Indianized Baklava

Baklava is one of our favorite desserts. Despite the calorific threat, the wafting aromas of rosewater and ghee, and the satisfying crunch of the crisp phyllo dough tempt us every time to eat sparingly albeit with a lot of relish. Making baklava at home has been on my to-do list (and on my husband's to-do list for me) for a long time, and this was the year when it was done!

I used palm sugar instead of regular sugar, sprinkled spices like cardamom and allspice, and used store bought phyllo sheets which simplified the process tremendously. The palm sugar reduces your guilt, and gives a rich deep flavor and color (especially to the syrup). This is not a dessert that you can mess up!

Eggless Mango Saffron Muffins with Pistachios

These cupcakes are a slight twist to a tried, tested, and much appreciated recipe for eggless mango cake.

Saffron and cardamom are added to most Indian desserts. Although they are added together, they complement each other beautifully without overshadowing or competing for their individual flavors. However, I feel the underlying dish loses its inherent flavor in the midst of these two strong spices. Since the flavor of mango deserves to stand-out, I suggest adding a hint of either cardamom or saffron to amplify the flavor quotient of the overall dish while still preserving the inherent taste of the fruit and spice. Since I have tried the cake version of this recipe with cardamom, I added saffron and pistachios this time.

Almond Mascarpone Pound Cake

When it comes to Italian desserts, there are only two or three that come to mind - tiramisu, gelatos, and biscotti. Of these, I have never tried (nor do I have the right equipment or knowledge) to make a gelato or biscotti. So, I challenged myself to use ingredients commonly used in Italian cuisine to make the kind of dessert I am comfortable with.
So, this is a simple pound cake that is flavored with amaretto and softened with mascarpone. Due to the butter and mascarpone, the resulting cake is buttery soft, but it is not too rich or cloying. Perfect with a cup of espresso!

Fruits & Nuts Bundt Cake

My first bundt cake! All these years, I put off buying a bundt cake-pan because I didn't need one more baking equipment to tempt and taunt me. However, I was recently absolved of all guilt because my husband picked it up because he felt like having a bundt cake.

I found an interesting recipe in Piece of Cake, called an Ambrosia Cake. It had pineapple, canned mandarin oranges, almond extract, cherries, pecans, and sweetened coconut flakes. What a medley of flavors! And what better way to christen the bundt pan!

I adapted the recipe to suit the ingredients I had on hand, and I played around with the measurements and technique accordingly. This is a dense and hardy cake that is sure to be a popular holiday dessert, and it serves a huge gathering!

Orange Cake with Chocolate Glaze

Orange and chocolate seem to be this year's favorite flavor in our household.

Every so often, I get a detailed request from my husband to cook or bake something specific. A couple of months ago, after trying out an orange-chocolate cake at a restaurant out of town, I received a detailed text about how my next express task was to make the afore mentioned dessert. I appreciate such requests - it makes me feel useful, and it gives me a great excuse to bake ;)

However, I was honestly tired of making yet another citrus based treat with chocolate on top. Especially since I had just made a batch of chocolate brownies with orange zest. How many more orange-chocolate treats could the husband hanker for? Why couldn't he ask me for something more exotic?

Anyway, after rifling through my recipes, I realized I had never actually made a bold, stand-alone orange cake. So, I decided to use utilize this excuse to make a cake packed with as much orange flavor as possible. And of course, to appease the husband, I added chocolate on top.

Chocolate Caramel Torte with Peanuts

Our wonderful friends and former neighbors gave us this fabulous book

I think the book pretty much sums up the foundation of my marriage :). One insatiable sweet-toothed chocoholic, and one insatiable baker with a soft corner for chocolate. It is a match made in cocoa heaven, at least until we keep diabetes at bay!

The husband flipped through the book and predictably pointed at a recipe that involved chocolate (of course), caramel, and nuts. He also wanted me to somehow add orange to it, so that all his favorite flavors get mushed up, but I laughed him off. 

The original recipe called for walnuts. Since peanuts are my husband's favorite, that too peanuts gelled in caramel (South India's kadalai mittai/peanut brittle), I added peanuts instead.

This was the first time I tried baking a torte - a type of cake that has little to no flour that is baked at a lower temperature (300 F). In this case, there is no flour; just healthy amounts of bitter-sweet chocolate, butter, sugar, and eggs (whipped whites and creamed yolks). It is topped with a simple caramel sauce made from brown sugar, corn syrup and more butter! Finally, the peanuts add a lovely bite. This is surely a rich cake. A small serving goes a long way.

The best part of the cake is the play of textures and layers of flavors - soft, gooey and crunchy, with bursts of peanuts and caramel mixing with the rich and fudgy bitter-sweet chocolate.

Thank you so much N and C for the lovely book!

Peanut Butter Cake with Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Crumble

Peanuts and peanut butter are always in my pantry, thanks to my husband's love for all thing peanuts. So, when he asked me why I hadn't baked anything with peanuts/peanut butter yet, I had to rectify my oversight one weekend.

And this cake was born. Peanut butter features both inside the batter and in the crumbly topping. And for an extra notch of decadence, there's chocolate chips as well. My husband wants to marry this cake and live with it forever.

Nutella & Vanilla Marble Cake

This was an experimental cake from a few weeks ago. It came out decently and served as a simple dessert and tea time cake.

I realized that I hadn't utilized Nutella in any cake recently, so I decided to add it to a regular vanilla sponge cake (with butter and sugar levels adjusted). (If you're reading this, sorry J, for the blasphemy of using Nutella ;))