Bake the Cake

After not making it to the voting in the last week's challenge, I was a tad disappointed. But then my piece was read and enjoyed by some of the fellow writers and that made me feel a lot better. I know I am still in the early stages of writing and yes, I do tend to jump tenses at times.

So does that mean I am going to stop writing? No way! It only means I'll have to concentrate and work harder. Which is why I am taking up writing creative non-fiction again this week.

The underlying theme for this week is to keep trying and the first thing I remembered when I read the write up was about my disasters in trying to bake a cake in the microwave.

Unlike the households in other countries, in India we did not have built-in oven in the kitchen. The trend began with the increasing number of people taking interest in baking cakes & bread at home and it is fast becoming a standard feature.

It was during my early college days that we brought home a microwave and it sat in a corner, dressed in an old curtain cloth. Indian cooking doesn't really need a microwave and the person who came to give us the demo told us about reheating and preset recipes most of which were non-vegetarian.

We were totally disappointed. It looked like we had absolutely no use for it! Month after month I would look at it not knowing what to do. I searched on the internet, wrote down recipes and tried using the poor thing, but I ended up being the poor thing. They were absolute disasters and I thought I was better off using the cooker cake mix to make cakes at home.

But.... the microwave should have some use (we do not reheat food) and I kept trying asking people for tips and ideas. I hit gold when I posted the same query in a foodie group in Facebook and a kind lady explained to me the different types of microwaves(mine is just MW & grill). She gave me the approximate time settings and encouraged me to keep trying. For half an hour in an OTG the microwave takes around 5-7 mins.

Honestly, my parents were reluctant but I got stubborn and they gave in eventually. I messed up a few more cakes and even bread (it ended up looking like a ball of dough). Another round of hunting the internet began and it was then that I realized; not cakes can be made in the MW and definitely not breads.

A simple recipe caught my eye and finally I got a decent chocolate cake. It was kind of mushy though, but at least we could eat it.

I kept trying, reading stuff and making adjustments in power and time settings. Gradually, the efforts began to pay off. I still mess up at times, the cake turns out too dry or hard, but most of them come out fairly decent. I tried numerous recipes but my most favorites are the egg less chocolate cake by KK (a fellow member of the foodie group), semolina banana chocolate cake, paan (betel) flavored cake which I am proud to say is my creation. (I used a butterscotch cake recipe and moved things around). Also I discovered how the cakes taste much better the next day as the flavors intensify. I now have the confidence to use whole wheat flour, sorghum flour or finger millet flour to substitute the bleached all purpose flour in cakes. (It is comparatively healthy!)

My latest cake was an egg less Christmas cake with nuts soaked in rum (first time again). It was soft and a touch dense though the color was a pale brown (MW doesn't change the color of the batter. There will not be any golden top to drool at.)

This is the image of a semolina chocolate banana cake.