Creamy-Fruity-Custard

Creamy-Fruity-Custard

Custard powder though does not have much nutrition value except pure calories due to corn flour, flavor and coloring agent being the main ingredients; it is the filling in custard which makes it more tasty and nutritive. Lots of fruits coated with custard is a wonderful and healthy dessert. It is the simple, tasty and easy to make dessert. Children love it for the taste of it and mothers love it not only for the taste of it but also for the less work they have to put to make family happy.

Preparation Time: 15 min. (Fruit cutting time)

Cooking Time: 15 min

Servings: 4 Large Serving

Ingredients For making Creamy-Fruity-Custard:

• 250 ml. whole cream Milk

• 2 Tea spoon Custard Powder

• 50 gm. Cream (Optional)

• 50 gm. Sugar

• 1 banana

• 1 Small size Apple

• 20-25 Grapes

• 10-12 Straw berries

Directions For making Fruity Custard:

• Dissolve 2 teaspoon custard in 50 ml. milk. (Not hot milk).

Custard Powder Dissolved in milk

• Boil milk in a thick bottom container.

Milk for Custard boiling in thick bottom container

• Add sugar to the boiling milk and stir till the sugar dissolves in the milk.

• Lower the flame and add custard powder- milk mixture and stir nicely.

Custard-milk mixture being added to boiling milk

• Cook for just one minute with continuous stirring. Switch off the gas. Cover and allow the custard to cool.

Custard cooking on low flame

Consistency of custard before cooling

• When the custard comes to room temperature add cream mix nicely cover and keep it in the fridge for chilling.

• Peel banana, slit from center lengthwise and cut to thin pieces.

• Peel and cut apple to small pieces.

• Cut the grapes to half.

• Cut straw berries to half lengthwise.

• Mix all fruits in a bowl with chilled custard.

• Take the Fruity-Custard in a serving bowl and top it up with some grapes and straw berries.

Creamy-Fruity-Custard

Tips:

• Guava, chickoo and pomegranate with small pink fruit having big seeds do not go well in custard. do not taste well in custard. 

• For one measure of cooked chilled custard two measure of fruits are the best proportion. If not so at least the ratio should be 1:1.

• Taste the fruits before adding to custard. Fruits should be absolutely sweet, little bit of sour taste will spoil the taste of Fruity-custard.

• Mix the fruits just before serving otherwise they will lose their moisture and will become limp.

• Cut the fruits just before serving.

• If the fruits are cut and kept in fridge, then bananas and apple will become red and will spoil the looks and taste of custard. Remember the freshness of fruits and their individual flavor gives the Fruity-custard unique delightful taste.

• Custard should neither be thick as cake nor too runny. It should be of the consistency of cake batter.

• Do not remove the cover at any stage of cooling.

• Do not cover while custard is being cooked.

• Immediate and continuous stirring after milk-custard powder mixture is added to the boiling milk is must to avoid lump formation as well as to avoid it selling at the bottom and getting burnt.

Suggested Variations:

• Mango can be cut to cubes and added to the mixture of fruits for custard. make sure the mangoes do not have fibers and is sweet.

• Cubes of any flavor cake can be placed at the bottom of serving bowl before putting Fruity-custard in the bowl.

Apple- Caramel Cake

Apple-Caramel Cake

Apple-Caramel-Cake

Cake is one thing that can be had with milk/ coffee/tea for breakfast, as snack and as dessert. Desserts can be made from cake combining them with ice cream/cream/custard etc. Trifle is one of my favorite cake desserts. When cake is made with lots of different fruits it not only adds to the taste but adds the required dietary fibers and nutrients to the cake. Apple cake is very tasty, nutritious cake. I prefer not removing the peeling of apple as they add lots of color to the cake and the vitamins present in the cake are also not lost. As far as possible try to include the peeling of fruits and vegetables to the food to get full nutritional value from them.

Preparation Time: 30 min.

Baking Time: 50 min. (Approx,)

Servings: Makes nearly 1 Kg. Cake(Approx.)

Ingredients for Making Apple Cake:

• 200 gm. All-purpose flour (Maida)
• 300 gm Sugar (150+100+50 gm.)
• 100 Gm. Nutrelite butter/White butter (Chilled)
• 4 Eggs
• 1/2Teaspoon Cinnamon powder
• 50 gm. Kernel of Walnuts cut to pieces

Walnut Pieces

• 1 Teaspoon Baking powder
• 1 Teaspoon Eating soda (Soda-bi-carb)

Directions For Making Apple Cake:

Golden Syrup:

• Make golden syrup from 100 gm. of sugar. 

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.in/2014/02/how-to-make-golden-syrup.html Thick Golden Syrup Caramelizing The Walnuts:

• Heat a thick bottom pan with remaining 50 gm. of sugar on low flame with regular stirring till the color of sugar turns brown (Caramelized).

Sugar being Caramelized for Walnuts

Caramelized Sugar ready to be added to Walnut

• Switch off the heat and pour this sugar caramel on the cut walnuts.Stir quickly to coat the pieces with caramel. Spread these caramel coated walnuts on a plate and crush to separate the pieces coated with caramel.  

Caramelized sugar sterred with Walnut pieces

• Some may get crushed to small pieces and some caramel pieces may be without walnut. Do not worry. Keep aside for later use.

Walnut pieces coated with Sugar caramel

Making Batter For Apple Cake:

• Mix
• Maida (All-purpose flour)
• Baking powder
• Soda-bi-carb
• Cinnamon powder
• Sift through a fine sieve four to five times to ensure thorough mixing of the ingredients.
• Keep the mixture in a dry container for later use.
• Make fine powder of 150 gm. of sugar,
• Separate egg yolks from egg white and whisk the egg yolks.
• Beat egg white to peaky stiffness. When egg white is foamier and fluffy the cake comes out best.

Whisked Egg White

• Cut chilled butter to small pieces (Cubes) and add sugar powder to it.
• Whisk till creamy and fluffy.
• Add egg yolk in small proportions with constant whisking. When all egg yolk is added the mixture should be creamy and light.

Egg yolk-Butter-Sugar Mixture

• Remove the core with seeds from apples and grate them. The grated apples will turn brown do not worry. Immediately add all of it to the mixture of egg yolk-butter-sugar.
• Add egg white in small proportions to above mixture and fold with fingers gently.
• Add golden syrup and mix gently.
• Add caramel coated walnuts and mix.
• Batter for the cake is ready.

Batter For Apple-Caramel-Cake

Baking The Cake:

• Pour the batter in a baking dish and bake for 30 min. at 160^oC in a preheated oven.

After 15 min of baking at 160 C

• Increase the temperature to 180^oC and bake for 10-15 minutes.(Approximately)

After 45 min. of baking

• Keep checking the cake by poking a dry metallic/wooden needle if it comes out without any thing sticking to it then it is ready. Stop baking further and remove from oven.
• The time for baking may change with the size of eggs (Egg white amount) and type of oven. I have used oven with heating from top and bottom but baking was done using bottom heating only.
• Cool the baked cake on a rake covering it with thin damp cloth (Muslin cloth).

Cake cooling on the Rake

• Place a plate on the cooled cake and holding the dish with the cake invert the plate. Tap lightly on sides and bottom of baking dish. Cake will come out easily on the plate. Remove the butter paper gently.

Inverted Apple-Caramel-Cake

•  Cut to pieces and enjoy delicious Apple Cake with hot cup of tea/coffee.

Apple-Caramel-Cake

Tips:

• If you have square oven with top and bottom heating then for best result bake the cake using bottom heating only as top heating causes the cake to become hard and black from top with center remaining uncooked.
• Round oven cooks cakes from sides and bottom thus cake comes out good.
• Grate and add grated apple to flour just before use.
• Prepare the cake baking dish before starting to make the batter by either oiling the dish and dusting with flour or lining it with butter paper.
• Always remove the cake from baking dish when it is at room temperature not warm to ensure cake coming out of dish without breaking.
• Coat dry fruits with flour to avoid them from settling at the bottom of the cake.
• Do not beat the batter while mixing the egg white, if done so the air trapped in the egg white will come out and cake will become less fluffy and soft.
• The Golden syrup should not be too thin this will cause the batter to become thin.
• Golden syrup can be make and kept in fridge for long time.

Alternate suggestions:

• Walnuts can be added without coating them with caramel, just coat them with little flour to stop them from settling at the bottom.
• Walnuts can be roasted before coating with caramel/flour to give wonderful roasted flavor.
• Almonds can be cut and added along with walnuts.
• Green cardamom powder can be used instead of cinnamon powder. If cardamom powder is being used then take 1 tea spoon of it rather than 1/2teaspoon.
• Golden syrup can be stirred not mixed uniformly to give double color to the batter and cake.(Yellow and golden brown) 
• One medium size apple can be peeled and cut to 1 cm. cube pieces and coated with flour and added to the batter with the nuts.
• This cake can be made using whole wheat flour/multigrain flour, the color and textutre will change but the nutritional value will increase.

Banana-Jaggery Eggless Cake

Banana-Jaggery Cake

Banana-Jaggery cake

Cake is the flavor of season in the month of December, as from thanks giving to Christmas and New Year eve fall in this month. Many either are pure vegetarian or opt to have egg less cake. Egg-less cakes are made either from Dates, chocolate and fruits. Though most of them are in texture like any other cake the recipe of the cake I am blogging today is slightly wet / moist but is extremely tasty and healthy. Iused to make Banana-Sugar cake but Banana and jaggery was introduced to me by my daughter-in-law who inturn got this wonderful recipe fromPushpa (Anand's wife). Banana and jaggery both are rich in iron and whole wheat as well as banana is rich in vitamins and fibers. Extremely easy to make this cake is delight of all cake lover's especially egg-less cake lovers. My daughter in law made this for my mother and she delightfully cut this cake.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Baking Time: 50 minutes (Approx)

Servings: makes 800 gm cake (Approx)

Ingredients Required For Making Banana-Jaggery:

• 150 gm. Jaggery

• 225 gm. Whole wheat flour

• 225 gm. Banana (Peeled)

• 1/2Teaspoon Cinnamon powder

• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder (Level)

• 1 Teaspoon Eating Soda (Level)

• 150 ml. Olive oil/sunflower oil

• 100 gm. walnut kernel

• 100 gm. Cashew

Directions For making Banana-Jaggery Cake:

• Cut peeled banana to small pieces.

Banana cut to pieces

• Break the jaggery to small pieces.

• Mix jaggery and banana in a bowl, cover and keep aside for 10 min. 

Jaggery added to Banana pieces and mixed

After 10 min. Banana and jaggery mixture

• Mix

• Flour

• Baking powder

• Eating soda

• Sieve the flour mixture through a fine sieve three to four times to ensure through mixing.

• The mixture of jaggery and banana will have liquefied in 10 min. Make it to fine paste. 

Paste and jaggery paste

Whole wheat flour and jaggery banana paste

• Add flour to jaggery banana paste.

Jaggery banana paste added to flour 

• Add oil and cinnamon powder and mix.

Oil being added to flour banana mixture

Cinnamon powder added to flour jaggery mixture

• Mix the nuts and sprinkle 10 gm. of whole wheat flour on then and give a shake so as to coat them with flour.

• Add these nuts to the batter and stir to mix the nuts in batter.

Batter of cake

• The batter will be thick not pourable like in egg cakes.

Consistency of Batter

• Put the batter in a butter paper lined baking dish.

Batter in baking dish

• Bake for 30 min at 150^oC temperature.

• Increase the temperature to 160^o C and bake for 10 minutes.

• Poke with a needle if it comes out clean then switch off the oven. If it comes out sticky with batter then bake for 5-10 minutes at 160^o.

Cake after 50 min.  of baking

• When the batter does not stick to the needle then switch off the oven and remove the cake from oven. Cool on the rake.

Banana-Jaggery Cake Ready to be cut

My Mom  Cutting the Cake

• Cut the cooled cake to required pieces. If hot cake is cut then pieces will not come out neat. 

Banana-Jaggery Cake

Tips:

• Do not add any raisins as they do not taste good in this cake.

• Do not increase the amount of cinnamon the flavor will become overpowering and unwelcome.
  

• Always measure the baking powder and eating soda with standard measuring spoon to get best results.

• Get jaggery powder from market to ease your work.

• The baking dish should never be filled more than 3/4^th. Else the cake will remain half-baked from the center.

• Always coat the nuts with flour to ensure they do not settle at the bottom.

• If you do not want to use butter paper then thinly coat the baking dish with oil then dust flour on it before putting the batter in it.
• Keep 150 ml of water in the oven while baking below the cake rake to ensure the top exposed surface of cake does not become hard.

Alternate Suggestions:

• Organic jaggery can be taken rather than normal jaggery.

• Multigrain flour can be taken in place of whole wheat flour.

• Almonds can be added along with the nuts.
• Bananas can be mashed in the peel itself but the mash should be weighed to the given weight in the recipe.