Last few days have been busy. I hosted a surprise baby shower for my dear friend. This was the first big event I hosted at my home (after the house warming). We had total 13 families. I am good at hosting parties where I do everything. But here we decided to divide the task. It was a learning experience for me to coordinate between so many families. In the end, everything worked so well and we all had awesome time. I did not know most of the families that attended the party, but once we met, everybody had great time together.
Two of the friends took care of all the decorations. These were the baby shower experts, so they gave lot of ideas. We decided the menu and asked everyone else to pick a dish from the menu. We had chips and salsa, pani puri, papdi chaat, khasta kachori, pulav and pav bhaji. The food was lipsmacking good.
I baked and decorated this cake. Most of the crowd was strictly vegetarians. So it was challenging for me to make it completely vegetarian – no eggs, no gelatin. I frantically googled for many days to figure out the best recipe but then decided to go with one of my tried and tested cakes. If you know me, you also know that I like to tweak the recipes. So I took this cardamom cake recipe and changed it to chocolate cake.
Eggless Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- 2 and ½ cups cake flour see notes below
- 2 tea spns baking powder
- 1 tea spn baking soda
- 1 can 14oz sweetened condensed milk
- 1 cup orange juice
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup butter I used salted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 350F for about 10mins.
- Grease a baking dish with butter and flour, keep aside.
- Sieve together dry ingredients - cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and keep aside.
- Take condensed milk and butter and beat till well mixed.
- Alternately add orange juice and dry ingredient, a little at a time and mix gently.
- Bake at 350F for about 40-45mins till a tooth pick inserted in the center comes clean.
Notes
Since I didn’t want to use fondant, I had to use buttercream frosting. I love the buttercream because it is easy to work with but I hate the taste because it is super sweet. This is one of the reasons I was using cream cheese in my previous cakes. But there it was, staring at my face! The reason why I loved the cream cheese was because the salt in it made the frosting less sweet. So the solution was easy. I used the salted butter to make the frosting!. It was the best tasting frosting ever. It gave me the finish I wanted and everyone was literally picking up the frosting and eating it.
Buttercream icing
Ingredients
- 1 cup 2 sticks salted butter at room temperature
- 4 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 tea spn vanilla essence
Instructions
- Sieve the sugar to remove any lumps.
- Beat the butter together with sugar till it is well mixed.
- Add vanilla essence and whip it.
How I assembled the cake – After the cake completely cooled down(I refrigerated overnight), I cut the cake horizontally. Brushed the cake couple of times with sugar syrup. I made the sugar syrup by boiling about 1 cup water with 3 tea spns sugar till sugar melted. Then added a tea spn of vanilla essence to it. Then spread a layer of chocolate ganache, followed by a layer of whipped cream (Whip the cream with a little sugar and vanilla essence) in between two layers of cake.
Then I frosted the cake with buttercream. All the animal decorations were made with white modeling chocolate (12 oz white chocolate chips and 1/3 cup light corn syrup). It is a bit challenging to work with this modeling chocolate, but the animals were very tasty.
Eggless Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- 2 and ½ cups cake flour see notes below
- 2 tea spns baking powder
- 1 tea spn baking soda
- 1 can 14oz sweetened condensed milk
- 1 cup orange juice
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup butter I used salted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 350F for about 10mins.
- Grease a baking dish with butter and flour, keep aside.
- Sieve together dry ingredients - cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and keep aside.
- Take condensed milk and butter and beat till well mixed.
- Alternately add orange juice and dry ingredient, a little at a time and mix gently.
- Bake at 350F for about 40-45mins till a tooth pick inserted in the center comes clean.
Notes
Buttercream icing
Ingredients
- 1 cup 2 sticks salted butter at room temperature
- 4 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 tea spn vanilla essence
Instructions
- Sieve the sugar to remove any lumps.
- Beat the butter together with sugar till it is well mixed.
- Add vanilla essence and whip it.
Wish you all a very happy new year 2016.
There was a time when Ishaan was around 2 years of age when I used sweet potatoes very regularly. But that did not continue for a long time. He does not like anything sweetish, so I stopped. Now I am trying to include them back in our diet because of their nutritional values and also because Ayaan is almost that age now. He has a big sweet tooth. Few months back, I saw these very tender and beautiful sweet potatoes at Farmers market. I made a simple stir fry with half of them. The remaining went into these stuffed parathas.
I used a combination of sweet potatoes and normal potatoes for this. I did not want the parathas to be too sweet. I also used lot of masalas to make them a little spicy. I think I need to make these more often, they were just delicious.
Pictorial: Cook sweet potatoes and potatoes(I do not have them in picture below) in pressure cooker. Peel them when they are cooled down. Add the spices and mash them to remove any lumps. Make the dough. Take small balls of covering, flatten it on the palm and then stuff a small ball of stuffing in them. Seal properly.
Roll each ball and then roast them on tava.
Sweet Potato Parathas
Ingredients
- For Stuffing
- 4-5 small sweet potatoes about 2 cups when mashed
- 2 potatoes 1 cup mashed
- 1/2 tea spn red chilli powder
- 1 tea spn coriander-cumin powder
- 1/2 tea spn chaat masala
- Salt
- For outer cover
- 1/2 cups water
- 3 cups wheat flour I use multigrain flour
- 1 tea spn oil
- Salt
Instructions
- Make a dough with the ingredients mentioned under outer cover.
- Knead the dough very well for few minutes.
- Apply little oil to the dough and let it rest (covered) for atleast 30-60mins.
- Cook sweet potatoes and potatoes in pressure cooker.
- Peel them and mash.
- Add all the spices, salt and mix well.
- Make small balls out of the dough and stuffing (I usually make sure I have equal number of dough and stuffing).
- Take a ball of dough and flatten on your palm, use little oil if needed.
- Keep a stuffing ball on it and seal the dough properly around the stuffing.
- Roll them into paratha. (Do not use too much dry flour).
- Roast on hot tava.
- Apply ghee from both sides for extra taste (I do that for kids).
- Serve hot with yogurt or pickle or any side dish of your choice.
