Monday, April 29, 2013

Delicious Banana bread that tastes like cupcake!


Hi There!

Most of the banana breads you might have eaten, will usually be dense, filling and too sugary. Unless you are eating in a fancy cafe that adds a lot of additives apart from bananas to get the fluffy texture. But I chanced upon a great recipe recently and made a lot of variations to it get banana bread that tastes like cupcake. Light, fluffy, spongy and delicious are the only few words to describe it.

Here is the recipe.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp yogurt
1 1/4 cup mashed or pureed banana (3 medium)
1/2-1 cup mixed nuts(walnuts, almonds)

1) Preheat oven to 175 deg Celsius. Line a bread loaf pan 8''*3'' with parchment paper and keep aside.

2)In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

3)In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, adding them one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract and the yogurt.

4)Stir half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture, followed by the mashed banana. Stir in remaining flour mixture, mixing until everything is just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain.

5)Add the mixed nuts and fold in.

6) Bake for 40min, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly pressed.

7)Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Do try and let me know how it goes.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Apple and Cinnamon muffins


Apple and Cinnamon combination is made in heaven. Though I have tried several cupcake recipes, it is the first time I made muffins. Tbh, I don't like muffins, because I consider them to be doughy, sticky and dense. But then I made these and also took extreme care not to over-mix. And when I say mix just enough, I mean usually 6-7 stirs or folds. They turned out just great. Though they were not spongy, they still tasted great and not dense at all.

Straight to the recipe now:

Yield: 10 muffins

85g plain whole wheat flour
70g all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
70gm of golden caster sugar( can also replace with regular white caster sugar)
1 red delicious apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped
125ml milk
1 egg beaten
55gm butter, melted
3-4 drops of vanilla extract

Topping:
12 brown sugar lumps, roughly crushed
0.5tsp ground cinnamon

Method:

1) Place 10 muffin paper cases in a muffin pan.

2) Sift both flours, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, finely chopped apples and sugar into a large bowl and mix well. Place the milk, egg, melted butter and vanilla extract in a smaller bowl and stir well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and gently stir using a wooden spatula for some 6-7 stirs. Make sure you don't stir more than 10 folds. The mixture appears clumpy, but it is perfectly fine.

3) Divide the mixture evenly between the paper cases. To make the topping, mix the crushed sugar lumps with cinnamon together and sprinkle over the muffins.

4) Bake in a preheated oven at 200 deg Celsius/400 deg F/Gas mark 6, for 20 min or until risen and golden. Remove the muffins from the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Notes:

1) Do not over mix.
2) Muffins must be baked at higher temperature(200 deg C) for at least the first 10 minutes to get optimal benefits from the leavening agents.
3) Do not over bake.




Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Review of Lavonne Academy of Baking Science

Hi There!

Being in India, it is very difficult to find the right baking equipments and quality ingredients. So when I was browsing to buy few things online, I found this place http://lavonne.in/ . It is India's first International baking institute. This is a destination for those looking to pursue Baking and Pastry Arts as a passion or as a profession being in India. Sounds delightful, right!

Out of curiosity I browsed through the Lavonne website and found that it has a Patisserie, a store where you can buy almost anything related to baking. Also I found that they conduct foundation and advanced courses Patisserie. A dream come true for home bakers.

Though I have baked several cakes in the past, I enrolled for their weekend Cupcake and butter-cream class. The fees for the cupcake and butter-cream class is Rs 2,500. My expectation from this class was to be able to create bakery style cupcakes at home. So I went ahead and explored the place. The place is located in Domlur amidst residential colony and is in fact a home turned into a baking institute. The entrance is beautiful and the first sight is that of French patisserie and a cafe. All the items on display were mouth watering. They had several flavors of Macarons, tarts, cheesecakes and French breads.

The class was conducted on a Sunday by Chef Joonie Tan, who exclusively flies down from Malaysia. After waiting for almost 20 min, we were asked to go upstairs where we had hands-on experience of baking. The kitchen is clean and hygienic. The chef said that all the cupcakes use the creaming method i.e. to cream the butter and sugar till pale white and fluffy. I have creamed mostly using a hand blender, but the chef taught us how to do the same with our palms. This was something new and interesting. We had hands on experience baking vanilla, chocolate and red-velvet cupcake and Italian-meringue butter cream.The butter cream was the best tasting which was not too sweet and had a satiny texture.

I was not at all happy with the recipes they shared with us. The vanilla cupcake was not sufficiently moist and was tasting more like eggs than vanilla. The chocolate cupcake was not at all sweet and the texture was not smooth. The red velvet was the most pathetic. I felt like I wasted a lot of money on this.

Some of my observations below:

Pros
  • You will get hands on creaming method, (both hand creaming and using blender)
  • The Italian-meringue butter cream was the best.  
  • You will get a certificate of course completion at the end of the day.
Cons:
  • The classes are over priced. 
  • The recipes they share in the class are the not of the same which they serve in their shop. The red velvet cupcake which they serve in their patisserie is the best. But the one we made in our class was next to hopeless.
  • The cupcakes dried out the next day, even after keeping in an air tight container.  
All suggestions and comments are welcome.