Featured Archives - Passionate About Baking

“Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate.”
Jo Brand

Moist, dark and absolutely delicious are words enough to describe this Dark Chocolate Layered Cake with Almond Meringue Topping. The base is a simple chocolate genoise sponge, layered with a low fat whipped cream. The top is a brown sugar meringue topped with slivered almonds, quite optional if you are torn for time, but it does add a lovely touch to the final look. The secret to the moist cake and whipping up low fat cream is melted, cooled clarified butter/ghee. This is my new favourite sponge recipe and my new favourite light buttercream.It’s been a busy last few months and I stare at a hungry blog. We’ve had a great food styling workshop just recently, packed to the gills, on one of the hottest days of the season. It was a LOT of work and planning, but it was all so worth it. The venue {Lodi – The Garden Restaurant, New Delhi}, the folk who attended, the food we ate and shot, was all great fun. A great learning experience too.Then of course there is obsessive everyday shooting, something that keeps me so engrossed, I often lose track of time. Some work for others, some for myself, yet all a learning process. Add to that Sunday Stills where I join Simi as she shoots stills. The Masala Dabba with Dolphia has fallen prey to procrastination but I will get back there soon since spices is what I enjoy shooting a lot!

Getting back to baking and this wonderful cake, here’s something I recently discovered. I often find a lot of folk these days baking out of a box and frosting the cake with ready made cream, ingredients loaded with preservatives, enhancers, emulsifiers and what not. Read the label and you’ll figure out. Baking or cooking ‘from scratch’ conjures up images of cooking with fresh ingredients and lovingly preparing meals. Boxed meals emphasize just the convenience. Add a few ingredients and then you’re done. Making a cake from scratch gives you control over the quality of the ingredients, also allowing for a bit more creativity. Creativity and experimenting go hand in hand. The revelation that I could use clarified butter / ghee instead of normal butter has made life really simple for me. The recipes need to be adapted a little here and there, but the huge plus is that clarified butter stays good on the shelf for long. You don’t need to melt and cool in summer as it doesn’t set hard at warm temperatures. The convenience of use is indescribable in weather like we have here these days at 45C! That’s how I got the low fat 20% cream to whip up so I could pipe it. Worked each time but once when it was really really hot and humid. Whip chilled low fat cream to medium soft peaks at a high speed. Then drizzle in about a teaspoon of cool melted clarified butter / ghee for every 100ml of cream and continue to whip at high speed, you will notice the cream gradually firming up and holding shape. This is because you’re putting the fat back into low fat cream. I have also seen this works better with the ‘Go’ brand of fresh cream as compared to ‘Amul’ {in India}. Do let me know if it works for you!Well everyone can’t ‘do it from scratch’, and even though additives etc are often considered part of the package when it comes to boxed meals, it really doesn’t have to be. Interestingly enough, at least one company thought that way. San Francisco-based food tech company Hampton Creek offers a new take on shelf-ready foods, striving to take out additives and other unnatural ingredients from common, off-the-shelf goods. For eg, their premade cookie dough doesn’t contain common additives, is an eggless dough mix that is also dairy-free. Baking from a box or a premade mix can be as mouth-watering as a meal made from scratch; guess you need to know what to look for.

Until then, here’s my Dark Chocolate Layered Cake with Almond Meringue Topping Cake!

Dark Chocolate Layered Cake with Almond Meringue Topping

Moist, dark and absolutely delicious are words enough to describe this Dark Chocolate Layered Cake with Almond Meringue Topping. The base is a simple chocolate genoise sponge, layered with a low fat whipped cream. The top is a brown sugar meringue topped with slivered almonds, quite optional if you are torn for time, but it does add a lovely touch to the final look. The secret to the moist cake and whipping up the cream is melted, cooled clarified butter/ghee. This is my new favourite sponge recipe.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 40

Total Time 1

Servings 8 people

Ingredients

Chocolate Genoise Sponge 1

4 eggs
1 egg-yolk
125 g brown sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
35 g plain flour
35 g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
45 g clarified butter/ghee melted, cooled

Meringue topping

2 egg whites
40 g brown sugar
2-3 tbsp flaked almonds

Frosting and filling

600 ml low fat cream, chilled
100 g icing sugar
40 g clarified butter/ghee melted, cooled

Instructions

Chocolate Genoise Sponge 1

Preheat oven to 180C. Line the sides and bottom of 2 8" spring-form round tin with parchment. {I have just 1 tin and an oven that fits only 1 cake at a time. I kept the parchment ready while the first sponge baked}
Place 4 eggs and the egg yolk in the bowl of the stand mixer with 125g brown sugar and vanilla extract. Whisk on high speed until light, very mousse like and tripled in volume, about 8-10 minutes.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt 2 times. Reserve.
Place cooled clarified butter in a medium sized bowl. reserve.
Once the eggs are whisked and mousse like, sift over 1/3 of the flour/cocoa mix and gently stir in in figure 8 moves so that the beaten air doesn't escape. Repeat 2 more times.
Take about a cup of this batter and fold into bowl with melted ghee to loosed the mixture. Now turn this batter back into main batter and gently mix through taking care not to release the beaten air.
Turn into prepared tin and bake for approximately 40 minutes, untl a pick inserted comes out clean.

Chocolate Genoise Sponge 2

Repeat as above, turn into prepared tin and top with brown sugar meringue spreading gently and uniformly with an offset spatula. Scatter slivered almonds over and bake for approximately 40 minutes, until a pick inserted comes out clean.

Brown sugar meringue

Whisk the egg whites with brown sugar on high speed to stiff peaks, about 5 minutes.

Frosting and filling

Place chilled cream, icing sugar, clarified butter in bowl of stand mixer. Whisk at highest speed for 7-9 minutes until stiff peaks form. Adjust sweetness if required.

Assemble

Gently cut each cake into two horizontal layers. They will be very moist and delicate.
Place one layer on the cake platter, top with about 1 cup of whipped cream, spread evenly. Repeat with remaining 3 layers. Frost the sides of the cake with remaining frosting, maybe pipe a border around.

“Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius

Savoury Granola … I’m not really sure why it took me so long to get going. Granola is something I’ve been making forever, actually until the folk at home get a little tired of it, then I stop. It happens on and off. Although I might bake a load of sweet stuff, in reality my heart and taste buds are ‘savoury’. Given half a chance, savoury is what I like to bake, like this Wholewheat Oat Soda Bread. This was the best!!

As you can see, say S A V O U R Y and my eyes light up. It’s strange but coffee, maybe bitter chocolate are the only 2 sweet things that entice me toward a dessert. I’m quite the happy savoury camper otherwise, anything not too spice laden works for me. So when Saffola Masala Oats launched their two new variants, Italian and Chinese, as panel members of Fit Foodie, we flew down to Mumbai for a blind tasting of the new variant. Turned out to be a very pleasant surprise!It’s an exciting new change from the other popular Indian inspired flavours in the market, and interestingly, they’ve managed to pull off a change in texture too. I would encourage you to try a bowl, or rather dive into a bowl or two. At the blind tasting, all you could hear in a matter of minutes was ‘scrape, scrape, scrape’ as we got to the end of the delicious bowls! Once you’re hooked onto the same, I am certain your next step could be this exciting and fun savoury granola. Granola is always simple and fun to make at home. Savoury granola turned out to be a winner; even simpler, and even more fun. Gorgeous colour too! The oats are already spiced and in handy little pouches. Snip off the tops, turn into a bowl, toss with a spoon, stir in the wet mix. Pop into the oven! Quite the hardest thing is waiting for the granola to cool down to get to the crunchy nibble! Gave me enough time to play around with the camera ….Later, I made a quick bhel puri like mix too. YUMM! Quite an ideal, healthy and delicious snack.

Savoury Granola

Savoury granola is delicious, addictive, crisp & crunchy good! Good for breakfast, as a snack, over salads etc. This quick healthy bake is also great as a part of a trail mix, or an Indian bhel puri fusion mix. Toss it up with chopped tomatoes, peppers and onions, some fresh herbs, maybe throw in some sweet corn and enjoy!

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 30

Total Time 35

Servings 1 500g jar