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Honey I Messed the Castella …but it was still so good!!

“When you hear buzz around the beehive, you know they’re making honey in there.”

Terrence Howard

This week’s been bookmarked to post recipes I’ve bookmarked & gotten down to attempting. Strange how the best of plans fall flat on their face & all prior preparation flies out of the window. Had a free kind of free day…no hub, no kids, no laundry & no grocery…decided to bake a cake, The Honey Castella. I’ve been fascinated with it with ever since the very talented doctor-blogger-foodie-friend @ No Special Effects posted it. It’s the first one of Manggy’s that I’ve had the courage to try. Most of his drool worthy creations are intimidating in the least, full of Special Effects (don’t get misled by the ‘No‘), & I’m very hesitant to try climbing to his ‘Everest‘ heights. About the cake in his words, “It’s already been specially engineered by skillful Nagasaki bakers (inspired by the Portuguese who introduced the Pão de Castela) to have a superior crust and lovely crumb. The crust is dark (actually supposed to me much darker than mine), sweet, smooth, and silky. The crumb is dense and moist. Just unmarred perfection.”

This seemed simple enough & I MESSED IT UP, I think!! It’s not really my fault…is it ever? See, I was all set up to make it with all the above ‘NO’ factors on my ever so free day. BUT, luck was tough & the morning went on to NO electricity. So I had this neat row of ingredients, lined baking tin, jar of honey, recipe notes neatly copied down…etc & *SULK*, only 3 eggs; making matters worse – no power to bake. I even had an impressed Manggy (or so I choose to believe) knowing that I had everything ready. Hit the kitchen counter early the next morning…easy, breezy, beautiful…until the recipe asked for the oil to be whipped into 1/2 a cup of batter, when a bolt of lightning struck the dolt in me!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, had bunged the oil in the beginning with everything else in my stupid hurry. Not my fault…I could feel Manggy staring over my shoulder through-out & was already nervous that I had beaten the blessed batter 8 minutes, instead of 10 etc. I bravely carried on, hurriedly shoved it into the oven…got a beautiful cake but still rue what I might have missed. Mailed the good man @ No Special Effects & he immediately gave me an analysis based on my pictures. O boy… was the tin larger that 8 inches he queried? Shiver me timbers man, how did you guess? Crumb looks good, crust is fine…see, he’s just a Doc in disguise & there are plenty of Special Effects there. Despite my major blooper, the cake was fantastic, though suffered in proper aeration. It was everything he said it would be…superior crust, lovely crumb, dense & moist! Would have been lighter & spongier had I not been careless…next time!!

Our post baking conversation went something like this…
Me: Hi there…
Alright ‘fess time. I got the title ready…”Honey I Messed Up the Castella!!”
You don’t want to know what I did after all my prep, but you’ll have to know. Had everything ready, but when old Mother Hubbard got to the cupboard, there were only 3 eggs. Plans were rapidly shelved for want of an egg-white!! This morning, everything was going along fine…till the time that the oil had to be whisked into 1/2 a cuppa batter. And that moment a blinding flash went through my silly brain…***********… I had happily tossed the oil in with the rest of the merry stuff. I’ve got the post ready in my head & a list of who’s who to blame…so worry not, it’ll be posted soon.
Otherwise it came out fine ( think a bit underdone coz i thought it would get too dark & was done pretty much sooner than 25 minutes for the first bit. I’ve had a slice already & it’s really nice & light…but I rue what it might have been………..aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!

Manggy: Oh, Deeba… Well, I’m glad it tasted nice. Was the pan size 8 inches? It looks a little larger.You shouldn’t have minded the dark crust– it really is supposed to be that way– it’s MY Castella that had too pale a crust for reasons unknown.Definitely whipping the eggs with the oil already in it will hinder proper aeration. Oh well! Did it form the thick, slowly sinking ribbons?I’m glad I was able to make your morning a little more exciting, ha ha ha 🙂

Honey Castella adapted from The Sweet Spot
As copied from Manggy’s @ No Special Effects (he did all the hard-work of recalculations etc.)

True Castella from Nagasaki does not contain any added oil, which makes Ong’s recipe unique. There are also several other techniques in traditional Castella that I don’t use here: sprinkling the batter with coarse sugar that settles at the bottom and makes a dark, sweet bottom crust, taking out the cake halfway through baking and disturbing it to destroy the air bubbles and make the cake dense, and baking in a covered container to steam the cake. You will also notice there is a slight fall in the cake, which creates a raised rim of crust. This didn’t bother me, but if you don’t like the effect, you can cool the cake upside-down: just be careful to do so on a greased surface so you won’t lose any of the precious crust.
88g (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
pinch of salt
126g (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) granulated sugar
42g (1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons) honey
22g (1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons) canola or other neutral oil (you may also use the same weight, or 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter, melted)

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Spray an 8-inch round pan with baking spray and line the bottom and sides with parchment. Don’t spray the parchment after lining. Sift the flour onto a sheet of wax paper or a bowl and set aside. In a heatproof (or mixer) bowl, add the eggs, egg yolk, salt, sugar, and honey. Place this over a saucepan of simmering water and beat on medium speed with a hand mixer (or use a whisk) for 10 minutes (the mixture will be at least 40°C, or 104°F). Take off the heat and beat on high speed for at least 6 more minutes using a hand mixer (or 10 minutes on a stand mixer if you started out with a whisk). The batter will be cool, pale and form very thick ribbons that take a very long time to sink completely into the surface of the batter.Gently fold in the flour into the batter in 3 additions. Take about 1/2 cup of the batter and whisk it into the oil until completely homogeneous, then drizzle it back into the batter, folding continuously as you add it.Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 150°C (300°F) and continue baking for 18-25 more minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few very fine crumbs. Cool the cake completely (cool inverted on a sheet of greased parchment if desired). Unmold to a serving platter.

This is off to Ruth @ Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments for her Bookmarked event.

And of course I did some more with the beautiful Castella sponge. Couldn’t resist it.

Made some light ‘Mango Mousse Cheesecake Trifle’ as I chose to call it.

Was delicious. Recipe shall follow in the next post!

Am sending this post off to a Group Writing Project, on a cool site I just discovered, Problogger. The call is to ‘Write a Post with a Killer Title. Be as creative as you like. Make the post relevant to your blog.’

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Baking | The original butter chicken … make yours at home

” If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.”

Romain Rolland

Today is India’s 61st Independence Day… & I decided to post something Indian today. In fact, India’s most popular gastronomic export to the Western world, which is Butter Chicken or Murgh Makhani.

Quoting from a snippet in a tabloid debating butter chicken vs chicken tikka masala…”Many years ago, a man named Robin Cook, not the novelist, but the late Labour Party leader & Britain’s Foreign Secretary, had stirred an international gastronomic debate by calling Chicken Tikka Masala his country’s national dish. People who contested his claim, should have saved their breath, for CTM indeed is a British creation. What they did was dunk chicken tikka that didn’t sell during the day, Campbell’s tomato soup, fresh cream & lots of red chillies into the frying pan, & they called the result CTM. It must have come as a blessing to a generation that must have grown tired of the blazing vindaloo.” But this was far from butter chicken…

This appeared in the newspaper in July 2008, in an article from the man who gave Delhi the most memorable Butter Chicken ever…& has been doing so for years – Monish Gujral of Moti Mahal. The article has interesting trivia about the original murgh makhani, or butter chicken, which originated in a dhaba (roadside eatery) near Peshawar in the 1920’s. Like everything pertaining to Indian cuisine, there are no records to prove any claim – & was imported into post-partition Delhi by a refugee named Kundan Lal Gujral, or so says his grandson, Monish Gujral. He remembers the founder of Moti Mahal telling him that the dish originated to end the problem of excess chicken tikka, which if left overnight, gets hard & fibrous. This kind man shared his best kept secret of one of India’s most famous exports to the Western world in his book, Moti Mahal’s Tandoori Trail….& in a moment of weakness, shared that you need to keep certain points in mind to get best results.

In brief, the chicken should be a broiler, weighing no more than 600-700 gms. This recipe is made ‘best with bones’, & you can’t make butter chicken with anything other than tandoori chicken. Also, the butter chicken tastes best when gravy tomatoes (bright red ones) are used, as compared to ready made tomato puree from the market. To balance the sourness of the tomatoes, use a bit of sugar, & to get the right consistency, add cashew paste. I can say it works, & works brilliantly. I’ve made this thrice (on the bone, boneless breast & boneless drumsticks) & it’s very, very nice indeed. The sauce is brilliantly flavoured & quite mild despite the garam masala, red & green chilies.

I had an old aunt, my mother’s elder sister, visiting on her way out to Canada. Feisty old lady, at 80+ speaks her mind & has brought up 2 sons & a daughter. One son is a Professor of Genetics at Pittsburgh University, & the other is a Geologist in Canada. Sadly, she lost her daughter, quite young, to Multiple Sclerosis last year.

I played host to her while she was transiting to catch her flight last month, as my Mom was out of town. My aunt babysat me often when I was very young, & the few food memories I have of when I was a child, all relate to her…right to the aromas of the dal she fed me, to the crisp onions on top. My mother is horrified that I remember nothing of the good stuff she slaved to make & present on the table….shudder…I just hope that doesn’t happen to me!!

Anyway, I asked my aunt if there was something special she would like to eat, or else I would figure out what would be nice. Pronto came the reply…a request for Butter Chicken! She said she always remembers a very nice butter chicken I made for her almost 5 years ago, & that’s just what she’d love to have. Obviously, our food memories were mutually complimentary…so I set to make this recipe. My recommendation…on the bone is the best!

MOTI MAHAL’S MURGH MAKHANI / The original BUTTER CHICKEN

…like from the horses mouth!

Ingredients:
Chicken – 600-700 gms (on the bone)
For the first marinade:
Lime Juice of 1 lime
Red chili powder – 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
For the second marinade:
Yogurt – ½ cup / thick
Garlic paste – 1 tbsp
Ginger – 1 tbsps
Rock salt – 1 tsp
Garam Masala – 1 tsp
Kasoori methi – ½ tsp (these are a variety of dried fenugreek leaves often used in Indian cooking)
Oil – 1 tbsp
Method:

Make 2 deep incisions each in both breast pieces &s drumsticks. Mix all ingredients on the first marinade & rub well into chicken pieces. Keep aside for an hour.
For the second marinade, mix all ingredients well & rub into chicken pieces till they are well coated. Leave in the fridge for at least 3 hours. I usually leave this overnight.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Place the chicken on the grill rack, with a tray underneath to collect the drippings. Grill for 8-10 minutes, brush with oil, turn the pieces, & grill for another 4-5 minutes until the chicken is tender. Keep aside.

For the makhani sauce
Ripe, red tomatoes – 800gms / chopped
Oil – 2 tbsp
Onion – 1 / chopped
Red Chili powder – 1 tsp
Garam masala _ 1 tsp
Cumin/Zeera powder – 1tsp
Ginger-garlic paste – 1 tbsp
Cashew paste – 2 tbsp (I ran a handful in my dry grinder in short bursts)
Bay leaf – 1
Green chili – 1-2 / finely chopped
Butter – 50 gms
Single Cream – 50 ml (original has 100 gm double cream)
Kasoori methi – 1 tsp
Green chilies, fresh coriander, cream for garnishing. Method:

Heat the oil in a pan, add onion & sauté for a few seconds. Put in chopped tomatoes, bay leaf & salt & simmer, stirring occasionally, until the oil leaves the sides. Cool slightly & strain the sauce. (Do this the previous day to save time).
Pour the sauce back into a pan over low heat. Add all the spices, followed by the tandoori chicken. Stir well & simmer for 3-4 minutes.
Add the butter & stir in till it melts. Finally stir in the cream & take off heat.
Garnish with fresh coriander leaves, cream & green chilies, as desired.
Serve hot with crisp garlic naan, & a salad of onion rings tossed in lime juice & salt.

Enjoy a finger-licking good chicken gravy…the original butter chicken!

SUNFLOWER OATMEAL COOKIES…HAPPINESS IN A COOKIE!

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do. “

Helen Keller

I LOVE baking, which is quite obvious I’m sure…& baking sometimes seems to be the best escape for me. Even when I’ve been run ragged, rushing the kids up & down & across town, doing grocery, laundry & every other silly thing under the sun, I come back home & am always ready for some baking therapy.

Found some lovely sunflowers growing at a friend’s place, & couldn’t resist the offer to take a few. So home I came, clutching a pretty buncha flowers in giddy excitement. Sunflowers just do this to me.

I think they are quite the brightest & most cheerful flowers; for Mondays, or any day for that matter!! The minute I saw the sunflowers, I just knew I would head home & bake sunflower seed somethings!

I was back to what I like doing best! Have been meaning to use a bagful of sunflower seeds for a while now, which my friend brought for me from Ukraine. She keeps carting these interesting ingredients across each time she visits coz she knows it’ll trigger some more baking passion in me.

She also brought along some yummy sachets of vanilla sugar. How could I not do justice to what was in the bag!! Browsed around the net & found these Sunflower Oatmeal Cookies on All Recipes, a site I often explore. The reviews were enough to send me baking…

Sunflower Oatmeal Cookies as adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients:
White sugar – 1 cup
Brown sugar – 1 cup, packed
Butter – 1 cup, softened
Eggs – 2
Vanilla extract – 1 teaspoon
All-purpose flour – 1 1/2 cups
Whole-wheat flour – 1/2 cup (I substituted 1/2 cup plain flour with whole-wheat)
Baking powder – 1/2 teaspoon
Baking soda – 1 teaspoon
Rolled oats – 2 cups
Roasted and salted sunflower seeds – 1 cup
Flaked coconut – 1 cup (optional) / I didn’t use this
Vanilla sugar – 1 sachet/ 2 tsps ( part of my change to the original recipe)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together the white sugar, brown sugar, and butter until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended.
Mix in the rolled oats and sunflower seeds. Stir in coconut if desired. Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Leave room for spreading. Sprinkle with some seeds & chocolate strands if you like.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the cookies begin to brown around the edge.
Allow cookies to set for a few minutes on the sheet before removing to wire racks to cool completely

Of course I have to do something different…& often. So while dropping the cookies on the sheet, I thought, hmmmmmmmm, HOW ABOUT A COOKIE CAKE! Have long been fascinated by a chocolate chip cookie cake picture I once saw, & this seemed a good time to try it. I think I made about 3 dozen cookies & the rest of the dough went into the cookie cake.

I pressed some cookie dough firmly into a lined 8″ Victoria sandwich tin & baked it for about 30-35 minutes, just until it became golden brown. Marked the segments as soon as it came out of the oven & let it cool in the tin. I left a small rim of paper coming up around the edges of the base to aid easy removal.

Got this brilliant dessert serving idea from this Cookie Dough Dessert by Ruth @ Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments where she had posted a similar dessert. Just the right way to serve this yummy cookie cake!!

Have a great sunshine day!

…& LIFE COMES FULL CIRCLE – CLICK CITRUS!

“The distance doesn’t matter, it is only the first step that is difficult.”

Marie de Vichy-Chamrond

Life comes a full circle in many more ways than 1. Yes, I’m 1 year old in blogland & everyday offers exciting, new insights & views galore. Gathered some courage to peek into my first couple of posts & know now how far I’ve come. One of my first posts were not even remotely related to baking…the Indian tailor Bird in our yard, which adopted a plant in our garden & sewed a nest, laid eggs, hatched the chicks…which flew crookedly from plant to plant! I followed crookedly with a camera not knowing that ‘macro’ was a function in photography too, not just boring old Economics that I had laboured through in college! Why am I bringing this silly topic up?

Hmmmmmmmmmm…because, it was then that the kind Bee welcomed me into this scary world & asked if I would like to be part of Click, the theme for September was Eggs! She gave me a days grace, & I posted the only eggs I had ever clicked in my life…Tailor Bird Eggs! Eeeeeeks, don’t get me wrong, I had no intentions of cooking the precious things…but now wonder what possessed me to post these poor eggs in a foodie photo competition!! (Bee, of course, never said a word, & graciously accepted my silly, unfoodie entry!!)

Walked out this morning to see that the tailor bird has returned & begun setting up another nest…a full year later!!

Circle complete…& life goes on to another month of CLICK! With Jugalbandi‘s CLICK, I began burning some midnight oil to read up about my point & shoot. Discovered ‘MACRO’…WOOHOO… & then would macro shoot all day long…..still do. Every month of CLICK throws up AMAZING pictures, a huge & steep learning curve for me. I stand nowhere in the running, but something within wants me to send a participative entry…

The August 08’s theme is CITRUS. One of my favourite foodie & natural flavours. The freshness & zing of Citrus is unparalleled. It’s got this ‘get & up & go’ thingie which I absolutely love. So, here’s my entry for CLICK CITRUS: August ’08. Why do they look all shrivelled up? Story follows…

Rooting For Citrus! CLICK: August 2008. (Citrus)

…& brings me to my current obsession! My previous one was yeast, the battle of which has been largely won, so I’ve moved on to trying to plant a ‘tangerine’ plant. I love the ornamental look, beauty & freshness of this plant. Was speaking to a neighbour last evening, who said to me that the plant would grow from seeds. Had saved up 2 tangerines from making ‘Seville/Bitter Orange Marmalade’ earlier this year & dried them for posterity. Hit the soil this morning, spade & all; have shoved some seeds into Mother Earth…will now check every morning to see if I’m gonna get lucky! If you never hear of this obsession again…you know the seeds didn’t oblige or my green thumb is history. Hopefully from a seed shall grow a plant!

A rambling post like this isn’t often me, but I have so many criss-cross connections in my 1 year old blog-brain, that I need to add a few last clicks!

For the Jugalbandi duo… !!

These three ‘busy’ pictures are dedicated to the hardworking Bee & her equally hard-working better half, Jai! If you look at these creatures at work, you’ll know where she got her name from! These buzzing ‘bees at work’ are currently buzzing in the tree outside my window & I was terrified they would attack me.

They didn’t! I got as close as I dared to, clicked & did the vanishing act. Not good to tempt danger…but wanted to put these busybees/ yellow wasps (Ropalidiini)in for Bee. They looked so pretty, with huge green eyes like aliens!!

MAKE MINE SAVOURY…A GALETTE WITH A DIFFERENCE!

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. ”

Henry David Thoreau

Savoury Spinach, Tomato & Cheese Galette

The happy feeling the rustic Peach & Plum Galette gave me was indescribable. High on confidence, I decided to venture further & make what I would possibly love … a savoury version of sorts. Donno what the purists of the pastry world would call this, forgive me if I have erred, but I called this a savoury galette.

Since it’s screaming the colour RED, am sending this off as an entry to Sunshine Mom for her event Food In Colour.

Her colour of choice for the month of August is RED!!

There was spinach & cottage cheese in the fridge which I very much wanted to use, & was in the mood for some sort of experimentation. I used my giant flower shaped cookie cutters to cut out the 6″ shapes…great opportuntiy coz I don’t think I would contemplate 6″ cookies otherwise! A 6″ circle cutter, or a platter would work as a guide beautifully too.

My permutations worked well!! The daughter & the rest of us LOVED these…

…though the lad preferred it without spinach, which defied the very purpose of nutrition & adding the blessed leaves! Sadly enough, the Popeye magic doesn’t work anymore, so I tried to pass off the spinach tucked underneath as basil! The son pulled every bit out ( though I made him eat the bits)…who did I think I was trying to kid anyway!! Aaaaaaargh!!

The boy loved the sans spinach small bites that I made with the left over dough scraps. Cut them out in shapes of small flowers & hearts!

Savoury Spinach, Tomato & Cheese Galette
Ingredients:
Topping:
Cottage Cheese – 200 gms
Spinach – 1 bunch; tender leaves / chopped
Nutmeg – 1/2 tsp; grated fresh
Garlic – 2-3 cloves ; chopped
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Tomatoes – 3-4 sliced
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper
Baby Gouda Cheese or any cheese of your choice
Fresh basil for garnishing

Dough:
Coarse Cornmeal – 1 cup
Flour – 2 1/4 cup
Dried mixed herbs – 1 tbsp
Sea salt- 1 tsp
Butter – 3/4 cup , chilled; cut up
Buttermilk – a little less than 1/2 cup

To make the dough:

Combine flour, cornmeal, herbs and salt in a processor; pulse 2-3 times. Add butter and pulse 4-5 times, or until mixture resembles coarse meal.
With the processor running, slowing pour the buttermilk through the chute, processing until the dough forms a ball. (Stop adding buttermilk when it begins to clump up around the blades. My dough got a bit sticky so I had to add extra flour in the end. Worked fine eventually.)
Remove the dough ball and adhere any remaining pieces of dough to it, then divide into 2 balls, wrap in plastic & refrigerate for an hour.

For the topping, heat oil & saute garlic. Add spinach leaves, nutmeg & generous sprinkling of salt. Saute till the spinach wilts. Allow to cool a bit & then leave in a colander to get rid of the extra liquid; otherwise the pastry will get soggy.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll out the dough a thin or thick as you like. I like my pastry thin, as I like my pizza base. I got 6 6″ flower/circle shapes out of each ball. If you like the base thick, you’ll get a generous 4 out of each ball. Use the remaining pastry to cut out smaller shapes. Alternatively, you can make savoury petit fours as finger food with the entire dough. Place the pastry on the prepared baking sheet.
Spread a little spinach on the cut-out base. Grate cottage cheese all over, leaving a 1/2″ border around, top with tomatoes, grate some Gouda, mozzarella or cheddar etc, season with sea salt & freshly ground pepper. garnish with fresh basil.
Bake at 200 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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