Eggless Banana, Date and Walnut Loaf

My baking escapades scores  more in number than the sweets I have been making. I don't miss celebrating any festival and all our festivals are associated with some kind of sweet. And it gets done as part of it. So I go for baking to satisfy the sweet cravings. During our Palakkad trip, we had various sweets and savories. That's another reason which pushed me to bake, yesterday. I had a bottle of  dates syrup and wanted to use in baking. I googled for a date loaf and found  a suitable recipe at JoyOfBaking. I tweaked the original recipe a lot that my recipe may look entirely different from the original one. Anyways, I started with that recipe as the base and modified to suit the ingredients at hand and to make it egg less. Hence this Banana, Date and walnut loaf. 

I replaced the nutmeg with cardamom to give an Indian flavor. Believe me the combo of banana, date and cardamom was outstanding. The aroma while it was baking filled the entire house. I couldn't wait to cool and slice. Before I was done with the slicing, I polished off two slices. It was so tempting that I was afraid I might finish off the whole loaf  before my husband is back from office. My loaf tin is small, so I halved the original recipe. I felt the date syrup and banana would have been enough for the sweetness. The 1/4 cup of sugar did make it more sweet but not the cloyingly sweet kind.  I liked it.  But if you intend to serve along your evening tea/coffee, you may omit the sugar altogether or reduce it. In case you are using the dates, then the amount of sugar is required.

You need


Whole wheat flour -1 cup
Baking soda - 1/2 tspn
Baking powder - 1/2 tspn
Salt - a pinch
Cardamom powder - 1/4 tspn
Walnuts - 1/4 cup, toasted and chopped
Banana - 1, small
Date syrup - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Oil - 1/4 cup

Method

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom powder and salt. Add the toasted and chopped walnuts. In a blender jar, take chopped  bananas, sugar, and oil. Blend to make a homogeneous paste. Fold in the flour mixture into the wet mix. Stir to mix it completely. Transfer to a greased and dusted loaf tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 55 minutes or till  tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

 

Eggless Pumpkin Apricot Cake

Initially I had planned  to use the apricot received as part of the Arusuvai Friendship Chain in a baking recipe. And I bookmarked few recipes too. I tried a cake using the recipe from Allrecipes. The original recipe was for two cakes. Since I wanted to bake a single cake, I halved the ingredients. I replaced eggs with flaxseed meal and used whole wheat flour (atta) in place of all purpose flour(maida). Except for these two changes, I have followed the original recipe. 

I chose this recipe since I have never baked with pumpkin puree.  Its just mixing the wet and dry ingredients and no creaming/whisking required here. Actually you can do all the mixing in one bowl as mentioned in the original recipe. Since I am used to doing it separately and also wanted to be sure that the wet ingredients are combined well for even distribution.

Ingredients

• Dried apricots  -8 nos  1/4 cup puree
• Pumpkin puree - 1 cup
• Whole wheat flour - 2cups
• Baking powder - 1 tspn
• Baking soda - 1/2 tspn
• Ground cinnamon - 1 tspn
• Salt -1/4 tspn
• Caster sugar  - 1 cup (I powdered granulated sugar not very fine)
• Flax seed meal - 1 tblspn mixed in 4 tblspn of water
• Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup

Method

Prepare the apricot puree

Soak the apricots in boiling water for half an hour. Water should be enough to cover the apricots. Puree the apricots in a mixer grinder. Add some water while grinding. The puree should measure 1/4 cup. You can use the soaked water to make it to 1/4 cup.

Prepare the pumpkin puree

Take 250 gm of pumpkin. Peel and deseed the pumpkin and then chop it into cubes. Steam cook in the pressure cooker or microwave until it is tender. Puree the pumpkin to get 1 cup of puree.

To bake

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and sugar in a bowl.  In another bowl, add flax seeds mixed in water, apricot and pumpkin purees. Make a well in the centre of the fry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and mix until they are just combined. 

The batter consistency is similar to that of muffins. At first, I had mixed flax seed meal in 3 tablespoon of water. But I found the batter to be very thick and added. another tablespoon of water to get muffin batter consistency.

Bake in a greased and dusted tin at 180 C for 45 minutes or until the skewer inserted comes out clean

The cake was moist and airy. The cake is just sweet enough for my palate. If you prefer it be very sweet, then increase the sugar by 1/4 cup more. After tasting, I felt addition of a handful of nuts/tutti fruity/chocolate chips will be better to make it more than just a plain cake. Else a butter cream frosting would have complemented the cake well but decided not to go for it since I did not want to add more calories.

I will be sending mystery ingredients, as part of the Arusuvai Frienship Chain, to Rajani of Healthy Slurps and Rituparna of ChocolatesAndDreams

Eggless Carrot Cake ~ Butterless, Low Fat & Healthy

Carrot cake is one of the first few cakes I baked. During those beginning days, I stick to the recipe and never attempted to make any changes. Then after few attempts and reading many more recipes in various blogs, I started tweaking the recipe. This recipe is a result of my attempt to use whole wheat flour, low fat, healthy cake.

Ingredients

•  Wheat flour - 1 cup
• Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Grated carrots - 1 cup
• Refined Oil - 1/3 cup (I used rice bran)
• Buttermilk - 3/4 cup
• Vanilla essence - 2 tspn
• All spice powder -1/2 tspn  (Combo of cinnamon,star anise, cloves powdered together)
• Baking powder - 1 tspn
• Baking soda - 1 tspn
• Chopped nuts/tutti fruity - 1/2 cup

 Method

Sieve together maida, baking powder, soda and spice powder. Add oil, sugar and buttermilk. Whisk until its smooth and is well combined. Now fold the wet ingredients into the dry, mixing with each addition.

Transfer the batter to a greased and dusted cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

 

 

The cake is very soft and moist. Since the cake on its own is very sweet, there isn't any need for frosting.  I baked one batch in an aluminium foil box to be taken for a friend.

 

 

 

No Bake Strawberry Cheesecake

Though I wanted to clear my drafts at the earliest, I do not want to postpone the posting of recipes which makes use of the seasonal fruits/vegetables. Strawberries are in plenty in the market and its hard to ignore those red beauties.  When  Mahabaleshwar is nearby, you can find them in heaps at the carts lined up near the market. I wanted to make best use of them during the season. My husband is happy with the milkshake. He says why bother to use them in any other way when the milkshake is heavenly. While looking for strawberry recipes, I came across the cheese cake recipe at Nandita's. And I decided it was the dessert for the New Year's eve.  I did not make much changes to her recipe except that I used some chocolate biscuit too and increased the sugar by 1/4 cup.

For the base

 

• Marie biscuit - 1 packets (24 nos)
• Chocolate biscuit - 1 pkt (I used Hide & Seek)
• Melted butter - 3 tblspn

 

For the cake

 

• Fresh Strawberries - 250 gm
• Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Hung curd - 1 cup
• Fresh cream - 1 cup (used Amul cream 200ml)
• Agar agar/China grass - 1 pkt (10 gm)
• Water - 4 tblspn

Method

 

I used a combination of marie biscuit and chocolate biscuits. You could use marie biscuit alone. Pulse the biscuit coarsely in the mixer along with the melted butter. Or take the biscuits in a zip lock cover and powder it coarsely with the chappathi roller.

  

Take a round tin. Line it with cling film. Make sure you leave some of the film hanging over the edge, to make it easier to lift the cake out of the tin, later. Spread the biscuit mix on the tin. The base should be firm. So press it down tight. Freeze the base for half an hour. Meanwhile prepare the cake mix.

 

 

 

Mix hung curd and cream in a bowl. To get hung curd, take almost 4 cups of fresh curd and tie it in a muslin cloth and hang it. The whey will be drained and you will be left with creamy curd.

 

 

Puree strawberry with sugar till smooth.

 Mix in the strawberry puree to the curd+cream mix. Mix well so that its uniformly blended in.

 

 

 

The agar agar I used were strands. I put them in warm water for 10 minutes. Then put that bowl in a pan of boiling water for the china grass to fully dissolve. Add the liquefied agar agar to the mix. Mix it well with a spatula. I reserved few drops of the puree and made a marble effect. But on setting, the effect was not seen, though. Leave in the refrigerator for overnight, to set.

 

 

 

Once set, take the pan and pull the cake out by lifting the cling film. You could garnish with some fresh strawberries or strawberry preserve. I served it plain

 

 

 

Notes:

 

The quantity of agar agar used  helps in the setting of the cake. I used only half a packet (5 gms) which I found was not enough. On leaving it in the fridge overnight also, the cake did not set well. Later I had to move it to the freezer to set. Then it set well. But once taken out, after sometime, it started melting like an ice cream. The full packet of agar agar would have worked well. But for that, the cake tasted well. No after taste of agar agar.

Kerala Style Eggless Plum/Fruit Cake

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous year ahead. Come December, all the bakeries in Kerala will have piled up the plum cakes. Though those plum cakes are available through out the year, the ones that arrive during the Christmas, is something special. We never miss to buy them during the season. I have been on the look out for the recipe and Aparna posted a Kerala style fruit cake. Now she did quite a research on the variants of the fruit cake and finally zeroed in on Ammini Ramachandran's recipe.

I decided to follow Aparna's since she said that recipe is close to what she had in mind and  her recipe has only two egg whites. As per her recipe, it was for two cakes. I wanted only one cake. So scaling down the recipe will mean only one egg white, which I decided to replace with milk. I agree the texture is not the same, but I got a decent cake and taste was close to what we got back in Kerala. 

Here is my version

You need

Dry fruits for soaking

• Raisins - 1/2 cup (I used a mix of black and brown ones)
• Dates - 1/2 cup
• Tutti fruity - 1/4 cup
• Candied orange peel - 2 tblspn
• Candied ginger - 2 tblspn
• Nuts - 1/2 cup
• Orange juice - 1/4 cup

For Caramel Sauce

• Sugar - 3 tblspn
• Boiling water - 1/4 cup

For the cake

• Maida - 1 cup
• Butter - 100 gms/ 1/2 cup
• Powdered brown sugar - 3/4 cup

• Baking powder - 1/2 tspn
• Baking soda - 1/4 tspn
• Milk - 2 tblspn

• Spice powder - 1/2 tspn (Combo of clove+cinnamon+nutmeg powdered together)
• Ginger powder - 1/4 tspn
• Shahjeera- 1/2 tspn
• Vanilla essence - 1/2 tspn

Method.

Take the dry fruit mix in a bowl. Add orange juice. The more it is soaked, better it tastes. I soaked for two days under refrigeration. On the day of baking, bring it to room temperature. Microwave it for 2 minutes or cook it on stove top till the fruits soften and the liquid dries up. Leave it to cool

To prepare the caramel, take sugar in a kadai and heat it. Let the sugar melt. Let the melted sugar take a dark brown color. Keep stirring it. Keep 1/4 cup of boiling water ready. When it reaches the brown color, slowly add the boiling water. Take care not to splash the hot liquid on your hand. Mix well. Remove from fire. Let it cool.

Bring butter to room temperature. Cream butter until cream and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar to the butter and mix well. Reserve 2 tablespoons of maida. Sieve the dry ingredients- maida, baking powder, baking soda together.

Stir in the dry ingredients along with the spice powders to the butter-sugar mix. Fold in gently. Don't over mix. Add the caramel sauce and milk too. Dust the soaked fruits with the reserved maida and fold into the batter. 

Grease the cake tin and  transfer the batter. I lined the tin with a butter paper.  Bake in a preheated oven at 175 C for 1 hour 30 minutes. Please check after 1 hour and 15 minutes. My oven tends to take more time than the suggested time.

Its always said, fruit cakes taste better as it matures. So decided to leave it for two days. But I was very impatient and couldn't control myself for more than a day and had to slice it to see, how it turned out. 

I felt the cake was very sweet. Probably the dates and the candied fruits added to the sweetness. So may be next time, I will reduce 1/4 cup of sugar considering the dry fruits added to it.


Here is wishing all my readers, friends and fellow bloggers a very happy and sparkling 2011.  As a blogger, I wish we see less of  Plagiarism in the coming year.

Eggless Dates Banana Cake

During my initial baking days, I tried a banana cake using a recipe from a blog. The cake came out well in terms of texture and taste. But the flavor of banana was so overpowering that I could hardly finish a slice. Things have changed now. I have tried pairing banana with dates or chocolate powder to mask it flavor. In this cake, I have pureed the dates and added it to the batter. I used only 1/3 cup of brown sugar. The cake is mildly sweet. I did frost the cake so that took care of the lack of sweetness. In case you are not frosting and would like your cake to be sweet, increase the sugar to 1/2 cup.

You need

• Wheat flour/Atta- 1 cup
• All purpose flour/maida- 1/2 cup
• Deseeded dates - 15 to 20 nos 
• Mashed banana- 1/2 cup
• Brown sugar - 1/3 cup
• Curd - 1/3 cup
• Oil - 1/3 cup
• Baking powder -1 tspn
• Baking soda- 1 tspn

Method

Sieve together wheat flour, maida, baking soda and baking powder.

Soak seeded and chopped dates in half cup of warm water for an hour or till it turns soft. Alternatively you can microwave the dates in water for 2 minutes and it turns soft. No soaking required. Grind the dates to a smooth paste. Add in  mashed banana, curd, oil and sugar to the mixer jar. Pulse to blend.

Transfer the wet mix to a bowl. Fold the dry ingredients to the wet mix, with mixing after each addition. Pour the batter to a greased and dusted tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 30 minutes.


For icing

Powdered sugar - 1 cup
Corn flour - 2 tspn
Butter -1 tblspn.

Whisk all the ingredients till smooth and light. Cool the cake. Spread the icing on the cake. If you find it difficult to spread the frosting, add few drops of milk  to make it easier to spread. To the remaining icing, I added a teaspoon of cocoa powder and did a swirl on top of each piece.

Eggless Apple Upside Down Cake with whole wheat flour

After my attempt at an upside down cake with pineapple, I wanted to try with apples. This time I didnot use any all purpose flour and did with whole wheat flour and arrow root flour. I usually stock arrow root flour or koova podi in Malayalam during the season(Nov-December), it is available in the market. I use it in baking and whereever corn flour is used in regular cooking. In case u don't have this flour, use corn flour or maida in place of that.

For the cake

 

• Wheat flour/Atta- 1 cup
• Arrow root/Corn flour - 1/2 cup
• Baking powder - 2 tspn
• Salt - 1/4 tspn

• All spice powder- 1/2 tspn (Mix of cinnamon,nutmeg and cloves)
• Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

•  Butter - 1/2 cup
• Sugar- 1/2 cup
• Milk - 1/2 cup
• Flaxseed meal - 1 tblspn mixed in 1 cup of water

  For topping

 

• Butter - 2 tblspn
• Brown Sugar - 1/2 cup
• All spice powder - 1/4 tspn
• One applie sliced

Melt sugar and butter in microwave for a minute. Stir in the spice powder.

 Method

Seive together the dry ingredients - Wheat flour,arrow root flour, baking powder and salt. I always measure the dry ingredients to an airtight container and shake it well for few times so that the ingredients gets mixed up well.

 

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

 

 

Add milk and flaxseed meal mixed with water to the sugar butter mix. Fold in the dry ingredients to the wet mix. Finally mix in the spice powder and vanilla essence.

 

 

Grease the cake tin with butter or oil and lightly dust with flour. Pour the melted sugar+butter mix. Arrange the sliced appales overlapping each slice. Pour the cake batter on top of the arranged apple slices.

 

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 55 minutes. Cool the cake and invert it carefully. The cake was slightly denser yet soft.

 P.S. Have you left your comment here to stand a chance to win $50 gift certificate? You have time till 15th July,2010.

 

 

Eggless Chocolate Yogurt Cake

Last week of March, I had my neice and nephew here for a week's vacation. My 10 year old nephew had his list of things he wanted me to make during their stay. He is a great fan of Naan and Paneer Butter Masala that he can have it for all 3 meals and not get bored by it. Without him telling, I knew that top the list. As with all kids, he too is a chocoholic. I was thinking of  using the zebra cake recipe and make a chocolate cake. I was surprised when he asked me if I could bake using the recipe given on the Cadbury's cocoa tin. Though I have seen it, I have not bothered to try it. I told him I haven't tried it so I can't guarantee the result. He was confident of my baking skills and told I can't go wrong. Hearing his innocent reply, I could not say no and all credit goes to him that I baked my best chocolate cake so far. The recipe was eggless so I needn't make any changes. Few measurements were given in grams which I converted to cups with help of online converter.  The measurements may not be exact and that didnot affect the cake at all. Mava was also in the ingredient list and I didnot add it. May be the addition of mava would have resulted in a rich cake.

You need

Curd - 1 cup

Rawa/semolina- 1/4 cup (50 gm)

Cooking soda- 1/2 tspn

Butter - 1/2 cup (100 gm)

Powdered sugar - 1 2/3 cup (200 gm)

Mava - 50 gm (I didnot use it)

Maida - 1 2/3 cup (200 gm)

Baking powder - 1 teaspoon

Cocoa powder - 3 tablespoon

Milk - 1 cup


Method

Mix 1 cup curd with rawa and cooking soda. Keep aside for 10 minutes. Beat butter amd powdered sugar. Add soaked curd-rava mixture. Mix well. In a bowl, sift maida, baking powder and cocoa powder until well combined. Add the flour mix to wet mixture. Add 1 cup of milk. Mix gently. Take care not to overmix.

Pour the prepared batter into a greased and dusted tim. Bake at 180 C for 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.


Fudge Icing

Butter - 1/2 cup
Icing sugar - 1 cup
Cocoa powder - 3 tblspn
Milk - few drops

Mix all the ingredients till light and fluffy. Add few drops of milk to get a spreadable consistency. Spread it on the cake.

My niece wanted to add her bit to the cake. So sprinkled some powdered sugar on top of the icing and aranged some tutty fruity.

SpotLightBlog - Shoba's Anubavathi ~ Eggless Zebra Cake

Beginning the month of February, I am starting a new series called SpotLightBlog. My bookmark folder is overflowing and I wanted to do some justice to the bookmarked recipes. My first idea was to try one recipe each week and post it subsequently. But choosing one recipe was not easy as I thought to be. Instead, I thought of selecting a blog and trying four recipes and post one every week. I felt that to be a better option and in a way I can show my appreciation to my fellow blogger too. So from this month onwards, one blog will be chosen as SpotLightBlog and I shall showcase once recipe per week and will be posting it every Monday. I had this project in mind for sometime now and wanted to start from January. But the month of January had something else in store fro me in the form of relatives, festivals etc. So it starts from February.

***********

The first blog I have chosen is my dear friend Shoba's Anubavathi, which has lot of traditional recipes and eggless bakes. Recipe for this week is a Zebra cake following Shoba's recipe. I know this is a signature cake of Shoba among her friends and she is quite an expert in baking this cake in various flavors. I didnot make any changes to the recipe. It came out very well. The cake was very spongy and moist and was a winner for an eggless cake. To make Zebra cake, any recipe can be followed. Is the pattern that matters. It comes in practise. First time when I made, the lines were very thin and hardly the pattern could be made out. The second time I made, the patterns were visible, though I felt I could improve better in terms of pattern, since taste wise, the cake was very good.

Ingredients

All Purpose Flour / Maida - 2cups
Baking Soda. - 1 tspn

Baking Powder -1 tspn

Oil - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1 1/4 cup
Whole Milk - 1 3/4


Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Cocoa Powder - 4 tblspn

In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients - Maida, Baking soda and baking power. Mix well.

In another bowl, mix oil and sugar. Wisk well to dissolve the sugar. Add milk and whisk everything together. Slowly, add the dry ingredients to the wet mix little by little. Mix well after each addition with out forming any lumps.

Remove half of the batter to another bowl. To one half add vanilla essence and to the other, add cocoa powder and mix well.

Take a greased and flour dusted pan. Take a ladle which can contain around 4 tblspn of the batter. Add a ladle of chocolate batter on to the centre of the pan. Next add a ladle of the vanilla batter onto the centre of the chocolate batter. Don't try to spread or shake the pan. The batter gets spread on its own. You keep adding both the batter alternatively until you finish all the batter.

The amount of batter added to form a ring is important to get nice and clear pattern. If too little batter is added the lines formed will be very thin and the patter doesn't show well.

Bake the cake in preaheated oven at 170 C for 35 minutes or it passes a toothpick test.
 
 

 
My eldest co-sister had sent me mini cake moulds and I wanted to use that too. So I made 3 mini cakes and used the rest of the batter for the bigger one.
 
 

The patterns have come out better in the mini cake mould. The amount of batter added for each ring was little more here.

 

Eggless Orange Cake

I had too much of oranges at home, to be used up. Making juice is one good way to finish up more number of oranges at one go. I thought of cakes and did a search for orange cakes. I wanted a recipe where in orange juice is used and majority of the recipes I found had only the zest in it. Finally I found Shammi's Orange Cake. The feedback by those who have tried was encouraging. Hop over to her blog for more eggless baking recipes. I have changed some ingredients else its almost her recipe. I didn't do the filling. But decided to try my hand in icing the cake, which is a first for me. The amount of sugar and butter in the icing, puts me off, usually. Also me and my husband prefers cake with no frosting. My dad was here when I baked and he pushed me to do the icing. My dad really enjoyed the cake very much. While slicing the cake, I did in a hurried manner and the top slice cracked but managed to keep it whole. I know I have much more to go on the icing part. But for a first timer, I think it will get a pass.

Ingredients


Whole wheat flour - 1 cup

All pupose flour/Maida - 1/2 cup

Cornflour - 2 tspn

Baking powder - 2 tspn

Salt -1/4 tspn


Oil - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 3/4 cup

Yogurt -1/4 cup

Orange zest - 1 tspn

Fresh orange juice - 3/4 cup ( from 3 ornages)

Orange color a pinch


Method

Sift the dry ingredients - wheat flour, maida, cornflour, baking powder and salt.

Cream sugar and oil. Add yogurt. Beat well. Add a pinch of orange color.

Add the flour mix and orange juice alternatively to the wet mix. Mix well after each addition.

Finally stir in the orange zest.

Transfer the batter to a greased and dusted cake tin. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 30 minutes.

The cake on its own also tastes very nice. You can just dust it with some powdered sugar and serve.


Frosting

Butter - 1/2 cup

Powdered sugar - 1 1/2 cup

Corn flour - 2 tblspn


Beat all the ingredients together till creamy. Cool the cake well and slice it horizontally.  Spread the frosting on the base slice. Carefully place the top slice over it. In the remaining  frosting, add a pinch of orange color. Cover the cake fully with the frosting. Leave it to set and slice.

Wishing all my readers A Merry Christmas.

Eggless Banana Chocolate Cake

In baking, I am trying to  do away with all purpose flour completely. I decided to try a whole wheat cake. I used half cup of wheat flour and 1/2 cup of multigrain flour. The pillsbury brand has come out with a mutligrain flour that has 80 % of atta and 20% of soy, oats, maize, ragi, chana dal and barley together. Since I had that flour in hand, I decided to try that in baking, again thanks to Madhuram's whole grain baking series. And in my attempt to make it healthy, I omitted white sugar and used  brown sugar and  honey. Considering the less amount of oil, the cake was very moist. All in all this is a keeper recipe. I will be trying with coffee flavor soon.

You need

Whole wheat flour - 1/2 cup


Multigrain flour - 1/2 cup

Arrowroot powder - 4 tblspn ( you can use corn flour)

Cocoa powder - 4 tblspn

Baking powder ,baking soda - 1 tspn each



Mashed banana - 1 cup

Brown sugar - 4 tblspn

Honey - 3 tblspn

Oil - 1/3 cup

Milk - 1/2 cup + 2 tblspn

Yogurt - 2 tblspn

Vanilla essence - 1/2 tspn

Cashew nuts to garnish - optional

Method

Sift the fry ingredients together - Atta, multigrain flour, arrow root powder, coco powder, baking powder and cooking soda.

Mix banana, brown sugar and honey well. It smells like Panchamritam. Add milk and whisk till blended, followed by yogurt. Finally add oil and vanilla essence. Beat till everything is blended nicely.

Fold in the dry ingredients into the wet mix, mixing after each addition. Transfer to a greased baking tin. I usually dust the greased with some flour before transferring the batter.  Garnish with few cashews on top. If you wish you can add some to the batter too.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 35 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean. I baked at 200 C. The top cracked.

The cake was very moist and spongy. Perfect sponge cake with chocolate flavor and no hint of banana. For those who you like the cake to be sweet, you can increase the sugar by 2 tablespoon.

This is off to Divya's Show Me Your Cake and  Sara's Cakes n Cookies event.

Eggless Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Pineapple upside down cake was on my list for a long time. I have been buying pineapples with the idea of cake in mind. But it eventually ended up in juice or jam. Recently, Sowmya of Creative Sage posted one. That brought the idea to the front again. during the weekend veggie shopping, I got one ripe pineapple. Decided to bake it on Sunday. But we had other plans. I thought this time too I should give the cake a miss. But somehow managed to bake it on Monday evening. I had bookmarked a recipe from JoyofBaking. I made it eggless with the use of flaxseeds powder and with slight changes in the ingredients. I got a moist cake

and was very happy with the result. The cake recipe can be made with variations to make different flavors. It had a perfect texture and not very dense in spite of using some whole wheat flour. It remained moist the next day too and has soaked in the flavors better.

Topping

Butter - 2 tblspn

Powdered Jaggery - 1/2 cup

Fresh pineapple slices - 7 nos


For the cake

All purpose flour - 1 cup

Whole wheat flour (Atta) -1/2 cup

Baking powder - 2 tspn

Salt - 1/4 tspn

Butter - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Milk - 1/2 cup

Powdered flaxseeds - 2 tspn in 1 cup of water.



Topping

The original recipe asked for brown sugar which I didn't have. I was thinking of caramelizing white sugar instead of brown sugar. Then I remembered Sunita's recent dessert, where in she has used jaggery. I didn’t want jaggery to be overpowering so reduced to 1/2 cup in place of 3/4 cup of brown sugar as said in the recipe. Also used 2 tblspn less butter.

Add the grated jaggery and 2 tblspn of butter in a pan. Soon both will start melting and when it starts bubbling, remove. Transfer the melted jaggery and butter to the greased cake tin. I placed the slice pineapples on the syrup when warm.

Preparing the cake

Sift the dry ingredients together. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Mix the 2 tablespoons of flaxseeds in a cup of water. Add milk, flaxseed meal mixed with water and vanilla essence to the butter sugar mix. Slowly fold in the dry ingredients and mix it without any lumps, after each addition.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 50 minutes or till the top starts browning and the cake pulls from the sides. After removing from the oven, cool it for 10 minutes and invert it on a plate. With a scoop of ice-cream, the cake will make an exotic dessert.

Note: In place of fresh pineapple, canned slices can be used too.

The baking bug has caught on my sister too. After the recent Diwali purchase of a MW convection oven, she too is on a baking spree on weekends. I am delighted to see her first cake attempt turning successful, with my instructions over phone, inspite of the recipe on my blog.

My sister's first cake - Eggless Dates Cake

P.S. This is my 200th post. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers and readers for the inspiration and encouragement.