Hii friends,
After long long time!!!!
It has been so long since I posted something in this blog.. I came to India a couple of weeks back and got spoiled by all petting and pampering by my parents and in laws. Everyone were so excited to cook for us and so I hardly get any chance to cook now a days. Still, as cooking is my life breath, it is impossible for me to be without cooking for days together. This is the first time I came to India after staring this blog. I showed my blog, dashboard etc to all my relatives and friends. They gave me enough motivation, encouragement and wishes for my future posts.
About this cake.. This super soft, moist and fluffy cake is very low in calories as it is made using whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour, curds instead of egg and oil instead of butter. I am not a very big fan of cinnamon. But then I started realizing that adding cinnamon powder to banana cakes gives an awesome taste to it. As it is eggless, it can be prepared by vegetarians and non-vegetarians.
Try to use the bananas which are big and has black spots on its skin. The more riper the banana is, the more sweeter your cake will be.
Have the ingredients and measurements right, the cake will taste simply great. Let's go through the recipe. Try and let me know your feedback.
Ingredients
- Whole wheat flour - 1 cup
- Baking powder - 1 tsp
- Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
- Cinnamon powder - 1/2 tsp
- Salt - a pinch
- Candied Cherries - 1/4 cup, roughly chopped
- Sugar - 1/2 cup + 2 tblspns
- Thick unsour yogurt - 1/4 cup
- Oil - 1/4 cup
- Banana - 2, medium sized
- Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
- Apple Cider Vinegar- 1 tblspn
- Flax seeds powder - 1 tblspn
- Hot water - 3 tblspn
Method
- Preheat the oven @180 deg C. Grease your cake/ loaf pan with oil/ butter. Dust some flour, spread them all around the pan. Tap off the excess flour. This step will allow the cake from sticking to the pan.
- Mix together flax seeds powder and hot water. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes.
- Sieve the dry ingredients together for about 2 or 3 times; Wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon powder and salt. This will make the cake more light and spongy.
- Take some flour in a bowl and mix the chopped candied cherries. Keep aside
- In another bowl, mix all the wet ingredients one by one; oil, sugar, yogurt, vanilla essence, mashed bananas, apple cider vinegar and flax seeds slurry taken out of the fridge.
- Now add half of the sifted dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Fold in gently, as slow as you can. Do not over mix or mix vigorously as it would take away the aeration of the cake.
- Now add the remaining dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix in slowly until everything is combined
- Add the flour coated cherries to the batter and fold in gently.
- Pour the batter to the cake/ loaf pan. Bake in the preheated oven @180 deg C for about 40 to 50 minutes or until the tooth pick inserted comes out clean. The temperature of each oven will vary from each other. So, keep an eye often until it is baked.
- Once baked, take out of the oven. Run a knife over the edges to separate the cake from the pan.
- Allow it to cool for 15 minutes before you remove from the pan.
- Cut / slice once it cools down completely.
- Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee
As I am a passionate baker, I bake at least once a week. But until now, I have never baked a simple vanilla sponge cake. I was trying to bake a perfect vanilla sponge cake, which has no eggs and no butter. Finally, I made it. I saw many recipes for the same, mixed and matched almost all recipes, used my baking tips and at last my vanilla sponge cake with dry fruits and nuts was accomplished.
My sincere thanks to my co-sister, who gave me an awesome idea for baking a sponge cake. For the first time, I used that technique on my cakes and it turned out super soft!!
The tip was like this;
Mix 1 tblspn of flax seeds powder and 3 tblspn of hot water (neither warm nor boiling. Just hot). Mix well and refrigerate for sometime. Then, add it to the batter.
Another tip of mine is, adding Apple Cider Vinegar for all my eggless cakes, which does all the magic.
Here goes the Recipe
Ingredients
- All purpose flour/ maida - 1 + 1/2 cup
- Baking powder - 1 + 1/2 tsp
- Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
- Curd - 1 cup, well beaten
- Sugar - 3/4 cup
- Apple Cider Vinegar - 1 tblspn
- Flax seeds powder - 1 tblspn
- Hot water - 3 tblspn
- Chopped dry fruits and nuts - 1/2 cup
- Oil - 1/2 cup
- Vanilla essence - 1 tblspn
- Flour - 1 tblspn, to coat the dry fruits and nuts
- Salt - a pinch
- Cashews - few
Method
- In a bowl, mix flax seeds powder and hot water. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Chop dry fruits and nuts. Coat them with 1 tblspn flour, so that it will not sink to the bottom while baking.
- Pre-heat the oven @200 deg C. Grease your cake tin or loaf pan with oil. Dust some flour all around, pat it so that it coats all the sides. Tap off the excess flour
- Dry Ingredients:Sieve together maida, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Sieve it at least twice.
- Wet Ingredients: In another vessel, beat the curd and sugar, until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- Now add oil, vanilla essence, flax seeds slurry and apple cider vinegar. Mix everything well.
- To the wet ingredients, add half of the flour mixture, fold in gently.
- Now add the remaining half, fold in gently. Use spatula to mix it.
- Now add the chopped dry fruits and nuts and again, fold in gently.
- Transfer this batter to a greased cake tin or loaf pan. Sprinkle some cashew nuts or any nuts of your choice.
- Bake in the pre-heated oven @200 deg C for about 30 to 35 minutes, or until the toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Once baked, remove from the oven and run your knife around the edges to loosen it.
- Remove from the pan after 15 minutes.
- Cut and serve once it is cooled down completely.
This cake is very soft and moist and has a very nice flavor, which will be loved by all, from children to elder ones. I did not imagine that this simple vegetable will be so delicious when added to the cake batter. The specialty of this cake is that, it has no butter and no eggs!! Also, the maida can be replaced with whole wheat flour.
In this recipe I replaced egg with yoghurt and the outcome was surprisingly great. Yes.. I just took a chance this time. This cake was prepared for my best friend, who is fond of cakes. Even my hubby is very fond of cakes, and when it has no butter he eats it without any guilt. This is one of such cakes, he liked a lot and asked me to prepare this more often here after.
Recipe for Eggless Moist Carrot Cake
Ingredients
- All Purpose Flour / Wheat Flour - 1 cup (170gms)
- Grated Carrot - 1/2 cup (More or less as you prefer)
- Yoghurt/Curd - 3/4 cup (200ml)
- Oil - 1/4 cup (60ml) Olive, Canola or Sunflower. I used sunflower oil
- Milk - 2 tblspn
- Sugar - 1/2 cup (100gms)
- Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
- Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
- Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
- Salt - a pinch
- Chopped nuts of your choice - 1/2 cup
- Apple Cider Vinegar - 1 tblspn (Optional)
Method
- Preheat the oven @180 deg C. Grease a cake tin with oil/butter. Dust some flour, spread all over the tin and tap off the excess flour.
- Sieve together, Flour, Salt, Baking Powder and Baking Soda. Set aside. Sieve it 2 times at least.
- Now comes the wet ingredients; Mix milk, sugar, oil and curd. Mix until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- Now add vanilla essence, grated carrot, 1/4th of the nuts and apple cider vinegar. Mix well.
- Now, add half of the flour mixture, folding in gently avoiding any lumps.
- Now add the remaining flour, folding in gently.
- Transfer it to the greased baking tin. Even it using back of your spoon and tap it gently.
- Sprinkle the remaining nuts. You can also mix the entire nuts in the batter. I liked this way.
- Bake it in the pre-heated oven @180deg C for about 30-35 minutes, or until the tooth pick inserted comes out clean. The baking time varies from oven to oven. So always keep an eye that it not charred.
- Once baked, run your knife through the edges of your pan to loosen it. Let it sit for 20 minutes, before you remove it from the pan
I love baking!! And love baking something new and different every time. I was going through some youtube videos and happened to see a video about this recipe. The recipe required egg. But I somehow wanted to avoid eggs in my preparation. So, I made an eggless dough. I also modified the filling part.
Here is the detailed recipe with some pics for the better understanding.
Ingredients
For the dough
- All purpose Flour - 2 cups
- Milk - 1/4 cup
- Water - 1/2 cup
- Salt - 1.5 tsp
- Sugar - 3 tsp
- Butter - 2 tsp
- yeast - 1.5 tsp
For the filling
- Nutella - 1/2 cup
- Coconut - 1/2 cup (Freshly grated)
- Powdered sugar - 2 tsp (Optional)
- Cinnamon powder - 1 tsp (Optional)
Other Ingredients
- Melted Butter - For greasing
- Any jam - 3 to 4 tsp (I used lemon jam)
- Dessicated Coconut - to sprinkle after baking
Method
For the Dough
- Mix Maida and salt in a large bowl. Mix until combined
- In another microwave safe bowl, combine milk and water. Microwave until it is just warm. You can also do on stove top. It should not be hot because, hot water has the capacity to kill the yeast.
- Add yeast and sugar to the milk water mixture and keep it aside for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes the milk water mixture would have become frothy, if you had done everything well. If not, you need to start the entire process from the beginning.
- Now slowly pour the milk water mixture in to the flour, kneading well. Keep kneading for about 10 minutes, until the dough starts leaving your hands.
- Spread some melted butter all over the dough and knead again
- Transfer the dough in a greased bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for a couple of hours
For the filling
- In a microwave safe bowl, melt Nutella in microwave. Do not melt it too much. This is done just to loosen the Nutella
- Mix coconut, powdered sugar and cinnamon in to it. Keep it aside. Your filling is now ready
How to proceed?
- Preheat the oven @175 deg C.
- After 2 hours, your dough would have become double the size. Punch out the air pockets from it.
- Divide the dough in to 5 or 6 lemon sized portions.
- Rotate each portion between your fists in order to get a round shape.
- Dust some flour on one portion and roll it using your rolling pin
- Keep some filling in the middle. Bring together all the edges to seal it.
- Dust some flour again and gently roll it. Make sure the filling doesn't come out.
- Cut the rolled dough 12 times
- Now, rotate each petal in 90 degree angle, to form a shape of the flower.
- Arrange them in a baking tray and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes.
- Brush each flower using some melted butter. If you wish, place some jam in the centre.
- Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 30 - 35 minutes, until the top portion becomes golden in colour.
- Once it is baked, take out of the oven and brush some melted butter again on top of each flower bread
- Sprinkle some dessicated coconut . Allow it to cool and then serve.
