Millionaire's Shortbread Bars

It was very quiet in my house last Saturday night. The reason? Both boys were at my mother's and I had the house to myself to make my famed chocolate cake pops for my niece Zoha's birthday party the following day. Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of any cooking chocolate and so I had to nix that plan. I made something I had made on Azhaan's birthday last month - Millionaire's Shortbread Bars.

It's hard to describe these bars without going into raptures because they're so, so good! There's a crunchy shortbread base at the bottom, topped with a layer of dulce de leche (cooked condensed milk) and further topped with melted chocolate.

For small amounts of chocolate, I don't mind using Bourneville Dark Chocolate because it's pretty good and can be used as cooking chocolate as well. So armed with the ingredients, I set out to make these delicious squares which were a great hit the following day at the birthday.

I found the recipe at Joy of Baking and I followed it exactly. I did notice a couple of changes from the first time I made it though. For instance, the dulce de leche was creamier and more evident in this one. The picture in the Joy of Baking website shows the second layer to be almost caramel coloured but I couldn't achieve it.

For the dulce de leche, I cooked the condensed milk in the microwave at a very low power, around 50% for the first four minutes and then reduced to 40% for another 8 minutes. It's important to beat the dulce de leche when you remove it from the microwave so it becomes smooth and creamy. And yes, it's preferable if you cook the shortbread before this step so that the shortbread is cooling while the dulce de leche is cooking. Pour it on the shortbread and spread it immediately or it will begin to harden.

For the layer of chocolate, I simply melted two large bars of Bournville over a double boiler and poured it over the dulce de leche and left it to set for sometime in the fridge. When it was half set I marked lines on the chocolate and then put it back in the fridge. Later that night I removed the shortbread bars and realised I couldn't remove the first piece without causing cracks on the chocolate surface. So I made a narrow line on one of the edges and removed a piece from it so that I had leverage to remove the other squares. And the narrow edge belonged to moi! All the itsy bitsy pieces of chocolate and dulce de leche covered shortbread was MINE. And I ate it all as I cut out the rest and then when I went to sleep that night, I couldn't get any sleep because of a butter and chocolate overload in my system.

Chocolate cake pops

For the inventor of the cake pops, it must have been a moment of pure inspiration following a disaster when the cake didn't come out clean from the pan. How I wish someone had told me that it was possible to salvage a cake from the pan back in the days when I had started baking? I'd have been saved so much teasing from everyone.

Anyways, I don't quite recall how I came across chocolate cake pops. Maybe it was on Bakerella, or probably some other such fantastic website and I made it one day thinking it would be a pretty easy thing to do. Surprisingly it was! What it was though, was time consuming. I had to stay up till around 1.30 in the morning making these cake pops and in minutes they were gone.

They're very popular and the kids keep demanding I make them but I haven't made them in months. Simply because I get a bit sick from licking off all that chocolate from the bowls and my hands.

Here's how they're made -

One cake yields around 60 cake pops.

Chocolate cake

This is my standard chocolate cake recipe, although you can make it the way you usually do also.

200 gms butter
1 1/2 cup sugar, (powdering it is optional)
1 3/4 cup maida (all purpose flour)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup curdled milk ( 1/2 cup milk with a tsp of lemon juice, let it stand for sometime until milk curdles)

Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time and then the vanilla essence.

Sieve maida with baking powder and fold it into batter gently.

Mix the curdled milk but don’t over beat. Mix, until just incorporated. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for about half an hour.

Let the cake cool and then in a huge bowl, crumble it all up. This is the fun part because your cake doesnt have to look perfect or emerge from the pan perfectly either. :D

Chocolate frosting

Now this is what I keep forgetting each and every time. I mean, I simply forget what kind of frosting I make and I improvise each time. So, doing this from memory now. I make a terrible absentminded cook .

3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk

Mix everything and cook for a minute. Beat well until it is glossy.

To assemble cake pops

Pour the chocolate frosting over the crumbled cake and knead it like dough. Make small balls out of it and line it on parchment paper. Freeze for half an hour.

Melt chocolate in the microwave or a double boiler. Dip each ball into the melted chocolate and let it rest on the paper. The chocolate hardens slowly and you can lift each ball off the paper easily enough.

Look ma, a perfect cake!

I've had a long history with making bad cakes. Jokes used to abound in the house about how my mother would have to hunt out the hammer in order to break the cake and how we'd all end up cracking a molar or two while eating it. But I started early I think. I was just 11. So I could possibly be forgiven for thinking that a double boiler simply meant a pan double the size of a regular pan. Or that one cup flour didn't mean I had to pile the cup with flour till it resembled a mini mountain. Also, my father had just bought a microwave. Back then it was an absolute novelty. Which meant that I didn't know we shouldn't leave cake batter in it for 30 minutes at Medium because it felt right.

Anyhow, I was determined to learn how to bake a cake properly and even attended classes (yes!) to learn more about cakes and baking etc. One course that I did in 2003 was pretty good. It was conducted by the Institute of Cake Baking and Cake Art (that's the name I think) and we got a one hour lesson on the science of baking, something that pretty much boggled me considering that I still think that cooking is an art. So I learnt baking and I was finally able to bake proper cakes for the first time in my life, a fact that amazed me as much as it astounded my mother (who had to do most of the cleaning up after my cake adventures when I was small.)

Now, I'm considered something of an expert at home. Ahem. Yes.

See? See??? I told ya!!!

Yes, I made it. Not now though. Umm, a couple of years back and I can make it again if I wanted to. Really.

And I'm being very nice and giving you the recipe as well which I adapted from a book called the McCall Book of Cakes and Pies.

Ingredients for Cake (make 2 of these)

3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup hot milk
3/4 cup maida + 1/4 cup cocoa sifted together with 1 tsp baking powder
vanilla essence

• Break the eggs into a clean bowl and beat them using an electric egg beater until they're foamy and acquire a light lemony colour.
• Add the sugar and continue beating on high for about 5 minutes until the mixture is thick.
• Add essence and slowly fold in flour+cocoa mixture and beat on low for a little while.
• Add the hot milk and mix properly.
• Bake at 200 degrees centigrade for about thirty minutes
• When cake is done, cool and invert on a plate

Icing

Fresh Cream

Sugar

Ice cubes

Beat the fresh cream with sugar over ice cubes until thick. Keep aside.

Decoration

1 tin cherries

grated choclate

Assembling

Moisten each cake with the sweetened sugar syrup present in the cherry tin can. Spread haf the cream over one cake, arrange the cherries and sprinkle grated chocolate over it.

Place the other cake on top. Spread the whipped cream all over the cake, and sides, decorate with cherries and grated chocolate.

I get these huge complexes when I watch shows like Masterchef Australia where they come up with such fabulous looking desserts but I just have to go back and see these pictures and it helps me feel tons better. While I would never survive even one episode of a Masterchef episode, forget winning anything, it's nice to know that for those who don't know any better (like my family and friends), I'm pretty much a master at what I do. I think.

Toffee Bars at the picnic

So there was this impromptu picnic last Saturday at a farmhouse and the family decided to do an open air barbecue. It was also potluck time so we got biryani and a whole lot of barbecued food like chicken and fish. It was also a warm and sunny day and the boys played cricket while we girls got busy with badminton. Since we are all out of shape sadly, we didn't manage to play much before coming back the area where we had parked our cars so we could have lunch. Amid all the camaraderie and good natured teasing, we managed to finish the barbecue and sit down and eat.

As usual I wanted to make something sweet for the picnic. The consensus was that I should make my famed chocolate cake pops and I was ready for it. But for some reason Iwasn't feeling too well and the idea of sitting up till 2 am making these cake pops didn't appeal to me. I have to make these after 10.30 in the night when the kids go to sleep or they go crazy seeing all the lined up cake pops and the melted chocolate and I really don't need more chaos.

So I browsed the internet for something else which I could make, with chocolate but not as time consuming or tiring. I wondered briefly about making peanut butter cups, little rounds of peanut butter and sugar coated with chocolate, and then decided not to, because it could well be an acquired taste and people might not like it. Then, on The Joy of Baking I found the recipe for toffee bars.

Making these was so easy that I was entirely surprised myself. But the best part is that they're so delicious! The toffee bars actually consist of a bottom layer of buttery shortbread, topped with melted chocolate and sprinkled with toasted chopped almonds. I was out of almonds so I toasted cashewnuts instead and it was just fine. Here's the recipe. I've had to adapt it to my requirements and it seems to work just fine.

200 gms butter

2 cups maida

1 cup sugar(brown sugar is preferable)

1/2 tsp salt

175 gms cooking chocolate chopped

1/4 cup toasted and chopped nuts

1 tsp vanilla essence

Melt the butter in a pan. Remove from fire. Add the sugar and essence and stir well. Add salt and maida and stir until just incorporated. Press at the bottom of a rectangular tin which has been lined on the bottom and sides with aluminum foil. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for about 20 to 25 minutes or until the shortbread is golden brown or browning on  the edges.

Remove from oven and immediately scatter the chopped chocolate over it and return to the oven for 3 to 4 minutes. Remove and with the back of a spoon spread out the chocolate to cover the entire shortbread. Sprinkle chopped nuts over the chocolate. Let the chocolate set and the shortbread cool before you cut bars or squares. You can lift the shortbread out with the help of the aluminum foil and place it on a cutting board so you can cut more evenly.

I'd been planning to take a picture for the blog but unfortunately I thought I'd do it later. Later was when I saw that the box had been completely demolished (at home by my son) although everyone had enjoyed it at the picnic.

This one's a winner. It's only when my baked goods don't disappear that I start getting worried. :)

The 'to-hell-with-the-diet' chocolate fudge

I don't diet. I can never stick to one but I've been trying since the past few days. Today however my diet was shot to hell when mom asked me to help her make chocolate fudge.

Before you set out to make this, do note that this requires a lot of hard work especially in stirring the fudge as it thickens and begins to harden. So, roll up those sleeves, tie up your hair and get cracking.

Ingredients

1 cup khova

1 cup sugar

1 cup fresh breadcrumbs

2 tbsp cocoa powder

chopped nuts

Method

Mix all the ingredients together except the nuts and cook on a medium flame till it starts leaving the sides. This takes at least half an hour so be prepared to stir, stir and stir. Add the chopped nuts and mix well. Scrape out into a greased tin and let it cool and set for sometime.



Let it set for sometime, cut into pieces and watch it disappear.



Credit for this recipe goes to my cousin Fathima. Sorry I forgot to mention this earlier on. Thanks Fathima for this fabulous recipe which has become a family favourite since then!

 

Beginning the year on a smelly note

I didn't mean to.  I had assumed that these days, the great spirit of the kitchen resides in my hands and the wonderful and benevolent oven will not do anything underhanded. They didn't. In fact they performed beautifully. It was the icing that decided to act up.

This is what happened:

My son Saboor's birthday falls on 2nd January and this time (also) I decided to bake a cake for him. Funny how I didn't bother to post any blog about what happened last year. But that was so hilarious, I will have to dedicate an entire post to that.

This time I decided to bake a different cake for him. I didn't want the usual chocolate cake topped with chocolate icing and filled with chocolate filling. I must be growing old. I mean, who in their right minds would decide not to make a chocolate cake.

I looked up the recipe from this book called Mc Calls Best Cakes and Pies, and chose to make Mc Calls Best White Cake. Following the instructions was easy and using just one round pan, I made three layers of the cake. I couldn't resist adding cocoa to one of the layers. Then, I wrapped them up in parchment paper, tossed it in the freezer for sometime and wondered what kind of icing I should do.

I was always happy with a ganache type of icing because it is the easiest and always delivered good results. But recently, I was also doing a pretty good job of whipped cream icing. Still, I wanted to try something new and I decided to opt for the White Mountain icing from the same book.

We decided to celebrate Saboor's birthday at my moms place this time so we took the cakes and went there. I started preparing the icing for which we needed to make a thick sugar syrup. Then, this had to be added in a thin stream to whipped egg whites. What you get is a fluffy and sweet icing that is spreadable but hardens really fast.

I sandwiched the three cakes with the icing, and covered the top also. It was already starting to harden and I was having a difficult time but I managed somehow. The end result was this:

[caption id="attachment_10" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="S for Saboor"][/caption]

Which is not bad at all. I mean, it looked pretty decent enough. There was still some icing left which had become hard, so I tried to fashion a mouse out of it, then a cat and I think it ended up looking like an owl. Take a look:



Ok so it won't win any prizes but I was still quite pleased about it. After all, I had done everything myself! No shortcuts at all.

Then the time came to cut the cake. Half of it soon disappeared as soon as it was cut. The general consensus was that the cake was not moist enough. It was a little dry. I agreed although I felt defensive about it.

[caption id="attachment_12" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Birthday cake"][/caption]

You might be wondering what is wrong here. I mean, so far everything seemed to have worked out pretty well. Yes, like I said the icing acted up. You did note that I made it with egg whites. I knew those had a propensity for smelling a little but while we ate the cake, there was nothing wrong. No eggy smell. As yet.

A little while later when I was looking around for something to store the cake, I realised that the inevitable will happen. You put raw egg in something, it's bound to throw up a stink.

So, the cake failed my 'disappearance' test. If a cake didn't disappear soon enough from the table, it wasn't good. Not good enough.