A Vanilla Sponge Cake without Oil/Butter

Hi friends!

I am back after 2 weeks of hibernation!!! In this 2 weeks, I went for a short vacation to Goa and enjoyed to the fullest with my family. It is a place of beautiful scenic locations, good food, warm and caring people and unlimited shopping! So, I would recommend this place to all of you.

Anyway, back to my topic! This is not a travel blog - but may be I should soon open one travel blog too, to share my travelling experience with all of you. :)

There are several recipes pending to share with you. Today, I am going to talk about one of my latest bakes - a fresh strawberry cake! This one I baked for my sister's birthday and it came out quite well. But there were few issues, which I experienced while working on this cake. I'll share those too, later on. Let me first begin with the vanilla sponge cake.

This fresh strawberry cake I prepared using a vanilla sponge cake and it was made without oil or butter. When I put a lot of icing on top of the cake, I try to balance the fat-quantity by making the cake fat-free. You have to keep a track of the health quotient too, while preparing the desserts. A sponge cake is also light in weight, so it does not give you that heavy feeling after eating.

It is very easy to prepare this basic cake. You will need only few ingredients.

The dry ingredients are -

Flour or maida - 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon

Powdered sugar - 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon

Baking powder - 1 teaspoon

The wet ingredients are -

Eggs - 4 large

Hot water - 1 1/2 tablespoon

Vanilla essence - 1 1/2 tablespoon

The process is very much similar to the chocolate sponge cake recipe. Please note that you should be very careful in measuring the items.

In a large bowl, sieve in flour and baking powder. Blend well and keep aside.

Break the eggs and separate the white and yellow parts in 2 different bowls. The white part should be kept in a large bowl.

Use the electric beater to beat the egg white until stiff peaks arise. Gradually add sugar by couple of tablespoons at a time and keep on beating. Once all the sugar is used, add the egg yolks and again beat for some time. Next add the vanilla essence and mix well.

Now gradually add boiling water in few drops and beat well. Now the mixture will be light, fluffy and almost 3 times in volume.

This is the time to set your oven in preheat mode (180C). Also prepare your cake pan by greasing and dusting.

Slowly fold in flour into the egg mixture. While doing this, don't add all the flour at a time. Sprinkle in small amount on top of the batter and fold in nicely.

Pour the batter in the pan and place inside oven to bake at 180C for 30-35 minutes.

The cake will leave the side of the pan, when it is done. Also the top will spring back when you touch on top. Insert a knife to check the doneness and if ready, then remove from oven.

Allow it to cool down at room temperature and then bring out the cake from the pan. Wrap the cake with a cling wrap and place inside refrigerator for future use.

In my next blog, I'll share the fresh strawberry cake making procedure using this vanilla cake.

Till then, ciao!

Fun with Fondant - A Weekend Spent Well!!

Today I am not going to describe any cake recipe or baking tips. It's going to be a colorful post, with lots of bright and beautiful images. Yes, you have guessed it right - it's the fondant decoration for the cakes.

As I have mentioned many times, that I am still learning. Many of you are getting inspired from my blog and started baking for the first time - that is really a great achievement for me. When I started this blog, I never knew - it will be popular and more than that, inspirational - for so many of you. I am so, so happy that at least it is serving a purpose!

So, back to my story! I never had any experience of using fondant in decorating cakes, but I have seen many of the expert bakers are using this technique and they are making so exquisite cakes... just unbelievable! Being a member of the Home Bakers Group Pune (in Facebook), I got the opportunity to see this beautiful art pieces - they are not just cake, but something more than that. In fact, I cannot think of cutting these cakes to serve - they should be kept for display, forever in some museum! That's my idea of using fondant.

Anyway, I was planning to join some course to learn some basic technique of using fondant and I got my chance. One of the best and renowned home-bakers of Pune - Lynette Dias, was conducting this class for 2 days over the weekend. Weekend was the best time for me, so I decided to join the course. I was like - no matter whatever the situation is - I am going to do it! And I took the right decision. It was such a great experience to learn so many new things and moreover it was fun to spend a weekend out of the daily chores of work-cook-sleep. It was a real stress buster for me. We were 4 ladies in the group - and all of us felt like we have gone back to our childhood days to play with colorful play-doughs.

Making a Tiger

Yes, the process of creating these beautiful, cute, little figurines using the colored fondants are exactly same as playing with play-doughs. If you have done that in your childhood time, then you are going to be a pro in some time. But obviously you have to rack your brains, to get all these unique themes of decorating cakes.

The Tiger and The Lion

We did few figurines on wild animals and then we moved to our project cakes. Our teacher, Lynette - gave us few options for the project cakes and among that I selected the mermaid cake. Actually the day before, I was thinking that if there is an option then I'll go for a mermaid cake or a family cake  - showing a couple and two daughters. However, the family theme could have been more difficult, because preparing the mermaid was almost a 2 hours job. By the end of the first day, we were ready with most of the figurines.

A Teddy Bear and A Cute Doggy

The Mermaid

The second day was kept for icing the cake with ganache, covering with fondant and placing the figurines. Basically the total assembling of the cake was done in the second day. In second day, I had prepared few more aquatic items like octopus, a big fish and sea weeds. Ultimately the cake was assembled and it was really looking so gorgeous. Everyone's cakes were looking brilliant and gorgeous. Without Lynette's guidance, it was completely impossible. Thank you so much, Lynette!

My Mermaid Cake

Octopus and The Big Fish

I brought my project cake back home and my family-members could not believe that I made that cake. I had to cut that cake, but I made sure to remove these cute-little figurines first. These are still lying in my refrigerator and I don't think, I'll ever be able to throw them up in kitchen garbage-bin... I'll store them as long as I can... :)

A Black Forest Cake and a Surprise!!!

It was the birthday of my younger daughter and I wanted to make it special. I rarely get birthday cakes from outside - for every birthday in my family, I make sure to bake a cake. The first time, I started this, was the 5th birthday for my younger daughter. But that was a steamed cake, made in pressure cooker. At that time, I did not have a microwave, so I found a ready-made cake mix, which can be made using a pressure cooker. The process was not at all proper baking, and how come you can call it a cake, which is not baked? So I was not satisfied!

From that day onward, for every birthday, I made the cake of my own. Many times, it was just a simple chocolate cake, as I did not have any idea of icing a cake during those days. But, still it made my daughters very happy. Many people asked me, why don't you get colorful iced cakes for your daughters! Yes, I could have went to a bakery shop and get the best cake from there; but to me, it was very much superficial. Baking a cake - is a project and it not only involves the basic ingredients, but also requires a lot of sincerity, dedication and passion. By baking the birthday cakes every year, I wanted to satisfy my desire of being more sincere and dedicated for my family-members. However, this is extremely personal view, and friends, no offence... please!!

This year, I planned to make a properly iced cake for her and I really made a plan much ahead of the day. Although it was a black forest cake, but I made it little bit unique, by drawing mehendi designs on top, using melted chocolate. In fact, the main reason behind this planning was that my daughter loves to wear mehendi on her hands. Her school does not permit to have mehendi-dyed hands, so many times, she does temporary mehendi drawings on her palms, using brown colored sketch pens. And I knew that she is going to love this cake, even before baking it!!

I baked the chocolate sponge cake, a day before the birthday. Because, you have to give some time to cool the cake in room temperature. You also need the other ingredients ready by your side. One of the most important ingredients is fresh cream icing. 

To prepare the fresh cream icing, I used -

BlueBird whipping powder - 2 packs

The whipping method is clearly mentioned at the back of the pack. Follow that carefully, to prepare a stiff peak whipping cream. Keep it inside refrigerator, until you are using it for icing. 

Other than the whipping cream, you will also need whole de-seeded cherries. Tinned cherries will also do. My luck was not that good, I could manage some dried cherries from the dry fruit section of the grocery store. But that's fine, I took 1 cup of dried cherries and let them soak into 1/2 cup of warm water. Cherries became fresh and I got the cherry syrup, as well. 

A black forest, is not a black forest, unless you use rum to soak the cake. But I did not have rum, instead I used 2 tablespoons of red wine, and it was quite good. I added that red wine to the cherry syrup.

Finally I had to prepare the melted chocolate for piping the mehendi design. I used the normal double-boiler method to melt 2 dark milk chocolates (medium sized). Once the chocolate started melting, I removed the glass bowl from the double boiler and kept it aside to cool down at room temperature.

Everything was ready, and it was the time to assemble. 

Step 1:

Cut the cake horizontally in 2 parts. If you want, you can make 3 layers of cake, too.

Step 2:

Place one layer on top of a board, and soak with the cherry syrup. Add cream icing and spread nicely on top. Sprinkle cherries all over.

Step 3:

Cover the icing with the other half of the cake. Complete icing on top and sides. Place the iced cake inside the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes, before you start the chocolate design.

Step 4:

Use a piping bag to fill with melted chocolate. Make a small hole in the corner. Be careful, a little larger hole will make the design a mess. Also you will have better control over the chocolate flow, when you have a small hole. You can do your choice of design.

Here is a simple video of making the design on top of the cake. My younger daughter has recorded it in a mobile phone camera and then she has edited it. The editing software was a downloaded version, so the promo text is showing up in between. But this is her genuine effort to make me happy and so I am putting it in my blog.

I wanted to make her happy and she wanted to make me - it was a sincere emotion from both the sides. As a result, the cake came out so nice and the video, came out to be a surprise for all of us!

Enjoy!!!