You can make any occasion a festive one by serving a slice of cake at the end of a meal.

There are a couple of do’s and don’ts when you come across a recipe you’d like to have a go at. Go through the recipe and see if you have all the ingredients. Prepping for a cake is easy and putting all the ingredients together to make this fabulous cake is even easier.

Basic measurements that every baker should know:

• Butter -200 gm = 1 cup (2 nos -100 gm slabs)
• Sugar – 200 gm =1 cup
• Flour – 200 gm= 1 3/4 cup cos ‘ 1 cup of Flour = 125 gm
• Vanilla essence – 1 tablespoon or 1 tbsp = 3 teaspoon or 3 tsp
• Do not open the oven door till 3/4 of the baking time is over.
• The cake tin should be filled 3/4 with the cake batter. There should be at least 2 to 3 inch space above the cake batter.

Recipe

• Butter-200gm/ 1 cup. Any table butter
• Sugar-200 gm /1 cup
• Eggs- 4
• Vanilla extract- 1 tbsp
• Flour- 200 gm / 1 3/4 cup
• Baking powder- 1 1/2 tsp
• Milk- 1/2 cup

Method:

• Sift Flour and baking powder together and keep aside.
• Coarsely powder the sugar in the Food Processor and transfer to a bowl.
• Warm the butter. (10 sec.in the microwave) in a mixing bowl.
• Break 4 eggs into a small bowl and keep aside.
• Preheat oven to 180 deg.c
• Grease a cake tin lightly with butter and dust with flour. Remove excess.
• Cream butter and sugar with an electric beater till smooth and glossy. (a minute or so)
• Add eggs, one at a time and beat well after each addition.
• Add vanilla extract and blend with the beater.
• Add sifted flour and fold in with the egg beater.
• Finally Add milk, fold into the cake batter and pour into a greased and dusted cake tin.
• In case the cake batter curdles at this point Add 2tbsp of Flour
• Bake at 180 deg.c for 40 minutes in a preheated oven, a toothpick inserted in the centre should come out clean.
• Leave to cool for 10 minutes.
• Slice and serve. Enjoy!

Chefs tips and Variations:

• You could add the juice of 2 limes to the batter for a Lemon Tea Cake.
• A tablespoon of instant coffee could be dissolved in 1/2 cup of milk mentioned and added to the batter for a Coffee Cake.
• 2-3 tablespoon of cocoa could also be dissolved in 1/2 cup of milk mentioned for a Light Chocolate Cake
• A mixture of 2 tbsp of coffee and 3 tbsp of cocoa dissolved in 1/2 cup of milk could give you a Mocha Cake.
• For an Eggless Vanilla Cake you could substitute each egg for 1 /4 cup of yoghurt/ curd or 1/2 cup of mashed banana, so for the recipe above which calls for 4 eggs- you could add 1 cup of yoghurt and 1 cup of mashed banana.
• For a Caramel Cake you could add 1/4 cup of caramel syrup to the cake. (caramel syrup using 1/2 cup of sugar)
• Infact a couple of months back I tried out using the same recipe with a blend of cinnamon, coffee and vanilla and the result – the cake lasted hardly a day!
• The weight of the cake would be approximately a kilogram .

Till my Next post

Cheers,

Rose