I went a bit overboard with this cake… Chocolate cake with butter cream & ganache! There’s a reason… it’s our wedding anniversary :) Baking a cake is not part of our anniversary tradition. It very much depends on my mood. Anyways, this year I thought I’ll be a bit extravagant with the cake ;) After the cake was done, I was impatiently waiting for Jose to come home from office, so that we could cut it. Got the cake from the fridge, got the knife and was waiting to hear the wonderful things about the cake. Here it comes… “is this cake tilted?” Ohh yes… that’s what he notices first, not the roses, not the hearts but the ’tilting’ of the cake. But then… I was expecting this, after all some things never change ;)

People say marriage is one adventurous journey with both smooth drives and bumpy roads. We’ve also had our share of dramas and ups and downs. At times we drive each other crazy, at times we make each other laugh our hearts out and most importantly we make each other happy! That matters the most to me.

Now about the cake, it tasted great (if I should say so myself). I should say the chance of a moist chocolate cake slathered with butter cream & ganache going wrong, is almost next to impossible. It all tastes good, on their own, so you can imagine how it tastes when it’s put together :) I got the cake recipe from my dearest friend & neighbor Sonia. This cake is super moist, I think my ultra moist chocolate cake has a strong competition now. Thanks a lot Sonia for sharing this wonderful recipe with me. The butter cream recipe is adapted from here. Dont get scared by the length of the recipe, its pretty simple to put together, trust me.

Btw, here is a step by step pictures of making the cake:

     

 

 

Has it ever happened to you, that you try out something new & start wondering… why you never tried it before? It just reminds me of the famous scene from the evergreen Malayalam movie Nadodikattu where Mohanlal’s character asking Srinivasan “eda Vijaya, entha namukku ee budhi nerathe thonnanjathu?” to which Srinivasan’s character replying “Dasa, oroninnum athintethaya samayamundu mone”. Ohhh how I miss Malayalam movies of those days! (For my non-Kerala friends, in short: “There’s a time for everything”). Anyways, let’s come back to our cupcake. After having the very first bite of this cupcake, I was asking myself why I never tried baking something that has a strong coffee taste before? Looks like now is the right time. Anyways, as I always say… better late than never!

I’m presently in a cupcake baking spree & I ended up with this one day. I was happy with its taste, texture n looks too :) I hope you too will like it. Go ahead, bake it & enjoy!

Here is the recipe:

 

So tell me… are you a curiosity-kills-the-cat kinda person like me? In that case, I’m not testing your patience. Here are the winners of the giveaway…

Winners of Amazon Gift Coupons:

1. Sonia Thomas
2. Preethi
3. Maria John
4. Sanyukta
5. Tina R.M

Winners of the Cupcake Giveaway:

1. Seeba
2. Reena

Thank you so much for your lovely comments. It does make us feel wonderful.

Ok, now after reading the name of the winners, you will be in either of the 3 states below:

1. You got lucky today and too excited to think about anything else…

2. You didn’t get lucky and think “yeah, it always happens to me, I aint that lucky” and start to grumble about how unlucky you are.

3. You couldn’t care less about the giveaway n stuff. You are too busy with other stuff to fret about such silly things…

Let me tell you something… irrespective of your state of mind, I definitely want you to please care about this recipe. This is absolutely worth it! I waited almost 6 years for this recipe! Yep… 6 loooong years! This recipe is from a professional baker. I’ve been having this cake almost every other week for the past 6 years but the recipe remained a mystery to me. I speculated about the ingredients and techniques for long and wondered, how can anybody bake something so so moist and yummy. I got a shock of my life when I got the recipe finally!

There weren’t any ingredients from the alien world or complicated techniques as I had speculated. That again proves something, you don’t have to be complicated or extra ordinary or even different to be special in life. I guess being simple n easy is the best! Anyways, coming back to the cake, it was just like any other cake recipe, in fact it is just sooo simple and easy, you wouldn’t believe me! The end result is so magically moist and you feel like drowning in that deep dark rich brown goodness. Ok, I think that’s enough talk! The thing I liked most about the cake is that, its not too sweet, even if you top it up with some ganache. You will be able to still think straight & act normal even after having a huge slice of it. Yeah…  I dont like ‘a piece of cake’ controlling my behaviour ;)

Yeah yeah… ok here’s the recipe, but I wanna share something else with you before that (please bear with me a minute). So we celebrated the fifth b’day in a grand way, I suppose. Yep, it was pretty grand for us, considering the fact that we are not the type who make every event into an occasion, this was pretty grand. Ok what I was trying to say is that, MariasMenu got her b’day wishes, you got your return gift, but what about the b’day present for the b’day baby? Ohh yes! She also got a gift, yep a new lens! You’ve already seen the work of the lens in the Chicken Tomato Roast. I dont know whether you noticed any difference there, did you? You know what… I’ve this habit of trying to relate each n every situation in my life to some proverbs/wise saying/ old saying. Here’s how I feel about the new lens in my hands… “pattikku muzhuvan thenga kittiyathu pole” or “Korangante kaayil poomala kittiya pole” ;) ( I guess translation will not give you the exact idea, so my non Malayalee friends, please excuse me :) ) what to say, it’s a tie!

Please check out these cupcakes at Swapna’s place. Thanks a lot dear! Nisha also tried these cake, please check out her version here. Thank you Nish! There is another version here, thank you so much Priya!

Check out the these cupcakes made by Naseeba. Thank  you Seeba dear!

So here is the recipe for the Ultra Moist Chocolate Cake:

 

We are meeting after a small gap I guess? Yeah…my last post was around Easter time. I was hoping to say hi to you in between but didnt work out. Something or the other popped up just like that. Anyways, what news at your end?

I’m here with a baking recipe after a long time. It’s mainly because baking has taken a back seat recently. I was trying so hard to cut down on my sugar & butter intake, but it only increased my cravings & ended up having more from outside :( Anyways I baked these cupcakes when some friends came over. It was such a pleasure to bake after a long time & these little cuties did a good job in motivating me to start baking again. After all there is nothing like good old vanilla cake smothered with chocolate frosting.

Btw, I didnt tell you..these are eggless cupcakes. Though I’ve posted some eggless bakes before, it’s not party stuff…That was mainly some healthy bakes. Nothing wrong with that, but I do prefer some sugar & butter high when I’m in a mood to celebrate :) Yep, I’m in a mood to celebrate. You remember Adi boy, my nephew? Well, I’ve two nephews now, my brother & family is blessed with a cute little fella, Siddharth on 5th May. I’m so looking forward to meet him & also my niece Liana :)

Talking about celebration, no celebration is complete without chocolates, right? Check out See’s Candies. They have a great collection of chocolates designed for special occasions like these. Their varieties include truffles, candy bars, sugar free etc; I’d like to try their Springtime Truffles, it looks so delicate & smooth. I’m sure they will make an awesome gift item too. I for sure dont mind receiving a beautifully wrapped Chocolate Box as a gift ;)

Now, shall we hop on to the recipe?

Here we go…

 

It’s been some time right? No, this time I wasnt lazy, I was a bit busy. I myself cant believe that I was busy, some of my friends were saying “even Maria is so busy these days, what has the world come to” ;) Looks like it’ll be like this for the next few days too…So I thought I’ll just drop in and say hi and share this recipe for the traditional Christmas Fruit Cake.

Coming to think of it, I was always a hard core tea cake fan and used to wonder how can somebody like plum cake/fruit cake. It was changed only a few years ago when I baked a fruit cake myself just for the heck of it and I became an instant convert at the first bite itself. But I still don’t like the store bought plum cakes that we get back home in Kerala. I think they are overloaded/crowded with raisins. This recipe suits me well, it has fruits but not overpowering the cake portion.

Before going into the details of this recipe, let me ask you something. Did you notice our new look? How’s it? Well, if you’re thinking I was busy working on the new outfit for MariasMenu, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It’s all done by Jose, wait I did my part, actually what I’m good at. Just demanding what I want in the site ;) So if you like it, the credit goes to you know who…me,because the idea is mine right ;) We’ve added some new pages like upcoming book ,Buzz section & reader’s T&T (tried & tested). Please check out when time permits, ok?

So what were we talking about….right, fruit cake. I got this recipe a few months back from my friend Sumi. It’s her mom’s recipe. I had this when I visited her and I made sure that she mailed me the recipe in a few days :) I made it first with dates, since I was flooded with dates at that time & was very happy with the result. One another thing I’m happy about is the color of the cake. The color of the cake very much depends on the color of the caramel you make. I used to play it safe with caramel and always ended up with golden brown color caramel. But in this recipe, it was specifically stated to make a dark caramel & I decided to let my hair loose. When I tasted the caramel, it had a slight bitter taste and I was worried whether it’ll spoil the cake, but nothing like that happened & in fact I’m very happy with the color, texture & almost everything :) Thanks a ton Sumi for sharing your mom’s wonderful recipe with me.

Update on 13/12/2011: I’ve got many queries asking about using fruit juice instead of alcohol. One of the readers, Bindu tried an alcohol free version & she was kind enough to share it here. I’ve given a alcohol free version update in the end. Also please refer to Bindu’s comment below. Thank you so much Bindu!

Please see the picture of Fruit cake made by Anupama Antony, based on the above recipe. Thanks a lot Anupama :)

Check out other Xmas recipes:

Also check out the Christmas Menu.

Here goes the recipe:

If you are a regular here, you might have noticed that lesser number of baking recipes being posted. Well, there is no particular reason apart from my miserable attempt to reduce the sugar & butter intake. So if you’re wondering why I’m posting this now…. will you trust me if I say this cake happened by accident. I was just cleaning my kitchen cupboard the other day and saw a can of tinned pineapple. It was almost about to reach its expiry and to escape the guilty feeling of wasting stuff I decided to make something and ended up with this cake.

I always wanted to make an upside down cake and when I saw this recipe, it sounded interesting. Also, this happens to be an eggless one. I receive mails asking for eggless cakes, so this one fitted the bill perfectly. Now don’t you believe that everything happens for a reason ;)?

The cake was moist and soft & the flavor was just perfect. While it was still steaming hot, I had a piece… and thought the flavor of pineapple essence is a bit overwhelming. But after the cake cooled down, and I had a piece later, the flavor was just right. We had it with a dollop of Vanilla ice cream & it complemented the cake very well.

Btw, if you happen to bake this cake and you see the color of the cake as yellow, dont be surprised. The base cake is originally a yellow cake. I used the dulce de leche version of condensed milk and hence this brownish color. How I ended up with dulce de leche ,that’s a long story altogether, so we’ll leave it for another time :)

Go ahead, just do a kitchen clean up and I’m sure you will also end up with some condensed milk, waiting to be used :) Here is the recipe. Hope you will like it.