Chocolate Buttermilk Pound Cake

It's raining cakes on The Singing Chef! It was an unsual Saturday for us. We were to have one couple over for dinner. But A was unwell and we needed to make a trip to the paediatrician. So, we cancelled that dinner. As luck would have it, we weren't able to get an appointment for that day. I was feeling bad that we'd cancelled plans with our friends and were unable to take A to the doctor. Later in the day, S got on the phone with another friend and an impromptu dinner was planned.


I hadn't thought about dinner at all, and now suddenly we had a bunch of people coming over. I've become so comfortable with pizza now that I can whip it from scratch in less than the amount of time it would take me for a regular meal. Yes, I do benefit from living in Singapore as I now have the convenience of pre-grated cheese in different combinations.


I had just baked the Mango Cardamom Pound Cake. It smelt heavenly and I'd just cut a couple of slices for the photographs as well as to eat. It was after I cut the cake that I realized it was the birthday of one of our guests the following day. So, I had to bake my second cake. I had been browsing Deeba's blog that day and had bookmarked her Chocolate Buttermilk Pound Cake. I decided to make it. S decided to decorate the cake with some store bought cream cheese frosting and some whipped cream.


This has to be best "home made" chocolate cake I have eaten. The photo doesn't do it any justice as I took it the following morning, after the cake had been in the fridge for a good 12 hours. I will make this cake again and upload a better picture. But you have to believe me when I say this cake is as good as it gets.

I followed Deeba's recipe for most part and made some minor changes.

1 1/4 cups Cake Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
1 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
1/4 tsp Salt
2 Eggs
100 ml Buttermilk
1 tsp Chocolate Essence
Butter and Flour/Spray for preparing the cake tin

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F. Prepare a 10" round tin.

Cream the butter with the sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the buttermilk and chocolate essence and beat again. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the batter, adding a little at a time.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool a little and cut into slices when warm using a bread knife.

 

Thanks Deeba. I know I will use baby A as the perfect excuse and make this cake often when he grows up a little.

Mango Cardamom Pound Cake

I have often talked about my love for baking. I started baking a couple of years before I started cooking and so there's always been a soft spot for baking. Yes, there are the calories to think about. There's no running away from all that butter and sugar. Over the past few years, I have learnt to substitute oil for butter, jaggery for sugar, etc, in more recent times, I have rediscovered cakes with real butter. In one month, I baked 3 cakes, all of them pound cakes, and all with real butter.

I thought a lot about why I didn't like using butter. For starters, the thought of measuring the butter always put me off. First you thaw the butter. Then you measure it into a cup. That leaves you with a greasy spoon or knife and a greasy cup. Since I am not like the Food Network chefs who just dump the stuff in the sink, I, by sheer force of habit, have to use my hands to try and remove as much butter from the cup, the spoon and that leaves my fingers extremely greasy. I decided to be more organized, to keep soap and towels handy, and just take the plunge.

I was at the supermarket to buy some butter for these cakes. I found some brands that were sold in 250g packs. But I saw some others which were selling in 227g packs. I was a little irritated at first, but bought the 227g pack anyway. I came home and started to bake the cake. Was there a way out of measuring the butter? I ran a search to see how much half a cup of butter in grams would be. As it turns out, half a cup is about 115g. Voila! The 227g pack of butter was effectively 1 cup. I didn't have to measure the butter at all. I just cut my block in 2 pieces and allowed just one half to thaw. That was one more "happy to be living in Singapore" moment for me.

Enough about my well known love for baking. Coming to my well known love for blogging. I agree that this blog was a little abandoned in between. But I was baking the proverbial bun in my oven, so I was entitled to time off from blogging. As soon as I was able to, I resumed cooking. So, within a week of my delivery, I was dishing out at least one meal every couple of days for my family. And as soon as I could manage it, I resumed blogging too. There are many many reasons I love blogging. The biggest reason is the friends it has given me. And a couple of them are as close to me as some of the friends I have made in real life.

In 2007, Nandita and I were chatting and she told me about this mava cake she wanted to try out. She asked me if I would bake it with her. She in her kitchen in Bombay and I in mine in Gurgaon. It seemed like a terribly exciting thing to do back then. I had so much fun. Compating notes, choosing when to post it, and everything else. A couple of weeks ago, Arundati and I were chatting and she happened to be doing a lot of baking that day. I told her about how I was dragging my feet over a batch of chocolate chip cookies and she asked me to bake alongside her. So, there we were, she in Hyderabad and I in Singapore. She baking cupcakes and I making chocolate chip cookies. Even after 4 years of blogging, it still felt terribly exciting.


I mentioned, on Facebook, how much fun it was to be doing this, and before I knew it, the Baking Club gad been formed. Something like the Sisterhood of Traveling Cake Tins! My other namesake, Arundathi, and Aparna were also keen and we decided to celebrate summer by making pound cakes using mango. We picked recipes that appealed to us and made the cakes. This was even more exciting as there were more people involved and lots more notes being compared. So look out for more mango pound cakes in the blogosphere today.
I picked a recipe from the well known food blogger, Divya. Divya has given me so much happiness by regularly cooking stuff from my blog and blogging about it. She even dedicated one entire post to all the recipes she made my blog. I read it from time to time and always end up getting misty eyed. This is what keeps this blog going.

Divya blogged about her Mango Buttermilk Pound Cake a few days ago and I came across this recipe. This being a recipe that she adapted from Deeba's blog, I decided I had to try it. Two friends, one recipe. I can be sure of a hands down winner! I modified Divya's recipe even more and although I've been baking for almost 25 years now, I forgot to add the baking powder. Despite that, this cake was a winner all the way. The next time, I will add the baking powder, and I'm writing down the recipe here without excluding that ingredient.

1 1/2 cups Cake Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Cardamom, Powdered

1/2 cup Unsalted Butter

3/4 cup Sugar

2 Eggs

100ml Buttermilk

1/2 cup Mango Pulp

Icing sugar, for dusting (I used the canned variety)

Butter and Flour/Spray for preparing the cake tin

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F. Prepare a 10" round tin. (I used a springform ring mould.)

Cream the butter with the sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the buttermilk, mango pulp and cardamom and beat again. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the batter, adding a little at a time.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool a little and sieve the icing sugar over it.

Cut into slices when warm using a bread knife.

This cake was so good that S didn't really want me to share it with others. I, on the other hand, was happy to give the cake to friends because that way I could bake again. And I know I am going to keep baking this one, over and over again.

Green Masala Dal

Dal is almost a staple in our house. I don't make it everyday, but I make it very often. On days when it is pasta/noodles or anything other than rice and roti, dal doesn't make an appearance, but it is there to grace our meals on every other occasion.

Growing up, I saw only four varieties of dal being used. Toor dal (red gram dal) was the most common. Moong dal came second and not a close second. Udad and chana dals were relagated to temperings and that was that. Whole udad and whole chana found many uses, as did whole masoor. It is only when I moved out of home that I started stocking every variety of dal available in the market and learnt how to cook with them. Split, unsplit, skin on, skin off, premixed... you get the drift, don't you?

To aid me in my quest for newer dal dishes, I bought myself a pocket book by Tarla Dalal called "Dal". I have tried several recipes of hers from this book and have never been disappointed. This is one such recipe that I have adapted from this book.

1/2 cup Toor Dal

1/2 cup Moong Dal

1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder

1 tbsp Ghee

Salt to taste

Grind to a paste:

1 cup Coriander Leaves, chopped

1/3 cup Coconut, scraped

1 Onion, roughly chopped

1" piece of Ginger

3 Green Chillies

3 cloves Garlic

Combine all the ingredients for the paste and grind to a paste using as little water as necessary.

Cook the dals with the turneric powder, salt and 3 cups of water. Drain the water, reserving 1/2 cup (or save the rest for rasam). Mash the dals well.

Heat the ghee in a pan and add the ground paste. Saute for 4-5 minutes. Add the mashed dal and the 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a boil. Serve hot with rice or rotis.

Mushroom Pockets

Mushrooms have always been a favourite. There was a time when it was a rare commodity and I'd gotten into the habit of picking up a packet whenever I saw one. Now I live in a city where I don't have to even look and there's every variety of mushroom available in the shelves here. I hope to learn to use them all over time.


I found a punnet of assorted mushrooms in the supermarket the other day. The assortment was white button mushrooms, portobello mushrooms and shitake mushrooms. I brought them home and made these mushroom pockets. These are just like puffs, but they are made with shortcrust pastry instead of puff pastry.


For the pastry:


2 cups Flour

2/3 cup Butter

5-6 tbsp Ice Cold Water
1 tsp Salt


Place the flour, salt and butter in a bowl and mix together till the mixture resembles small peas. Gradually add the water and knead gently till it forms a dough. (Do not knead as you would for chapati/poori dough.) Roll out the dough and cut into squares.


For the filling:


200g Assorted Mushrooms, chopped

1 Onion, finely chopped

1 Garlic pod, finely chopped

1 tbsp Olive Oil
2 tsp Chilli flakes
1/2 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Parsley
Salt and Lime juice to taste


Heat the oil in a pan. Add onion and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the thyme, parsley and chilli flakes and saute for 1-2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and saute for 2 minutes.


To Proceed:


Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.


Place a little of the mushroom mixture in the middle of the pastry squares and fold over to form a triangle. Use a little water to seal the edges and press down with a fork.


Bake for 20 minutes. Enjoy hot.


You can serve this with some ketchup if you like. We enjoyed them as they were.