Quoting Julia Child, a party without a cake is just a meeting. True that I say, even for a tea party with samosas, cutlets, pinwheel sandwiches, scones and jam with clotted cream, croquettes and crisps on the menu. All of this and more cannot complete a tea table if the centre piece, a tea cake is not on top of it. I once hosted a Grandmama’s tea cake bazar in a lovely cafe in Bandra where I put up tasting samplers with half kilogram tea cakes on sale. My menu included date carrot cake, fig and honey cake, eggless chocolate cake, strawberry vanilla and chocolate marble cake, dry coconut cake, lemon pound cake, rum soaked cranberry cake and banana walnut cake. Pun intended, the cakes sold like hot cakes. It made me realise how much we hanker for homely cakes which bring back simple memories.
Sharing one such recipe. This one is a hot milk cake. It is simple and is simply white gold. Do find time and bake one soon.
My food word for this recipe would be pristine.
When you go out shopping look for;
Butter
Milk
Sugar
Flour
Baking powder
Vanilla extract
Eggs
The recipe would be;
Using an electric whisk beat four whole eggs at medium speed for four minutes. To this add a tsp of vanilla extract. Whisk again for half a minute. Now pour in one and a half cups of sugar. I used granulated sugar. Whisk again until the sugar dissolves smoothly into the egg vanilla batter. Sieve two cups of all purpose flour with two level tsp baking powder. Slide the powder in to the mix and fold until you get a smooth thick batter.
In a saucepan take a cup of milk. Allow it to come to a boil. Toss in hundred and fifty grams of butter. The butter will melt into the milk, continuously keep stirring gently. Now pour this warm liquid to your thick batter and again with the folding spatula combine the batter to get a lovely runny consistency.
Your oven should have been preheated by now. Line a cake tin with oil, pour in the batter and place the tin into your preheated oven. Ibtry to use square tins for this recipe because I cut the cake in square or rectangular pieces. Bake for forty minutes at hundred and eighty degrees C.
The cake is beautiful.
