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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

Pavlova!

This one is out of Nigella. I wasn't very convinced when I found out what pavlova is, but, despite the disastrous ending, it was quite yum. FAR too sweet. I'll use about 2/3rd the sugar when I make it again. Halfway through the meringue, my electric beater died. We were far too tired by then to beat it by hand. So we just baked it half beaten, and topped with very tart kiwis, and skipped the cream entirely.

No-bake Strawberry Cheesecake

I've adored cheesecake ever since the first time I ate a real one, not the eggy, gelatinous ones we get here in India as a rule. When I was in college, we discovered this bakery in Khan Market (I can't even remember the name, but it doesn't exist anymore so it doesn't matter I guess) that had divine blueberry cheesecake for the decadent sum of seventy rupees. (My daily budget was about 50), and as a special treat we'd go eat some occasionally. I've met many more of note, like the strawberry one at the deli at the southeast corner of central park, and lets never forget Rocco's in the West Village. Most recently it was the blueberry at Big Chill, in Khan Market again. So when my kind friend offered to teach me how to make one, I nearly peed in excitement.

So heeere it is at last my loverlies. Adapted from here.

This was part of the mad six-hour baking marathon some days ago. Also from then is the challah, the knish, the stew and the pavlova. It's best left to set overnight so make it the day before.

Orange Yoghurt Cake

Now, it's been a while since the sistah introducted me to smitten kitchen, and I have been DYING for a chance to try out some of her stuff, especially the non chocolate desserts. It being the gramma's eighty-sixth, I decided to make her lemon cake. But there aren't enough lemons around, and deffy not nice ones. It is also orange season, and we have these that I think are clementines, but we call them khinu. So I decided to tweak it a bit. And add cream cheese frosting. Which didn't really work out too well cos I wanted it more like a glaze and it wasn't, and I suck at icing cakes so it took a gorgeous looking cake and made it look lame. But. The flavours went wonderfully. Still, I want to make this one plain some day. My soaking syrup wasn't very syrupy, but the ohh the moistness! I was also making it in a tearing hurry so I didn't have time to document the process. Next time!

Apple Cake

The sister brought me a bundt pan, so I've been going a leeeetle nuts. Heh.

• 2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into pieces
• 1 tsp powdered cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 200g flour (wholewheat always works best)
• 100g melted butter
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 200 ml milk
• 150g sugar (brown for preference)
• 1 tbs sugar for caramel

Heat over to 250C. Beat eggs and sugar together. Add melted butter. Add milk, and then flour, cinnamon and baking powder. Beat till you see bubbles in the batter. Sprinkle sugar in the bottom of the bundt pan, and sprinkle some water on it. Heat over medium flame till sugar caramelises. Put apple pieces in the bottom, and pour batter on top. Bake for 30 min or so, test with knife. I didn't caramelise the sugar first, so it result was less than lovely. This recipe is also a good basic cake recipe!