Baklava Muffins

I’ve baked lots of things in the last few weeks but have simply not posted it on the blog. Recently, I sampled varieties of baklavas at Kunafa in Delhi. I never knew there were or could be so many types of baklavas. The owner, a genial man, offered us samples of baklava as well as kunafa – a crisp pastry stuffed with cheese and coconut. We finally picked up a 300 gm box of assorted baklavas that was priced at Rs 1000. It was absolutely sinful!

I had noticed a recipe for Baklava Muffins in Nigella’s Domestic Goddess. After having eaten baklavas, I was very keen on trying this.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients for the filling:

• 100g chopped walnuts
• 75g demerara sugar (I substituted it with light brown sugar as I had run out of demerara)
• 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
• 45g butter, melted

for the muffins:

• 210g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 large egg
• 45g unsalted butter, melted
• 250ml buttermilk (or 175g yogurt and 75g semi-skimmed milk)

12 bun muffin tray lined with 12 paper cases

for the topping:

• 125ml runny honey

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°Celsius/gas mark 6.

2. Mix all the filling ingredients together in a small bowl, and then get on with the muffins. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarb and sugar.

3. In a wide-mouthed measuring jug, whisk the egg, melted butter and buttermilk (or yogurt-milk mix). Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the liquid and mix lightly and gently, remembering to keep it bumpy rather than going all-out for smooth: anything more than the gentlest handling makes for heavy muffins.

4. Fill the muffin papers one-third full, add a scant tablespoon of filling, then cover with more muffin mixture until two-thirds full. Sprinkle any remaining filling on top of the muffins.

5. Bake for 15 minutes, by which time they should be golden-brown and ready.

6. Put the muffins, still in their papers, onto a rack and drizzle with honey. You may find it easier to warm the honey a little before pouring.

While this was supposed to yield 12 muffins, I managed to stretch it to 18 🙂 What I did not do, however, is pour the honey on top of the muffins out of fear that it would make the muffins overly sweet. This was a mistake. The honey would have made them moist and given it a nice baklavaish flavour.

Swedish Summer Cake

Believe it or not my husband doesn’t like chocolate based desserts that much (rolling eyes!!). I’ve been wanting to make this appealing Swedish Summer Cake for a very long time. The prospect of a three layered cake with cream, custard, and strawberry sounded inviting. I decided that this would be his birthday cake. The only hurdle was where would I find strawberries in September!  Frozen ones were the only option. After all, there is a reason why this is a “summer” cake! I bought frozen strawberries from INA market and on D-day realised that they were sour as tamarind. I could have easily made a strawberry rasam.

I deliberately showed Mahesh the picture of the cake so that he wouldn’t accuse me of doing a sloppy job! The cake is meant to look sloppy 🙂 This cake is very easy to put together. But, next time only with fresh strawberries. The cake would taste and look a lot better with fresh ones.

Here is the recipe as it appears in Nigella’s book Kitchen. Red Panda who blogs at http://redpandabakes.blogspot.in/ saved me the effort of typing the recipe.

Swedish Summer Cake

Vanilla Custard

2 egg yolks
2 x 15ml tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons cornflour or potato flour
250ml full-fat milk
½ vanilla pod or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

If using the vanilla pod, put everything in a pot over a low to medium heat, stirring non-stop, until it starts to thicken. Do not let it boil. If using the vanilla extract, put everything in except the extract and proceed as above.
When it starts to thicken – just over 3 minutes at medium heat, but just under 5 if you keep the flame cautiously low – take it off the heat. Remove the vanilla pod, if using.
Transfer to a cold bowl, mix in the vanilla extract, if using, and continue stirring until it is a little cooler, then cover with clingfilm – touching the surface of the custard – to stop the custard getting a skin when it’s cold. Or wet a piece of baking parchment and place that right on top of the custard. I had to whisk in a few teaspoons of sugar before assembling the cake to make up for the sour strawberries.

The Cake

3 eggs
250g caster sugar
90ml hot water from a recently boiled kettle
1½ teaspoons baking powder
150g plain flour
butter, for greasing

1 x 23cm spring-form or other round cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4 and line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment and butter the sides.
Whisk the eggs and sugar together briskly until pale and moussy and more than double in volume, then, still whisking but slightly more gently, add the hot water.
Mix the baking powder and flour in a separate bowl and gradually whisk these in, making sure there are no lumps. You may need to stop once or twice for a scrape-down.
Pour and scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for approximately 30 minutes, or until it is golden, well-risen and a cake tester comes out clean.

Let the cake stand in the tin on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes before – carefully – unmoulding and leaving it to cool on the rack.

Out of the oven

To assemble the cake
750g strawberries (I used 600 gms)

2-3 teaspoons caster sugar, depending on sweetness of berries (Used a lot more :()
500ml double cream* (Used about 250-300 gms)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract*

Put 250g strawberries to one side, and start preparing the remaining 500g. Hull these, halve the smaller berries and quarter the larger ones, dropping them into a bowl. Sprinkle with sugar – how much depends on how tart or sweet the berries – shake and leave until they glisten: 10 minutes will be just fine, though 1 hour would make them juicier and glossier.
Whisk the double cream and vanilla extract until it holds its peaked shape when the beaters are lifted out.
Fold a third of the whisked cream into the fully cooked vanilla custard you made earlier.
When the cake, too, is thoroughly cool, take out a bread knife and, courageously, slice the cake horizontally into 3 layers. I used toothpicks to mark the points and then proceeded to slice two layers.

Marked out

The layers weren’t too bad.

Put on cake layer on its serving platter or stand, and top with half the vanilla-custard-cream, then arrange half the macerating strawberries on top, concentrating more on the outer edges of the cake than the center. Top with the second layer of sponge and repeat as before with the rest of the custard-cream and cut berries.

Now set the third cake layer on top and cover with the waiting whipped cream, arranging the 250g reserved strawberries as desired.

:

Quadruple Chocolate Cake

As I inch towards 30, I realise that I was far less knowledgeable and yet more confident 10 years ago. In our last year of college we decide to celebrate each of our bdays in a special way. Instead of buying a cake we baked them. Our friend Juieen’s mother opened her home and kitchen to us and gave us absolute freedom to make a mess! Brimming with confidence we decided to bake a marble cake for Deepa’s bday. I knew a basic cake recipe and decided to double the ingredients so that we could have our marble. Little did we know how particular one must be about measures and temperature. We went by Deepa’s dictum “how bad can a combination of sugar, butter, and chocolate taste – not bad at all!”. We ended up with a cake which was cooked at the top and raw at the bottom. We decided to put it back inside for some more time and then ended up with a burnt top/bottom (can’t remember). We cut out the burnt half and wrapped it in a nice piece of paper for Deepa so that she could taste how bad the butter, sugar, and chocolate combo could be and proceeded to make up for the lost half of the cake by topping it with crushed Pure Magic biscuits. In didn’t look too bad and tasted pretty okay as well. See, none of us even bothered to google a recipe – we had such faith in our (non-existent) abilities. I don’t take any such risks now and try and abide by a recipe as far as possible while baking.

I baked Nigella’s Quadruple Chocolate Cake for my friend’s 30th bday. It is THE CAKE for all chocoholics. It is a moist and sinful cake. Here’s the recipe as it appears on Nigella’s website:

Ingredients

For the cake

• 200 grams Plain flour
• 1 teaspoon(s) bicarbonate of soda
• 50 grams cocoa powder
• 275 grams caster sugar
• 175 grams unsalted butter soft
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 tablespoon(s) vanilla extract
• 80 ml sour cream [I used regular cream from a local dairy]
• 125 ml water boiling
• 175 grams Dark chocolate chips (unless you prefer milk)

For the syrup

• 1 teaspoon(s) cocoa powder
• 125 ml water
• 100 grams caster sugar
• 25 grams Dark chocolate (from a thick bar)

Method

1. Take whatever you need out of the fridge so that all ingredients can come to room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/170°C, putting in a baking sheet as you do so, and line a 900g loaf tin (mine measures 21x11cm and 7.5cm deep and the cooking times are based on that) with greased foil – making sure there are no tears – and leave an overhang all round. Or use a silicon tin.
3. Put the flour, bicarb, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream into the processor and blitz till a smooth, satiny brown batter. Scrape down with a rubber spatula and process again while pouring the boiling water down the funnel. Switch it off then remove the lid and the well-scraped double-bladed knife and, still using your rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips or morsels.
4. Scrape and pour this beautiful batter into the prepared loaf tin and slide into the oven, cooking for about 1 hour. When it’s ready, the loaf will be risen and split down the middle and a cake-tester, or a fine skewer, will pretty well come out clean. But this is a damp cake so don’t be alarmed at a bit of stickiness in evidence; rather, greet it.
5. Not long before the cake is due out of the oven – say when it’s had about 45-50 minutes – put the syrup ingredients of cocoa, water and sugar into a small saucepan and boil for 5 minutes. You may find it needs a little longer: what you want is a reduced liquid, that’s to say a syrup, though I often take it a little further, so that the sugar caramelizes and the syrup has a really dark, smokey chocolate intensity.
6. Take the cake out of the oven and sit it on a cooling rack and, still in its tin, pierce here and there with a cake tester. Then pour the syrup as evenly as possible, which is not very, over the surface of the cake. It will run to the sides of the tin, but some will have been absorbed in the middle.

Cooled and punctured

8. Let the cake become completely cold and then slip out of its tin, removing the foil as you do so. Sit on an oblong or other plate. Now take your bar of chocolate, wrapped in foil if you haven’t got much of its wrapper left, and cut with a heavy sharp knife, so that it splinters and flakes and falls in slices of varying thickness and thinness.

9.  Sprinkle these chocolate splinters over the top of the sticky surface of the cake.

Quadruple Chocolate Cake