Baking with Merry

This Oven Cold Cream Cheese Pound Cake was  Bake Along #11 . And this had a speciality too!! You needn't preheat your oven like you do when baking normally. Just cream and mix the ingredients and pop it into your oven....simple!  A pound cake is a type of cake traditionally baked with a pound of four main ingredients: flour, butter, eggs and sugar. You could add different flavours or dried fruits for a variation. In this pound cake, I added cream cheese too and guess what I got-- an utterly delicious and yummy yummy cake!! Ingredients: Cake flour- 115 gms Butter - 115 gms, softened Cream Cheese - 115 gms, softened Eggs- 3 Baking powder - 3/4 tsp Salt - 1/2 tsp Sugar - 1 cup Vanilla essence - 1 tsp Method: NO PREHEATING the oven!!  Butter and flour a loaf pan and line the bottom with butter paper. Place softened butter and cream cheese in a bowl and beat using an electric beater until soft and ...

Its been a month since I have updated anything on the blog......Exams and holidays kept me away from this space!! Yep..you heard me right when I said "exams"; not that I am studying anything new but repeating Std 1 again with my son *winks*......phew!!! It was me who really enjoyed the one week break and I don't remember relaxing so much after finishing my own school exams back then!! Stories apart.... To start off, here is a simple cake loaded with lots of dried fruits. I would say this cake to be another version of the Christmas Plum Cake , except the entire process is a bit less complicated compared to the plum cakes .  This month being a happening month with festivals and causes, I am planning for some specials throughout this month.."smiles" Ingredients: Recipe Source: Coffee by Parragon Books Mixed dried fruit - 300 gm Brown sugar - 150 gm Butter - 150 gm, plus extra for greasing Strong black coffee - 200 ml Self-rais...

Back from my holidays and I was looking for a recipe to kick-start my baking. Found this simple and easy teatime Cardamom cake, that I had saved from Sheeba  Jacob's  Foodhogger . A perfect cake with hot tea or coffee!!! Just make sure to use fresh cardamom and nutmeg for a flavorful cake...... Ingredients: Recipe Source: Hogger & Co All purpose flour - 2 cups Cardamom, crushed - 1/2 tsp Nutmeg, crushed - 1/2 tsp Salt - 1/4 tsp Baking powder - 2 tsp Sugar - 1 cup Butter, softened - 1/4 cup Eggs - 4 Vanilla essence - 1 tsp Milk - 1 cup Method: Preheat oven to 180 C. Remove the shells of fresh nutmeg and cardamom and crush them into powders. Combine the flour with the crushed powders, salt and baking powder. Keep aside. Combine the softened butter and sugar together in a big bowl. Add eggs and blend together. Add the flour into the butter-sugar mixture and combine. Then add the milk and vanilla essence and beat well until smooth...

Finally, one of my bookmarked recipe sees the limelight. I had jotted this recipe from Swapna's Cuisine few months back, but had completely forgot about it. Few days back, I had a few over-ripened bananas (a usual thing in my home)  and when I was wondering as to what to do with those, I remembered about this recipe. When I checked out the ingredients in the recipe, I found I had everything, and viola the Chocolate Banana Bread got baked..... Ingredients: Recipe Source: Swapna's Cuisine All purpose flour - 230 gm Cocoa powder - 30 gm Granulated white sugar - 200 gm Baking powder - 1 tsp Baking soda - 1/4 tsp Salt - 1/4 tsp Chocolate chips - 1 cup  Egg - 1 Yoghurt - 2 tbsp Unsalted butter - 1/4 cup Bananas - 3 ripe Vanilla essence - 1 tsp Method: Preheat oven to 180 C. Butter and flour the bottom and sides of a loaf tin. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powde...

Last weekend I stocked up some extra mangoes to try out some bookmarked recipes with them.....The first was this Mango Loaf Cake, which I found on Divya's blog .....And speaking about her blog, I like it for its simplicity...Also, she's got a pictorial representation of each steps too!, which I haven't seen in any other blog....I have tried out many of her recipes like the Biscuit Pudding , Black Forrest Cake , Coffee cake with Coffee Buttercream Icing , Butter cake with Chocolate Icing , and the  Marble Cake ....and planning to bake her Whole Wheat Garlic Pull-apart rolls pretty soon!! Below are the ingredients I used to baked this cake... Ingredients: Recipe Source: Easycooking All purpose flour - 1 1/2 cups Baking powder - 2 tsp Salt - 1/4 tsp Eggs - 2 Sugar - 1 cup Fresh Mangoes chopped - 1/2 cup Yogurt -  1/2 cup Vanilla extract - 2 tsp Butter - 1/2 cup Method: Preheat the oven to 180 C for 15 mins and butter a loaf pan. Melt the butter...