Usha's Recipes

Black Forest Cake

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!!! 

New Year started with baking and today finally thought of sharing this cake here. This is the first cake in my site. It’s been one year I started posting recipes here, but ended up with very few. This year I will try to post many more recipes. For this New Year I baked black forest cake, the reason I choose this is I find myself no time to decorate with butter cream icing. As New Year fell on Friday the cake should be ready by Thursday so I thought to bake on Wednesday and want to decorate on Thursday. But suddenly H booked for Avatar movie on Thursday. So changed my plan and started to bake and whip the cream on Wednesday itself. Unfortunately we were caught in the traffic jam and thought I may miss the new year bells. But finally we reached home around 11 pm with tiring faces and started to fill the cake with whipping cream and getting chocolate shavings ready. H helped me a lot to set up the new Microwave which we bought for this New Year and clean up my messy kitchen platform. At last I ended my cake by 11:40 pm.  Refresh myself to welcome the New Year. Happy to share this recipe here I used the basic sponge cake with chocolate flavor and topped with whipping cream.  Here goes the recipe………

Ingredients: 

For Cake

¾ cup Plain flour (maida)

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

6 eggs

½ cup water

1/3 cup sugar

2 cups heavy cream

6 tbsp powdered sugar

½ tsp vanilla

Few Cherries

3-4 tbsp chocolate rice

Chocolate bar

Procedure: 

·         Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl and mix.

·         Separate egg yolks and whites into separate bowls.

·         Beat yolks with vanilla and sugar till it forms thick batter.

·         Beat egg whites on medium-high speed till it forms soft peaks.

·         Add yolks mixture into whites and mix gently with the spatula. (Don’t beat).

·         Now sprinkle flour all over the egg mixture and gently mix.

·         Pour this batter into 2 greased baking pans (divide the batter into equal amounts).

·         Bake for 18-20 minutes in a preheated (preheat for 15 minutes) oven at 180 C.

·         Time varies oven to oven, so make sure to test with a tooth pick or skewer inserted into the cake should come out clean.

·         Remove the cake from the oven and let it sit for 10-15 minutes to cool and then invert the cake on to a wire rack to cool completely for about 1 hr.

·         Place the mixing bowl and whisk or blades in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes.

·         Boil water and sugar to make syrup and let it.

·         Peel the chocolate bar to get enough shavings; I peeled on the sides of the bar to get curls. You can use grater to get fine chocolate crumbs.

·         Pour the heavy (whipping) cream into chilled mixing bowl and beat on low speed for a while till the top surface is filled with bubbles.

·         Add sugar and beat on medium-high speed till it forms soft peaks (can be stored in refrigerator until used).

·         Place one cake on the cake board or on a plate and feed (sprinkle evenly) with sugar syrup and spread 1/3 of cream and sprinkle chopped cherries.

·         Place the second cake over the cream and cherries and feed with syrup first and cover the cake with 2/3 of the remaining cream on the top and sides.

·         Fill the piping bag with left over cream and pipe design and arrange the cherries (cut the cherries into half) as you wish. Sprinkle chocolate rice/shavings on the sides and top of the cake.

·         Keep refrigerated for 3-4 hours and serve chilled. 

Capsicum-Cumin Rice with Egg

Today a bit lazy to cook, as it’s a long weekend and yesterday was fully occupied with kitchen stuff. I prepared all the powders like sambar powder, rasam powder, karam podi, ginger garlic paste for the coming months. I will post all the recipes in future. And here comes Capsicum-cumin rice, which I felt easy to do and this recipe is from aayis recipes.

Serves 2

1cup Rice

3 Eggs boiled

1tbsp Cumin seeds (slightly stone crushed)

1 Capsicum (I used half green and half Red capsicum)

2 garlic flakes chopped

2 medium size onions sliced

4-5 green chilies chopped

2 tbsp finely chopped coriander

2 Cloves

2 Cardamoms (beat with stone or pestle to break the pods)

1” Cinnamon

Pinch of cumin powder

Pinch of turmeric

Pinch of white pepper

Pinch of dried/fresh parsley

1 tbsp oil

1 tbsp ghee

Salt

Procedure: 

·         Heat ghee and half tbsp oil in a pan and add clove, cardamom, cinnamon. Then add crushed cumin, garlic, chilies and fry for a minute.

·         Add chopped onions, coriander, turmeric, salt and fry till onions turn light brown.

·         Add Capsicum and saute for a minute and add rice (soaked and drained) fry for 3 minutes.

·         Add 2 cups of water adjust salt and cook covered till done.

·         Peel eggs and cut into small pieces (discard yolks).

·         Heat half tbsp oil in a pan and add egg pieces, salt, turmeric, cumin powder, pepper and toss till egg pieces coated well.

·         Sprinkle some dried or fresh parsley or else with coriander and turn off heat.

·         Mix egg pieces with the rice and server hot.

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Makes 2 dozen cookies

1/2 cup butter softened

1/4 cup castor sugar

1/2 cup Brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 egg

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Procedure: 

·         Sieve flour together with salt and baking powder.

·         Beat butter, brown sugar, castor sugar at medium speed.

·         Add egg and vanilla and beat well to get creamy texture.

·         Add flour and mix on low speed for 30 sec and stop beating.

·         Add chocolate chips, nuts and gently mix (fold-in) with wooden spoon.

·         Pre-heat the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees C (350 degree F).

·         Line the baking tray with non-sticking baking paper.

·         Take a large spoon (2 tbsp) and drop like a scoop on the tray.

·         Make sure each cookie should have chocolate chips & nuts.

·         Scoop the dough on to the tray leaving space between the cookies to spread.

·         Bake these for about 6-8 minutes or until the edges and peaks on the top surface turns golden brown.

·         At this point of time, only the top peaks should be coloured but the middle part still looks like the dough colour. Don’t wait to get browned the entire surface.

·         Take out the tray and let it stand for 5 minutes.

·         Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let them cool for sometime then can be stored in an air tight container.

 Note: If you want a bit crisper, bake it for 2 more minutes 9-10 minutes, but not more than 10 min. If you bake more than 10 minutes, chocolate chips get melted and burnt.