Sundays with Joe: Pasteis de nata

My dear baking-loving friend 2B1M and I have decided that we are going to try and bake our way through Joe Pastry, especially since he has all those recipes we've been dying to try, like puff pastry and croissants and eclairs. So, during the week, in all our food porn reading, we decide on something and on Sunday, bake it. This means we can offload it on colleagues on Monday morning and refrain from eating our own weight in butter. (Sorry for the horrible photo it was like 8pm.)

Gingerbread cookies

As a kid I never liked ginger cookies (I think everyone says this heh). For the life of me I don't know WHY I ever decided to bake any (maybe I wanted to do a house but chickened out), but I did for my 2012 christmas cake party, and they were such a hit, even with me, that I have made them a bit of a tradition now. The recipe is from the lovely Annie, of course duly tweaked by yours truly.

Christmas is here!

And you have two recipes! First up, Christmas Cake.

When I moved to Delhi in 2010 the Dragon and I were thrilled with our spanking new house and decided we wanted to have a christmas party. We made many plans but I don't remember if we did bake all the things we planned, and we didn't have many guests--only the Glare if I remember right--but I did make my hero Joe's Old School Fruitcake for the party. And dear lord in heaven. I decided immediately that I had to make it every single year. And thus was born the annual Christmas Cake Party, in it's fourth edition this year.

Peach Pie

A very long time ago, when my extended family still lived in Malleshwaram, one weekend on a visit we ended up being fed pie at The Only Place. It was peach pie. I fell in love. No, really. But somehow, I don't think I've ever eaten much peach pie since, even when I lived in phorens and whatnot. I did however acquire an addictive love of stone fruit, peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries and my bestest favourites, donut peaches, which I ate by the bushel in Spain. So I was thrilled when I moved to Delhi and realised how much this fruit was around in May and June, and planned faithfully to gorge each year. But it never happened. This year I finally went and bought kilos of peaches and ate em with great delight, and then, when I had my first ever monthly dinner party last night and six peaches getting too ripe to handle, I figured it made the most sense to bake a peach pie.

Carrot Cake and life lessons

The first time I heard of carrot cake I was, obviously, revolted. Carrots! Orange vegetables with their very distinct and strong flavour in a cake! Impossible. Gajar ka halwa was made barely palatable only by the addition of obscene amounts of ghee. And raisins. How could you put carrots in cake and expect it to taste nice?

Of course, one day, I finally ate some. It was cake, after all, and one thing I cannot resist is cake. What I found was a ridiculously moist, cinnamony cake that made me purr in joy at every bite. I fell in love. Dark and damp, with fluffy white icing, only faintly sweet, with undertones of caramel, and that suggestion of spice. And raisins, of course. I looked for my dream carrot cake recipe for a long time. I found a few good ones along the way, including an eggless one.

Butterscotch cake with Caramel topping

Staying at the sister's I was asked to bake. Unfortunately, the large and varied group of people meant that my choices were restricted. So I thought about it and decided it was time to try a caramel cake. I know Deb has one, and Dragon makes it a lot. But somehow it's just not caramel enough for me. So I trawled my other two go to sites, and got the cake from Annie, and the topping from Joe. (Joe you're my hero.) (Annie, you're pretty awesome too.)

Piña colada cake

I thought of this before Deb posted, I swear. And you'll see it's not like her recipe. I've been very taken with the idea of making up my own recipes lately, especially ones that incorporate fruit and booze. So I thought, how can I turn a piña colada into cake? I thought about fresh coconut, or frosting with coconut, but I don't like coconut, except as milk. So I decided to put pureed pineapple in the batter and replace the milk/buttermilk with coconut milk. The frosting I finally went with was white chocolate based, because it sets better than a plain buttercream. I think I need to work on it a bit to get the coconut flavour to come out better, but for now, voila!

Lemon pound cake with lemon glaze

A cousin whose birthday I missed was the perfect excuse for this. She inhaled the tres leches I had left over, and would emerge from her book blinking sleepily to say 'cake? I heard cake!' every time anyone said anything that rhymed with cake, and so, even though she wanted chocolate, I begged her to choose something else for me to make. She graciously allowed me to choose, with this as the result.

This cake is fabulous. Light, moist, tart, sweet, and mildly crunchy if the humidity doesn't make the frosting gooey, it goes so well with anything at all, and stays for ever in the fridge. Though I don't know, the second time I made it I took three fourths of the bundt off to friends, and it didn't last long enough for us to measure it's longevity!

Sugar cookies!

Adapted from Annie's Eats

For the party we had to celebrate my job at a place I've always wanted to work at, Dragon and I had a party, themed and everything. So I made sugar cookies, in white, orange and black. (Okay, only the orange ones were orange!) The recipe I used needed icing, so while the chocolate ones turned out delectably chocolate, the plain ones were a bit sad, but the ones covered in orange icing were perfect. So I adjusted the plain recipe.

Apple tart

This is an adaptation of the first recipe I ever invented all on my ownsome. One day I'll give you that recipe, for now I'm saving it in case there ever is a REAL Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Cafeh someday. However, today I modified it slightly, and here we have Apple Tart.

Tiramisu cake

My dad has a birthday last month, so I wanted to bake him a cake. He's mad about coffee and cricket, and since they haven't invented a cricket cake yet, it had to be this one.

The problems I had were silly, but problems nonetheless. I couldn't find mascarpone anywhere and simply did not have the time to bake it. I also had no one to eat the cake since I was leaving town the very day of his birthday, Amma was in the US, and neither he not my grandma should be eating that much cake. I decided to use a tiny tin, and I have one-third the recipe. Not a bad result at all! Remember to treble it and bake for 2 9inch cakes, or just mosey on over to Deb's and use the original recipe.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

It's not that I'm not cooking, I just either forget the camera, or lose the recipe, or don't have the time to post. June and July was too much travelling and well work's been hard so here I am finally posting.

I finally did it! I've always been intrigued by this cake, the red velvet cake, and was heavily disappointed to discover its a mildly chocolate cake that's red. Until I ate one at the cupcake heaven on Vine Street in Berkeley. While I love me some luscious evil death by chocolate cake, there's a lot of joy in a plain ol cocoa cake. You can taste the butter. And the salt. And a lot of other things. Anyway, I managed to find some red food colouring, and it set in my shelf in the pantry for ever. Three months into living at the parental house mean I have barely cooked, let alone baked. Plus, every time I did cook, I was left with a giant slab of cake in the fridge that I ended up eating!

Lime/Lemon layer cake with White Chocolate Ganache

My momma turned SIXTY this week, and as the only family representative I wanted to make her a cake she'd love. She's a bit persnickety when it comes to cake, so chocolate was out. Thank god - I'm quite sick of it myself. I found this recipe on teh internets, and it really did look like something she'd like, because of the fruit flavour and the tang of the lemon curd. But I needed to adapt it a bit, because I'm not comfy with buttercream yet, and the day temperature being between 35 and 45 C it really wasn't the best idea. I decided to experiment and made a half cake, scaling down to three eggs, as a farewell cake for my last day at work, and while I was in the supermarket getting ingredients I was hit by the idea for the white chocolate ganache. Now, I've never made one before, and at the time I just made it like ordinary chocolate ganache. Later I found out that it's much more complicated and I stuck to my original recipe. I saved her a piece of the trial cake and it was met with some face crinkling because of the sweetness of the ganache - but then the lemon curd kicked in and she got her happy face. Nailed it!

Best. Yellow. Cake. Ever.

All this frantic fancy baking - I was craving something nice and simple. Just, plain cake, you know? Vanilla, and moist, and crusty, and not too sweet; no complicated flavours, no brouhaha to prepare. Just cake. So I scooted over to smitten kitchen, and found these recipes.The second of which I then adapted. I shall babble no more and send you straight to the best cake ever.

Honey Wheatgerm cookies

Somewhere along the way, one of the Tuesdays with Dorie was these. And I really wanted to make them. Only the original recipe called for lemon, and I didn't have any. I did find wheatgerm at the fancy market so was very happy, and decided to make them just plain honey cookies instead of honey lemon ones. When I ate them though I realised, yummy thought they were, they would really have improved with the lemon!

Chocolate Tart

Ello! No I have not been neglecting you, I just didn't have the camera one week I cooked a lot and then I didn't cook much! However, here is the next in the birthday series, Chocolate Tart, from Deb of course. I must admit I was a tad skeptical, since I made a ton of the tart dough the previous week for a lemon tart and it was just too sweet, and a titch crunchy for my taste - I like em flaky and powdery. However, possibly because of the dark chocolate in the tart and the cup of sugar in the lemon tart, it worked fine.

Chocolate Whiskey cake with Baileys frosting

I promised all my friends I'd bake them cakes in March and April, mainly so I could bake all the delish recipes I've been dying to try, and then not have to eat them. A fellow whiskey-loving friend who periodically ensures there is Cutty Sark in my life recently had a birthday, and having seen these over on smittenkitchen, I decided I'd try them.

The first problem was that they're cupcakes and I needed to make them into a cake. Luckily, trawling the comments revealed a fairly straightforward formula for it. The second and larger problem was the lack of Guinness in our lives and not enough knowledge of beer to know what I could use to substitute it. I decided to ditch the beer entirely - a bad mistake I found out later when the cake itself tasted really bad. Then I needed to get my hands on Baileys, but that was solved by a quick search online, after which I made my own Irish Cream. DAYAM it was good.

Double Chocolate Cake

So I quit my job recently and decided to have a party to celebrate. Heck, who'm I kidding, I just wanted an excuse to bake. Hee. I've been dying to try more from smitten kitchen, and it's been a long time since there was chocolate in my life. Therefore, double chocolate cake. As usual, it lived up to everything I am now coming to demand from anything of Deb's, and was inhaled by my friends. Not a crumb left.

Bananananana bread. Again

Now I know I've posted a Banana Bread recipe already, but hey, when Deb's got a recipe up, I have to try it. And boy was it worth it.

I had these bananas left over from the GM, that were black on the outside. I mean, I know I'm OCD about bananas, but even my mother wouldn't have eaten these. I also didn't have bourbon in the house, but the smell of the cinnamon and the bananas made me think of Old Monk, and would you know it, there is one way to make Old Monk taste good. I don't have a loaf pan, as previously discussed, so I baked it in my borosil lasagna pan. Worked. Turned out skinny as hell, but hey, so what.

Heads up, don't look closely at the pictures of the batter. Seriously. I had to toss most of them they made me nauseous.

Pastel de Tres Leches (Three-milk cake)

Yeah, nothing to write home on the face of it, innit? Until, one day, at a Mexican restaurant in Montclair NJ, my uncle made me try some. Holy. Mother. Of. All. That. Is. Sacred. And. Tastes. Good.

Take a sponge cake, and soak it with condensed milk and cream - bleurgh you say. I don't like condensed milk you say. That really doesn't sound very appetising you say. And then you eat two pieces. (True story, of my colleague who is addicted to all that is chocolate.)

When I came back to India and realised I would never be able to stroll out to a restaurant and eat it again, I was desperate, desperate to find a recipe that worked. Much research revealed that it is a Central-American dessert, and called so because the soaking syrup calls for three kinds of milk: condensed, evaporated and cream. The first time I tried it was for my gramma's birthday last year. I assumed evaporated milk was milk powder, and proceeded to toss some in. Bad idea. If you can't get evaporated milk, skip it! I also found that the damn cake wouldn't drink the syrup as promised, which just meant much more work. And then I left it to soak in the fridge, which meant it set instead of soaking and wasn't all gooey right through.