Baking Fever !!!!

( The above picture is my attempt at fancy decorating a cake piece 😺)

Everyone who loves a bit of cooking, dreams of baking a cake one day . So was me since childhood(Though I didn't have any idea of cooking then 😝 making a cake was on the list). During old times we bought cake only on special occasions like birthdays. And maybe a bonus one during Christmas.Cake was not as popular as it is now and didn't get to eat it whenever we craved for one unlike now . Here I am talking about the cake with icing and frosting. Of course boring plum cakes were easily available then also. But as a child I was not at all a fan of it.

After being a grown up, and managing my own home kitchen, I did try once to bake a cake but failed miserably and the cake was hard as a stone. Mostly because I was not familiar with those microwave oven settings. It may seem funny but I have never used a microwave in my life and never bothered to get one for myself. Was always skeptical of that thing ,after hearing about the possible hidden health risks and dangerous waves.

If you are in Toronto you know every rentals will be provided with an oven.💃 And that's how I decided to give another try. A recipe from one of my relative has been sitting in my phone for a long time. And surprisingly I was very much impressed by the very first cake. So this post is all about cake recipes and cakes.

I became confident after the first successful outcome and thereafter tried various versions. Once you understand the basics its very easy. You just have to do a bit of trial and error, especially for the oven time and temperature.

Here is the borrowed recipe of my first successful wheat cake.

Wheat Flour - 1 1/2 cups

Baking powder - 2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

Salt - A pinch

Sugar - 1 cup

Oil - 1 cup

Sour curd - 1/2 cup

Eggs - 3

Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

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Mix the eggs and sugar and beat till fluffy. Add the oil and vanilla essence. Lastly add the curd bit by bit and mix well. Now sieve and mix all the dry ingredients. Fold gently. Grease and dust the mould with flour. Preheat the oven to 180 degree celcius and bake for 10-15 minutes. The time varies for each oven. Check by inserting a tooth pick. If it comes out clean, time to take it out.

Instead of egg you can add banana mash. But haven't tried it yet.

I tried cream cheese frosting by beating butter, cream cheese and sugar. To be frank I didn't like it much because it had a cheesy, bit sour taste.

The next time when I made the same ,I added a bit of nuts and raisins. Just on the top only to add a bit decorations 😁 because I hate biting nuts in any food. I can eat tons of it separately but not when incorporated in any kind of food. In Indian cuisines people add a lot of raisins and nuts in foods like biriyani, desserts which I hate absolutely. 😃

Next time I had the thoughts of making marble cake. I watched some tutorials which showed preparing two separate mixes. I love shortcuts. So I made the wheat mix as earlier, separated half of it and added 2 tbs of cocoa powder(I used unsweetened dark cocoa which is a bit bitter.So used only 2 tbs) Added both mix layer by layer and gave a swirl with the back of a spoon and voila !!

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Next was chocolate cake. Same procedures but instead of wheat flour used all purpose flour and 3 tbs of cocoa powder. Also skipped the curd. And instead of three eggs I took two. To correct the consistency add a bit of milk/coffee at the end.

So I thought of upgrading my tools at this point and got myself an electric beater. And the next one on list was the fluffy sponge cake. Here also I used all purpose flour. The sponginess of the cake depends on how perfectly you fluff up the egg , sugar mix. For this you need an electric beater. Beat for 5-8 minutes thoroughly by adding sugar slowly. After adding the dry ingredients gently fold it and incorporate in the egg fluff. It was super soft in the beginning. But the next day the outer crust started to harden. I kept a damp towel covered for sometime to make it moist again. I don't know what went wrong here.

But this was my favorite one. So airy, light and fluffy when it freshly came out of the oven❤️

This is the chocolate cake with frosting I made for our anniversary. Once you start baking, you automatically take the responsibility of baking cake for all the special occasions.

Next came my birthday. And once again dutifully I baked a chocolate brownie with marshmallow toppings for myself. Marshmallows are great. It saves you from beating and whipping the cream. After baking,just toss marshmallows generously on the brownie and put it back in the oven when its still hot for two or three minutes. Marshmallows melt and your brownie is all gooey and creamy. Drizzle some chocolate sauce and thats it.