Easy, Excellent and Eggless

You must have guessed by now what this post is about! Yes, it's about an eggless cake - I baked an eggless  cake yesterday for the first time for DH's birthday. Not having ventured into the eggless terrain, I was sceptical about the results but I was surprised - the cake turned out to be far superior to my previous cakes made using eggs.

This cake was inspired by a Vanilla Cake recipe I found in a Microwave Cookbook by Nita Mehta. Actually the cake is not for microwave but you can bake it in the convection mode if your microwave provides this facility. I made a few changes of my own to the original recipe and managed to create a Marble Cake using Nutella. You could also use cocoa in place of nutella.

This cake is so easy, that even a novice would be able to bake it! As they say, proof of pudding is in the taste - so do give it a go!

Eggless Nutella Marble Cake

Ingredients

125 gms Plain Flour
1/2 tin/200 gms Condensed Milk
1/2 cup/75 gms Unsalted Butter
1 1/2 tbsp Caster Sugar
1/2 cup Milk
2 tbsp Nutella
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
3/4 level tsp Baking Powder
3/4 level tsp Baking Soda

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 C.
• Measured the required amount of plain flour and add the baking powder and baking soda to it. Sift all this into a bowl and keep aside.
• Melt the butter. Add sugar and mix well. Then add the condensed milk, vanilla essence and milk and mix well using a whisk.
• Pour the liquid mix (butter and milk mixture) into the bowl containing flour and fold in the flour into the liquid. Blend well and make sure there are no lumps.
• Divide the mixture equally into two bowls. To one part, add Nutella and mix well.
• In a 8" greased and lined cake tin/silicone cake pan, add alternate spoons of the two mixtures.
• Bake it at 180 C for 40-45 minutes. To check if the cake it done, insert a skewer or a knife. If it comes out clean then the cake is ready.
• Allow it to cool completely before taking it out from tin.
• Optional: To decorate sift some icing sugar over the cake. I also added mint leaves and couple of raspberries for decoration - it's upto you how you want to do it!

P.S:  This cake was a hit in my household so I was enthused to try it again. I have baked it couple of times since last week - here are the pictures:

A Dose of Protein

Confused with the title? Let me explain - I prepared dosas using lentils and you probably know that lentils are a good source of protien. This dosa is very familiar to South Indians and is called Adai Dosa. I have been getting more interested in South Indian food these days and so thought of trying this dosa - I have never eaten it before myself though!

I browsed for recipes for this dosa and each called for varying proportions of rice to lentils. So I thought of using my own judgement : 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of mixed lentils - Chana, Toor, Urad and Moong. The good thing is you have to soak them for 2-3 hours only.

You can make variations to the spices used for the dosa. I would also add grated carrots/spinach if I was making it for my little one.

Adai Dosa

Ingredients:

1 cup Rice
1 cup lentils (mixture of Urad, Toor, Chana and Moong dals) - You can take 1/4 cup of each.
Salt to taste
4 Red Chillies
2 Green Chillies
1 medium Onion
1 tsp Cumin Seeds
Few Curry leaves
1/2 inch piece of Ginger
Oil for frying dosa

Method

• Soak rice and lentils separately for 2-3 hours.
• Grind them together along with chillies, onion, ginger, cumin seeds and curry leaves. Add little water while grinding to get a thick but coarse batter. Add salt to taste.
• Heat a non-stick tava (griddle) and ladle about 1/2 cup of mixture on the pan and spread it out in circular motion to make a big round dosa. Let it cook on medium heat.
• When the lower side is cooked and browned, flip the dosa and cook the other side briefly.
• Serve hot with coconut chutney - it's delicious on its own as well.