Coffee-walnut cake

This post along with another one is probably the last in my drafts. I am staring at my Picasa album to realize I don't have any more food pics (blogworthy) in it. So I think it would be safe to say it will be a while till my next post. Unless otherwise I get all enthu over the weekend and cook up a storm and then style it and take pics. By the looks of it, I don't think I will be..well for one, its supposed to be an over cast weekend with rains on and off and two, I have so much frozen food, I need to eat it some time or else my freezer would remain full and i wont be able to fill it with more junk.

I blame myself for running around the Indian grocery store like I'm crazy (and Ro for not stopping me). I picked up mooli paratha, peas paratha (I don't even like peas) and paneer paratha by the truck loads and ignoring Ro's eye rolling I even picked up canned pavakka theeyal..really, canned theeyal...who does that you might wonder. Oh well, here's living proof of the fact that I can buy the most bizarre of things. And like that's not enough, both of us hate bitter gourd with a vengeance. I will just have to say a little prayer and open it and pretend to like it, so Ro cant say 'I told you so'

While we are on the 'buying' topic, I have gone ahead and picked up a shelf to keep all my blog stuff. Although it is not as droolworthy as Soma's and Aran's gorgeous collection, I am so proud of it that each time I pass by I exclaim how amazing it looks (with dramatic sighs and oohs and aah's. Now that its all out in the open (before it all used to be in a cardboard box), the not-so-fun part is Ro shooting questions at me like, where did you buy this from, how much did that cost and so on. Of course I understand that he wanted to know what I was gonna do with the Christmas decorations, when we didn't even plan on buying a Christmas tree (Here's the answer...it was because I was doing a post for a magazine with Christmas as the theme and without candles, baubles and holly, it wouldn't have been a 'merry' Christmas would it?). Obviously I didn't say that and distracted him with a tea pot I picked up because Ro is a sucker for anything tea related. (Note to self: first find a place to hide the huge cake stand before I buy it.)

Anyhoo, coming to the cake, its not a fancy schmancy cake, but I loved it. Its a simple coffee cake that pairs well with, err..coffee perhaps? Also, the best part- its a one bowl cake. No cleaning up tonnes of vessels and all that which usually puts me off making a cake altogether. I whipped it up quite a while back to serve with tea for some unexpected guests and strangely had all the ingredients it required. The original recipe calls for a mascarpone frosting which I didn't do, because for one its a painstaking job and two, I somehow have this notion that tea cakes are supposed to be plain. Click on the link for the filling and frosting recipe if you are going all out. I am a sucker for anything coffee flavoured and this cake just made me fall in love with it all over again.

Recipe adapted from Delia online

Plain flour- 110 gms

Baking powder- 2 tsp

Salt- 1/4 tsp

Caster sugar- 110 gms

Unsalted butter- 110 gms, at room temperature

Eggs- 2 large

Vanilla extract- 1/2 tsp

Instant espresso coffee- 1 tbsp

Boiling water- 1 1/2 tbsp

Finely chopped walnuts- 50 gms

Dissolve the instant espresso in boiling water. Keep aside.

Into a large mixing bowl add the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk together.

Add all the remaining ingredients except the coffee and walnuts and combine well either using an electric beater or if you are lazy like me, use the whisk or a wooden spoon and get the job done.

Mix till you get a smooth consistency.

Pour in the coffee, add walnuts and fold it in, making sure you have a well combined mixture.

Transfer the batter into a greased 9 inch cake pan, even it out, tap a couple of times to release the air bubbles and bake in an oven pre-heated at 170C for 30 minutes or till the skewer comes out clean.

Cool for about 5 minutes after which you can transfer it from the cake pan on to a wire rack and cool completely.

The cake stays in an air tight container for about 4 or 5 days at room temperature. Mine lasted just one evening :)

Notes: The original recipe calls for self-raising flour, so if you have that, reduce the baking powder to 1 tsp and omit the salt.

For caster sugar, just pulse normal granulated sugar in a blender once or twice for a finer version. Don't over do it or else you will end up with icing sugar
Replace espresso powder with normal instant coffee if espresso is not available. You might have to increase the quantity a tad bit to get strong coffee flavour in the cake though

If you don't like biting into the walnuts, then pulse it in a blender, along with a couple of tbsp of sugar, (from the measurements given) to a fine powder and then add it along with the flour.

Hazelnuts or almonds can also be used instead of walnuts.

Mocha-walnut marbled loaf cake

It was my moms birthday yesterday and I actually wanted to post this cake yesterday as well. But some guests arrived unannounced and I was left with very little cake to take pics, and no time to blog. I am one of those people who don't plan in advance, who don't have a pantry stocked with awesome things, a freezer full of cutlets etc. I am the type who wakes up in the morning, heads over to make coffee, only to realize I have no milk or sugar. I drag on my tracks and run to grocery store right across the street and pick up the milk. I come back home and realize I don't have enough sugar as well..yes, story of my life, I am that disorganized. Hell I even get into the bath only to realize I don't have shower gel and have to scream my lungs out to Ro who will have to lend me his (free advice: the key to a happy married life, don't share your bathroom with your husband). He sometimes pretends not to hear too.

Ro keeps asking me to write down a list of things I'm out of, but who's listening? I spend hours at the grocery store contemplating and trying hard to remember what I need back home. I will most certainly not learn my lesson, I'm sure. 

But yesterday, these friends arrived unannounced (which is very very rare, mind you) and I panicked. They called me from the underground station (about 5 minutes from my house) and I said Id pick them up. By some crazy intuition I had decided to bake yesterday and this marble cake was in the oven when they called. There was about 24 minutes more to go and I could have easily kept the oven on and left the house but crazy things like the cake burning and the house catching on fire went through my mind and so, not worrying about the outcome, I turned off the oven leaving the cake inside. I guess that is one big NO in the book of baking, especially cakes.

Took a last look around the apartment to see if it was presentable (by that I mean dumping all the vessels into the dishwasher) and ran to pick them up. Came back home and checked the cake, well suddenly remembered that a cake was still in the oven after some 10 minutes of catching up, and found that it had not sunk or anything. So I turned it on again and waited to unravel the disaster in front of my guests. The problem with having an open kitchen is that you cant hide your mess or your blunders which in my case is in abundance...so I warned them and took out the cake and cut into it only to realize it was the yummiest, moistest cake evah!

....and served warm, it was such a treat. The kids loved it and kept asking for more. I also (thankfully) had a bag of chocolate covered pretzels which I'd received at their launch party and so served that as well. Unprepared I was, but at the end I managed it..which is what I tell Ro all the time. I may be disorganized and a last minute person, but I always end up with some solution (mostly by fluke). Each time Ro gets bugged with this act of mine, I remind him that he once mentioned how he loved the fact that, 'I keep him on his toes.'

So anyhoo, the reason I rambled on and on was to explain why I didn't have time to blog this recipe yesterday...So here's wishing my mummy dearest a very happy birthday. I'm celebrating it with you, virtually.

Recipe halved from here (originally from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan)

All purpose flour- 145 gms

Ground walnuts- 1/4 cup

Baking powder- 1/2 tsp

Salt- 1/2 tsp

Unsalted butter- 113 gms + 1 tbsp for chocolate

Dark chocolate- 43 gms (1.5oz)

Coffee- 1/4 cup (1oz)

Instant Espresso powder- 1/2 tsp (I used 1 tsp because I like the coffee taste)

Sugar- 175 gms

Eggs- 2 large

Vanilla extract- 1 tsp

Whole milk- 1/2 cup

Mix together the flour, ground walnuts, baking powder and salt. Keep aside.

Break the chocolate into lumps and place it in a heat proof bowl along with 1tbsp butter, coffee and espresso powder. Place this bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

Keep the heat on low and once the chocolate and butter has slightly melted, mix well to form a smooth and creamy consistency. Keep aside to cool.

In a free standing mixer with paddle attachment or using a hand mixer, beat together the remaining butter and sugar till you form a lump free mixture. This wont be light and fluffy but should be a thick paste-like consistency.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition with the batter having a smooth and satiny texture.

In goes the vanilla extract.

Now reduce the speed to the lowest and add the flour mix and milk alternatively..starting and ending with the flour. You should have a smooth batter with no flour seen.

Pour a little less than half of this batter into the bowl with the chocolate and thoroughly mix it. Not vigorously.

Butter and dust a loaf pan and alternate spoons full of dark and white batter. I placed the white-chocolate-white as the lowest layer, then the second layer was chocolate-white-chocolate and then topped with a thin layer of white. Continue till about 3/4th full.

Swirl the batter with a butter knife right till the bottom, to get that marble effect.

Place in the centre rack of an oven pre heated at 176C and bake for 55 to 60 minutes or till a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Transfer to a cooling rack and after about 10 minutes unmould. 

Serve with some vanilla ice cream.

Notes: You can use normal instant coffee powder instead of espresso powder

There are various methods of doing the marble pattern. You can do an entire layer of white and then top with the chocolate and then do the swirl as well.

My cake was done in a little less than 45 minutes.