/2 cup of raspberry jam. Overall, the cake was not heavy or cloyingly sweet or buttery. It was also moist and tender inside, much to my relief. The only thing I wasn't satisfied with was the crust, but given that I didn't cover the entire cake with icing, and I had to tweak the recipe to keep it eggless, I guess it was inevitable. 

After all my research on eggless baking, this is what I found out:

• If you are baking without eggs, oil is a better substitute for fat than butter. It keeps the cake moist and fluffy for a long time. And it's true. We had left over cake for almost a week, and even the refrigerated cake was moist. The inside of the cake never dried out.
• If you are using oil instead of butter, the cake's crust will be slightly coarse and dry (especially the four edges). Butter helps to form a light, airy crust. Hence, the compromise if you choose oil. An easy solution is to slice off the crust and edges before decorating the cake.
• Butter constitutes 80% fat and 20% milk solids and water. So if you are not using butter to bake, then introduce some water and milk solids to make up for the lack of milk solids & liquid that butter brings to the cake

Therefore, I used oil to keep the cake moist. And the cake was moist (if you ignored the crusty edges)

Since I used oil, I introduced some milk and water to make up for the loss of milk solids and water due to not using butter.

Why use hot water and not just room temperature water? I don't know. Cake experts in cake forums recommend hot water, even boiling water. Even Hershey's recommends it.

Here's how I made it.

Recipe adapted from here

Ingredients for one 9" by 13" cake:

1. 4.5 cups all-purpose flour
2. 3 cups sugar
3. 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4. 2 cups hot water
5. 1 cup milk (at room temperature)
6. 1 cup vegetable oil
7. 3 teaspoons baking soda
8. 1/2 teaspoon salt
9. 2.5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
10. 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules (intensifies the flavor of chocolate)
11. 2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Butter and flour a 9 by 13 cake pan. Please use a metal pan if possible. I think the cake's crust gets drier when baked in a glass pan. Maybe I am imagining it, but one layer of cake baked in a glass pan turned out dry on the top, but was still moist inside. The other layer of cake baked in a metal pan had a much lighter crust and was moist inside too.
2. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt and mix well. Add sugar and mix.
3. Melt the chocolate in 30 second intervals in the microwave until smooth and lump-free. Add the coffee granules to the melted chocolate and mix well. 
4. Prepare the wet ingredients: Whisk together the milk, melted chocolate & coffee, and vanilla extract. Finally add the oil and whisk well.
5. Now slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and gently fold until just combined
6. Finally add the hot water and give a final mix until everything is combined. Do not over mix or vigorously mix. It's okay if there are a few small lumps of flour. Over mixing will result in a tough, dense cake.
7. Pour the batter in the cake pan and bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour in a 350 F preheated oven until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.
8. Place the cake pan on a cooling rack for 20 minutes. Then gently loosen the cake around the edges and carefully invert onto a plate.

Raspberry Whipped Cream Frosting:

1. 1 cup cold whipping cream
2. 1/2 cup raspberry jam or raspberry sauce 
3. 1 teaspoon raspberry extract

Whip the cream till it forms soft-peaks. Add the raspberry jam and raspberry extract, and continue to whip until the cream forms stiff peaks. That's it! Either transfer to a piping bag to pipe out the frosting, or  just slather it on the cake. 

A word of caution: Do not use this frosting if the weather is hot and you expect the cake to be out or at a warm room-temperature for a while. The frosting will melt. Like parts of mine did.

Enjoy!