Chocolate Mud Cake

I was always scared of making a dark chocolate cake as I always feared that it would become a dry cake. So whenever I wanted to make a soft chocolate cake for icing I would end up buying Betty Corker’s Devil’s Food cake mix.

But this time as there was no occasion linked while making this cake. I had my hands free to do a trial on this recipe.  The recipe is completely copied from Bake Like a Pro YouTube video.  The end result was very satisfactory, so good bye to Betty corker’s cake mixes.

Ingredients

Flour – 2 cups / 300gm

Water – ¾ cup / 175ml

Unsalted butter – 1 ¼ cup / 250gm

Cooking chocolate – 8 ounce / 250gm

Milk – ½ cup / 125ml

Coco powder - ½ cup / 55gm

Eggs – 4

Castor sugar – 2 ¾ cup / 550 ml

Instant coffee – 2 tbsp / 30gm

Vegetable oil – 2 tbsp / 30ml

Baking soda – ½ tsp

Baking powder – 2 tsp / 10gm

Salt 1 tsp

Method

1.     Heat the water and mix the instant coffee. Keep it ready for use.

2.     In a double boiler container add the cooking chocolate, butter, sugar and the instant coffee mixture. Let it melt completely.

3.     Remove and let it come to room temperature.

4.     Now add the eggs one by one and mix well.

5.     To this add the milk and oil.

6.     Swift together flour, coffee powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

7.     Mix this to liquid mixture thoroughly so that no lumps are left.

8.     Grease and dust a 9” cake tin and pour the mixture.

9.     In a preheated oven bake the cake at 150⁰C for about 2hrs.

10.  When the cake is baked and cooled down to room temperature. Top it with chocolate ganache. 

Caramel Popcorn

I love caramel popcorn, and wait for movie trips to the malls, so that I can buy a big packet of hot caramel popcorn. So finally after lots of internet surfing, I try this at home and it turned out lip-smacking. So no more waiting for movie trips.  

Ingredients

Unpoped dried corns – ½ cup

Vegetable oil – 1 tbsp

Butter – 50 gm ( ½ cup)

Packed brown sugar – 1 tsp

Corn syrup – ¼ cup

Baking soda – ¼ tsp

Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Method

To make the pop corn

1.      Heat a big pan which has a lid.  Add oil and the corn to it.  Cover the lid.

2.      In 5 min the corn kernels will start popping. Keep shaking the pan with the lid on it.

3.      When the popping stop, immediately transfer the popcorn to the heat proof bowl and let it cool.

4.      Spread the popcorn in to baking sheet and keep it ready

Note: From this point you have to be quick and alert

To make the caramel popcorn

5.      Heat a heavy bottom pan and add the butter, sugar and corn syrup.

6.      Bring it to boil and bring the heat to medium.

7.      Let it boil for 3 min with continuous steering, don’t let the syrup burn.

8.      Immediately add the baking soda and vanilla essence.  Mix it thoroughly.  ( the mixture will fuzz up due to the reaction of the baking soda).

9.      Add the syrup to the ready popcorn and mix nicely so that the caramel gets coated on the corn.

10.  Now bake the caramel corn for 15 min at 120⁰C ( don’t let it burn).

11.  Cool it and serve it. 

Sheermal

It is a flavoured traditional flat bread made in Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh and some part of India like Lucknow, Hyderabad. Its soft and has a very delicate sweetness. The first time I had it was a Kareem’s outlet. It was really different and nice. So thought of making it during the Raman  period. Hope you will try it and like it.

Ingredients

All purpose flour/ maida – 2 ½ cups

Caster sugar – 1 tbsp

Salt - pinch

Instant yeast  – 2 tsp

Kewra water – 1 tsp

Ghee – 3tbsp

Egg – 1

Cream – 3 tbsp

Milk – ½ cup

Luke warm water – approx. ½ cup to make dough

Water & ghee to brush

Method

1.      In a bowl put all the ingredients (flour, salt, caster sugar, kewra water, yeast, ghee, cream, egg and milk).

2.      Mix them well.  Add the lukewarm water little by little and knead to dough. Knead it thoroughly.

3.      Grease a big bowl and leave the dough in this bowl for about an hour or till the dough rises to double the size.

4.      Punch this dough and knead once more.

5.      Divide it into 5 balls.

6.      Roll it into a round thick chappati.

7.      Now with a fork prick the entire chapppti.

8.      Place this on a baking tray.

9.      Brush milk on them.

10.  Bake this in a preheated oven at 200⁰C for 15 min.

11.   Remove and brush with ghee and water.

12.  Cover immediately in a foil till you require to use it.