As I look back on my journey in food blogging I have a huge smile and a content heart. I am humbled by my little space turning 1 today, call it Blog birthday or an anniversary, I still cannot fathom a year has passed since I started this little space. My first post was Caramel Custard and I still remember clicking the photographs in our little apartment with lights on :P and my husband did not know that what he saw that day of his wife capturing a sweet companion behind the lens will be her day to day activity :D. I still consider myself novice when it comes to blogging although I learnt it all from scratch did not know who to ask or what to even search in google. I have never made efforts to upload a template or get help from a professional for my blog. All that you see today is what I learnt and what I experimented in terms of layout, design, header, recipes and indexing. Back then everyday as my husband left for work I would log into my blog and keep exploring what I can do next and little did I know that I would be hooked with it all day. Blogging did make me learn the art of baking a cake, bread and try new recipes. Everyone asks me if I have learnt baking or cooking from someone, I have to tell you all that I did it all on my own. I started to cook only after marriage and still there is a long way to go in my culinary journey.Blogging has added many friends in my life who still keep in touch with me on a daily basis. Little did I know that the people I used to visit would be my close friends. I consider myself fortunate to be friends with them. Everyone thinks that the virtual world is so unreal but it became real to me I have met few great bloggers in real life. Today CLP has crossed over 2 lakh 83 thousand views, over 700 + facebook page likes, 240 + google friend connects... This sure is a proud moment for me.
First of all I want to thank God for His grace that enabled me to do all that I did.
Thanks to my husband,
readers, friends and family
who have been with me in this 1 year journey.
Its been so much fun to share my kitchen success with you.
Thanks to my husband,
readers, friends and family
who have been with me in this 1 year journey.
Its been so much fun to share my kitchen success with you.
No occasion is complete for me without a cake, since I have never posted a pressure cooker cake I thought this is the right time to do one. Really whether you believe it or not I used a pressure cooker to bake this cake and did not use an electric whisk while doing the sponge and frosting. Its not rocket science to bake a cake and if you really lack an oven don't be worried use a pressure cooker. Mind you that you need a good recipe which is a must to get the perfect cake. Besides that my personal opinion is not to bake often in a pressure cooker there are two reasons for that - one is that you would use lot of gas as the cake would need atleast an hour to bake and the second is that the life of the pressure cooker will diminish as you don't use water. Ok let this not stop you from baking a cake ;-). Btw recently my dslr brokedown and I am so in awe with my point and shoot magic. All the clicks in this post are taken with my humble p n s cam :D
VANILLA BEAN SPONGE RECIPE
Recipe Source - Adapted from Tarla Dalal & Nags
Prep time - 15 mins
Bake time - 1 hour approx
Makes - 6 " cake
Serves - 8 people
Ingredients
1 cup + 2 tbsp of plain flour / maida
1/2 cup of powdered sugar
1 cup of milk powder ( I used Nestle sweetened milk powder)
1 cup of milk ( I used skimmed milk)
3/4 cup of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp of salt
Method
- Take 2 medium bowls in one sieve flour and salt together, set aside.
- In the other bowl cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, I used a hand whisk to do so. Now add the milk powder and combine. The mixture can be curdly don't worry not slowly add the milk and mix well.
- Now split the vanilla bean and scrap the caviar with the back of your knife. Make sure you use every bit of it as vanilla beans are precious.
- Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine well. Pour into a greased pan
- Prepare the pressure cooker by placing a steel plate. stand on it. Do not use any water, and remove the rubber beading from the cooker lid, no need for cooker weight. Heat the cooker on high flame of 5 mins ( this is similar to pre-heating an oven)
- Using a vessel holder place the cake tin on the stand inside the cooker, this is to avoid yourself from burning. Make sure that the cake tin fits inside the cooker. Close the lid without rubber ring and weight. After 3-4 minutes reduce the flame to medium and bake for approx an hour.
- You can start checking the doneness of the cake after 30 mins by inserting your knife in center of the cake tin, If it comes clean the cake is done else bake for some more time
- Once done using a vessel holder remove the cake tin from the cooker and let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Later invert the tin to remove the cake. It will take around 1 hr for the cake to come to room temperature.
STRAWBERRY BUTTERCREAM FROSTING RECIPE
Unsalted Butter - 1/2 cup ( in room temprature)
Icing sugar - 1 and 1/2 cup
Strawberry Flavoring - 1 tsp
Pink food color - few drops
Sugar sprinklers - to decorate
Cream the butter for a few minutes then slowly combine the icing sugar little but little and add the flavoring and food color. Combine well.
Assembly
Using an offset spatula spread the buttercream on the sponge and decorate with the sugar sprinklers. Set in refrigerator for 5 minutes to set.
Cooks Wisdom
- Make sure while baking cake to use an aluminum cooker, it heats up fast and withstands long cooking without water in the pan.
- using a stand to keep the cake tin is essential if you don't have the stand that comes with your cooker make sure you use any aluminum plate
- Never use a weight for the cooker cake and rubber beading on the cooker lid
- Do not add water or sand to bake the cake
- If you want to bake the cake in an oven pre-heat oven to 180C/350F and bake for 30-35 mins until a toothpick inserted in center comes clean