Easy to make Banana Cake

This specific recipe, although easy to make takes a little long to bake. My aunt taught me a similar one and it was one of the very first cake I had baked!

Here is the recipe-

Ingredients:

• 1 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 bananas
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon powder
• a few walnuts, crushed

Method of Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 180C and line 2 cake pans.
• Mix oil and sugar together. Add one egg at a time mixing continuously. Beat well after adding eggs.
• Make small pieces of the bananas and mix it with the lemon and orange juices. The juices help prevent the banana from getting black. Mix it in with the egg mixture. Also add the vanilla essence and the cinnamon powder.
• Sieve the flour, baking soda and salt together and leave it aside.
• Make sure that the sugar has dissolved and then add the flour little by little mixing all the time.
• Just keep in mind that the batter should have a dropping consistency. Mix in the crushed walnuts. 
• Pour the batter in the prepared cake pans.
• Placing both the pans in the oven, bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour at 180C. Keep checking at regular intervals.

Enjoy!

Hershey's Chocolate Cake with Blueberries

Recently I was looking for a good and easy recipe for a chocolate cake and came across this one- Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake and I must say, it is quite a perfect chocolate cake! The first time I tried it, it turned out so well that it needed absolutely NO changes in the procedure or the quantity of ingredients.

As this was a tried and tested cake, I decided on making it for my brother's birthday. But this time I topped it off with a layer of vanilla frosting and blueberries. This was the outcome-

The frosting was done in a little bit of a hurry and therefore wasn't very neat. The recipe for the cake and frosting is as follows-

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar
• 13/4 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup Hershey's cocoa
• 11/2 tsp baking soda
• 11/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• Whipping cream
• Icing sugar

Procedure:

For the cake:

• Heat the oven to 350F / 180C. Grease and flour two round 9 - inch baking pans.
• Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milks, oil and vanilla and beat the whole mixture for 2 minutes using a speed mixer.
• Stir in the boiling water 
• Pour into the prepared pans.
• Bake for about 30-35 minutes at 180C/350F.
• Cool for sometime by placing the pans on wire racks.

For the frosting I used whipping cream, icing sugar and a little bit of vanilla essence just for the flavor. Whisk it together until it forms a rich and creamy frosting.

Do let me know if you try it and also send pictures :)

Enjoy !

Lemon Meringue Pie

Hello there!

Sorry for not being very active on the blog as I have been trying to get my university applications done. Last week one of my friends asked me if I knew how to bake a pie and that when I realised I didn't. Actually I had never tried a pie, any pie.

So I decided on making a Lemon Meringue Pie! And for my first and second try, I must say it wasn't all that bad.

First attempt.

Second attempt.

I used a proper pie pan for the first time but the quantity that the recipe mentioned was a little less for the pan. The second time I used a pan that was smaller but deeper. Keep in mind- ALWAYS USE THE THINNER PAN! There is a very valid reason for this. Firstly because the liquid inside gets cooked easily when it is more spread out and secondly because the top layer of the pie gets cooked really fast leaving the inside liquid like.

Ingredients:

• 1 packet Marie biscuits
• 130g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 350ml condensed milk
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1 lemon rind
• 2 tbsp sugar

Procedure:

• Crush the Marie biscuits in tiny pieces and simultaneously melt the butter. Slowly pour he melted butter into the crushed biscuits and mix it well with your hand. 

• After the biscuit and butter is mixed well, set it in the pie pan. Remember to use a thin pan. Bake it in the oven for about 5 minutes at 180 C.

• In a larger bowl grate the lemon rind and take out the juice of the lemon. To that add the 2 egg yolks and condensed milk. Whisk it well. Leave the egg whites separately for later.

• Whisk the egg whites and sugar together to form meringue. Continue until you can see soft peeks of the egg white. 
• Once done, pour the condensed milk mixture in the pie pan. 

• Then pour in the meringue as the top layer and put it in the oven at 180C. Bake it till the top is brown in colour. 

Let me know in the comments below if you tried out the recipe and how it turned out :)

Enjoy!

A couple of days in Delhi!

I have been away on vacation in India where I went for a trek with friends and roamed around the city of Delhi and a small town near Manali called Kasol. I will do another detailed post about the trek and Kasol and will leave a link to that post at the end of this one. This blog post will be only about Delhi and the things I did when I was in the city.

I was to join my cousins in Delhi before the trek and so the day before we were to leave, my sister and I were a little touristy in the city. As my sister has stayed in Delhi was the past year, she was my guide for the day. firstly we went for a tour of the Parliament of India. It is one of the majestic structures I have ever seen to date. After a tour from the inside of the Parliament we headed to our hotel to freshen up a bit and the went out for a little shopping.

As this trip happened a  few weeks ago, the details of where we went and when are a little blurry. So I will mention the places that we went to and what we did but please excuse the order I write them down in.

We went to Connaught Place - 2 streets in the shape of concentric circles- which is one of the largest financial, commercial and business centre in Delhi. We went to Janpath to have the renowned momos and cold coffee. And I did realise why the momos are so renowned !After all the tiresome walking in the heat we went to Subway for lunch and then headed to our hotel to relax for some time. Later in the evening we along with 2 of my sister's friends visited the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib and ended the day with a quick dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Gurudwara Bangla Sahib

The next day started with a late-ish breakfast and then shopping for general trek related necessities around Shankar Market. I also bought a kurta for my mother from one of the clothing store. Spending a couple of hours in the same area, we then went to Bikanerwala for some chaat. Walking back to our hotel we crossed the Delhi Emporium. This is street full of shops for the various states that are in India. Each shop represents one state of India and sells stuff that are traditionally from that state. After that we went back to our hotel as we had a bus to catch in time for the trek.

After the trek and a long 15-hour bus ride from Manali to Delhi, we got back tired, hungry and sun-burnt because of he hot sun. This time we were 13 of us. Me, my sister, my brother and his group of friends. My sister took our group of 13 people to The All American Diner for a heavy, continental breakfast.

The ambiance of The All American Diner was very T G I Friday's like. There were posters all around the restaurant of different comics, movies etc and in the background they played old English songs including the Beatles.

The menu compromised of a variety of waffles, pancakes, omelettes, burgers, sandwiches, fresh juices, drinks and many more. As we had a large number of people, we had to wait a little while to get inside but the wait was all worth it. This was one of the best continental breakfast I may have ever had!

After a long one and a half hour of eating, we then went to Janpath for momos and cold coffee (again). After this, we were completely full but there was still one place that my sister wanted to take us to. Cha Bar. It is integrated with the Oxford bookstore where you can sit and read books for hours together. Adjoining to the bookstore is Cha Bar which serves a variety of teas- hot and cold, cakes, sandwiches etc. The ambiance is very relaxing and fresh. As we weren't very hungry, most of us just ordered different flavors of Ice Tea.

After a day of hopping from place to place, trying different types of food and shopping we went to the station, collected our baggage and went our separate ways. All in all, a tiring yet a trip full of different and new experiences !

Hope you enjoy this!

P.S Do check out the other blog post on Kasol and the trek ! I will leave a link down here to it once its done :)