Date and Walnut Cake

Merry Christmas to all... may peace and happiness fills your heart 🎅🏼

We all have some sweet and naughty stories to tell of our childhood..... This recipe takes me back to my teenage, almost 30 years back. I being a teenager, was learning to open up my wings... exploring new things. I was always found of cooking.. as my school always encouraged us for the extra curricular activities - we had cooking class in our school. I had got this recipe from one of my neighbour Aunty, since this recipe content rum... me and my friend became very excited about this recipe. We use to buy a quarter bottle rum... half went into the cake and the other half into our stomach... with Bryan Adams songs playing at the background....

and my mother screaming at another end.

Later there was a Savvy magazine contest about the dishes you can store for a longer period of time... I had posted this recipe to them and this recipe was selected...

This cake can be prepared for any occasions... 

This cake is moist and the taste is amazing. Please eat a day after you bake... this cake can be store for 2 months in the freezer. Wrap it in a foil and then in a sealed bag..

Ingredients

500 grams of Dates deseeded and chopped

200 grams of Walnuts chopped

50 grams of Black Raisins deseeded and chopped

50 grams of Truti Fruti

500 grams Sugar

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 to A cup of Rum

6 Eggs

4 tbsp Ghee

3 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat flour

3 tsp Soda Bicarbonate

3 cups of Water

Method

Soak the chopped walnuts in rum for a day or more. Boil 3 cups of water, switch off the flame. Add the dates, raisins, truti fruti, sugar, salt, ghee and the soda bicarbonate. Cover and keep it aside to cool. Beat the eggs. Add the eggs and the the flour gradually into the date mixture and beat it. Add the walnut soaked in rum and mix it again. Take 4 baking mould - 2 of 1/2 kg and 2 of 250 grams each. Grease the baking moulds. Pour the batter up to 1/2 the baking mould. Bake the cake at 180 degrees for an hour approximately in an pre heated oven. Check the cake by inserting a tooth pick after 50 minutes, as different oven has different temperature levels. Once done, remove the cake. Cool the cake and remove from the mould. Cool it further on a cooling rack. Enjoy the cake the next day... this cake can be stored in a freezer for 2 months. Wrap the cake in a foil paper and then keep it in a sealed bag.

Bolo Rei - King’s Cake

Merry Christmas to all...

Bolo Rei (King’s Cake) is a traditional Portuguese cake that is eaten around Christmas, that’s 25th December to 6th January. There won’t be any Christmas without Bolo Rei on the table. Each family in Portugal either buys or makes it at home during the season. 

This recipe made it’s way to Portugal from France during the 19th century when Confeitaria Nacional opened it’s official bakery in 1829. The Confeitaria was the first to introduce this recipe. 

Although it is called a cake,  Bolo Rei is more like a sweet bread.  Traditionally there is a large fava bean and a coin placed inside the Bolo Rei. And the one who gets the bean has to make the cake  for the following year and the one who gets the coin, is the lucky one. 

Normally you can add 50 ml of Port wine into the dry fruits and keep it for overnight but I haven’t add the port wine into my recipe. The dough is kept overnight for rising, but I kept it for 2 hours. 

Here is my version of the recipe - 

Ingredients

500 grams All Purpose Flour 

125 ml Lukewarm Milk

65 grams Caster Sugar 

1 sachet / 11 grams Dry Yeast 

2 Eggs

1 Egg white

100 grams Butter

2 tbsp Candied Apricot chopped 

2 tbsp Candied Cherry chopped 

2 tbsp Raisins chopped 

2 tbsp Black Raisins chopped

1/2 cup Dried Fruits chopped

2 tbsp Walnuts chopped 

2 tbsp Almond chopped 

2 tbsp Cashews chopped 

1 Egg yolk to brush 

2 tbsp Powder Sugar for sprinkle 

For Garnishing 

Ingredients 

1 tbsp Almond chopped 

1 tbsp Walnut chopped 

1 tbsp Dried Fruits

1 tbsp Candied Apricot sliced 

1 tbsp Candied Cherries whole 

Some Lemon Candied peels sliced 

Method 

Take 1/2 the quantity of the lukewarm milk, add 1 tbsp of caster sugar, stir the milk, then add the yeast.  Stir it once again and let it rise. Meanwhile mix all the dried fruits, candied fruits and nuts together and keep it aside. 

Take flour, sugar, butter, eggs, remaining milk and yeast in a mixing bowl and knead it into a dough for 5 to 7 minutes. I have used a kneading machine, but you can also knead it by hand. Cover and keep it aside to rise. Now add the dried fruits and nuts. Knead the dough again. Divide the dough into 2 portions. Take a portion of the dough, roll it into a thick rope and round it into a wreath on a baking sheet.  Cover and keep it for 30 minutes. Then brush the dough with the egg.

Garnish the cake with candied peels, nuts and dried fruits. Bake it in an pre heated oven for 25 minutes at 180 degree celsius. Remove it from the oven and let it cool a bit. Sprinkle with some powdered Sugar.

Dutch Speculaas Cookies.....

Speculaas cookie is a type of spiced short crust biscuit, traditionally baked on or just before St Nicholas' day in the Netherlands that is 5th December, In Belgium it is December 6th and around Christmas in Germany. Speculaas are thin, very crunchy, caramelized, slightly browned and, most significantly, have some image or figure (often from the traditional stories about St. Nicholas stamped on the front side before baking and the back is flat. 

Traditionally speculaas are made by pressing the dough into a mold before baking in the oven. Using a springerle rolling pin (a rolling pin with a pattern carved into it) is an easy way to impress a shape into the cookies. If you don’t have a speculaas mold or a springerle rolling pin, you can just use regular holiday cookie cutters to make festive shaped cookies instead or just roll them out, and cut them into squares with a knife. While baking the whole house is filled up with aroma and makes you feel like holiday season.

Net source ...

Ingredients

2 cups All Purpose Flour 

1/2 cup  Butter

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 tsp Cinnamon powder 

1/4 tsp Nutmeg powder

1/4 tsp Clove powder

1/4 tsp Dry Ginger powder

1/4 tsp White pepper powder

1/4 tsp Cardamom powder

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence

2 tbsp Curd 

Method 

Take a mixing bowl. Beat the butter and brown sugar together till fluffy. Scrape the sides with a spatula and add the vanilla essence and curd, beat it well. Add all the spice powder and beat it. Add the flour and the baking powder. Beat it again and knead it until all the ingredients incorporates well and forms a dough. Sprinkle some flour on the platform. Place the dough on the platform. If you using the springerle rolling pin then roll the dough out into 1/2 inch thick sheet with a plain rolling pin. Dust the springerle pin with flour then roll over the dough, pressing it firmly to make a 1/4 inch thick cookie dough, with imprint. Cut the dough along the springerle grid lines with a sharp knife or pizza cutter and place the cookies on a baking tray.If using a cookie cutter, roll the dough out until 1/4 inch thick with a plain rolling pin and cut out cookies and place on the baking sheet. Bake it in a preheated oven at 170 degrees celsius for 20 minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before enjoying... 

Recipe adapted from Irvin Lin

Eggless Non alcoholic Super Moist Rich Christmas Fruit Cake.....

As Christmas arrives my memory runs down through those beautiful moments of my life where I stayed for so many years, a place where you could hear Christmas tune flowing in the air. Adult and children from different parish would walk down the road singing carols. There would be romance in the air. so nostalgic..... Every household would make sweets and cakes.... The aroma of baking would be everywhere. All the main roads and  Gaothans would be decorated and lite up with colourful stars and lights. Food and drink would flow in parties along with the music and dance. More over fun to attend the midnight mass with friends. 

One of the must in the menu is the fruit cake. The dry fruits are soaked in alcohol for many weeks before makingthe cake, but today, I made a cake without eggs and alcohol... which was equally good in taste. 

Ingredients

3/4 cup Raisins chopped 

1 cup Trutti futti

1/2 cup Red Canned Cherries chopped

1/4 cup Lemon Candy Peels chopped

1/2 cup Cashew nuts chopped

400 ml  Orange juice

1/3 cup Honey

3/4 cup Oil

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp All Purpose Flour 

1 tsp Baking powder

1/tsp Soda bicarbonate 

1/4 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Mix spices powder  ( 2 pinches of Cinnamon powder, 2 pinches of Nutmeg powder, 2 pinch of Ginger powder and 2 pinches of Cloves powder) 

1/4 cup Club Soda or Drinking Soda 

Method

Pre heat the oven at 160 -180 degrees. Mix all the dry fruits, orange juice and honey and keep it over night in the fridge. Take the soaked dry fruits and drain the juice out. Keep the juice and the dry fruits separately. 

Take oil and sugar. Beat it well till both the ingredients are well incooperated. Take the dry fruits and the cashews and mix it. Sprinkle 2 tbsp of the flour into the dry fruits and mix it. Now take a cup of the juice. Add the juice into the oil and sugar mixture little at a time along with the remaining flour, baking powder, soda bicarbonate and salt and beat it. Add the mix spice powder and the dry fruits into the batter and gently fold in the batter. Add in 1/4 cup of the club Soda and gently mix it. Now take 2 mould of 500 grams. Grease the moulds. Add the batter into the mould. Fill in 3/4 of the size of the mould. Bake it for 45 to 50 minutes at 160 - 180 degrees. Insert a tooth pick and check. Cool the cake completely and then slice it. 

Eggless Christmas Cookies...

As Christmas is just round the corner, I wanted to share this colourful eggless cookie recipe which I had made 2 years back before having a blog. The Christmas tree cookie presentation idea was taken from Sandra Denneler. This is an excellent idea for decorating your table for Christmas parties. 

Ingredients

1/3 cup Powdered Sugar

Or 

1 cup Sugar Free Natura

1/3 cup Amul Butter

1 tbsp Curd

1/4 tsp Baking powder  

1 cup of All Purpose Flour and 1/3 cup of Almond powder

1 tsp Almond essence (or whatever essence you prefer)

2 Perk Chocolate bars

Melted Chocolate for sticking the cookies

6 different Food colours

1 cup Sugar (Displaying your Cookies)

Method

Beat the sugar with butter, curd and essence. Now combine all the dry ingredients together, and then gradually add them to the sugar-butter mixture. Split dough into 6 equal portions and keep a very small portion for the star.Add food coloring to each of the dough balls until desired color is achieved. Take 2 lime size portions from any of the coloured dough. Keep them on a plate. Similarly take another 2 portions from another colour dough. This portion has to be little smaller than the previous portions taken. Keep repeating. The portions keeps decreasing in size as we take different colour dough. The yellow colour dough can be cut into a star for the top. Flatten the dough balls. First place the bigger size cookies on the greased baking tray. Start with baking at 170 - 180 degrees for 3 minutes in a pre heated oven. Then remove the baking tray from the oven and add the next smaller size cookies, bake it for more 3 minutes. In the similar manner, keep adding the cookies and baking it for next 3 minutes. So the total time for baking will be 20 minutes.Cool of the cookies completely. Cut a full-sized perk  bar in half. Get the 2 halves together and stick it with melted chocolate. Take a plate. Add the sugar for display into the plate. Add melted chocolate on top edge of the perk bar to secure the bottom cookie. For more stable trees, keep adding melted chocolate in between each cookies layer as you stack them. Stack the largest cookie in the bottom, graduating to the smallest size on the top. Add the star cookie on top. Take the leftover dough and roll it into a sheet and with the help of a Christmas cookie cutters cut out different shapes and bake it at 180 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. Enjoy them during Christmas.

Lapis Sarawa Coloured Layered Kek

Lapis Sarawa Coloured Layered Kek...

The Sarawak layer cake is traditionally served in Sarawak, Malaysia on special occasions. In the Malay language, the cakes are known as kek lapis Sarawak, Kek lapis moden Sarawak, 'or simply Kek lapis. They are often baked for religious or cultural celebrations such as Eid ul-Fitr, Christmas, Deepavali, birthdays and weddings. 

According to the history, layer cakes have been made in Jakarta, Indonesia since the 1970s and 1980s. During that time, Betawi people came to Sarawak and taught the people, how to make the spiced Betawi cake. The Sarawak people then added new ingredients, flavour and colour that resulted in a new version of the layer cake been introduced and named as Sarawak layer cake. In addition, modern Sarawak layered cakes were inspired by Western cake-making in the early 1980s. In 2011, cake maker Kek lapis Qalas Qalas introduced modern design to the traditional layer cake, along with new flavours. Sarawakian modern layered cakes can be divided into two categories, cakes with ordinary layers and cakes with patterns, motifs, or shapes. All must have at least two colours. The cake can be baked in an oven or microwave. The batter is made from butter or vegetable oil, milk and eggs, it requires a strong arm or electric mixer to beat the ingredients together. The baked cake has a high, firm texture and the layers are fastened together with jam or a similarly sticky sweet substance. More detailed cakes often require special moulds to maintain the perfect layer thickness.

(Net Source )

Here is my version of this recipe with the ingredients available in my kitchen.

Ingredients

160 grams All Purpose Flour 

80 grams Malt / Horlicks or Malt based drinking powder like Bournvita 

1tbsp Coco powder 

1 tsp Baking powder 

200 grams Butter

80 grams Caster Sugar

5 Eggs

200 grams Condensed Milk

1 tsp Vanilla essence 

3 Ameri Colour of your choice

Method 

Grease a rectangular 7" × 5 " × 2 " baking tin and keep it aside. Take a mixing bowl. Add butter and sugar. Beat it well till fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat it well. Add the vanilla essence and condensed milk. In a bowl mix the flour, baking powder and malt powder together. Add the flour mix little at a time and beat it well. Divide the batter into 5 parts. Add cocoa powder into 1 part of the batter and mix it well. Let one part remain as it is. Add different colours in each of the 3 remaining batter. Preheat the oven at 180 degrees celcius. Pour 2 tbsps of cocoa batter into baking tin and spread mixture evenly. Bake for about 6 -7 minutes or until cooked. Once cooked, remove the pan from the oven & press top of the cake gently using a fondant smoother or bottom flat surface of bowl.Then adjust the oven setting to top heat only and increase the temperature to190 degrees celcius.  Pour 2 tbsp of any colour batter into baking tin and spread evenly. Bake untill cook. Continue baking the same way, by pressing the baked layer and adding another colour batter on top of the baked layer. Repeat till all the batter is over. Take it out from the oven and cool it completely. Cut it into square pieces and enjoy it...

P. S. 2 tbsp batter will remain which can be baked in a small bowl.

Pesto and Olive Whole Wheat Bread Wreath

Pesto and Olive Whole Wheat Bread Wreath
This bread is made with home made Pesto sauce,sliced red pickled chillies and olives...it is then garnish with thyme.

Pesto sauce
Ingredients
2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup peeled almonds and walnut mix
3 garlic cloves minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method
Put the basil leaves and  nuts into the grinder and grind. Add the garlic and Parmesan cheese and grind few more times. While the grinder is running, slowly add the olive oil in the grinder. Occasionally stop to scrape down the sides of the grinder. Add some salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Pesto and Olive Whole Wheat Bread Wreath
Ingredients
31/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 cup Pesto sauce
2 tsp Dry Yeast
1/2 cup Lukewarm water
2 tsp Sugar
Salt to taste
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Pickled Red Chilli  sliced
Few Green and Black Olives sliced
Few Thyme Leaves

Method
Add yeast and sugar in the Lukewarm Water and stir.  Keep it aside to rise. In a bowl add flour and salt. Mix it. Add the yeast water and 1 cup or more water little at a time to get a soft dough. Add 1 tbsp oil and knead it for 10 minutes. Cover and keep it aside to rise double in size. Once the dough is risen, knock it back then roll it out on a lightly floured surface into a big  rectangle shape.    Spread the pesto evenly all over the dough. Starting at the long edge closest to you, roll the dough up tightly but gently, like a swiss roll, into a log. Grease the  baking sheet,  transfer the roll of dough to the baking sheet and, using a sharp knife,  cut the roll in half lengthwise. Turn the two halves so that the cut side is facing up then lay one over the other so that they make an X shape, twist them together by laying one side over the other, keeping the cut side up, until all of the dough is twisted and you are left with a braid. Loop the braid round into a wreath shape and pinch the ends together. Leave to rise for about 20 minutes. Add olives and pickled chilli on the dough.  Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Once baked transfer to a wire rack to cool. Garnish with thyme..

Non alcoholic Super rich fruit cake for Christmas

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup raisins chopped
2 cups trutti futti
1 cup red canned cherries chopped
1 cup lemon candy peels chopped
1 cup cashew nuts chopped
1 cup dates chopped
1/2 litre Orange juice
1/3 cup honey
250 grams oil or butter
1 cup brown sugar
5 eggs
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
Method
Pre heat the oven at 150 degrees. Mix all the dry fruits, orange juice and honey and keep it over night in the fridge. Take oil and sugar. Beat it well till both the ingredients are well incooperated. Add the eggs one by one and beat it well. Add the flour and the baking powder to the marinated dry fruits. Slowly add the egg, sugar and oil mixture to the dry fruits and fold the mixture slowly. Now take 6 mould of 500 grams. Grease the moulds. Add the batter into the mould. Fill it half the size of the mould. Bake it for an hour at 150 degrees. Cool the cake completely and then slice it. This cake can be stored for few months in an air tight container in the fridge.