Relaxing . . .

Many of my friends told me that they are too petrified after reading my blogs. It seems as if we don’t do anything else other than deal with sick patients and the hospital.

Well, this blog is for to assure them that we get the opportunity to lead quite normal lives and rather enjoy time doing things we like.

Below are snaps of us doing things as a family. Both of us reach home and we do not realise how fast time flies.

And as you can see the kids helping to scrap the cake batter vessel clean, baking is a major past-time. Our son, Shalom likes to watch us and help to prepare the cake and our daughter, Charis (helped by me and Shalom) ensures that it does not last more than 24 hours.

Below is the recipe for one of the cakes which enjoys tremendous patronage from both our kids. It is a combination of 3 recipes which I found in the internet for dates cake.

So, if anyone is interested. For a 9 inch pan cake –

Refined flour (maida): 1^1/4 cup

Milk: ^3/4 cup

Sugar: ^3/4 cup

Powdered cinnamon: ^1/2 teaspoon

Egg: 1

Dates: 18 nos.

Butter: ^3/4 cup

Baking powder: 1 teaspoon

Vanilla essence: 1 teaspoon

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Baking Time: 40-50 minutes

Preparation:

1.   Separate the yolk and white of the egg. Keep the yolk aside. Fluff up the white of the egg with an egg beater.

2.   Sieve the flour and add baking powder to the same.

3.   After removing the seeds from the dates, put it in milk and bring it to boil. You would need to do it quite early as the mixture needs to cool to room temperature before being mixed with the cake batter. Most of the dates have coarse fibre which needs to be removed. After boiling, we use a sieve to pass the milk-dates paste through.

4.   Mix the sugar and the butter well. We usually powder the sugar before mixing.

5.   Add the yolk of the egg to the sugar-butter batter.

6.   Add the milk-date paste to the batter.

7.   Incorporate the flour gradually into the batter. The batter may look a bit thick, but that is how it should be. Once, I had added a bit more milk to the batter to make it thin, but the resulting cake was a disaster. I have realised that the trick of getting a good cake is to ensure that you don’t mix the batter too long – you just need to ensure that the flour is incorporated into the batter.

8.   At last, fold the fluffed up egg whites to the batter. Do not use a cake mixer for it. Take a spoon and just fold it into the cake batter.

9.   Don’t keep the batter outside for long. Bake as soon as possible at 175 degree Celsius (about 300 degree Fahrenheit) for about 40 to 50 minutes. Ensure that the cake is well cooled before you attempt to cut.

Instead of dates if you use bananas – about 2 medium sized ones for one 9 inch pan cake, you have the banana cake. Similar to dates, the banana paste also needs to be sieved through to remove the fibre. We’ve done both cakes couple of times without the sieving part and the result was not that great – the cake did not rise on baking.

Hope that I've something refreshingly different for a post this time.