From the category archives:

cakes and sweet bakes

Gianduja Roulade

March 25, 2011

Gianduja Roulade

That’s just fancy talk for rich hazelnut chocolate ganache rolled into a hazelnut sheet cake rich with chocolate and more hazelnuts.

As you’ve probably noticed, there is a lot of chocolate being eaten in the Purple Foodie household. And this time, with a bag of fresh hazelnuts at hand, I had to put together one of the world’s greatest food pairings: chocolate + hazelnut.

I made the hazelnut ganache from scratch – which means I toasted the hazelnuts, ground it to a paste, and then mixed it with dark chocolate and cream. If the cake didn’t bake in 8 minutes, I’m pretty sure I’d have licked the bowl of ganache clean.

If you’re not particularly inclined on making the ganache from scratch, you could make the ganache with Nutella. Will work just as well.

Gianduja Roulade Recipe

Adapted from: Pure Dessert (USA | UK | India)
Equipment: A 12×16 inch or 11×17 inch baking sheets with rimmed edges, or two 9×9 inch baking pans, or jelly roll pans.

Gianduja Ganache

Ingredients

  • 4 oz / 100g hazelnuts, toasted
  • 4 oz / 100g dark chocolate
  • 4 oz / 100g icing sugar
  • 8 oz / 200g light cream (I use 25% fat)

Cooking Directions

  1. Toast the hazelnuts in at 175°C/350°F, until they are fragrant and light brown. Let them cool a little before transferring it to a mixer for grind to a paste starting with half the sugar, and then adding the rest of the sugar until it's a homogenous paste. Transfer this paste to a bowl and then add the chocolate. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil and pour it over the chocolate-hazelnut mixture. Stir till all the chocolate has melted and then refrigerate until ready to do.

Hazelnut Cake

Cook Time: 8 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz / 50g hazelnuts, toasted
  • 2 tbsp flour
  • 6 oz/ 180g dark chocolate
  • 4 oz/ 100g butter
  • 4 eggs, seperated
  • 2/3rd cup / 130g caster sugar
  • cocoa powder, for dusting

Cooking Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F.
  2. Pulse the nuts with the flour in a food processor until finely ground. Set aside.
  3. In a large bowl, melt the chocolate and butter over a pot of simmering water. Once melted, remove from heat and then stir in the egg yolks and half the sugar (1/3rd cup).
  4. In another bowl whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then slowly add the remaining sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form.
  5. Fold in about a 1/4th of the whites into the egg mixture. Then scrape all of the egg mixture into the bowl, sprinkle with the flour and hazelnut mixture and fold it in.
  6. Spread the batter evenly into prepared pans. I preferred making mine into smaller roulades, so I divided the batter into two 9 inch square pans.
  7. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.Now, finally when the cake has cooled, invert it on a sheet of foil and then spread it with the gianduja paste. Start rolling it with the help of the foil. There will be cracks, but it gets less severe as it thickens to one cake.
  8. Refrigerate for a while before slicing, to have neat slices. Dust with cocoa powder to serve.

{ 10 comments }

V Day Decadence

February 12, 2011

I’ve put together a round up of my favouite recipes from the blog that are loaded with love and chocolate – the kind that are perfect for Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!

Breakfast in bed: Chocolate cinnamon babka
Chocolate cinnamon babka

Sinful: Chocolate Valentino Cake
Chocolate Valentino Cake
”
Perfect gifts: Passion fruit truffles
Passion Fruit Truffles

I *heart* you: Linzer cookies
Linzer Cookies

Healthy guise: Baked vanilla yoghurt
Vanilla Baked Yoghurt

Red. Velvet. Cupcakes. Need I say more?
Red Velvet Cupcakes

{ 4 comments }

Tahitian Vanilla Cake

November 26, 2010

Tahitian Vanilla Cake

Everyone has a go-to pound cake recipe, right? Heck, I have two pound cake recipes around here already. So why would anyone possibly want to use this recipe? Well, no reason really except for the fact that these loaves baking in your oven will make the house smell spectacular. And in this case, it’s the two plump vanilla beans that create the magic (something that copious amounts of lemongrass and orange essential oils in diffusers couldn’t.)

This cake from Dorie Greenspan’s book caught my eye because I was looking for a recipe in which my precious Tahitian Vanilla can be enjoyed in all its splendour. More so because, unlike recipes that call for vanilla extract, or at the most half a vanilla pod, this one called for four times that. It wasn’t hard to make up my mind.

I love a good pound cake just like anyone else, and when it is made with a technique that deviates from the norm, I feel an obsessive need to try out the new recipe. The new method in question involves the eggs and sugar being mixed together, followed by cream, and the butter stirred in only at the end, after the flour. It promised a soft, tight crumb, and it delivered.  However, I’m still hoping to get my hands on a recipe that will have the crust bake till it’s thicker and golden to provide that distinct bite that stands up against the soft crumb.

Since this recipe makes two loaves, I made one plain loaf and the other speckled with dark chocolate chips. Like all pound cakes, this one tastes better after a day; so once it’s cooled, wrap it up in cling film. Of course, I couldn’t wait a day so I cut up slices when warm and ate it with a little raspberry jam.

PS: For those of you mailing in for Christmas cake – here’s a recipe from my favourite food guy Nigel Slater whom I know I can blindly trust. I don’t think I’m up for making a Christmas cake given the astonishing amount of alcohol involved. Sorry!

Tahitian Vanilla Cake

Tahitian Vanilla Cake Recipe

Adapted from: Baking From My Home To Yours, Dorie Greenspan (USA | UK | India)
Yield: 2 loaves

Ingredients:
2 2/3rd cup/ 300g flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
2 cups / 400g sugar
2 tbsp / 25g vanilla sugar
2 plump vanilla pods, split lengthwise with the seeds scraped out. You can use the remains for making vanilla sugar/extract.
6 eggs
2/3rd cup / 160ml heavy cream (I use Amul)
200g butter, melted

Equipment:
2 loaf pans

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Butter and flour two loaf pans.
  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
  3. Rub the sugar, vanilla sugar and vanilla pod innards together until it’s nice and frangrant.
  4. Add the eggs to the bowl of sugar and mix until they’re thoroughly incorporated.
  5. Whisk in the cream.
  6. Now, switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the flour mixture into the bowl, until it’s evenly incorporated.
  7. Finally, fold in the melted butter and pour the batter into the baking pans.
  8. Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
  9. The cake will brown faster, especially when using dark pans, so make sure to cover the top with a foil tent.
  10. Remove from the oven and let it sit in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
  11. Slice up and serve!

{ 17 comments }

Raspberry Yoghurt Teacake

October 12, 2010

Raspberry Yoghurt Cake

I miss blogging. I miss blogging a lot. It’s not that I’m not baking. It’s just that I’m not baking anything new. I’ve been on my feet for hours at a stretch; I can hardly feel them anymore. I’m not complaining – rather, I’m enjoying every bit of it. Nothing beats working for myself, nothing can ever be a bigger motivator. And what I’m especially thrilled about is that my tart crust just keeps getting better and better! The last batch was so good, I didn’t care to fill it up. Just ate it like that. I know a little Nutella in it would be dreamy. It’s not that I’ve hit upon a “no-fail” recipe for the tart dough. It’s about paying attention to the technique and the little things that need to be taken care of while making the tart dough. And more importantly, it’ about practice.

While Mondays are my new Sunday (well, almost), I finally got some time to sit and read a book and bake something new for myself. I’m not a big fan of snacking on raspberries (my first raspberry experience), but I love them in baked goodies. Today I made myself a raspberry yoghurt cake. I especially love yoghurt cakes. They are my comfort food. They are always more moist than regular cakes, and keep longer too. And I adore how the raspberry red bleeds into the cake, making it look so spectacular.

As for the recipe  – I keep going back to the Ottolenghi Cookbook, so it’s no surprises here that the recipe I used is from there. I used a buttered and floured muffin tray for these mini teacakes. When had warm, you will love the crust that has crisped up with all the butter (always be generous with butter). My mom enjoyed it so much; she claimed an entire loaf of it.

On a side note, I’ve been featured in Bombay Times as well as Tehelka this past week.

Raspberry Yoghurt Cake

Raspberry Yoghurt Teacake

Makes 9-12 mini tea cakes.
Adapted from: The Ottolenghi Cookbook (US | UK | India)

130g flour
½ tsp baking powder
1/4th tsp baking soda
100g butter
80g Sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
75g yoghurt (or you could use sour cream)
100g raspberries, fresh or frozen

  1. Preheat the oven to 175C/350F. Butter and flour a kugelhopf tin, mini bundt pan or a muffin tray.
  2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
  3. In another bowl, mix together the butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to mix until evenly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract.
  4. Add the flour mixture and yoghurt alternately until it looks like a homogenous mixture.
  5. Stir in half the berries. Add the cake batter into the prepared pan and press the remaining berries into the dough.
  6. Bake for 15 minutes for mini cakes in muffin mould or longer, depending on the size of the mould used.
  7. Eat warm.

{ 18 comments }

Buttery Cinnamon Cake

September 13, 2010

Cinnamon

When the Pioneer Woman says it’s the best coffee cake ever, you’ve got to listen. Having bookmarked this recipe ever since she wrote about this super delicious coffee cake, I finally set out to make it today. With lots of butter, sugar, pecans and cinnamon, what’s not to like? (For that matter, anything with cinnamon makes me go weak in the knees.)

I have never made a cake with this technique of folding in egg whites right at the end, so I was very, very curious about how the texture might turn out to be. I’m so pleased to learn that this resulted in a cake that has the softest crumb I’ve eaten in a long time (well, clearly). Biting into the cake, is like having soft, pillowy goodness in your mouth that has the added bonus of having a hint of vanilla in the cake and a heady fragrance of Sri Lankan cinnamon in the crumb topping. And then there is the slightly chewy, almost crispy, buttery brown sugar pecan topping that not only makes for a wonderful topping, but blobs of it sink into the cake that makes the sugary goo so desirable (that’s the part I look for, hoping I can sneak the slice with the maximum goo without anyone noticing.)  It is so buttery, you’re going to have nightmares about your doctor when you make them. But you know, it’s good for you.

Buttery Cinnamon Cake

Will the original recipe makes A LOT of cake; I halved the recipe to fit into a 7 inch square pan. Of course, if you don’t have the pecans you could substitute walnuts or leave them out entirely. I can imagine this cake being so delicious with vanilla icecream, for those who like ice cream. However, I’d much rather have them with caramelised apples. You should make this cake. You really should.

Buttery Cinnamon Cake

Buttery Cinnamon Cake Recipe

Adapted from: The Pioneer Woman (her cookbook)

Yield: One 7 inch square cake. Serves 8.

Note: I have halved the recipe and put down metric measures because cup measures get a little weird (1/2 of 3/4th cup?). If you’d like to see the cup measure for the full recipe, you should check out the link above.

Ingredients

FOR THE CAKE:
60g egg whites
85g butter, Softened
180g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
180g  flour, Sifted
2 tsp baking powder
150ml whole milk
FOR THE TOPPING:
85g butter, Softened
60g flour
100g brown sugar
1 tbsp Cinnamon
100g Pecans, Chopped

Equipment: 7 inch square pan

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat egg whites and set aside.
  2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add flour mixture and milk alternately until combined, starting and ending with flour. Don’t overbeat.
  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites with a rubber spatula.
  4. Spread in a 7 inch square pan with high sides lined with parchment paper.
  5. In a separate bowl, combine topping ingredients with a pastry cutter until crumbly. Sprinkle all over the top.
  6. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until no longer jiggly, and a skewer comes out clean.
  7. Eat!

{ 40 comments }

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