Strawberries And Cream "Anime" cake.

Summers in Madras lie in the spectrum that ranges between Harsh and Brutal. Right now, I'd say that the pointer was teetering at the Cruel gradation. In cooking terms, an evening out on Purasaiwalkam High Road is the equivalent of getting confited in your fat. Gross, but not entirely untrue.

Your hoarded chocolate melt into puddles that stubbornly cling to the foil; please do not suggest refrigeration, I'd never do that to chocolate. Nutella bottles lie untouched. Yogurt and watermelon and Air-Conditioning seem (and are) heaven-sent. It's a little unnatural.

So when I had to make a cake for the brother to be, I didn't even consider the Caramel Peanut Brownie Cake I made him last year. Not only do I frown on repetition, but the heat wouldn't permit more than a forkful. Unless you shovel heaps of Vanilla Bean Ice Cream into the salty caramel. Mmm. There's an idea.

Designing the cake around a person's favourite memory, malt-drink and tastes is the best part about making a birthday cake, in itself. BTB wrote a couple of poetic verses on White Forest Cake, and I knew my options.

Harassed the fruit vendor for two boxes of his best strawberries (last of the season! Depressing.) at 10 percent off.

Bought a couple of vanilla beans from Spice Route (at Express Avenue). They cost up to 150 bucks, but you can stash the deseeded beans in a canister of sugar and Reuse/Recycle.

Strawberries and Cream cake, Strawberry Cake with Cheesecake Frosting, Strawberry Shortcake (Misnomer alert!). Call it any thing you want and get away with it.

You get away with a lot of things when you layer stunningly-vanilla scented sponge cake with a coulis of ripe, red strawberries and the lightest, fluffiest whipped cream. You can even drizzle a little while chocolate ganache over the strawberries, to fancypants it up a little bit. Even if you have an intense revulsion (Mum would knock me on the head if I used that word for food) dislike for "white chocolate". You do it, because your nerdface Brother-to-be likes it.

I'm ready for that Best Sister award any time soon. And I can be paid in Nutella. Once this heatwave/kathiri goes from scorching to muggy.

The sponge cake is your classic sponge: the type with no butter in it, the fluffiness achieved by whipping the egg whites into a frenzy. I folded in 1/3 cup of melted butter towards the end, because I panic in a world where there's no fat in a birthday cake.

The frosting can be made without cream cheese. Whipping cream with sugar is an excellent substitute. However, I wanted a stiff, Japanese-style frosting (the ones stabilised with gelatin) without mucking around with melted gelatin. Read the ingredients list completely before you start shopping... the same things will pop up annoyingly!


Strawberries and Cream "Anime" Cake:

(Sponge cake recipe adapted from Williams Sonoma Magazine)

For the Sponge Cake:

1 ¼ Cups All-Purpose Flour (maida)
2 ½ tsp Baking Powder
1/8 tsp Salt
5 Large Eggs, separated
1 ¼ Cups White Granulated Sugar
5 Tbsp Boiling Water
1 ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
Pods from 1/2 a vanilla bean (optional)
Grated zest of 2 Lemons
1/3 cup melted butter (optional)

For the coulis:

2 cups strawberries, hulled and halved
2 tsps lemon juice/balsamic vinegar/rosewater
5-6 tbsps white granulated sugar

For the frosting:

1 ½ cups fresh cream (whipping cream)
60 grams cream cheese, softened.
1/2 cup powdered sugar, more as required.
1 tsp vanilla essence or pods from 1/2 a vanilla bean

For the ganache:

1/3 cup white chocolate, chopped
2 tbsps fresh cream

10 extra strawberries, for decorating.

Method:

For the Sponge Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C. Grease and flour a 9" round pan.

In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Keep aside.

In another big bowl, whip together the egg yolks and sugar on Medium Speed until thick yellow ribbons form when you lift the beater. The mixture will be grainy.

Pour in the boiling water. Turn off the mixer and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Increase the speed to high and whip again until thick. Stir in the vanilla extract/pods and lemon zest. Fold in the flour mixture until just combined.

In a separate, CLEAN, DRY BOWL, whip together the egg whites on Medium-High, with CLEAN, DRY beaters. Whip until thick, but not entirely dry.

Fold in half the egg whites into the batter, then the other. Do NOT overfold. You can now stir in 1/3 cup of melted butter, if using.

Gently spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes.

Turn it out onto a wire rack, and let it cool for a couple of hours (throw in the freezer for 20 minutes if pressed for time). Take it out and cut into two layers, horizontally, using a serrated knife or thread. You can attempt more layers, but I didn't want to risk it.

For the coulis.

Marinate the strawberries in the lemon juice and sugar for around one hour. Blitz half the strawberries in a mixie/food processor. Heat the pureed strawberries and juice over low heat for 5 minutes until you get a nice syrup.

Reserve the remaining marinated strawberries.

For the cream:

Beat the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Make sure the cream is cold when you beat it. Keep aside.

Beat the cream cheese (at room temperature) until it forms soft peaks. Add in the sugar and beat until incorporated. Beat in the whipping cream and vanilla until combined. Taste to see if you require more sugar.
Keep in the refrigerator until use.

For the white chocolate ganache:

Melt together the fresh cream and white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl until smooth. Set aside to cool.

Assembling the cake:

On one layer of the sliced cake, spread the strawberry coulis. The reserved whole macerated strawberries should be arranged along the circumference/perimetre of the cake.

Spoon over half the whipped frosting on the cake.

Make sure some of it overflows, so it looks appetizing from the outside.

Close with the other layer of cake. Spoon over the remaining frosting. Decorate with the ten strawberry halves.

You can do some piping with the ganache that you've made, but this is strongly optional.

Refrigerate assembled cake for up to 4 hours. Take the chilled cake and place it out for around 20 minutes before serving, so it's all moist. If you live in a hot/humid/cruel/harsh/brutal place, three minutes should do the job.

Enough cribbing. You now have an Anime Cake, named wistfully after the type of pastry that keeps on coming up on various manga. You can practically hear the "tih-din-tih-din" Animax break-tune. Ultra Maniac is probably on next. School vacations were just about the only tolerable thing about Summer. Apart from Mangoes. Sigh.

Let Me Take You Down, 'Cause I'm Going To...

Strawberries!

How I love thee.

I've made so many crazy things with strawberries this month, I don't know which one to post! Help.

We started off with those crepes. Baby steps into Strawberry Fields Forever.

The Strawberry Swirled Cheesecake with a Dark Chocolate Brownie Base? With a Strawberry Sauce to add fire to the whole thing.

W loves his Warhol-esque photowork!

Roasted strawberry-balsamic jam goes into it. So does brown butter and Milkmaid and a lot of fattening things that can only churn out Deliciousness on a plate.

Maybe the Strawberry Yogurt cake is a better place to start. It's easy, quick and one-bowl. And also the adaptation of the Spanish Orange Cake, which is one of the most popular recipes on the blog.

You know what's better than a rich, dense New York-style Cheesecake?

A cloud-like concoction of cream cheese, whipped cream and condensed milk. Very easy and disproportionately delicious NoBake Cheesecake. With a homemade strawberry topping, buttery graham cracker crust and chocolate-ganache covered strawberries.

They taste like bliss.

As do Strawberry Cheesecake Truffles. Dipped in Chocolate Ganache made with Toblerone.

And you know how I'm always mouthing off about brownies being akin to bread?

You know: putting Dulce de Leche into them, browning butter, drenching them with caramel?

Turns out that if you bake them with a Strawberry swirl, your olfactory mechanism might have the best party of their lives.

The smell of chocolate brownie baking, strawberry juices reducing and a tiny waft of brown butter?

You can't be an atheist if you've smelt this stuff. It is heavenly. Standing in front of the oven, with preprandial glee and a jackass-smile? One of the best five minutes of my culinary life.

And if you think all these calorific treats should remain rare treats, I'd suggest you make them all and often and Phone A Friend!

I'm properly confused. Time for a Strawberry-Cucumber juice. Let's hope my luck with the berries continue.
Stock your freezer with washed/dried/hulled strawberries in airtight freezer-safe boxes... the berry season is drawing to a close. This way, You Can Be Taken Down...

Strawberry Fields Forever.

Carrot Cake for Mum.

You know how we detest certain food as kids but cannot dream of living without now?

Case in point: tea. I never liked the cups of milky chai, spiced with dried ginger (sukku) and elaichi that my mum would plonk in front of me. With a plate full of Britannia Marie that smelt vaguely of michar (mixture). Why couldn't I have fun after school snacks like "Ice Milo" and the last bits of Chips Ahoy! she hid in her dresser? Like all normal kids have?

Not with my mum. No chicken nuggets, no french fries, no pricey Squeezy Kissan Jams. My mum has no use for precious people. No hiding shaved carrots in idli batter, no happy faces drawn on roti with Milkmaid. She (rightly) knew that was just watering the fussy little gourmand in me.

Guess how I turned out anyway?

Yes, I can be finicky and a half. However, when I'm on duty (especially on nights, ICU, ER and double shifts), I drink plastic cup after plastic cup of bad hospital tea. I can recognise the sound of the tea trolley from just about anywhere. After all the childhood drama/trauma.

Back in the days of Fullhouse and Sweet Valley Twins & Friends, I'd come across various food I hadn't an inkling about. Never had a problem with Enid Blyton: fried tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs and jam tarts were easy enough to imagine. With the American books, I had these road blocks. What was Eggplant Parmigiana? Mallomars? And yes, carrot cake.

Who made anything other than beans-carrot poriyal with carrots? It's bad enough that they offered carrot juice (and tomato juice) on Air France. Carrot cake?

My doubts were put to rest when I sampled a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting at a Malaysian food court. Don't ask me why I was having carrot cake instead of miscellaneous native food. I was fourteen, and that is my excuse. I was a convert.

I still have trouble trying to convince the younger ones to try carrot cake, but this recipe could change their minds and your life. This could be our basic go-to carrot cake recipe. Yes, I said ours. No big deal.

You can play around with it, adding in cardamom and medjool dates for a more Middle-eastern flavour, or stick with Vanilla for the old-fashioned bakery flavour. And no, it isn't low-fat in any way, shape or form, but I can guarantee that the other nutrients edge out the calorie-counter.

I like the tropical flavours in this cake... you could make this with tinned pineapple, dessicated coconut and the like, but India wins in the Ingredients department for a change. You get these ingredients all year around at Madras. Fresh. Yes.

Sam's Famous Carrot Cake:
(Recipe adapted from: Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

3 eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk + 1 tbsp vinegar)

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups shredded carrots

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

2/3 cup pineapple, chopped

1/3 cup fresh pineapple juice

1 cup raisins

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.

Soak the raisins in the fresh pineapple juice for about an hour. Or you can boil the raisins in the juice for a couple of minutes. I used Real Activ Fiber Plus's Mixed Fruit juice, so there would be robust pineapple and carrot flavours.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In another large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk (or milk with vinegar), oil, sugar and vanilla. Beat on low speed for 1 minute. Add flour mixture and only FOLD it in, with a spatula.

In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins with all the juice.

Add the carrot mix to the batter. The batter will be very heavy, so use a proper spatula and all your arm power.

Pour the mix into the prepared baking tin. Bake for around one hour, or until a skewer/toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Take it out, let it cool for around 10 minutes. Loosen the sides of the cake from with the tin, with a knife.

Turn it out onto the serving plate. Let it cool for another 15 minutes before serving.

I served this plain, as a snack cake. You can added a dusting of icing sugar or go all out with a cream cheese frosting.

Or serve this to your mum, embellished flowers plucked by your sister from God-knows-where (neighbours' weed garden).

For all those cups of tea.

Spanish Saffron Orange Cake/The Sunshine Cake.

Since the last post on the blog (technically) wasn't dessert, I'm morally obliged to post one. Stat.

This dessert has neither butter nor chocolate in it. Before you go X-ing any Windows, hear me out. It's pretty darned good, and I have it on self-proclaimed excellent authority.

My love for the Mediterranean/Middle-East has grown exponentially over the years. Even though the closest I've got to either place are childhood trips to Paris and shopping/religious visits to the UAE/Saudi Arabia. The fear of sounding like a person who wants to go to "Swiss" for their honeymoon or whatever, keeps me from raving too much about Marrakesh and Mykonos. Discovery Travel & Living has completely done an Inception on my limited brain-space.

It's not just for the food (food is just 90% of the reason). The language, culture, people, smells and overall beauty beckons. And I'm fairly certain MSF (Doctors-Without-Borders) does not post you there, thanks to the lack of Multi Drug Resistant-TB cases and the like.. So I'll have to put these plans on hold until I turn 50 (average age at which a doctor pays off her med-school loans) or when my HLA-typing matches that of an uraemic millionaire (on a serious note, dodgy organ donations for profit is a cruel, unethical act).

So until the day I get to Greece or Turkey, I'll just cook up things with olive oil and chickpeas and plonk myself in front of a foreign film. "A Separation" was a movie I watched recently (yes, I succumb to Oscar buzz) and absolutely loved.

Between the ages of 12 and 17, I baked nothing but chocolate cake. I didn't even like eating anything other than chocolate cake. Until my aunt requested I make something other than "karuppu kokka cake". I made her an Irish Tea Cake she still remembers and mentions at many (and there are many) family gatherings. Since then, I've gone on to bake with everything from carrots to coconut to pumpkin.

The one I'm putting up today is a healthy, light cake you'd love with your morning cuppa.

Make it and one of the following scenarios will happen to you:-

Your mum would proudly send some over to the neighbours (instead of saying "cake again? Cook 'real' food"). Your aunt will request the recipe, thrice. Your cousins/friends would ask for thirds (especially if it's smothered with enough cream and jello). Your grandmother would reminisce about the good old days and since it's not horribly-unhealthy, you make two halfhearted attempts to remind her of glycemic control and stop. The New Family will call you at midnight and thank you whilst you pretend you just rustled it up in your sleep. It's a winner.

Or you can just drink the orange and saffron-scented batter and live fattily happily ever after. It's the blessed truth.

Spanish Saffron Orange Cake:
(Recipe Source: The Greystone  Bakery Cookbook)

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1-1/2 cups granulated white sugar
2 cups plain whole milk yogurt
2/3 cup vegetable oil (I used 1/3 olive oil, 1/3 cup vegetable oil)
Juice and zest of 2 oranges
2 teaspoons vanilla extract/essence
5 Tablespoons powdered sugar or honey
a pinch of saffron
1 tsp powdered cardamom (from 6-7 elaichi pods)
1 tbsp hot milk

Method:

Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius, 375 degrees F.
If you're using a smaller pan, halve the recipe or bake in two batches.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and ground cardamom.

Add half the saffron to it to the milk in a small cup and keep aside, letting the saffron infuse into it.

Horrendously expensive Spanish Saffron. You can use much lesser and get away with it.

In a big bowl, mix together the orange zest and granulated sugar.

Rub it all in, until the sugar is tinted orange and the essential oils of the zest flavour the sugar.

Add the eggs to the bowl with the sugar and beat until the mix is thick and pale yellow.  Add the yogurt, oil, 2 Tablespoon of orange juice, saffron milk and vanilla essence.  Stir well to combine.  Fold in the flour mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes (much lesser baking time if you halve the recipe), or until the top is golden brown and a wooden skewer comes out clean when inserted near the center.

Place the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes to cool.  Run a knife around the edges of the cake, separating it from the pan. Turn it out and cool completely.

To make the glaze:

Sorry for the horrid picture. My spatial orientation gets out of whack around hot sugar.

In a heatproof bowl, combine the remaining orange juice, remaining saffron and honey/sugar. Heat over medium until it comes to a boil and then turn the heat to Low/Sim. Once it forms a syrup (around 10 minutes), take it off the heat. Poke holes all over the cake with a toothpick. Pour the warm glaze over the cool cake.

This cake apparently keeps well, when wrapped well, for around 2 days. I can't promise that in Madras (heat) or in my household (gluttony).

If you're giving away the cake to someone, always bake a small portion in a cupcake liner, just so you know it does not taste horrendous. You can use pretty cupcake liners, if you have kickass friends like Anisha L!

Serve the way your heart chooses. Especially if you're like me and can't plate food beautifully.

Sprinkle some more powdered sugar on top, if you like to keep it simple.

 I made a "creme Anglaise" with Foster-Clark's custard powder and added a pinch of saffron and half a cup of blanched and chopped pistachios and almonds to it.

You can elevate it with a few fresh orange segments or raspberry/strawberry flavoured jelly/Jell-O. MMM.

I'm going to call this The Sunshine Cake because the actual name is a little long and snobby (it can get away with the pishposh 'tude, mind you). This might even wipe out all negative connotations Sunshine has, thanks to the Merciless May Madras Heat.

Blogoversary, Part One/Walk in The Park!

It's been a year.

This exact day, one year back, I wrote a semi-narcissistic piece on how much I love food. Should I be worried that not a thing has changed? No. I'll save that for the quarter-life-crisis I'm due for next year.

A full year of cooking, taking bad photographs and borderline-raving to the gourmands of the blogosphere... and I'm hungry for more. Sigh. Beyond help.

The first few posts averaged around 15 views, on a good day. That didn't deter me. I continued eating, writing, eating whilst writing. Over the course of a few months, thanks to friends (and mum's friends) and word-of-mouth, the Stats-meter took an uphill journey. I still don't understand why anybody would be interested in reading a paragraph on the nuances of sour cream versus Greek yogurt versus creme fraiche. It's madness.

I get recognised as the "food blog girl." I get asked about what brand of cocoa powder to buy and what steak to order, more than I do about nebulizers and antibiotics. I get so many heart whelming "I loved your strawberry scones". All this for food-blog-hopping and baking brownies! It's insane and amazing, but mostly insane.

Oh, I've had brickbats, as well. "A doctor like you shouldn't be wasting time","why this obssession with food" and similar. But for the most part, I'm doing what I love and nothing makes me happier than being recognised as the "food blog girl."

So here's a huge thank you to all the like minded people who come here to indulge their inner fat-child. I will continue to ply you all with all the butter and demerara sugar Nilgris has on its shelves.

This calls for a celebration: I'll be reviewing the best food I've eaten this year today, as well as posting the recipe (as Part Two, tomorrow) for Salted Peanut, Triple Chocolate, Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies. It's one of those things that give you food-gasms and epiphanies... and there are no controlled substances involved.

Jettez un coup d'oeil (that's the last of the rudimentary French garnered at school: roughly translates to "Cast your eyes") on photos taken during a meal at 601 at The Park and dessert at Latitude 13 by The Park.

The Park needs no introduction. I don't have to talk about the brilliant hospitality, the classy interiors or the college-educated waiters (at least at 601). I, especially, do not have to mention the prices (they're pretty high, I'll stop at that. Like the Salvatore Ferragamo pumps on magazine spreads that just have "Price on Request" underneath them).

W and I had saved The Park for a special occasion. As usual, we just ended up going there dressed in work wear (not good when you work in a hospital) while on the hunt for a clean loo.

The clink of cutlery and Hunger (my omnipresent, un-imaginary friend) steered us in the direction of 601.
Hunger also dictates you order basic things that fill your soul and stomach. So. Pizza and Fish-and-chips. Sat back, in preprandial glee, almost saying "show us what you got. Entertain us."

Soon after placing the order, we were served with the bread basket filled to the brim with soft, delicate little dinner rolls brushed with butter, sprinkled with Sea Salt and grains and baked to a gorgeous golden-brown.

Carbaholics that we are, we finished the whole basket. We weren't going back there any day soon, so appearances didn't matter. The open butter chiplet should confirm the fact.

And the pizza that made me a convert from a only-deep dish-please girl to a thin-crust-can-taste-this-good? girl.

Chunky, juicy chicken.

Yummy jalapenos.

Gooey mozzarella.

Sprinkled with a wee bit of dried oregano and chilli.

This is better than the pizzas I've had at Tuscana. And it costs about the same.

As for the fish-and-chips.

Golden, non-oily, breaded-to-perfection fish fingers.

Fries that were almost a metre-long; crisp on the outside, tender and steamy on the inside. One thing I have to mention is the palpable grains of salt coating the fries. Nirvana. Hello, hello, hello!

The in-house tartar sauce and ketchup? Drinkable. Ask for refills. You're paying enough.

All I needed was a huge glass of chocolate milkshake with a striped red straw and I'd be done with good food for life.

The two of us finished every single morsel on the plate. That left us with no room whatsoever for dessert.

So on another occasion (Eid, to be precise), the cousins and I hit Latitude 13 by The Park on Wallace Garden Road.

The bill wasn't frighteningly high here, as we ordered the Hi-Tea combo. For 190 bucks (exclusive of taxes), you get a mug of coffee/tea and a dessert.

I got the Chocolate Truffle Cake, because it was Eid, and calories don't count on Eid.

Sarbee had an Apple-cranberry (I think) tart with vanilla ice cream (?gelato).

Love the chocolate syrup and condensed-milk zig-zags.

Also love it when ice-cream speckled with vanilla beans forms a cold puddle over flaky tart.

N joined us after dessert #1 at Sandy's Chocolate Laboratory, so she just had an apres-dessert sorbet. I'm blessed with crazies in the family; girls who do not fuss about one-dessert-per-day limits and the like.

The tea was a mug of garden-variety English Breakfast.

But my Cafe Mocha, with a thin almond biscotti, was delicious. If you discount the alarming smiley face.

Here's to biting into the new year!

Tomorrow, all you lovely people get to feast your eyes on the aforementioned triple-chocolate-chip-peanut-butter cookies.

Auf Wiederhausen! (yes, I treat myself to late night masochism in the form of Project Runway, cookies on the side).

P.S. Before I forget, thank you all so much. Again.