So last week I shared with you a lesser known, but extremely yummy recipe for a biscuit found in the Pune-Mumbai region – Shrewsbury Biscuits. If you haven’t seen that yet, go check it out, I’ll still be here when you get back.
Okay, so you’re back. Today, is the turn for another lesser known recipe, this time for a cake called Mawa Cake. Again, as far as I know this cake is found in the Pune-Mumbai region. Kayani Bakery in Pune and Merwan’s Cake shop in Mumbai are popular for their Mawa cake, though you will find quite a few other shops selling this cake. They are usually sold in packs of 6 – 6 muffin sized pieces. This simple cake is so very special. It is not much to look at, but what it lacks in looks, it makes up for in taste. If you’ve never heard about this cake before, you should put it on your list of recipes to try out. Mawa is nothing but milk solids and this is widely used in a lot of Indian sweets.
A lot of people cringe at the thought of making their own mawa and just buy it from the local Dairy shop in India. This is because, while it is a simple process of reducing milk, working with about a litre of milk could take you about an hour to process. In the past, I have made Mawa the traditional way a couple of times. But for this cake, I decided to try out a cheat’s version of Mawa. This method takes literally 2 minutes at the most, and you would never be able to tell that it is an instant version. I’m so happy that I found this method. I have a whole bunch of recipes for Indian sweets that I’ve been ignoring, simply because it calls for Mawa. But that has changed, so you can expect to see some more Indian sweets / Mithai recipes, just before the Indian festival season starts.
Back to the cake. If you have your Mawa sorted out, the rest of the recipe is like a simple pound cake one but with a serious flavor profile. The Mawa adds a richness to the cake and it is mildly flavored with cardamom powder, resulting in a very exotic tasting cake. This time around my husband made the cake, which I guess made it even tastier (lol). He chose to bake this in an 8″ round cake tin, but you could bake it in a cupcake tray too. I do hope you try it out.
Mawa Cake
Yields: an 8 inch cake or 15-16 cupcakes
1 portion of homemade mawa (recipe below) or 200g unsweetened mawa
200g all purpose flour
300g sugar
200g butter
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cardamom powder (Seeds of about 10-12 green cardamom pods, powdered)
Preheat the oven to 160ºC.
Grease and line an 8-Inch Round Cake Pan
Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the whites to a stiff froth and keep aside.
In another bowl, cream the butter, sugar and egg yolks till light and creamy.
Add the mawa, cardamom powder, baking powder and flour and mix till well incorporated. (If the mawa in store bought or is a firm block, grate it before adding into the batter)
Fold in the beaten egg whites gently till just evenly incorporated in the batter.
Pour the batter in the prepared cake pan and bake for about 40-50 minutes (if using a cupcake tray, bake for 15-20 minutes) or till a bamboo skewer inserted near the middle of the cake come out clean.
Cool completely, cut and serve. Don’t get fooled by the look of the cake. It tastes a whole lot better than it looks. And don’t forget, if my husband (who has probably not baked more than a handful of times so far), can whip this up, so can you.
Enjoy!!!
How to make Instant Mawa?
1 tbsp ghee / clarified butter
1/4 cup milk
1 cup full fat milk powder
Warm the ghee and the milk together. You just want this mixture warm, not hot.
Add the milk powder and stir and cook till it comes apart from the pan and starts forming a ball.
Use to make mawa cake.
Notes: If you are baking the cake in a regular cake tin and not a cupcake tray, in some cases, the milk solids may cause the cake to brown quickly. This is normal, but if you think it is browning too fast and may burn, cover the tin loosely with aluminium foil and continue baking till the cake is done.
Date and Walnut Cake …. keeping it real !!!
Have you tried a date and walnut cake before? A lot of people haven’t. If you’ve spent some time in Bombay and been a part of celebrations there, every now and then you will find a Date & Walnut Cake pop up. This cake is a beautiful tea cake. It has a lovely flavor from the dates, a crunch from the walnuts and a rich, dark color that the dates lend to it. It has the most beautiful, luscious crumb. I can’t praise this cake enough. You have to try it to believe it. Its a shame I don’t make this cake more often.
As for keeping it real, I know a lot of food blogs are perfect. Not just picture perfect, but flawless in so many ways. My little blog is far from that. I like that it is human in that way. Even in my kitchen, there are times where I make some boo boos, I have brain farts and sometimes, I just could’ve planned better. This is one of those times where my brain was on a trip of its own. Maybe I was just over excited about this cake. While this cake batter is really easy to put together, I forgot to put the walnuts in it. I only realized this after pouring the batter into my parchment lined loaf pan. So what did I do? I just poured the walnuts on top and tried to stir it through the batter. That is why, you’ll notice the walnuts are mostly near the top of the cake. If you add them to the batter when you are supposed to, it will be better distributed. Now I could’ve waited till I baked this cake again to post this recipe. But in the true spirit of keeping it real and not wanting to keep this recipe from you any longer, I decided to post it with its tiny imperfection. I cannot tell you how amazing this cake is and I do hope you try it out.
Here’s the video recipe, to help you through the process –
Date & Walnut Cake
The best Baked Cheesecake ever
Let’s go back to where it all began, shall we! My husband and I were sitting one evening and watching the latest season of Masterchef Australia (one of my favourite food shows) and it happened to be a Masterclass episode. I’m so stoked they brought back the Masterclass episodes this year. I felt quite cheated out of them last year. Anyway, Matt Preston was making a baked cheesecake. We love cheesecake in our house. So we were very keen to check this masterclass out. Long story short, we loved the way his cheesecake turned out and decided that we would try it sometime soon.
Now I didn’t know how soon “soon” would actually be. I figured it would be a while before I got a chance to make one of them. Turned out, my husband had other plans. The following Saturday while I was at work (yes, unfortunately I do work some weekends), he actually went to the shops and picked out all the ingredients for the cake and had it prepped by the time I got home from work. We popped it in to bake and then in the fridge to set. After dinner that day we were both anxious to see how it turned out. It was HEAVENLY. Soft, creamy, beautifully flavoured with a fantastic crust. We we both very, very pleased with the way this cheesecake turned out and I can happily say that this will now be my go-to recipe for a baked Cheesecake. Thank you Matt Preston! and thank you Masterchef Australia!
Baked Cheesecake
For the base –
1 packet of Granita biscuits (250g pack) (if you can’t find Granita biscuits, you can use Digestive biscuits instead)
60g sugar
75 g butter, melted
For the filling –
750g cream cheese, at room temperature
230g or 1 cup caster sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract
A pinch of salt
300ml double cream
Preheat the oven to 175ºC.
Line a 23cm spring form cake tin with baking paper.
Double wrap the outside of the cake tin with extra wide aluminium foil. This is to make the tin water tight to ensure that water from the little water bath you will create for the cake, doesn’t seep into the cake.
For the base, blitz the biscuits in a food processor till you get crumbs. Add the sugar and blitz again for a couple of seconds till its mixes well. Add the unsalted butter and blitz again to combine.
At this stage, your base mix should resemble coarse wet sand.
Press the mix into the bottom of the prepared cake tin, spreading it out with the back of a large wooden spoon to even it out.
Bake for 10 minutes till lightly brown and set.
Remove the tin from the oven and set aside to cool. This base should be completely cooled before you add the filling.
For the filling, place the cream cheese in a stand mixer and using a padding attachment beat till smooth and creamy.
Add the sugar and beat till the sugar has completely dissolved.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each addition and make sure the egg is fully incorporated in the mix before adding the next one.
Add the lemon juice, vanilla extract and salt and mix until well combined.
Now add the cream and mix until well combined.
Pour the mix over the cooled base. Set the cake tin in the middle of a larger roasting tray or larger baking dish. You want to ensure your roasting tray / baking dish has high sides. Set this on the middle rack of the oven.
Carefully, fill the roasting tray with boiling water upto a 2 cm height and bake till the cake has set and the top is a little golden brown. This should take about 65 minutes.
Turn off the oven and leave the cheesecake inside the oven to cool with the oven door closed.
Then take the cheesecake and leave to cool completely.
Cover it and pop it into the fridge to cool a little and set further.
Serve with fresh berries if desired. But even by itself, the cake is so good you’ll be glad you baked it.
Chocolate Mud Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache
So with a single cake pan and a wooden spoon, I set out to bake this cake. Please excuse the aesthetics on this one and don’t let it fool you for a single moment. This cake was so very good, I was amazed. I know I will make this recipe again. This cake was down right delicious. I think I might’ve jumped the gun when I tried to sandwich the cake with the icing. I now know better. I would’ve had a better looking cake had I just iced it on top. Which is why I don’t have a picture of the entire cake, just one enticing piece 🙂 That’s something I know I will do differently the next time. But all said, this is a winner of a recipe.
Chocolate Mud Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache
For the cake –
400g butter, chopped into cubes
400g dark chocolate, chopped
15g instant coffee powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
60 ml water
225g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
25g cocoa
6 large eggs
440g caster sugar
Preheat the oven to 160°C.
Line a 9″ round cake tin with parchment paper and lightly grease it.
Place the butter, chocolate, coffee, vanilla and water in a saucepan over low heat. Stir and heat till melted. Set aside and cool to room temperature.
Sift the flour and cocoa into a bowl. Sift another 2 times.
Beat the eggs and sugar till pale and thick.
Add the chocolate mixture and beat till combined.
Fold in the flour cocoa mixture.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.
Bake for 90 minutes or till done.
Leave it in the baking tin to cool for about 10 minutes.
Take it out of the cake tin and cool it down completely.
Note: According to the Donna Hay Magazine, where this recipe is originally from, she recommends testing a mud cake with a skewer. Piece the skewer into the center of the cake. It will emerge coated in cake. Roll the cake from the skewer onto your fingertips. If it balls up and feels tacky, the cake is done. Take the cake out of the oven.
For the ganache –
250 ml single cream
300g dark chocolate, chopped
Place the cream and chocolate in a saucepan over low heat and stir till melted and smooth.
Cool to room temperature.
To assemble –
When the cake has completely cooled, spread the completely cooled ganache over the cake.
Serve.
Note: I did cut and split the cake into 2 layers and placed some ganache in the center. This is something I won’t do the next time, it just messes up the finish. I would recommend baking the layers separately, if you’re keen on a layered mud cake.
The Lightest and Creamiest Japanese Cheesecake
I’d read in a few places that this cheesecake is finicky and a lot can go wrong, but after making it, what I can say is that if you follow the instructions carefully, you will be treated to the most amazing cheesecake you’ve had in a while and that too, made right in your kitchen. I do hope you try this out. It would be such a shame to miss out on making this. And when you do, I;d love to know how it goes.
Please excuse the picture quality, my camera was dead and I knew if I waited to charge it, there’d be nothing left to capture. So I just used my phone instead!
Japanese Cheesecake
Recipe from: Diana’s Desserts
140g superfine sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
50g butter
250g cream cheese
100 ml milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
60g all purpose flour
20g cornflour
1/4 tsp salt
Line an 8″ round cake pan (bottom and sides) with some lightly greased parchment paper. (I just lined the bottom of the pan and it worked fine too.)
Melt the cream cheese, butter and milk in a double boiler.
Cool this mix down.
Fold in the flour, cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.
Whisk the egg whites with the cream of tartar till it is foamy. Add the sugar and continue to whisk till soft peaks form.
Add the cream cheese mix to the egg white mix and mix well.
Pour the mix into the prepared cake pan and bake it in a water bath at 160ºC for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until set and golden brown.
Note: I halved the recipe and used a 6″ round cake pan.
This recipe is linked to –
Sweet Tooth Friday
Sweets for a Saturday
A Themed Bakers Sunday
Not Baaad
Mangia Mondays
Homespun Bakeshop
A Glimpse of Spring – A Basket of Flowers Cake
It is a heart shaped cake with a basket weave pipping to resemble the basket, dotted with gumpaste daisies and royal icing pipped leaves, finished off with a bow made out of curling ribbon.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Remembrance Cakes for 9-11
Floral Fondant Anniversary Cakes
Everything was made from scratch. The base was a rich, dark fruit cake, covered with a layer of homemade marzipan and homemade fondant. The flowers were made of fondant.
I was free to use any colors I wanted. So for the first cake, I opted for some bright spring – summer colors.
Here’s a view of the side of the cake –
For the second cake, I went with pink. One can never go wrong with pink.
Here’s what the sides looked like –
These cakes are linked to –
Rook No.17
Thrilling Thursdays @ Paisley Passions
Crazy for Cakes @ Now Serving
A little mermaid and a really cute dalmatian
Last weekend I had to throw together some goodies for a birthday party thrown for 2 of my favourite nieces. It was a costume party and my elder niece decided that she wanted to dress as a mermaid while the younger one wanted to be a little dalmatian puppy. I obviously couldn’t take them a tea cake and had to look at doing something a little more fancy. My next challenge was to figure out how to put a mermaid and a little puppy on the same cake. Since I couldn’t figure out how to merge both characters on one cake, I simply decided to bake them a cake each. Here’s a peek at what they looked like. These were unfortunately taken using my mobile phone as my camera battery had died out. But their dad managed to get some good shots. Will update those as soon as I get them.
Both were chocolate cakes made using Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe and were covered in fondant. All the little characters were also made of fondant. So here you go. These are my very first fondant covered cakes with little characters all made from scratch. Both designs were inspired from images seen on the web.
This recipe has been linked to –
Treat to the Eyes – Series 2