Today my parents started from here back to India, and once again we feel our house is empty. To give them a nice send off, I made this moist fruit gateau . I had made this for the first time about a year ago and had liked the taste. But now that I have a bit knowledge about cake decorating, I was making cakes with butter cream icing. My parents are not very familiar with cakes. Aayi had made few when we were kids and my pachi makes a lot of them, but still both my pappa and aayi have mainly tasted cakes without icing. So I made 3-4 cakes while they were here and each time I used different icing. My husband has grown a dislike for butter cream and so he was asking for some other icing. So this delicious moist, soft and easy cake came to my mind.
?Since I used whipped cream for icing, this got ready in literally 20mins (apart from baking time). It was moist, sweet. As I said, I have made few cakes while they were here and they took atleast 2 days to finish each cake. But this cake got over within minutes. They simply loved it. My husband has totally approved this topping. This does not require any decorating skills, I just spread the whipped cream with a spatula.
Please click Fruit Gateau(A fruity cake) for the recipe of this cake. I didn’t use any dry fruits this time.
This is one more kind of vadi/odi with mirsang (chilies), which is bit less popular than the classic kuvaLe (ash gourd) vadis . This is a must at my home and aayi makes these almost every year. These are generally not used for gravies like ash gourd vadis , but these are served along with papads with meals. A huge amount of green chilies are added to it to make them quite hot. Few people make some vadis which have both ash gourd and green chilies, but at my home we prefer these as separate ones. The batter is quite easy, but when deep fried and served with simple rice and curd, these make a very tasty and filing meal.
Ingredients: 1 cup urad dal 1 cup green chilies 1/2 tea spn asafoetida powder 2 tea spn sesame seeds( til ) Salt
Method: Soak urad dal in water for overnight. Grind it to a very smooth paste adding little water. If the paste is not smooth enough, the vadis become hard and difficult to eat. Grind the green chilies(without water) for a very coarse paste. Mix the dal paste, chili paste, salt, sesame seeds and mix.
Mix 1 tea spn oil in 1 cup water. Spread a plastic sheet under hot sun. Sprinkle some oiled water on the sheet. Spread vadis on it. Leave enough space between two vadis , since they spread after sometime.
Dry them till they come out of sheet easily and they are crisp.
Cool them to room temperature and store in air tight container. When required, take them out, deep fry and serve as side dish (like papads ).
