Lemon, Rose and Pistachio Mini Bundt Cakes~Recipe Swap

This is the second time I am participating in the recipe swap club. The aim is that you are paired up with a fellow blogger and you have to recreate a recipe from their blog. This month I was paired with Jagruti from Jagruti’s Cooking Odyssey. Jagruti is a very good friend of mine and she has a lovely blog show casing vegan and vegetarian recipes. She is an expert cook and experiments with lots of textures and flavours. I spent hours looking through her blog and there were so many recipes I wanted to make. I short listed a few of my favorites such as her Instant Raiti Gor Keri -sweet mango pickle, her vegan Boussou Tmssou- Algerian cookies and her Rasjasthani Dal Bafla recipe to name a few. But what caught my eye was her recent post where she featured her Middle Eastern semolina Bundt cakes. The rose and lemon combination with the pistachio are my favorite flavours so I decided  to recreate this recipe at the weekend. Wow what a hit, we loved this mini gorgeous spongy cakes that oozed Middle Eastern flavours to the core. This is definitely a keeper recipe that I can see my self making it again and again.

I did make a couple of small changes to suit my taste, the original recipe can be found here.

I have a mini bundt tin so I made mini bundt cakes rather than 4 large as in Jagrutis recipe. I also reduced the amount of sugar syrup in the recipe to a half and it was more than enough to sweeten the little cakes. The cakes turned out delicious served with strong Moroccan coffee.

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Lemon, Rose and Pistachio Mini Bundt Cakes

by Nayna Kanabar March-28-2018

Mini bundt cakes with mouth watering middle Eastern flavours of rose, lemon and pistachio make these cakes delectable and simply delicious.

Ingredients:

• 250 g Coarse Semolina
• 1 tablespoon Corn flour
• 85 g Melted butter
• 85 g Caster Sugar
• 125 g Plain Greek Yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon Lemon zest
• 1 pinch Salt
• 1 level teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
• 30 ml Milk
• 2 tablespoons Pistachio slices
For the Syrup
• Sugar 125 g
• 150 ml Water
• 1 Lemon (thinly sliced)
• 1 teaspoon Rose water
• 2 tablespoons Lemon juice
• Few Rose petals for garnishing

Method:

1.Preheat oven to 180 degrees -C 375 degrees F 2.In a bowl add the bicarbonate of soda and yoghurt and mix together. Leave aside for 10 minutes.3. In another bowl add the semolina, sugar, lemon zest, melted butter and mix together.4. Add in the yoghurt mixture and mix together, add the milk a little at a time until the batter is dropping consistency.5. Grease and dust the bundt tin with melted butter and flour.6. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until cakes are golden brown and a skewer inserted in them comes out clean.7. In another pan add the sugar, water, lemon juice, lemon slices and bring the mixture to a boil, once the sugar has melted simmer on low heat for 5 minutes .Turn off the heat and add the rose water.8. Leave the cakes in the bundt tin after taking them out of the oven. While they are still warm, spoon on top of each cake a generous spoonful of the syrup. Wait a few minutes and add another spoonful. 9. Once the cakes have soaked up the syrup, gently take them out of the bundt tin and arrange them on a serving platter, spoon another teaspoon full of syrup on the cakes and garnish them with the pistachio slices and rose petals.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 30 mins Yield: 12 cakes

Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes

I do like a cake every now and then with my cup of coffee, however I am not too fond of buttercream and fondant icing on the cake. I am a plain cake person with just good flavour and no topping. I love chocolate cakes and this vegan recipe with no eggs or butter is so delicious that it is one of my most favourite recipes. It is also very easy to adapt the recipe if you want to add other flavours in cake.

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Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes

by Nayna Kanabar Jan-22-2016

Moist and deliciously chocolatey cupcakes, that are egg and dairy free.


Ingredients:

     Dry Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups Plain Flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup white caster sugar
• 1/2 cup Milk chocolate chips 

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 cup Water
• 1/3 cup Sunflower oil
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C 2. Line a muffin pan with cake cases.3.  In a large bowl sieve the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda three times to get lots of air in the mixture.4. Stir in the sugar.5. In a jug add the water ,oil, vinegar and vanilla essence and whisk together.6. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry and do not over mix, you want to keep the mixture as light as possible. Stir in the chocolate chips. 7.  Spoon the mixture into the cake cases and bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the cakes comes out clean. Once baked remove tray from oven and wait for the cakes to cool. At this stage you can swirl butter cream on the top if desired.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Baking time: 25 mins Total time: 35 mins   Yield: 16 cupcakes depending on size of cake cases.

For other eggless recipes do check out the posts for more cake ideas here.

Mini Genoise Mousse Cakes

Week 7-Dessert week of GBBO has been and gone and the challenges to my mind are getting harder and harder. This week we saw contestants  make Roulade as the signature challenge, followed by technical challenge of making Marjolaine, a layered meringue with cream and nuts followed by the show stoppers Mousse cakes. All the bakes looked extremely difficult and you could clearly see the stress on the contestants faces as they struggled to create the perfect bake.

This week I have attempted to create my own version of the mini mousse cakes. I have used a vanilla genoise sponge recipe from GBBO and made a vegetarian mango and cardamon mousse topped with fresh mangoes and strawberries and finally finished off with a decorated chocolate collar around the mini cakes.

Some of the ingredients for my challenge this week were provided by Tesco

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Mini Genoise Mousse Cake

by Nayna Kanabar October-7-2016

Light Genoise sponge topped with delicious cardamon mango mousse and garnished with fresh mango and strawberries and pistachio nuts.

Ingredients:

• 50g butter (melted)
• 100g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 140g Plain flour (sifted 3 times)
• 120g Whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons Icing sugar
• 120g mango puree
• 1/2 teaspoon Cardamon powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla essence
• 8 Strawberries
• 1 Fresh mango
• 200g Milk chocolate
• 10 pistachio nut sliced
• 1 sheet Edible chocolate transfer

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/ 400 degrees F2. Line a square tin with grease proof paper and keep it aside.3.Place the eggs and sugar in large bowl and set it over a bowl of barely simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Beat with an electric whisk until the mixture is thick and fluffy then remove the bowl from the pan and continue beating for three minutes.4. Add the melted butter and then gently fold in the flour.5.Transfer the batter to the prepared cake tin and smooth the top.6.Bake the cake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.7. Remove cake from the oven and leave to cool.8.To make the mousse, whip up the cream with the icing sugar until it forms stiff peaks.9. Fold in the mango puree, cardamon and vanilla essence very gently. Place the mousse in the fridge to chill.10 Peel the mango and cut it into thin slices.Hull the strawberries and cut them into thin slices.11.Using a cookie cutter that is 6 cm in diameter, cut 6 round cakes from the large cake, any off cuts can be used for making trifle.12. Break the chocolate and melt it in the microwave at 30 sec intervals until its melted. Remove from the microwave and keep aside.13. Cut the chocolate transfer paper to fit around the cake rounds and cut 6 sheets. Make sure they are at least 1 inch taller than the cake as there will be need to be a cavity to fill the mousse.14. Place the chocolate transfers on a baking sheet and using a palette knife thinly spread the melted chocolate on the design,15 Place the tray in the fridge for the chocolate to semi set for about 5 minutes.16 Remove chocolate wrapper from fridge and wrap them around the cake rounds. Return the chocolate wrapped cake back to the fridge to set completely. (about 1 hour)17. Remove the chocolate covered cakes from fridge and gently peel off the plastic wrapper to expose the chocolate design.With a sharp knife level the top of the cups.18. Spoon the mousse on top of the cakes and return the cakes to the fridge for 30 minutes.The mousse has no gelatin so it will not set fully but the chocolate sides of the cake will hold the mousse.19. To serve garnish the mousse cakes with mango slices and strawberry slices and sprinkle pistachio slices.

Details

Prep time: 45 mins (plus chilling time 1 hour) Cook time: 30 mins Total time: 1 hour 15 mins Yield: 6 mini cakes

Submitting this to :
Great Bloggers Bake Off with Jenny from Mummy Mishaps.

Eggless Lemon Drizzle Mini Loaf Cakes

Last week was the start of the Great British Bake off Series 7. I am a huge fan of this awesome show and really enjoy watching all the challenges and creations that the participants partake. I love the docile Mary Berry and the candid Paul Hollywood with his piercing blue eyes that are enough to give you the shakes!!! I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to make some bread with Paul at a recent bloggers event.You can read all about it here .

On last weeks GBBO episode we saw bakers bake a Drizzle cake, make Jaffa cakes and create a show stopper of a Genoise cake with a mirror glaze. I was totally inspired by the drizzle cakes and so here I am sharing my bake: Eggless Lemon Drizzle mini loaf cakes.

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Eggless Lemon drizzle Mini Loaf Cakes

by Nayna Kanabar August-29-2016

Decadent and moist eggless cakeS with pungent citrus flavours.

Ingredients:

• 270g Plain Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
• 250g Sugar
• 75ml Sunflower Oil
• 1 tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
• 3 tablespoons Lemon Juice
• 220ml Water
• 1 teaspoon Lemon zest
For Drizzle Syrup







30g Sugar
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 tablespoons Water
1/2 tablespoon Icing Sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and grease the inside of 8 mini loaf tins.Place the loaf tins on a baking tray.2.Sift together the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the flour. Place in the bowl of the Nutri Ninja3. In a jug add the oil, water, lemon juice, lemon zest and apple cider vinegar and mix together.4.Add the wet ingredients to the flour in the Nutri Ninja bowl and whisk the ingredients until it forms a batter. Do not over mix.

5. Divide the batter into the eight loaf tins and place the tins into the middle shelf of the oven to bake for 40-45 minutes util cakes are golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.6. Remove cakes from the oven and leave aside to cool.7. To make the drizzle warm the lemon juice, water and add the sugar, wait for it to dissolve and then remove from the heat.8. Using a skewer poke hole in the top of the cakes and spoon the warm syrup into the cakes.Leave the cakes aside for syrup to soak in9. Demold the cakes and sprinkle with a flurry of icing sugar before serving.

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 1 hour Yield: 8 mini loaves

I used the Ninja Kitchen System with Nutri Ninja to whisk up my cake mix. The Ninja®Complete Kitchen System with Nutri Ninja® is a power machine that incorporates three appliances, a food processor, high speed blender and a nutrient extractor. Its 1,500 watt of power  is perfect for all kitchen tasks such as mixing, blending, kneading,chopping and whipping.

I am delighted to have this addition to my kitchen as its going to be very handy whilst I create some exciting challenges inspired by the GBBO.


I am also excited to feature the Paul Hollywood bakeware by Kitchen Craft during my GBBO posts. The bakeware is made from extra thick carbon steel which won't warp during baking and will give all your cakes an even bake.The bakeware is dishwasher,fridge and freezer safe. Its100% PFOA, PTFE and BPA-free and comes with  a 20 year guarantee (5 year non stick guarantee). The range is available in most cookware shops.

I was sent the The Ninja®Complete Kitchen System with Nutri Ninja® and the Paul Hollywood bakeware to review in the simplyfood kitchens.

I love the classic lemon drizzle cake, you can also check out some other drizzle cakes below:
Blueberry Loaf Cake with Lime Drizzle by Jac from Tinned Tomatoes
Lime, Coconut and Cardamom Loaf Cake by Choclette from Tin and Thyme
Blackberry cake with Orange drizzle by Jac from Tinned Tomatoes
Apple and Rum drizzled cake by Tracy from its not easy being greedy
Lemon rose and gin drizzle cake by Kevin from The crafty Larder
Submitting this to :
Great Bloggers Bake Off with Jenny from Mummy Mishaps.

Chocolate Brownies

At simplyfood I do try and post healthy recipes but once in awhile it's nice to bake a cake or a special treat. I made these chocolate brownies to share at work with my colleagues as a treat. I have never baked brownies before so I thought it was best to use a tried and tested recipe and adapt it a little. I took inspiration from the Mary Berry Chocolate Brownie recipe.

The brownies turned out delicious although I think next time I will reduce the baking time by 5 minutes to make them a little bit more gooey in the centre. I found the addition of coffee really highlighted the chocolate taste.

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Chocolate Brownies

by Nayna Kanabar June-4-2016

Chocolatey gooey indulgent chocolate brownies

Ingredients:

• 375g Plain chocolate chopped up
• 250g Margarine softened
• 2 teaspoons Instant coffee
• 2 tablespoons Hot water
• 2 Eggs
• 250g Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla essence
• 90g Self raising flour
• 250g White chocolate chips
• 1/2 tablespoon Cocoa for dusting.

Method:

1. Grease and line a loose bottom square baking tin 10x10 size2.Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C3. In a microwave safe bowl add the 375g of chopped chocolate and margarine and heat on high for 30 seconds stir and repeat at 30 second intervals until chocolate is melted.Make sure you stir between each stage. Remove the chocolate from the microwave and allow to cool.4. In another large bowl add the coffee and add to it the hot water, mix to melt the coffee. Add the eggs, vanilla and sugar and whisk until the mixture is light and fluffy.5. Slowly add the melted chocolate until it is all incorporated.6. Fold in the flour gently and then stir in the white chocolate chips. Do not over mix.7. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes.8. Remove the brownies from the oven when they are soft to touch and crust is crisp but centre is slightly gooey.9. Allow brownies to cool completely, once cooled cut into squares and sieve some cocoa on the top.

Details

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 1 hour 5 mins Yield: 16 pieces