Birthday Cake


Mummy's cake is one of those dishes that most of us will remember for a long time. She owned a oven for as long as I can remember. The older oven, once it stopped working, was painted and mounted on the wall and was used as an airtight little cupboard to store special snack/food items. She baked cake for the birthdays for anybody that mattered to her. If it was my birthday, no matter where I was, I knew she must have baked a cake for me.

She had improvised her cake recipe over time. In the beginning, she used condensed milk but then when she visited us in 2000, she once showed me how to make the cake with ingredients almost always available in my kitchen. Lately she had been using yogurt in her cake recipe which I never learnt. I will ask didi (my sister) or my aunts for the recipe with yogurt. Then we had to also experiment with the temperature at which to bake. Her oven in India only had one setting and we dont know what it was.

Last week was my son's birthday, first birthday without her. I had to make this cake because my son loves this cake and I knew she is not there to make it.

Ingredients

2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup fine sugar
1/3 cup ghee
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I use olive oil for a different flavor)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup full cream milk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F.
2. Grease the cake pan (I have used 9 inch bundt pan here) with oil or butter. Put 2 tbsp flour in the pan and rotate the pan with one hand to move the flour around to cover the greased surface. Dump out extra flour.
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and soda.
4. Dump all other ingredients and mix. I use low setting on my hand mixer.
6. Pour the batter in the cake pan.
7. Bake on the middle rack for 20 minutes at 375F.
8. Reduce the heat to 350 F and bake for another 25-35 minutes.
9. Cake is done when it has a golden brown crust and when a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
10. Take it out of the oven and let it cool for couple of minutes.
11. Softly hit the pan on sides and bottom and make sure the cake is not sticking to the pan surface.
11. Carefully take it out on a cooling rack.

Serve it when it has cooled down just like that or with a cup of chai or coffee.

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