I haven’t baked any cakes in almost a year’s time. I have been thinking about it for a while, but could not take any action. Yesterday, finally I decided to do it. I baked this cake which turned out to be awesome. I could do better with the decorations though. I started at around 9:30 and wanted to just finish it.
Ingredients for cake: 1 and 1/2 cups All purpose flour 1 and 1/4 cups sugar 4 eggs separated 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 tea spn vanilla essence 1/4 cup orange juice 1 and 1/2 tea spn baking powder 1 tea spn orange zest
Icing: 1 and 1/2 cups whipping cream 2 tbl spns confectioners sugar 1 tea spn cream of tartar
Orange segments, orange zest for decoration 1/2 cup orange juice for soaking the cake
Method: Preheat the oven at 350F for about 10 mins. Grease a baking dish and keep it aside. Take the egg whites in a bowl and beat them till they form soft peaks. Take egg yolks, oil, orange juice, essence in a bowl and beat till it forms a uniform mixture. In another bowl, sieve together flour, sugar, baking powder, orange zest. Add this dry ingredients mix to egg yolk mixture a little at a time till all the dry ingredients are well incorporated. Now fold in the egg whites gently and mix. Pour in the baking dish and bake at 350F for about 45mins or till the cake is done. Let the cake cool and take it out of the baking dish.
For the icing – Beat together whipping cream,sugar and cream of tartar till soft peaks form. While beating the cream, I kept this bowl in another bowl with ice cubes. This keeps the cream cold. Take the cake on cake board and evenly spread orange juice all over it till the cake soaks all the juice. Cover the cake with icing. Decorate with orange segments and zest. (Next time, I am going to cut the cake horizontally and then add the juice to both pieces. Add a layer of cream between the two layers. That would make it much more moist and delicious).
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These days my cooking is inspired by what my little baby eats. There are two vegetables that he totally adores – sweet potato and butternut squash. I try and add these to most of the dishes that I cook. Today I made these simple phodis for him. The sweetness of the sweet potato (or yam) outshines the spiciness of the red chillies.
Ingredients: 10 pieces of sweetpotato (or yam) cut into round pieces 1/2 tea spn chilli powder A pinch asafoetida Sooji/rava Oil Salt
Method: Add chilli powder, asafoeida and salt to sweet potato pieces and keep it aside for 30mins. Heat a tava and spread some oil. Roll the pieces in sooji and shallow fry them on tava. Sprinkle a table spoon of water and cover while cooking. Serve hot.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 30mins
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