Marble cake / Choco vanilla cake

Marble cake is one of the most popular cakes sold in Kerala bakeries. The choco and vanilla layers fascinated me from childhood days. Having this cake is like a double treat, you can enjoy both the flavours in a single bite.

Ingredients:


All Purpose flour / Maida - 2 cups
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Butter - 100 gms, softened
Powdered sugar - 1+1/4 cups
Eggs - 2 (at room temperature)
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Milk - 1 cup (luke warm)
Cocoa powder - 2 tbsp

Preparation:

1. Sift together maida and baking powder in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, combine butter and sugar. Add eggs and whisk well. Add the vanilla essence and milk and whisk together. Add the flour and whisk well till all ingredients are combined well and you get a smooth batter without any lumps.
3. Preheat oven to 180C and grease a cake tin.
4. Pour half of the cake mix in the tin.  Add the cocoa powder to the other half  in the bowl,and combine well. Pour this cocoa mix on top of the vanilla layer in the cake tin . Using a knife or toothpick, swirl the batter to create a marbling effect.
5. Bake for 30-40 mins. Check if cake is done by inserting a skewer in the middle. Let the cake cool completely.

Linking with my own event ABC Series:DESSERTS that ends tomorrow.

Events:

The Kerala Kitchen - Jan 2012 hosted by Kaveri, an event series started by Ria and Rose. 
Cooking concepts - Chocolate Fest by Sravani
Chocolate lover @Daily Cuppa
Valentine's day event @ Teenz Yummy delights
Chocolate Mela @ Cooking 4 all seasons
Valentine's special @ Anzz cafe
Tea time snack event @ Torview

ABC Series: CAKES for CHRISTMAS event roundup

Hope all of you had lots and lots of cake during the Christmas-New year time. I am so happy to receive many entries for the CAKES event. Thanks to each and everyone for their awesome entries.  This time I got to know many more blogger friends through this event. Here is an award for all of you, please accept it and I would be really happy to see it on your blog.

Poornima, Sobha Shyam and Prathibha gets a special one - Top contributor Award for sending 3 recipes each.

So, lets move on to the Roundup.

The first entry was Dates cake with buttercream frosting from Chitra of Chitranna. This also happens to her son's 3rd birthday cake. Belated Happy birthday, Shridhar.

P

Amina has sent her Soft Sponge Cake. Her blog also features her crafts and creative skills.

Poornima who participated in my blog event for the first time, surprised me with 3 yummy cakes Eggless custard powder snack cake

Strawberry chocolate mousse cake

Fruit and Nut cake

Eggless Brownie from MyIndiaRecipes. This also happens to be the 200th post on the blog. Congrats and keep posting yummy recipes !

Teena has sent this beautiful Plum upside cake

Eggless fruit cake from Resh of Daily Cuppa. Fruit cakes are my favourite.

Chocolate cake -  Egg and dairy free from Reva. Love the raspberries on it.

Rathai's Fruit cake perfect for the festive mood.

Vidhya has sent Chocolate rum raisin cake, I just love the combination of raisins and rum.

Sobha has sent this unique Stuffed Banana Muffins, Eggless oats banana muffins and Eggless carrot cake. Thanks dear, for supporting me from the beginning.

Chocolate lava cake recipe oozing chocolate from Malaysian Delicacies

Christmas Rum cake from Richa Priyanka for the festive season.

Prathibha has sent Christmas Fruit cake, the traditional kerala plum cake

A three tier cake that also happens to be her daughter's 2nd birthday cake 

and some Chocolate Chip cupcakes

Amy has sent these cute Rainbow cupcakes and Vanilla cupcakes

Sandhya's awesome Chocolate cake with nutella biscoff

Hyma's cute Eggless choco brownie cupcakes

The previous events on my blog can be found HERE

Simple tea cake for the New Year

This recipe is a simple one with minimal ingredients. I am in Bangalore now and I do not have a conventional oven to bake. So I decided to try baking in my microwave oven. This is my first attempt baking in convection mode and so I chose a simple recipe. And the result: A Soft and Spongy cake. I couldnt find any difference in the texture of the cake baked in convection mode, it was just perfect like the ones baked in a conventional oven.

Ingredients:


All Purpose flour/Maida – 2 cups
Baking powder – 2 tsp
Salt – ¼ tsp (omit if using salted butter)

Sugar – 1 cup
Softened Butter – ½ cup (100 g)
Eggs – 3 at room temperature
Vanilla essence – 1.5 tsp
Milk – 1 cup at room temperature

Preparation:

1. Sift together flour,baking powder and salt to a bowl.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together till fluffy.Add the eggs one by one and whisk well. Add the vanilla essence and combine well.
3. Add half of the milk and half of the flour and whisk well. Add the remaining half of milk and flour. Whisk till the ingredients are combined well and the batter is smooth without any lumps.
4. Grease a cake tin with some butter and pour the batter.
5. Set the oven to convection mode. Preheat the oven to 180C. My oven took 7-8 mins to pre-heat. After the oven beeps, place the cake tin and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Insert a skewer or toothpick at the centre of the cake to check if it is done.

Blueberry cake

Cakes are for celebrations and I have two reasons to celebrate. My blog is a 1 month old baby now and I'm hitting a half century with this post. I am surprised that I could post 50 recipes in just a month. This was made possible by the encouragement of my friends and my husband. Thank you all...Your feedback keeps me going...
I love blueberry muffins and we buy them regularly. When my husband was living alone in UK, he used to have a muffin and tea/coffee for breakfast. I do not have a muffin tray, so I made a cake with it.
So, here is the recipe...

Ingredients:

Self raising flour - 1.5 cups
Fresh blueberries - 1 cup (I used a little more than a cup)
Caster sugar - 3/4 cup
Whole Milk - 1/2 cup
Oil - 1/3 cup
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp
Eggs - 2


Preparation:

1. In a mixing bowl, beat egg and sugar. Add milk, oil, and vanilla extract and whisk well.
2. Add sifted flour to this and mix well.
3. Toss the blueberries with a little flour. This helps to avoid sinking of the blueberries to the bottom of the tin while baking. ( I learned it the hard way. The berries sank and I had to google it to find the reason. )Fold in the blueberries to the cake mix.
4. Pour the mix to the greased cake tin.
5. Preheat oven to 180C and bake the cake for 35-40 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean. (I used a loaf tin and my oven took 45 mins)
6. Let it cool.

The cake tasted very fruity and yummy though the berries were concentrated at the bottom.

Strawberry Cake

June has 30 days and this is my 30th post for this month. So, let's celebrate it with a cake...A very easy fruity cake made of strawberries. I never intended to make a cake with strawberry, but there were so many in my fridge and I wanted to make use of them before they become unusable. My strawberry crazy little girl usually eats them as such. She has got a bad cold now and doesn't feel like eating them.So to spend the ones in fridge, I started looking for recipes. The most simple one I got was a cake recipe from the Singing Chef blog. And here it is..

Ingredients:

Self raising flour - 1 cup
Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
Strawberries chopped - 1 cup
Caster sugar - 1/2 cup
Whole Milk - 1/2 cup
Oil - 1/4 cup
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp
Egg - 1

Preparation:

1. In a mixing bowl, beat egg and sugar. Add milk, oil, and vanilla extract and whisk well.
2. Add sifted flour to this and mix well.
3. Fold in the strawberries to the mixture.
4. Pour the mix to the greased cake tin.
5. Preheat oven to 180C and bake the cake for 30-35 minutes or till a skewer inserted comes out clean. (I used a loaf tin and my oven took 45 mins)
6. Cool on a wire rack.

Recipe Source: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com I subsituted plain flour and baking powder with self raising flour.

Sending this to Healing Foods - Berries hosted by Smitha, an event series started by Siri.

Butter Tea Cake

I am baking this cake for the third time now. My husband and little girl are so fond of this one that they can finish it in just a day and keeps asking for more. It is a very easy recipe with minimal ingredients. I didn't get it right the first time, due to some issues with my oven. So, I decided to keep trying,  till it came out perfect :-)

Ingredients


Butter – 125 gm, softened
Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
Caster sugar – 1 cup
Eggs – 3, at room temperature (I used only 2 eggs)
Plain flour – 1 cup, (150 gm)
Self-raising flour – 1/2 cup, (75 gm)
Bicarbonate of soda – 1/4 tsp
Milk – 1/2 cup (125 ml) at room temp

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 180 C, 10 mins before baking.
2. Grease a deep 20 cm/8 inch round cake tin or loaf tin; line base with baking paper.
3. Beat ingredients in medium bowl on low speed with electric mixer until just combined.
4. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth and changed to a paler colour. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
5. Bake cake in the preheated oven for 40-50 mins or until the skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. Stand cake 5 minutes then turn onto wire rack to cool

Recipe source: Maria's Menu