Amaretto-Soaked Pound Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

This is a moist vanilla cake with rich chocolate ganache and a delicate flavour of bitter almonds. Photos: Sriram Narayanan

There is always that one recipe that a cook favours above all the rest. Partly, because s(he) has made it so often, that it is now easily summoned from memory; and partly, because of its simplicity and assured great taste, every time it is made.

My mother has her ambatvaran, a spicy-sweet-sour dal that is tempered with a sputtering tadka of crushed garlic flakes, mustard seeds and curry leaves, among other things. One aunt makes a mean masale bhat, a rice pulao with a flavoursome blend of Indian spices and fried cashew-nuts  Another aunt has a way with fish curries that are soul satisfying to say the least, when paired with steamed rice.

As for me, I do cakes. That's my thing. And my favourite go-to recipe is the simple pound cake. It was called so because it used to be made with a pound each of all ingredients - butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Of course, you can make this cake with any quantity you choose.

Moreover, to my mind, there is nothing more versatile than a pound cake. By itself, it makes for a lovely teacake, with a deep brown crust and a golden yellow sponge. Take the cake up a notch on the posh scale by brushing it with a lime juice and sugar syrup when hot and you have zingy lemon drizzle cake. It is also a great foundation for most vanilla cupcakes, ice-cream cakes, and trifle puddings.

However, my favourite way with the pound cake is this. Brush the cake, rather generously, with some amaretto (almond liqueur) or brandy syrup, layer and frost on some dark chocolate ganache, and top it up with a few chocolate dipped nuts for decoration.

What you will get is a fancy, grown up birthday cake, or a nice party dessert for a crowd. This is a moist vanilla cake with a rich chocolate frosting and a delicate bitter almond flavour. If you want to make this cake for just that special someone, simply halve the recipe.

I took this amaretto soaked, chocolate frosted cake to a friend's home for a Christmas lunch last weekend, where everyone tucked into it, including a 4-year-old, who turned hyperactive after eating some off her mother's plate (don't know if it was the amaretto or the sugar rush).

Amaretto-Soaked Pound Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

Cake:

200 gm butter (softened)

150 gm fine sugar

4 eggs

200 gm self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla extract or seeds scraped from 2 vanilla beans

Amaretto syrup:

Dissolve 50 gm fine sugar into 125 ml amaretto or brandy

Frosting:

Dark cooking chocolate 250 gm

40 ml amaretto or brandy

¾ cup water (or cream, for a richer version)

Chocolate dipped nuts, for decoration

Method

Preheat the oven to 150 degree Celsius. Grease an 8-inch round cake tin with butter, dust with flour and set aside. Mix the baking powder and flour and set aside. Using an electric beater or mixer, cream the butter until pale and fluffy. Mix in sugar and beat well. Add the eggs, one by one, mixing well after each addition. Beat the mixture for 2-3 minutes. Add the vanilla extract. Gently fold in the flour, bit by bit, with a spatula. 

Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for around 40 minutes, or until a small knife inserted into the cake centre comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the tin when still warm. Use a large knife to slice it horizontally into two layers. Do not worry if the layers are not neat or the equal size. Spoon the amaretto syrup over both the cake layers.

While the cake is baking, melt the dark chocolate in a microwave proof bowl. Add the water/cream and amaretto/brandy to the melted chocolate. Leave the ganache to cool to a spreadable consistency until the cake layers are ready to be frosted.

Now, using a flat spatula or palette knife, spread a large dollop of cooled ganache between two amaretto-soaked, cake layers. Use the remaining ganache to cover and frost the cake’s top and sides.

Top the cake with the chocolate dipped nuts to decorate.

Smitten by a sweet cloud

Pavlova is a dessert with myriad textures and tastes - crunchy, brittle, sweet, and soft. Photos: Sriram Narayanan

One of my most awe-inspiring moments in the kitchen is to watch an egg white billow up into an airy, creamy cloud a few minutes after it meets a balloon whisk. Once you have created this well-whipped cloud, the possibilities for what happens next are endless. 

Carefully fold the whites into melted chocolate for a silky chocolate mousse, or fold them with a finely sieved powder of blanched almonds and sugar for a lovely French macaron mixture, ready for the oven. Combined the whipped whites with grated cheese (Gruyere or Comte), and seasoning, fill into individual ramekins, and slide into the oven for around 15 minutes for a posh cheese soufflé that rises to the occasion. If all this is too much work, just fold in whipped egg whites separately into your regular pound cake batter for the lightest bite of cake. 

That is the magic of whipped egg whites.

My favourite way with them though, is to showcase the whipped whites just the way they are (with that light, airy texture) into a classic baked meringue. All you need to do is add fine sugar, slowly, during the whisking process and you have shiny meringue that is ready to be baked in the oven.  

This week, with Christmas just around the corner, I wanted to bake a special meringue. So I picked the Pavlova, which is a special Christmas and summertime treat for scores of families in New Zealand and Australia, and is the national dish of both the countries. This is a baked meringue with a crisp crust and soft inside and is typically topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. 

Fresh mulberries and ruby red pomegranate seeds make for a lovely topping on this Pavlova

A chef in Wellington, New Zealand, is believed to have created the dish in honour of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova when she toured the country in the 1920s. But Australia stakes claim to the Pavlova’s creation too.

In either case, we have a lovely dessert that all arguing parties can dig into. 

Pavlova

Adapted from a recipe by Donna Hay

Ingredients

4 egg whites

1 cup superfine sugar

2 tablespoons cornflour

2 teaspoons vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

A pinch of salt

100 ml fresh cream

200 gm mulberries

Seeds from half a pomegranate

(You can use any berries you like, or sliced peaches, plums or kiwifruit)

Method

Preheat the oven to 150 degree Celsius. 

Separate 4 eggs and place the egg whites in a large, clean bowl. Add a pinch of salt. Start whisking the eggs with an electric balloon whisk, or with a whisk in a stand-in mixer on a low speed.

Add the vinegar while whisking the whites. When the eggs become frothy and start growing in volume, start adding the sugar, a teaspoon at a time.

The meringue mixture will start looking shiny now. Add the cornflour.

Continue whisking until stiff peaks form. 

Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray. Heap the meringue mixture onto the tray with a spatula or a flat spoon. 

Bake at 120 degree Celsius or 100 degree Celsius (fan) for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Let cool inside oven before getting the meringue out, and do not open oven door while baking. Whip the fresh cream with some fine sugar, drizzle over cooled meringue. Decorate top with fresh fruit.

Tips: 

1. Separate the eggs carefully; no bits of yolk should stray into the whites. 

2. The bowl in which you whip the whites and the whisk must be squeaky clean, with no oily residue whatsoever. If any grease gets into the whites, they won’t grow in volume.

3. I rub the inside of the bowl with lime juice or a little vinegar to ensure no grease stays in. 

It's a half-moon day

Crisp and flaky kanavlas with a sweet coconut, dry fruit and nut filling. Photos: Sai Raje

A few days ago, I was watching a food show on television, which had its host chomping on some sweet pastries in Mexico. The pastries caught my eye because they looked remarkably similar to the festive, half-moon shaped karanjis or kanavlas made at home during Diwali. My family’s homemade kanavla usually has a sweet coconut, dryfruit and nut filling. We also enjoy a finger-licking, savoury version that is filled with spiced, mutton kheema. 

The Mexican half-moon pastry described earlier, is called the empanada, and is both sweet and savoury as well. It is made by employing an almost identical process as the kanavla. Roll out specially made pastry dough into circles, add the filling, roll over the pastry and seal the filling inside, and finally, bake or fry the pastries. When made well, the pastry outside is crisp, light and quite flaky, which goes well with a flavoursome filling, both sweet and savoury.

The food geek in me was curious to find out if there were versions of this half-moon pastry in other cultures. So I consulted my dependable Larousse Gastronomique, and found several forms of this delectable treat. 

The Cornish pasty from Cornwall, Britain is probably the most popular of its kind. It’s a large baked pastry encasing a seasoned beef, potato and onion filling.

In Southern Italy, especially Sicily, this pastry takes the form of an Easter special called cassatedde, and is filled with sweet ricotta cheese, lemon or orange zest, and candied fruit and nuts. Israel has a savoury version called the boureka that is filled with cheese and potatoes. 

While the half-moon pastry is fashioned in a similar manner by several cultures, the method of making the pastry dough itself differs greatly. While some half-moon recipes call for buttery shortcrust pastry, others depend on yeasted dough. With Marathi kanavlas, making dough with gritty semolina is key. Fine flour just won’t do. Layering the dough with butter is also necessary to make a kanavla with a crisp, flaky exterior, much like puff pastry.

For my first effort, I enlisted the help of my mother, who not only provided me with the family recipe, but demonstrated it step by step too. 

Kanavla 

Pronounced ka-nuv-laa

Makes 10 

Ingredients

Pastry dough:

100 gm fine semolina or rava 

Pinch of crushed saffron

50 gm ghee

Cornflour

Filling:

100 gm desiccated dry coconut

100 gm superfine sugar

5-6 cardamom pods, crushed

Large pinch nutmeg

2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon ghee

Method

1. Add a pinch of salt, crushed saffron to the semolina. Mix in a little water, a few drops at a time and lightly mix semolina into stiff dough. Cover and set aside for 3 hours.

2. Sauté the coconut in a pan on low heat for 3 to 4 minutes, blitz in a mixer-grinder until fine, and set aside. Sauté the whole-wheat flour with a teaspoon of ghee on a low heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Mix the coconut, flour, sugar, crushed cardamom, nutmeg and set the filling aside.

3. Lightly beat 50 gm of ghee in a bowl until pale and smooth. Add cornflour, bit by bit, until the mixture resembles soft, white butter. 

4. Blitz semolina dough in a mixer-grinder for a minute or two, until soft and stretchy. Divide dough into three parts.

5. Roll out each of the three parts into thin discs. 

6. Spread the ghee-cornflour paste onto a disc; layer all discs in this manner.

7. Crimp up the sides, and roll into a cylindrical shape.

8. Cut lengthwise, and cut into 2-inch wide pieces. You will now notice several layers of buttered dough in each of the pieces.

9. Take a piece and roll out into a disc very gently with a rolling pin. Heap 2 teaspoons of the filling to the disc's centre.

10. Cover over and seal the edges.

11. Keep all the kanavlas covered under a clean, damp cloth. 

Deep fry the pastries in ghee on low heat, and eat a couple of them when warm!

A traditional treat, revisited with a new technique

Ninava (pronounced nee-nah-vuh), is a dense cake, made with that classic combination of coconut milk and jaggery, and scrumptious, ghee-roasted chickpea flour. Photo: Sai Raje

I often remember this very traditional sweet from my childhood because I rarely ever got to eat it. It was among my favourite sweet treats, but for some reason, was made only once a year, on the day before the Ganapati festivities.

Inexplicably, I never had the good sense to ask my mother to make it either, which left me pining for it most part of the year.

Ninava (pronounced nee-nah-vuh), is a dense, moist cake like sweet, made with that classic combination of coconut milk and jaggery, and scrumptious, ghee-roasted chickpea flour. I am told that the dish is unique to the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus (CKPs), a community in Maharashtra known for its love for good food (an old joke being that the wealthiest of this lot squandered their riches over fine food and drink!).

Last week, I attempted my own version of the ninava, helped along by the recipe published in my grandmother Shakuntala Mohile’s book, Paramparik CKP Pakakriya (traditional CKP recipes; Audumbar Prakashan). The biggest difference in my version was that unlike my grandmother, who steam-cooked the ninava, I spread the batter in a brownie tin and baked it in the oven. I must add; I did this because a footnote in Aji’s recipe insisted that the reader try baking it for better flavour.  

“We didn’t have ovens back then. Ninava is much tastier baked, than steamed,” she said, after having tasted a bite of my baked version.

The traditional and more authentic version calls for thick, handmade coconut milk, made by soaking, pressing and sieving grated coconut in hot water. But my being hard pressed for time did not help matters, and I resorted to a cheat’s route by using coconut milk from a tetrapak (a fact I conveniently avoided telling my grandmother). 

Rest assured, the little deception did not seem to make any difference to the final result. For an even richer and scrumptious version, you can pan-fry the ninava squares in some ghee after they are baked, which give them a crispy brown outer layer to die for.

Ninava 

Pronounced (nee-na-vuh)

Coconut milk, Chickpea flour and Jaggery Cake

Recipe translated from Paramparik CKP Pakakriya (in Marathi) by Shakuntala Mohile 

Ingredients 

1 cup chickpea flour (besan)

¼ cup whole wheat flour

Milk of 1 coconut or 2 small tetrapaks coconut milk

1 cup grated jaggery

3-4 teaspoons clarified butter (ghee)

10-12 green cardamom pods, seeds crushed

Large pinch grated nutmeg (optional)

Small pinch of salt

Method

Mix in the chickpea and whole wheat flour. Saute the flour mixture in a pan with the ghee on a low flame, until the chickpea flour loses its raw smell and turns light brown.

In a separate bowl, mix the jaggery into the coconut milk by hand, until it dissolves completely. Add a pinch of salt to this mixture. 

Now, little by little, add the roasted flour to the milk mixture. Mix in thoroughly for a smooth batter or use an electric hand blender to get rid of any lumps of flour.

Add powdered cardamom and nutmeg to the batter, and transfer to a pan. Stir the mixture constantly on low heat until it takes on a thick paste like consistency. 

Transfer the mixture to a greased 9-inch square baking tin.

Bake at 150 degree Celsius in a pre-heated oven for 25 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Let cool and cut into squares.

Easy Bournville Brownies

These brownies, made with dark chocolate and cocoa taste even better the day after they are baked
Photo: Sriram Narayanan 

What dessert comes to you easily when you have barely enough time to put together a three-course dinner for a few friends after a busy workday? There is a dish in every home cook’s repertoire that has been committed to memory and which the cook can recreate effortlessly at any time as long as all the ingredients are at hand. 

In my case, it is dark chocolate brownies, which I serve with a good ice cream.

A few days ago, I baked these brownies from scratch for dessert and served them with a store-bought mocha ice cream, when I had around two hours before a dear friend came home to dinner; other things on the menu that night were a marinated prawn appetiser, chicken curry and rice.

Contrary to what you may think, it is not difficult to make this dessert even as a last minute addition to a special meal involving more than two courses. Of course, a little bit of planning and grocery shopping go a long way in helping you do this. 

Assembling the brownie ingredients does not take too long, since I try to eliminate the process of measuring ingredients as much as possible when I am rushed. I prefer to make do with whatever packaged quantities I have at hand, and leave the rest to that ubiquitous Indian cooking trait called andaaz (roughly translated as ‘estimation’). 

As for the Bournville part, I was far too rushed during my after-office grocery run, and could not find the usual dark cooking chocolate that I use for this recipe. So I popped a couple of large bars of ‘Rich Cocoa’ Cadbury Bournville chocolate into my shopping cart. 

Moreover, as it turned out, the Bournville made the brownies even better; gooey and squidgy with a crackly crust and a dense bite. Overall, a quick dessert that took 15 minutes to gather and blend ingredients, and 25 minutes to bake.

Easy Bournville Brownies

Ingredients

2x80 gm bars and 1x33 gm bar Bournville 'Rich Cocoa' chocolate
1 packet (100 gm) Amul Butter
70 gm cocoa
60 gm flour
130 gm caster sugar
3 eggs

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degree C. Line an aluminium, square baking tin (6.5 x 6.5 inches or 7.5 x 7.5 inches) with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave proof bowl to a smooth consistency. Add softened butter and set aside. Mix sugar, cocoa and flour well, and set aside. Fold in the dry ingredients into the butter-chocolate mixture. Finally add the eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition.

Pour brownie batter into baking tin and pop into the oven for around 25 minutes. A toothpick/knife inserted into the brownies at this point should have sticky batter on it.

Cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares. Makes 9 thick brownies in the small tin, or 12 thin brownies in the larger tin. 

You can serve the brownies warm by themselves, or with a good vanilla, or coffee ice cream.

Banoffee Ice cream

This easy-to-make ice cream is a great crowd pleaser at parties. Photo: Sriram Narayanan

The best time to write a food blog post is right after you are done savouring the sweet results of your efforts. Although I must add, it is surprisingly difficult to put any words on paper after having licked a bowl of the softest, homemade banoffee (banana+toffee) ice cream clean. Nevertheless, in the interests of writing about good food, I shall make one final sugar-rush riddled attempt. 

Banana and toffee (in this case, dulce de leche - a gooey, Argentinean milk toffee made by slowly simmering milk and sugar) is one of those classic combinations that work brilliantly in a range of desserts. A few years ago, I ate it for the first time in a banoffee pie, a sweet pastry tart layered with dulce de leche, thinly sliced bananas, and topped with whipped cream. 

Good dulce de leche is key to this flavour combination, and is easy to make. You need not sweat over a stovetop, stirring milk and sugar for hours. Pop in an unopened 400-gm can (or two!) of condensed milk into a large vessel of water on the stove. Let the water boil for two hours. A word of caution: Make sure you top up the vessel with more water to keep the can submerged. Do not let the can boil dry as this may cause it to overheat and explode. All this careful effort will be worth it in the end when you peel off the tin lid to the most delicious dulce de leche inside.

Dulce de leche has a smooth, spreadable texture and tastes like a strong, condensed version of the Indian basundi, which is made using a similar process.  Photo: Sai Raje

Yesterday, when I had a few overripe elaichi bananas at home, I thought of trying my hand at an ice cream version of the banoffee pie. I had already made a can of dulce de leche in the morning. After that, it was just a matter of whisking together all the ingredients, pouring the mix into a rectangular tin covered with cling film, and freezing it overnight. 

Apart from playing perfect partner to the bananas, the dulce de leche also gives homemade ice cream a really soft and creamy texture. So much so, that the ice cream does not require any churning to keep it from forming annoying icicles. You can pretty much bunge it in the freezer and forget about it until it is time to enjoy this treat. If you are on the lookout for a low-effort and delicious party dessert, you must definitely try this recipe out.  

Banoffee Ice cream

Ingredients

1000 ml skimmed milk cream (I used Amul Cream with 25 per cent fat)

400 gm dulce de leche

6-7 ripe elaichi bananas, mashed

1 cup caster sugar

Large pinch of sea salt

Method

Use a stand-in mixer or hand blender to whisk the cream, dulce de leche, banana mush, sugar and salt together. Pour this mixture into a rectangular tin, cover with cling film, and freeze overnight. Scoop or slice into bowls to serve.

Orange Crème Caramel

The citrusy zest adds a lovely zing to the creamy custard Photo: Sai Raje

Don’t let the fancy French name fool you. A crème caramel is that good old Irani restaurant staple, caramel custard, by any other name. There’s also a South American-Spanish version of this dessert called the flan, which is sweeter and richer, made so by the addition of condensed milk.

Truth be told, crème caramel aka caramel custard is one of the simplest, yet elegant desserts to make if you are looking to wow your guests at a dinner party. It’s a soft, creamy pudding that is not overly sweet, and sits in an oozy pool of bittersweet caramel sauce. What’s not to like?

In my parents’ home, crème caramel has been that ever dependable dessert to serve friends and family on special occasions. And we are always eager to try out a slightly tweaked recipe for the dessert. A couple of days ago, me and my mother came across an orange crème caramel recipe by the noted British chef and food writer Simon Hopkinson, who hosts a popular TV show called The Good Cook.

I tweaked his recipe slightly, by using only whole eggs and totally omitting the extra egg yolks.

You can make and chill it in the fridge a day ahead too, which makes it a hassle-free party dessert. 

Orange Crème Caramel

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

3 large Valencia or Navel oranges, zest only

60 gm fine caster sugar

300 ml whole milk

3 eggs

70 gm granulated sugar

Note: Do not use Nagpur or any other Indian variety of oranges for this recipe. 

Method

Peel the zest of the oranges very gently using a sharp peeler. Make sure you leave out the white pith. Blitz the zest finely in the mixer. Add the caster fine sugar, and blitz again.

Transfer this mixture to a heavy-bottomed pan and add milk. Stir the mixture continuously over a very low flame for 10 minutes, just below simmering point. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid, and leave to infuse for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 150 degree Centigrade. Strain milk to remove the zest. One, by one, whisk eggs lightly into the strained milk.

Set a heavy-bottomed pan onto a medium flame and add in 3-4 tablespoons cold water, along with the granulated sugar. Let it caramelise to a light amber colour. Pour this caramel into four individual ramekins or custard moulds. Now pour over the milk mixture until each ramekin is 3/4^th full.

Ramekins with rich amber caramel

Place ramekins in the oven on a baking tray. Pour hot water into the tray, so that it rises up outside the ramekins, 3/4^th of the way up. Cover the ramekins loosely with an aluminium foil. Bake for 40-50 minutes until the crème caramel is set and just wobbly.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Cover and chill to set for at least two hours. To pop out on a plate, run a small knife around the inside edge of the ramekin. Gently use your fingers to pull away the custard from the ramekin wall, just enough to create an air bubble. Now, put an individual serving plate on top of the ramekin and turn it upside down.