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.

Boring Disclaimer. Marbled Chocolate-Banana Bread with Peanut Butter Frosting.

After almost a decade of their existence, I've realised the purpose of blogs. To be foist-fully heard.

No, I'm serious. I can text it, Status Update it and yell it along with the best of them, but I won't be heard as much as if I post it along with pictures of "deelishus!" food.

I'm so thoroughly grateful and happy to have people in my life who offer to send me cookies from across the seas and soup from across the streets. And to the people who make curious/concerned phone calls at the increasingly skyrocketing Bangalore-to-Madras rates. You're all very cool. Very occasionally.

Disclaimers aren't as cool, though. They are pesky, annoying and I almost always check "Agree to all terms and conditions" without reading them. You might want to read this bit.. You can doze off and pretend you have. I almost always do. Here goes.

Kindly take everything I say with a pinch of salt (make it Fleur de Sel, if you can lay your hands on some). I never, ever speak as a medical practitioner in this site. Butter and dark chocolate do not cancel each other out. My 8-year-old sister can tell you that. As a doctor who sees hoards of people with a plethora of lifestyle diseases, whose origins are almost always in the refrigerator, I know I have a responsibility. Which I hope I fulfill within the confines of my Outpatient Department and the people who call me for the purpose of medical advice.

On this blog? I'm your average twenty-four-year-old. I care equally about shockingly-blue skinny jeans and the fibrofatty plaques on  arterial walls. I blissfully lie to myself that Frozen-Yogurt is healthy. I touch the petri-dishes that handle-bars on the local trains are, without the fact even registering in. I regularly extol the virtues of raw cookie dough (the kind with eggs in it).

Sometimes I do not know if I'm typing out on a sordid Blogger text box or performing theatrics at The Globe. That's just me. I'm sorry. It's nearly impossible for me to completely cut the medicine out of it. I might tell you to add in flax seeds or talk about how crucial Calcium is.

But, please, please take caricature-ish verses on Butter with a pinch handful of salt. Call me during working hours, and I'll ask you to stay off both.

Not here. Of course, if it falls under the ambiguous umbrella of Healthy, I'll tag it.

I've spoken enough for my generation and the next. We'll head on to the Recipe of the Day.

Banana Bread. You can never have enough recipes for it.

This loaf has less calories than your average nut-studded, brown-butter-filled loaf. It has chocolate in it, though. Taste (and calorie count) is heightened by the addition of creamy, slightly salty Peanut Butter Frosting. That's all I'm saying.

Latha (tamil-muslim-word for big sister)'s little helper enjoys the cake of our labour!

Marbled Banana Bread:
(recipe source for bread: Post Punk Kitchen)


Ingredients:

1 cup mashed over-ripe banana
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil (canola, sunflower)
1/3 cup milk (make it almond to go Vegan!)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
6 tablespoons boiling water, divided

Peanut Butter Frosting:
1/4 cup peanut butter (Creamy/crunchy are both fine)
2 tbsps milk
1 tbsp butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt.
Method:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mash bananas (3 or so), until you get a cup's worth.

Beat in the sugar, oil, vanilla and milk until you get a smooth mix.

In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt until combined. Fold it into your banana-egg mix gently. It's OK if there are tiny streaks of flour. Do NOT overmix.

Measure out one cup's worth of batter in a separate bowl and keep both portions aside.

In a small cup, mix together 3 tbsps cocoa powder and 3 tbsps boiling water until it forms a homogeneous mix. Add this cocoa to the cup's worth of banana bread batter and fold with a fork until it's combined.

To the remaining plain banana bread batter, add 3 tbsps of boiling water and mix with fork until combined.

You now have your batter duo.

 Layer one batter over one corner of the greased loaf tin.

Add the chocolate-filled batter to the other half.

Swirl it around carefully with a blunt bread knife. Over mixing defeats the purpose of a marbled bread!

Bake for around 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Slice and frost with the Peanut Butter frosting while still warm.

Peanut butter frosting comprises of all the ingredients blitzed together in a blender. Thin out with more milk or sweeten/thicken it with more powdered sugar. It really is that simple!

Enjoy with a cup of tea/coffee.

Or just attack the frosting, then the bittersweet chocolate portion and then the scented banana portion.

Laatha's little helper is always right. When it comes to food.

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.

Crepes/Breakfast in bed.

Even if you've been reading the blog for only a couple of weeks now, or if you have the pleasure of knowing me in real life (modesty, begone!), you know I'm a big fan of food Breakfast.

However, on weekdays, even managing to throw down a Nature Valley bar (um, no) and a glass of milk (plain milk=hell, NO) is a luxury and a half. And nobody wakes up in time for breakfast on weekends. So what is the point of all these breakfast recipes, you might ask.

I'll tell you.
If you've ever been stone-broke, and you're obligated/bullied/coerced into giving someone a surprise, nothing beats Breakfast in Bed^(Trademarked). There's something decadent about waking up to a steaming mug of English Breakfast, Spanish omelettes and a stack of pancakes drenched in syrup. With a random roadside flower to top it all off.

Whether it's for the cousin who begs you for "fancy breakfast" in exchange for unlimited access to her Body Shop's Coconut Lip Butter. Or for the mum who gets off kitchen duty for just one day in the week. Especially if you're a guy, cooking for a girl (note: even if you can't cook very well, throw in some chocolate and it'll go from unedible to amazing).

Today, you can see how I made traditional French crepes. You will need a crepe pan for this, but you can totally make it in a saucepan/dosa tawa that isn't totally flat.

Use these crepes as blank templates, like you would with bread or brownies. Spread them with Nutella, serve with whipping cream, honey, whatever suits the pampered-person-of-the-day's fancy. You can even use them as savoury crepes, filling them with cheddar, sausages or even for Asian seafood rolls!

But. They taste pretty great the French way, hot off the griddle with a squirt of lemon juice and a dusting of powdered sugar. Yum.

Believe in breakfast. Eat it. I do, since it's the closest I get to being a champion of any sort.

French Crepes:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup flour
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
zest of half a lemon/orange
1 tablespoon butter (melted)
Method:

Mix everything in a bowl.

Chubby two-year-old hands are best for mixing.

Do not overbeat, as you'll get gluggy crepes.

Heat a crepe/non-stick pan over medium. Add a pat of butter.

Spread it around with a tissue.

Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter.

Immediately swirl so that the batter spreads over the entire circumference of the pan.

Cook for around 2 minutes.

Add some butter along the edges so it'll be easy to flip it.

Flip it over (I used a spatula). Cook for another minute.

Tip it onto the serving plate.

If you're adding any type of filling, don't flip it.

Instead add in the filling on the uncooked side and fold the cooked sides over the filling.

Use whatever is fresh and in season.

Mahableshwar strawberries and Malta oranges are yummy.

Simply chop up a cup of strawberries and soak them in 2 tbsps orange juice and 1 tbsp white sugar.

Serve with greek yogurt, cream cheese or whipped cream. Sweetened, of course.

Add bananas, peanut butter, honey, whatever your tastebuds adore.

Maintain a minute of mournful silence (for the absence of Nutella. Goshdarnit) and dig in!

Bon appetit, mes amours!

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.