Oatmeal Raisin Bread

One of the rituals that marks weekend-life these days is a Potluck. It has somehow become unacceptable if a Friday evening or Saturday evening is spent at home with a relaxing movie, or book, or just conversations. Weekends simply cannot end without socializing - that’s the unsaid rule :). So, almost every Friday evening, I find myself peering inside the pantry and the fridge, wondering what to make. This time, I leafed through William Sonoma’s Baking Book to find some inspiration, and came across a simple recipe for an Oatmeal Raisin Bread. But I had to tailor the recipe to fit the ingredients sitting in my pantry. So, here is my adapted version of the recipe.

Ingredients

1. 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
2. 1 cup oats
3. ¾ cup raisins (I used golden raisins, for that’s what I had)
4. ¾ cup brown sugar (you can substitute this with regular white sugar as well, but since brown sugar has molasses, it gives a rich jaggery-like flavor)
5. 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
6. 1 teaspoon baking soda
7. ½ teaspoon salt
8. 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
9. 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
10. ½ teaspoon of ground clove
11. 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
12. ½ teaspoon ground allspice
13. 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
14. 2 Tablespoons of flax seed
15. ⅓ cup vegetable oil
16. ¾ cup unsweetened applesauce (if you don’t have applesauce, it’s easy enough to make it with apples)
17. ¾ cup buttermilk (or ½ cup of yogurt)

Preparation

Making applesauce:

1 medium sized apple yields about ½ cup of sauce. So for ¾ cup of applesauce, you’d need 2 apples. It’s not necessary to be overly precise about this. The more applesauce, the more moist the cake would be. Since I had no eggs, I had to add yogurt, applesauce, and flax seeds to make the bread relatively light and moist.

Peel, core, and dice the apples. Transfer them to a saucepan with ½ cup of water, and cook well on medium-high heat till the apples can be mashed. It takes about 40 minutes for the apples to cook well. I’m not a big fan of using the microwave to cook for prolonged periods of time, so I avoid it.  A pressure-cooker will be ideal for this. The mashed apples = applesauce. 

 
Preparing the bread:

1. In a deep bowl, mix together the flour, oats, raisins, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, and cardamom. If you’re not a fan of these spices, you can skip them. But I love these spices. They infuse so much flavor to the oats and the bread. Besides, I find every chance to finish these spices that seem to be residing in the pantry forever.
2. In a separate bowl, mix two tablespoons of ground flax seed with 6 tablespoons of warm water, and whisk well. Microwave this for 30 seconds and whisk it vigorously till it becomes sticky and frothy. Let it cool.
3. Make a “well” in the centre of the dry ingredients. Into this centre, pour the oil, yogurt, applesauce, vanilla essence, and the whisked flax seed concoction.
4. Slowly combine the wet and dry ingredients, and mix just until evenly combined. Do not over-mix, or vigorously stir. Doing so will make your bread dense.
5. Grease a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan, and spoon out the batter into it. The batter will be thick, so not to worry.
6. Bake for 30-40 minutes (or till a cake-tester comes clean) at 350 F.
7. Wait for the bread to cool, run a knife around the edges of the pan and gently tilt out the bread.

Since this bread has oatmeal, raisin, and flax seed, it is an ideal breakfast item. I would even call this reasonably “healthy” since it uses very little oil. Two slices of this bread fill you up well. As a dessert, it goes well with ice-cream. What doesn’t go well with ice-cream? ;)

"Happy Birthday" Cakes

To my little cousin, every cake is a “Happy Birthday” cake, that too her “Happy Birthday” cake :). She gets very confused if the cake is devoid of candles, and even more perplexed if she is restrained from making a wish or from singing Happy Birthday when the cake is cut. I’m always reminded of her when I see a birthday cake or even contemplate on baking a birthday cake!

Well, starting from the last week of July to all the way till the end of August is a busy month for us - there are occasions, festivities, and plenty of birthdays of near and dear ones. Every year, this is the time when I get into full-fledged baking mode, and then wear myself out so badly that I retreat into baking-hibernation and emerge only during Christmas. As I prepare for Anand’s birthday, making notes on what I did, what went well, what was a disaster, and what I should aim for this year, I reminisce on the memorable birthday cakes of the past years.

Death by Chocolate
When I first came to know of Anand’s love affair with chocolates, and heard him say in his most serious tone - “I love chocolates so much that I would consider myself lucky if I could die eating chocolates.”, I immediately set out to make a rich chocolate-orange cake for his birthday... how dutiful, right? ;)

My good friend, who is an expert baker, helped me all the way through with plenty of research and guidance on finding the perfect cake recipe. And since it was a surprise “party”, we had plenty of fun baking together and coming up with elaborate schemes to keep it all within wraps! I still have the chocolate cake recipe, but we put it together from numerous online sources (incorporating all the yummy bits from each source), so I’m not sure if I can write it down here! Well, can I argue that due to our “unique” mix and match, we ended up with our own “version”? ;) Anyway, those interested please email me and I’ll send the chocolate cake recipe!

We baked two layers of intensely rich chocolate cake, and sandwiched the layers between a thick coat of orange marmalade. We then “improvised” on this orange cream-cheese frosting by adding orange liqueur and orange marmalade and came up with a frosting so delicious, it was hard to keep our fingers away from the bowl! The frosting was melting a bit in the August heat, but we still managed to liberally coat (or bathe) the cake with the frosting.

In addition to loving chocolates, Anand loves The Simpsons. If he is tempted between a bowl of chocolates and watching The Simpsons, he wouldn’t be able to pick one - it will involve intense soul searching on his part to come to a decision. So, I wanted a Simpsons’ themed cake. I made the naive mistake of asking Anand what his favorite Simpson’s character was. Now, I am a person with a head-full of random, useless questions. More often than not, it is Anand who gets bombarded with all my questions. As a self-defense mechanism, he usually tunes me out the minute my voice hits an inflection that forebodes a question. His practised answers are - I don’t know, I don’t care, Yes, No, Maybe.... all in random order. So to my aforementioned question, he first said, “I don’t know.” After my persistent bugging, he uttered the first name that came to his mind - Lisa Simpson. Back then, I was blithely unaware of this random answer, and so, I took his word very seriously and decided to ice Lisa Simpson on the cake. Icing/drawing on a frosting that threatens to melt any time is not easy, that too attempting to draw someone like Lisa, without ever practising on pen and paper, is plain silly. But that’s what I did - and ended up with a scary looking cross between Daisy Duck and Lisa Simpson! But the rich taste of the cake more than made up for the poor icing!

 

Lemon Cake
Anand and his family have a soft corner for intensely tart, citrus flavors. They are ardent fans of Starbucks’ Lemon Cake. So, last year, I was obsessed with trying to make the perfect Starbucks’ cake at home - to no avail, of course. But I haven’t given up - the quest continues! Anyway, I adapted from this recipe to make two layers of poppy-seed lemon cake, greased with an easy lemon icing (1/2 cup butter whipped with 3 cups of confectioners’ sugar, 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract). I changed the lemon cake recipe to add yogurt and flax seed instead of eggs. Although the cake tasted alright, it still didn’t have enough zing and flair to promote the citrus. It wasn’t “lemony” enough!

 

Almond-Chocolate Cake
And finally, here is one other birthday cake that I both enjoyed baking (and eating!). This cake turned out to be one of the most lightest, airiest, fluffiest cake I have ever made/eaten. It was also the first time I whipped egg whites - it always excites me to whip egg whites into frothy, fluffy, lathery goodness! And the combination of almond with chocolate was just beyond delectable! I followed every step of this recipe to make a single layer of almond cake. I then iced the cake with the Whipped Bittersweet frosting mentioned in the post. It was a very simple, very tasty, no-mess-easy-to-apply icing. And since I used low-fat cream, I felt a bit better ;). I was really glad I could serve a properly executed cake to this master-baker friend of mine :).

 

Now, keep your fingers crossed for a successful season of baking and Happy Birthday cake!

Fancy Fruit Salad

Women’s Web is an upcoming online women’s magazine that has a wide range of impressive articles primarily catered towards Indian women. It is organizing a unique cooking contest to which I was invited to participate! Wow, that has never happened to me before - somebody inviting me to contribute :). My long-lost-but-recently-united friend Anne, whose writing is as beautiful as she is, is one of the lovely writers and publishing agents for Women’s Web. Thanks Anne, for the invitation! Anne and I bonded over interesting conversations, most of which involved empathizing and sharing our life’s “woes” with each other, while waiting for the college bus to arrive :). Both of us are kindred spirits! While writing has so far remained just a hobby to me, she has found the heart and will to let go of her software engineering profession and plunge into freelance writing. I applaud her and wish her the very best in her writing career!

The theme of the cooking contest is - Cooking is Child’s Play. So, I had to think of a dish that could be prepared with a child. Knowing me, even I’m not safe by myself in the kitchen, let alone bringing a child into the mix! So I’d almost abandoned the idea of entering this contest, for I couldn’t think of a suitable dish that didn’t require chopping, heating, or complicated techniques. And then it suddenly came to me - a fruit salad!

During my fifth and sixth standard, my school had an annual “fruit salad day” and “sandwich day”. On these rare days, the entire afternoon session of classes was canceled and was instead devoted to our fruit salad or sandwich making! We eagerly looked forward to this day, planning for weeks on what ingredients to bring in which boxes, with which friends we would sit together and prepare our dishes, envisioning all the fun we would have eating and chatting, and so on. Although none of us were excited about fruits per se, the day brought us closer to fruits. And a lot of memories were made. So, for people like me, fruit salad is a “happy” dish that brings to mind good times, childhood friends, and much laughter.

I also tried to put myself in my little cousin’s “shoes” (or mind). She is a smart kid with a vivacious burst of energy that begs to be channelized into creative avenues! So engaging her in a knife-free kitchen and letting her imagination run wild, seemed ideal. Besides, she loves fruits of all kinds and shapes.

So here we go - here are some basic ingredients to make a special, elegant-looking fruit salad.

Ingredients:

1. Fruits (of course!). I decided to go with the below combination, but you can always substitute and use any fruit/s of your (and your child’s) liking. I envision a fun trip to the grocery store with the child, letting him/her pick the fruits of their choice, with perhaps some guidance to try the ones they don’t like. If the child goes towards a fruit like pineapple, I would recommend that the fruit be chopped prior to the child entering the kitchen, or pick up pre-diced, canned/frozen versions.
1. Two bananas
2. One orange
3. 170 gms or 1 pint each of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries (I didn’t pick strawberries for they involve dicing)
4. Raisins
2. Milk (quantity depends on the fruits - but around 4 cups)
3. 1 tablespoon of Honey
4. 2 teaspoons of cardamom powder
5. A couple of scoops of Mascarpone cheese (or vanilla icecream/ any kind of icream, or whipped cream)
6. A handful of toasted almonds (or any other nuts... hopefully the child isn’t allergic to nuts)
7. A drizzle of store bought caramel syrup (or chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, maple syrup.... you can pick one the child really likes)
8. A teaspoon of vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Grate the zest of one orange (a rasp/grater is sharp, but with a little guidance and supervision, kids can manage this, as an orange is much easier to firmly grasp such that the fingers are away from the grater. If not, zest it yourself). Take care not to zest the white-part of the orange as it is bitter. Gently scrape just the orange part.
2. Add the zest to a deep and wide bowl. Then allow the child to peel the orange and add the pieces into the bowl... I can imagine my cousin doing this... her brows knit in concentration, a bit of her tongue sticking out, until of course, she loses patience!
3. Next, the bananas! I think children would love to squish bananas into tiny pieces, so let them do it. Clean hands, though!
4. Then, watch them add the washed berries and raisins to the colorful mix.
5. Now pour in some milk just until the fruits are barely submerged. Measure out the milk before allowing the child to pour :).
6. Hand over the vanilla extract to the child and let them decide how many teaspoons should go in ;)
7. Squeeze a tablespoon of honey. I am wary of adding too much sugar and fueling kids to an uncontrollable sugar-high.... my cousin is usually always at such a state anyways ;). So I’m not inclined to add any more sugar in addition to the fruits, the syrup and topping! I may even skip honey.
8. Let the child sprinkle some cardamom powder (cardamom gives a distinct Indian flavor). Give them a spatula to stir the entire mass of sweet smelling salad.
9. Ladle out a few spoons of salad into a smaller bowl. Top it with a scoop of mascarpone cheese (a creamy, unsweetened cheese that doesn’t have the pungent smell of cheese), or ice-cream or whipped cream. Drizzle some caramel syrup/ any syrup of the child’s liking on the topping.
10. Finally, chop or crush some nuts... it is easy to break up cashews and peanuts with your fingers. So you don’t need to go near a knife. Toast them on the stove.... distract the child with other activities such as scooping out ice-cream or licking the ice-cream spoon as you toast the nuts. Sprinkle the toasted nuts on the topping and enjoy!

 

Fruit salads with a creative mix of flavors are a great way of encouraging kids to have their fruits. And making the process fun and engaging might entice them to change their perception of fruits. Both the child and the adult get to have a healthy, flavorful snack/meal, depending on their portion size! 

 
Plus, the simple manner of layering the fruit salad with toppings, and serving it in an elegant bowl elevates the simple and humble dish into a fancy dessert that can find its place even in gourmet menus. It’s easy for adults to throw together such a decadent-looking dessert when time is not on their hands. And it’s wonderful that you can tweak and change the flavors to your liking. Cooking surely becomes  child’s play with this dessert! 

P.S. : This entry actually won the first place! I'm still reeling with surprise :). Thanks to all you kind people from Women's Web :).

"Pooh" Cake

One of our friends is expecting a baby soon! In keeping with the tradition of throwing a baby shower for the mom-to-be, we had a get-together recently. A baby shower is incomplete without a cake (and of course, gifts!). So, I was racking my brain on what cake to bake that would be appropriate for the occasion. Since the theme of the baby’s nursery is Winnie the Pooh (a popular favorite in recent times!), I thought it would be fun to bake a “Pooh” cake! But, having never attempted cake-sculpting and detailed icing before, it was a little too ambitious of me to aspire to make an entire replica of Pooh himself. And of course, time is always a constraint. So I toned down by several degrees, and eventually decided to create a teddy-bear-faced cake that looks a little like Pooh :). 

 
I know there are Winnie-the-Pooh cake pans available in the market, and it would have been perfect had I purchased one such a pan. But, I wasn’t sure the pan would find much use in the future. In my view, most such specialty pans serve just a one-time-use,  for which child wants to have the same looking cake every year, or every so often? Their interests and fascinations change every week :). Besides, I really wanted to try my hand at making a simple bear-cake without the help of fancy cake pans that do most of the difficult job.

So, here is my version of a sloppy looking Pooh cake! I used yellow and red colored butter-cream frosting to slather over the cake. The red dye ended up being dark pink, and simply refused to budge to the deep end of the color spectrum no matter how many drops I poured!

The cake
The cake was a simple, yet divinely delicious, egg-less date cake that I found here. Thanks to Shilpa for sharing the awesome recipe! I followed every step as mentioned in the post, and ended up with a fluffy delight! It was a huge hit. I highly recommend the cake. Don’t be deceived by its simplicity! I also have to add that milk and yogurt are excellent egg substitutes as well (in addition to ground flax seed). They make the cake moist and soft. And dates pureed in milk? How can it not be good? Or as Ina says, “How bad can that be?” :)

You might have already guessed the “strategy” I employed to achieve the bear-like face. I filled three small ramekins (2-3 inch ones) with a few spoons of the cake batter. The cake will rise, so fill the ramekins up to half-way (and remember to grease the insides with butter). I baked all three at 350 F for 20 minutes. Then I scooped the remaining batter into a 9-inch round cake pan and baked it for 35 minutes at 350 F. Allow the cake/s to cool completely (give about 45 minutes for the 9-inch cake), before covering them with frosting. 

 

Assembling the cake
To form Pooh’s nose/mouth, place one mini-cake at the center of about 1-1 ½ inches from the bottom of the 9-inch cake. Then shave off about a quarter inch of cake along the diagonal of the other two mini-cakes to form ears that can be placed at the sides of the bigger cake. All the cake needs is some color, eyes, and a smiling mouth!

As for the icing, I put together my own version of a butter-cream-frosting. The consistency wasn’t perfect, but it was manageable. I couldn’t bring myself to add any more sugar to get the frosting to be thicker - my heart was thumping away at every spoon of sugar that went into the frosting! But this measurement left me with a few extra spoons of frosting, so you could probably cut down the butter to 1/2 - 1 stick.

Ingredients for the frosting:

1. 2 sticks of unsalted, room temperature butter
2. 1 ½ cups of confectioners sugar
3. 1 Tablespoon of milk
4. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
5. Food coloring - red and yellow  (Pooh’s colors)
6. Black colored gel-icing (a small store-bought tube)

Preparation:

1. Cream the room temperature butter until it looks whipped (a hand-beater is ideal)
2. Then slowly add the confectioners sugar - ½ cup at a time, and beat it well with the butter till it turns into a smooth, spreadable cream.
3. Add a tablespoon of milk and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Blend well.
4. Separate a couple of spoons of frosting (for Pooh’s ears). Add several drops of the red food coloring and mix it into the frosting (you can use a spoon to do this).
5. Add a few drops of the yellow coloring to the remaining frosting and mix well. Since you’re looking for a lighter shade of yellow, go easy on the dye. Add a few drops, stir, inspect, add a few more drops... repeat the process till you reach a color you’re happy with. Due to bad lighting, the yellow in the picture looks brighter than it was.

Frosting tips:

First, cut some parchment paper (butter paper) into little strips, and insert them all around the bottom of the cake. This will catch all the frosting that is sure to spill over. Remove the paper strips after frosting, and the plate/pan underneath the cake as well as the bottom of the cake will look clean.

Prepare the frosting after the cake is taken out of the oven, for the frosting will get gooey if left sitting out for a while. Also, if the cake is warm, the frosting will melt over the cake, so be sure the cake is cool (place the cake in the fridge for a few minutes if there is a time crunch - like I faced!). Using a flat icing spatula, gently spread the frosting. To even out the uneven strokes of the frosting, run the spatula under warm water and then gently glide it over the imperfect strokes to get a reasonably smooth finish. Despite all this, my frosting technique still needs plenty of practice, so the cake looks nowhere close to a store bought one. And maybe that is the point of homemade cakes - they should look homemade ;)

Slather the yellow frosting all over the 9-inch round cake. Then frost the nose/mouth. Cover the ears with the red (deep pink) frosting and place them on either sides of Pooh’s face. Draw big black eyes, curious-looking eyebrows, a simple nose, and an innocent smile with a store-bought black icing gel.

Viola! A teddy-bear’s face materializes! But then, this one looks more like a cat... an indication that the baby is going to be a Leo?! The nose/mouth should have been bigger... an experiment for another day! This isn't the perfect bear-cake... it has its numerous flaws, but I had a lot of fun making it!

May the baby boy be cuter and cuddlier than Pooh! :)

Watermelon Popsicle

Anand has a massive sweet tooth. If he goes grocery shopping by himself, he may even forget to get the very first item on the list, but will unfailingly bring home items not on the list - such as a tub of ice-cream, a bar of cookies, a bag of chocolates, a box of candies, etc. He literally gets the unmistakable kid-at-a-candy-store glaze in his eyes if he stumbles into a specialty chocolate store, or even the candy aisle. We walked into a Lindt store recently, and boy, for the first time ever, I saw him flustered, unable to make a decision on what to get. Finally, he rationalized that the below massive mug of chocolates was the biggest bang for his buck (and palate). The most incredulous and mildly infuriating part is, despite his candy obsession, he has awesome, healthy, pearly white teeth! 

His current fascination has been towards Popsicles. For the last several weeks, his favorite post-dinner routine has been to stretch on the couch with a popsicle in hand (and mouth), and relax in front of the TV. He fondly related nostalgic stories of how as a kid he used to lust after the “kuchi-ice” sold in front of his school, and how his mom always forbade him from licking on such unhealthy, unhygienic treats. I think he is making up for it by licking away one popsicle a day now ;).

Since I agree with his mom, and am also wary of the artificial colors and additives running through such treats, I decided to buy a set of popsicle molds. They are easily available at the stores and online, and are BPA free.  

Fill up the mold with any juice of your choice - it can be store bought juices, or home made ones. If home made, dice the fruit/s, and puree it with a bit of sugar/honey, and other flavorings (such as vanilla extract, chocolate syrup, maple syrup etc.). Pour the juice into the molds (leaving about 1 inch room for the popsicle to freeze). Place the molds in the freezer for 4+ hours (or overnight), and you have home-made, additive free, relatively healthy popsicles! You can even try filling the molds with ice-cream and sorbet.

I tried it with watermelons recently. I pureed the watermelons as is and prepared the popsicles. Watermelons are usually quite sweet, but of course, this batch didn’t have enough sugar to appease Anand :). So next time around, I should add a teaspoon or so of sugar to the juice.

This is a healthy substitute for store-bought popsicles, and is a great way to allure (fool) kids into having their fruits. It’s all in the fancy packaging and presentation!