Dessert

No bake Strawberry Cheese Cake

From blueberry to strawberry, I think I have got this one right. I mean, this came out perfect. Simple no bake cheesecake very similar to the way I make a blueberry cheesecake. Only that I put some strawberry preserve into the cream cheese mix. Not only does it flavour the mix with strawberry but also adds the light pink colour to it. You could also choose to add some freshly pureed strawberries as a substitute.    

Ingredients:

1 packet Philadelphia cream-cheese

200 ml fresh cream

150 gms icing sugar

2 tbsp strawberry preserve

50 gms butter

150 gms digestive biscuits

1 tbsp geletin

7-8 strawberries finely sliced

Method:

1. Whizz the biscuits in the food processor until you have fine crumbs, then add the butter into the processor.

2. Butter a loose bottom tin and press the biscuit mixture as a base down hard into the bottom of the tin and put in the fridge to set for about an hour.

3. Beat the cream and then beat in the packet of cream cheese until the mixture is smooth.

4. Add the icing sugar and beat again until you achieve a smooth consistency. Add the strawberry preserve to the mixture.

5. Add a bit of gelatin for the mixture to hold as per the instructions provided on the gelatin packet.

6. Pour it carefully over the biscuit base and spread the mixture evenly all over the base. Put it in the fridge to set for about 3-4 hours.

7. Once the cream base is set, place the fresh strawberries as a topping. 

Baked Lemon Cheesecake with Mascarpone Topping        

Before I like to bake for new friends, I usually like asking them what they would prefer. Most people ask for a cheesecake. So I need to get better at this and try many varieties. I have already made the no-bake cheesecake many a times, so it was time for a baked one and what better flavor than lemon in it. For the topping, I added my own twist of a thin layer of mascarpone as the entire cake is Philadelphia. It worked wonders. The colour of the cake was best suited for some fresh strawberry topping.  Turned out really amazing.        

Ingredients:

For the crust:

300 gms digestive biscuits

50 gms melted butter

For the cake:

600 gms Philadelphia cream cheese

½ cups fresh cream

250 gms castor sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp vanilla essence

For the Frosting:

4 tbsp melted mascarpone

25 gms icing sugar

5-6 fresh strawberries halved

Method:

For the cake:

1. Whizz the biscuits in the food processor until you have fine crumbs and then add the butter into the processor. You should get a crumbly texture. Grease a 24 cm spring form cake tin, which is at least 6 cm deep.

2. Now press the biscuit mixture on the base of the cake tin down hard and put it in the fridge to set for about half an hour.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together cream cheese, cream, sugar, eggs (one at a time), vanilla essence, lemon zest and lemon juice.

4. Place it in the cake-tin and bake for about one hour at 170 degrees for about one hour or till the cake is done.

5. Let the cake cool down in the oven itself. Then place it in the fridge for a day at least to set fully.                      

For the Frosting:

1. Mix together the icing sugar and mascarpone till it is absolutely smooth.

2. Pour over the cake and decorate it with the strawberries.  

Orange Cake

Cakes and fruits are just simply too amazing. It’s like adding extra goodness to every bite. I think I am gonna bake with every fruit possible. So here is an attempt with one of my favourite fruits, oranges. The zest of orange and orange juice is actually what brings out the cake. I have used Mascerpone for the frosting and have simply used the oranges for decoration.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

200 gms castor sugar

200 gms flour

100 gms butter

3 eggs

1 tsp orange zest

1 cup orange juice

1 tsp baking powder

For the Frosting:

150 gms mascarpone

100 gms icing sugar

14-15 pods of orange

Method:

For the cake:

1. Separate the egg-whites from the eggs and keep it aside.

2. Mix the flour and baking powder together and keep it aside.

3. Mix the butter, sugar, egg yolks and orange zest until light and fluffy.

4. Separately, beat the egg whites till they form peaks.

5. Now add flour mixture and orange juice to the first mixture alternatively.

6. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

7. Bake for an hour at 170 degrees.     

For the Frosting:

1. Mix together the icing sugar and mascarpone till it is absolutely smooth.

2. Pour over the cake once the cake has cool down.

3. Decorate it with the oranges.  

Banana-Walnut Bread

Banana seems to be quite a favourite with many of my friends. I have already made a pudding with the tempting caramel cream drizzle. So I enjoyed moving on to a bread form and mixing some walnuts. I serve it to my friends over tea and breakfast.

Ingredients:

4 bananas ripe and mashed

150 gms butter

200 gms flour

175 gms castor sugar

2 eggs

50 gms walnut broken into tiny pieces   

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp sodium bicarbonate

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Beat the butter and castor sugar to combine until fluffy.

2. In another bowl mix together flour, sodium bicarbonate and baking powder and keep it aside.

3. Add one egg at a time to butter and sugar mixture and add vanilla essence.

4. Add the mashed bananas and walnut and combine.

5. Now pour in the flour mixture into the batter.

5. In a greased loaf-tin, put the mixture and bake for an hour at 175C.   

Red Velvet Cake

The thing that I like about this is the beauty that lays underneath the white cream-cheese frosting- the gorgeous red velvet cake. When you buy this outside, the red certainly looks brighter than mine. But somehow, I wasn’t comfortable with too much food colour, atleast in my first attempt. For the frosting, I simply used cream-cheese and icing sugar and roughly covered the cake completely.

Ingredients:

225 gms butter

200 gms flour

150 gms sugar

2 tbsp cocoa powder

3-4 tsp red food colour

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

1 pack of cream cheese

100 icing sugar

1 cup regular cream

   

Method:

1.  Beat the butter and the sugar into a smooth blend.

2.  Add one egg at a time and mix together.

3.  Add cocoa powder and food colour to the mixture.

4.  Add vanilla essence

5.  Mix the baking powder into the flour mix and add it to the butter mixture.  

6.  Add buttermilk and mix it well.

7.  Now bake it for about 45 minutes at 175 C.

8. Mix the cream cheese, cream and icing sugar into a smooth blend.   

9. Once the cake cools down, spread the cream-cheese mixture with a knife over the cake.   

No bake Blueberry Cheese Cake

Blueberry Cheesecake – the most popular of all cheesecakes, is a favourite of many.  Personally, I feel there is less creativity in this as the Philadelphia cream-cheese does it all. However, this happens to be one of the simplest desserts and the “no- bake” way makes it most convenient. You can actually serve a dessert even if you don’t have an oven. If you get it right, no one could tell the difference between this one that is the result of the method below and the one that you buy from your favourite dessert place.

Ingredients:

1 packet Philadelphia cream-cheese

200 ml fresh cream

100 gms icing sugar

100 gms blueberry jam spread

50 gms butter

1 tbsp geletin

15-20 digestive biscuits

Method:

1. Whizz the biscuits in the food processor until you have fine crumbs, then add the butter into the processor. You should end up with a damp dough-like consistency.

2. Butter a loose bottom tin and press the biscuit mixture as a base down hard into the bottom of the tin and put in the fridge to set.

3. Beat the cream and then beat in the packet of cream cheese until the mixture is smooth.

4. Add the icing sugar and beat again until you achieve a smooth thick consistency. Add a bit of gelatin for the mixture to hold.

5. Pour it carefully over the biscuit base. 

6. Spread the mixture evenly all over the base. Put it in the fridge to set for about 2 hours.

7. Once the cream base is set, place the blueberry jam spread as a topping without disturbing the cream base. 

Plum Upside-down Cake

An upside down cake may be a little tricky. The fruit base is to be perfectly set with caramalised sugar so as to remain intact when inverted. The cake tin needs to be generously greased with butter or the baking spray for this purpose. I have used 2 ripe plums for this cake that turned out absolutely delicious with a fair blend of white sugar and brown sugar.             

Ingredients:

2 ripe plums round sliced

½ cup caramalised sugar

1½ cups castor sugar

100 gms butter

2 cups flour

½ cup milk

½ tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

Method:

1. Grease the cake tin with butter or baking spray generously and set the sliced plums in it.

2. Melt the caramalised sugar and pour it over the plums and set it aside.

3. Meanwhile, combine the butter, castor sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla essence into a smooth batter. Add milk if the batter is too thick.

4. Pour the batter evenly over the plums and bake at 170 ºC for about an hour or till a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean.

5. When the cake has cooled down, invert the cake on plate.   

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

The name itself speaks out the unusual ingredients, lemon and yoghurt. It is also quite different as instead of butter, we use vegetable oil which provides for perfect softness of the cake. The lemony flavor and the lovely lemon yellow colour is a welcome change from the usual super sweet desserts. I serve it with lemon juice and sugar topping.
              

Ingredients:

150 gms flour

200 gms castor sugar

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 tsp lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

4 tbsp vegetable oil

4 tbsp plain yoghurt

Method:

1. Mix together flour, salt and baking powder and set it aside.

2. Combine sugar, yoghurt, eggs, vanilla essence, vegetable oil, little more than half of the lemon juice, lemon zest and vegetable oil into a smooth blend.

3. Now slowly add the flour mixture into the above wet ingredients and mix well.  The batter will be quite loose.

4. Bake for an hour at 180ºC for about 1 hour.

5. Make a mixture of the remaining lemon juice with some sugar and apply of the cake when hot.

Dried Milk Cake

Dried Milk, known as Mawa or Khoya is used to make muffins. Mawa makes the cake really soft that it simply melts in the mouth. This cake would rise a lot so do not put a large batter in your dish. I usually carry this cake to work and serve it to my colleagues when they have tea.  They love me.  

Ingredients:

200 gms flour

250 gms castor sugar

200 gms dried milk or mawa

200 gms butter

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Soften the butter and add castor sugar till it becomes fluffy.

2. Add the dried milk and beat them together.

3. Add the eggs and vanilla essence and beat them together.

4. Now add the flour little by little and make sure it gets fully incorporated.

5. Now put it in a greased baking dish and bake for about 1 hour 20 minutes at 170º C.        

Marble Cake

Marble cake to me is nothing but an art of swirling your knife around two batters to create a marble effect. When I first saw the texture of this cake, I felt that it would be very difficult to bake. But actually, it is one of the easiest. Two classic batters, one having cocoa and the other vanilla combined by a swirl using a sharp knife or skewer. Trust me, swirling is your favourite part. So lets go about this step by step.

Ingredients:

225 gms castor sugar

225 gms flour

225 gms butter

50 gms cocoa powder

4 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla essence

2 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Beat the butter and castor sugar to combine until fluffy.

2. In another bowl mix together flour and baking powder and keep it aside.

3. Add four beaten eggs to the butter mixture along with vanilla essence.

4. Now gradually add the flour mixture to the batter and beat till its fully incorporated.

5. Take half the batter out and put it in another bowl and into this add the cocoa powder.

6. Now in a greased baking dish, add one spoon full of the vanilla batter and another spoon full of chocolate batter.

7. Repeat this process and then using a sharp knife swirl through the batter to create the marble effect.

8. Bake for an hour or until the knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.            

Pound Cake

Whenever we think of making a basic cake, we usually flavor it with vanilla essence. Honestly, I had never actually deviated from that myself. But for this pound cake, I used an almond essence instead of vanilla. The cake was awesome. Also, I never used cream-cheese in a cake before. Little did I know that the cream-cheese can actually make so much difference to the texture. I hope all of you try this one and I can guarantee you would want to bake this again and again. The quantities of the ingredients mentioned actually allow you to bake a cake that will easily be a double of the cake that you see in the image. I don’t have a very large dish to contain the entire batter so I use the same batter and put them in moulds of different shapes and then place them in the oven to bake. Alternatively, I bake half a quantity at a time and use the remaining to bake later.

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

 3 cups castor sugar

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp almond essence

6 eggs

1 packet of cream-cheese

150 gms butter

Method:

1. In a vessel, mix together the cream cheese and butter while they are soft.

2. In another bowl, make a mixture of flour and baking powder, the dry mixture.

3. Add sugar to the cream cheese and butter mixture and beat until fluffy. 
4. Add almond essence to the cream cheese and butter mixture.

5. Now start adding two spoons of the dry mixture to the butter mixture and then 2 eggs. Repeat this procedure with the remaining flour and eggs.

6. Beat until combined for a smooth batter. Bake it at 160º C for about 1 hour 20 minutes.  

Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla and cream cheese frosting

Cupcakes: Everybody seems to go crazy about them these days. For me, it is the American sitcoms that made it so popular. Somehow, it always came up in atleast those that I watched. So I tried to make a simple one. I chose a basic chocolate cake for starters using wheat flour! The recipe of the cake is simply the one mentioned on the container of dry chocolate that I used. However, I will set the same out here. I didn’t have the actual cupcake paper moulds so I used the simple oven proof tiny moulds that are easily available.  For the frosting, it’s nothing but the good old Philadelphia cream cheese, some whipping cream, vanilla essence and icing sugar. And we have nailed it!!
             

For the cupcake:

Ingredient:

For 12 cupcakes:

1 cup wheat flour

1 cup dry chocolate powder 

1 cup castor sugar

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp vanilla essence

3 eggs

100 gms butter

1 cup milk

Method:

1.  Mix together chocolate powder, wheat flour and baking powder and set it aside.   

2.  In another vessel, beat the butter and castor sugar until creamy.

3.    Now beat in the eggs and vanilla essence.

4.    Now fold in the dry flour mixture and make a smooth batter.

5.    Add milk if the batter is too thick.

6.   Pour the mixture in the greased cupcake moulds and bake in a pre-heated oven for 45  minutes 175º C.      

For the Frosting:

Ingredient:

1 packet of Philadelphia cream cheese

 1 packet of cream

½ tsp of vanilla essence

100 gms icing sugar

Method:

1.    Whip the cream on low speed first and then to high speed until fluffy.

2.   In another vessel, beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar starting on low speed   first. 

3.     Then beat in the vanilla extract

4.   Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mix. It’s ready to be used on these cupcakes.

Panacotta with blueberry jam topping

Probably the easiest to make, this dessert is one of my most gorgeous looking one. This is also one of my best bets for my vegetarian friends who prefer their desserts to be eggless. For the topping, I have used a blue berry jam spread. You could use strawberry, raspberry, pineapple, anything that you please.  Take it out of the fridge after it is set and gulp it down. Don’t let it melt away!!         

Ingredients:

For a serving of four:

1 small carton of fresh cream

1½ cup milk

50 gms castor sugar

½ tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp blueberry jam spread for each

1 tbsp gelatin salt

Method

1.    In a non-stick pan, pour the cream and stir it till it becomes thin. Add milk and sugar to the cream and mix them together. Add the vanilla to the mixture and turn the heat off.

2.    Prepare the gelatin mix as per the directions in the pack and add it to the mixture.

3.   Let it cool and pour equal quantities of the mixture in 4 ramekins.

4.    Place the ramekins in the fridge for three hours until set.

5.   Once it is set, with the help of a knife, carefully loosen the sides and turn the panacota upside down on the plate.

6.  Use the back of the spoon to spread the jam over it and serve.       

Bread Pudding

Bread Pudding, often referred as a poor man’s dessert is actually something that you can make at an instant as most of the ingredients are always at home. In fact before I bought the oven, I used to make this in a pressure cooker. The image below is a pudding made of rough chunks of brown bread and is in the shape of a round cake. Alternatively, you could use a square dish and serve the pudding in equal square pieces. For the topping I have used chocolate strands. If you like, you could top your pudding with chocolate chips or simply even grate a bar of chocolate.

Ingredients:

7-8 slices of brown bread

2 cups milk

2 tbsp fresh cream

3 eggs

100 gms castor sugar

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp rum or brandy

2 tbsp chocolate strands 

Method:

1.    Cut the bread into equal sizes. You do not need to be artistic. You could simply shred them with your own hands.

2.  Combine the milk, cream, rum and eggs and beat them together. You could also give them a quick whiz in the mixer.

3.     Now place all the bread pieces in the baking dish and pour the milk mixture into it.

4.    Sprinkle some brown sugar and the chocolate strands.

5.   Bake for 30 minutes at 225C.            

Banana Cake with Caramel Cream

This is one of my most successful attempts with fruit and cake combination. If you love banana, this is your thing. A tinge of cinnamon in the cake and the topping of caramel cream are to die for. The only thing one needs to be cautious about is the proportion of the ingredients. When I served this to two of my girl friends, they finished it in about 10 seconds!!  

               

Ingredients:

For the cake:

150 gms butter

250 gms self-raising flour

3 eggs

150 gms brown sugar

100 gms castor sugar

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1 tsp baking powder

3 medium size bananas mashed

For caramel cream:

100 gms fresh cream

50 gms brown sugar   

Method:

1.    Melt the butter in a vessel and mix in the sugars, cinnamon, banana, eggs, flour and baking powder using an electronic hand mixer until combined. The batter should look brown and should not be very thin.

2.    Pour the batter in the greased baking dish. I use a round one. You can very well use a loaf tin as well.          

3.     Bake for an hour at 225C.

4.   Once the cake is out of the oven, make the caramel cream by mixing the cream and brown sugar in a pan and letting it come to a simmer.

5.    Pour this mix over the cake.