Baking with Merry

"As slow as a snail"----That describes me! Wonder why?? Well, this is my 100th post and it took me almost 3 years to reach my century !!! But then, "Slow and steady wins the race".....  right ?? Though there isn't any race to win here!! *winks*..... This blog was started to share my hobby- baking..... And here I am writing my 100th post!! Happy to write so many posts and thanks to all my readers for constantly visiting my blog, though I do miss your comments!! For the 100th post, I wanted to bake something special. Something plain yet delicious with less fuss and mess!! And for that, I decided to go through the books I have, for a change and in the process wipe the dust off too... . *winks*..... After a detailed search, I found this recipe for a tea cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking- From my home to yours ..... A perfect finding!!! Just what I was looking for!!! Though, not kids-friendly, this cake sure was tasty and a perfect one for the  tea

Well, this cake wasn't planned... it  just happened!! My kids kept on nagging me for another cake after the previous one and so just baked a simple one from my book, for the sake of it!!! This was actually a muffin recipe and since my kids don't like muffins, I converted it to a cake!  Ingredients: Recipe Source: Oops, sorry ... don't remember !! Plain flour - 1 1/2 cups Whole wheat flour - 1/2 cup Baking powder - 2 tsp Salt - a pinch Vanilla essence - 2 tsp Sugar - 3/4 cup Milk - 1 cup Instant coffee powder - 2 tbsps Egg - 1 Melted butter - 1/2 cup Cocoa powder - 2 tsp Olive oil - 2 tbsps Water -1 tsp Method: Preheat oven to 180C. Stir the cocoa with olive oil in a small bowl and add 1 tsp of water to make it into a paste. Keep aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, vanilla essence, sugar and a pinch of salt. Crack the egg into a medium sized bowl and add milk and coffee granules. Whisk for 2-3 mins till

Back from my 2 months hibernation with a delicious Chocolate Banana Cake/ Banana Chocolate Cake, whichever way you like it to be called... *smiles*.... We had this cake from a hotel that we had stayed during our holidays and we, especially the kids loved it!!! Though not the exact replica of the original cake we had, this one did have some similarities somewhere. Ingredients: Recipe Source: Nigella Chocolate - 75 gms Butter, softened - 110 gms Brown Sugar/Caster Sugar - 125 gms Eggs - 2 Self-raising flour - 125 gms Baking powder - 1tsp Cocoa - 1 tbsp Bananas -4 small, peeled and mashed Method: Preheat oven to 180 C. Line a loaf tin with parchment paper. Melt the chocolate on low in a microwave oven. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in eggs one by one, beating all the time. Add the sieved flour, baking powder and cocoa, followed by the melted chocolate and mashed bananas. Stir together. Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake i