EVO & Yogurt Cake, Some Inspirational Blogs and an Endeavor to better my Photographs...

Hello All -

High time I post a recipe here, I say!
Well, I have been in the process of reading a lot of blogs and food websites (my favorites are: http://www.nigella.com/, http://www.doriegreenspan.com/, Aapplemint, Passionate about Baking, Brown Eyed Baker, The Pioneer Woman, Happy Home Baking, Joy of Baking, Easy Indian Cooking, Tuesdays With Dorie - I can go on and on ) and learning more about my point and shoot or learning how to use photoshop / picasa - anything that can help improve my food photographs.
I always seem to be in a rush to get my baking over and the icing done before my baby is awake and usually battling away sleep. If I am baking in the morning then someone wants to be in my "godi" (lap) through the baking and frosting process, you get the drift - so by the time I am done with the taking pics - all I want to do is share the recipe coz - 'Yay, I managed to bake another cake' or 'Wow, I had the time to create another dessert' but I have decided to sincerely make a change.
After over 30 posts I have realised I need to be more meticulous and patient with baking and frosting and decorating and the whole process of getting the post to all of you so that it looks as appealing to you to eat as it is for me!

I am very inspired with the likes of The Daring Bakers Challenge and Tuesdays With Dorie(TWD) but definitely intimidated with the level of skill required to be part of it but when I read about the EVO and Yogurt Cake on TWD - I just could not resist baking it! It seemed like a perfect quick cake recipe for me! The original recipe can be found at: http://www.doriegreenspan.com/ or http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com - this cake sounded simple and healthy (no butter) and seemed like something that could be put together in a jiffy with wonderful results and I was right :)! And I have decided to take mini steps and start baking easy recipes from these blogs...

This recipe is adapted a bit coz I bake in the nights and used whatever I could find available:  
11/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
Pinch of Salt
1/2 cup yogurt (I used homemade yogurt with low fat milk)
Finely grated zest of 1 lime (I didn't add 'coz my toddler doesn't have a thing for lemony flavours)
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (I used vanilla essence)
1/2 cup evo (I used Saffola Oil - a mixture of rice bran and safflower oil - wow, didn't know I had that in my kitchen - have to read up some more on the oil I use in my kitchen!)
                                                        
I followed the rest of the instructions to the T - I added yogurt to the sugar and whisked. I added eggs and vanilla essence to this and whisked further. I then added the dry ingredients to this and whisked it together.

In the end I added the oil and mixed it with a spatula as instructed. I couldn't find a loaf pan so in, it went into a round baking dish.

50-55 minutes at 350F for a loaf pan but mine was done in 45 mins in a round pan at 170 degree Celsius.

Though this cake calls for a jam or glaze I made a simple frosting to enhance the slight tart flavour that I thought the yogurt would add to this cake. I also wanted to give the cake a very cloud like ethereal look 'coz from the reviews I had read it was a dense cake with lots of character and flavour so I used the soy based whipping cream thats available in India and to it I added some fresh mango puree and very little sugar and whipped it together to get a fluffy and light frosting. Here is the recipe:

1 cup whipped cream - lightly beaten till it holds form
1/3 cup mangoes pureed
2 tablespoon powdered sugar
Fold the puree and sugar into the whipped cream

Frost the cake and decorate with mangoes and enjoy! By the time I finished baking and decorating the cake it was 2am and I had to wait till morning to take pictures.. so they are yet to be uploaded!

But my toddler love the cake and kept saying 'more', 'more' and he even added "yummy" after tasting the frosting so I think I passed. Those of you who have tried this recipe yet - it is a must have for cakes in a jiffy! The cake itself was really nice and dense and I did get good reviews from the family!

I am leaving you with a collage of some of my pictures and would really like some true feedback on them... pictures of the cake to follow soon!

Oye Delhi! Delhi Oye!

I had meant to put up a few new recipes with pictures et al but I have been stranded without help for the last few days and I just realized how difficult it is to successfully manage a house and a 5 month old… so I decided to dedicate this post to the quest for good food in Delhi.

When my husband and I moved to Delhi back in August 2007 we would be out most weekends looking for good sit-down places to relax at or soak in the ambience of, enjoy a nice quiet meal or sometimes all that mattered was great food! We don’t know a lot of people our age here so we would always be on the lookout for ways of discovering new places to eat it – magazine reviews, Google searches, you name it we have tried and it and it has been quite an adventure. I thought I will put down my feedback and reviews of some of the eateries on my blog so people who are looking for good food know where to go and where not to go!

To give my friends living abroad a bit of a background – Delhi is the capital of India and it’s a big sprawling city comparable to Washington D.C but Mumbai is the place to party at all night long and is always buzzing with activity (like NYC!!!). I have been in Delhi for over a year and being a hardcore Bombayite / Mumbaitie I’m still trying to adjust to the city’s idiosyncrasies but the one thing I cannot deny is that there most probably is not a single Indian restaurant in Delhi that can ruin a Butter Chicken (Indian Curry Chicken) or Dal Makhani (Indian lentils). Finding the same in Mumbai can be quite a challenge…

One place where my husband and I used to frequent a lot is The Big Chill Café – done up with a Serendipity 3 like ambience (http://www.serendipity3.com/ - my favoritest restaurant in NYC) – is a gastronomic delight and great place to chill at. The ambience is great (a bit retro), the crowd young and eclectic and the place is done up with posters from yesteryear’s Hollywood classics. You can’t go wrong with anything of the menu, the servers are very courteous and will try to fine tune a dish to suit it to your tastes. Our typical order at this joint is – the baked potato with chicken and mayonnaise (yumm - i can taste it as I write about it - it is always perfectly baked with the potato topped with a perfect combination of mayaonaise and chicken as the name suggest and a big dollop of cheese so each bite just melts into your mouth), the chicken peri peri (a fiery mouth watering pasta which seems like a fusion of Indian and Italian spices - again a full bodied sauce makes this pasta dish taste great). the pasta is served with their signature bread that is nice and buttery and perfect to balance the spice in the pasta. We always end our meal with the Mississippi Mudpie (I think this is the yummiest dessert I have ever eaten!!!). The Mississippi Mudpie portion can serve 3-4 people but however full our tummies Alok and I always manage to wolf this one down completely. It is the perfect combination of coffee ice-cream with a base of peanut butter laid on a chocolaty crust topped with hot chocolate fudge sauce and each bite just melts into your mouth. The only complain I have of this place is that is not kid friendly (so we now have to order take out) and if you plan on visiting this one the wait for getting a table varies between 20-40 minutes even on weekdays!

I think I will have to end this post for now since I haven't gotten more than 3 hours of sleep over the last few days... but I promise to follow this up soon with my healthy but yummy Butter Chicken recipe and more reviews of restaurants & bars in Delhi.

Anyone need the address of Big Chill can email me and this is one meal I gaurantee you will always remember!!!!