The White Ramekins

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Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread

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Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread

While simple cakes and cookies are a real comfort and super fun to be shared and enjoyed over tea time with friends and family, breads and pastries on the other hand are more involving and therapeutic. Kneading the soft dough by hand, watching it slowly rising and yielding to the yeast power, is way more satisfying. It feels great to see when a wonderful soft crumb bread, which is still warm comes out of the oven. The entire house smelling of freshly baked bread makes your Sunday even better. And that sense of accomplishment has got no match. Baking your own bread at home has got such healing and satiating powers.

Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread

The urge to bake a bread gets instigated time and again, though not as frequently as desired. But I am happy that it does at least. And I am sure the Baking Gods hear my wishes, whenever I rest my dough to let it rise patiently. A well risen dough, and you’ve conquered the battle almost! This time I chose to bake this soft, tender-crumbed, sweet milk bread with delicate swirls of cinnamon sugar and lots of raisins. Cinnamon, the spice I am truly, deeply madly in love with. And the affection grows stronger starting winters each year. The plump juicy raisins just hit the flavor at right spot. All you get is the warm mildly sweet fragrant loaf. I slathered my bread with the leftover dulce de leche from banana and dulce de leche swirl ice cream. I slathered it with mulberry jam. Had it toasted. And made french toasts as well. And I know, it’s great for Holiday season. So don’t wait, rather give yourself this treat because it is that awesome!

Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Recipe adapted from Baking from my home to yours

Ingredients

For the bread

1 packet active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar, plus a pinch
1 1/4 cup warm milk
50 gm butter
3/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 3/4 to 4 cups all purpose flour

For the swirl

1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon powder
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup moist plump raisins
3 tbsp butter, softened

Directions

  1. Put the yeast in a small bowl, toss in the pinch of sugar and stir in 1/4 cup of warm milk. Let rest for 3 minutes, then stir. Yeast may not have dissolved completely, but it should be soft.
  2. In a mixer, fitted with paddle attachment, combine 1 cup milk, butter and remaining 1/4 cup sugar and mix on low speed for 2 minutes.
  3. Add egg, salt and vanilla and mix for a minute. Add the yeast mixture and beat on medium speed for 1 minute more.
  4. Turn the mixer off and add 2 3/4 cup of flour. Mix on low speed, just until flour is worked into liquids. It will be a sticky mix. Switch to dough hook. Add another 1 cup of flour. Increase the mixture speed and beat for a couple of minutes. If the dough hasn’t come together and almost clean the sides of the bowl, add 1/4 cup of flour, 1 tbsp at a time. Kneed the dough for 3 minutes, until it has a smooth and buttery sheen to it.
  5. Butter a large bowl, turn the dough into the bowl and cover lightly with a plastic wrap. Put the bowl in a warm place and let the dough rise until it is doubled in size for about 1 1/2 hours.
  6. Butter a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. To make the swirl, whisk together cinnamon, sugar and cocoa powder. Put the dough on a large work surface, dusted lightly with flour and roll the dough in a rectangle about 12 x 18 inches.
  7. Gently smear 2 tbsp of butter over the surface of dough. Sprinkle over sugar and cinnamon mixture, followed by raisins.
  8. Starting from the short side of the dough, roll the dough up snugly, jelly roll fashion. Fit the dough into buttered pan, seam side down and sides tucked down under the loaf.
  9. Cover the pan loosely with wax paper and  set in a warm place and let it rise, until it comes just above the sides of the pan, about 45 minutes.
  10. When the dough has fully risen, preheat the oven at 190 degree C. Melt the remaining 1 tbsp of butter and brush it over the top of the loaf. Bake the bread for about 20 minutes. Cover loosely with foil tent and bake for another 25 minutes, until the bread is golden and it’s bottom sounds hollow, on tapping the bottom of the pan.
  11. Transfer to a cooling rack and let it cool completely before slicing up.

Celebrating Christmas With Fruit Cake …

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Christmas Fruit Cake 3

It’s time for the year when there are celebrations and happiness all around. And Christmas is about sharing this joy and happiness with friends and family. It also means Fruit Cake to us. I baked my first Christmas fruit cake last year, which was an egg free recipe from Divya of Easycooking. All my friends and family enjoyed that to the last bit. That was the easiest recipe, which didn’t require soaking the fruit in alcohol or juice for weeks in advance.

Christmas Fruit Cake 4

This time, I planned to start the preparation quite earlier and soaked the fruit for mincemeat a week before baking the cake. Deeba of PassionateAboutBaking is a real inspiration to me, while it comes to baking cakes. She’s just marvelous and so are her recipes. And I am quite happy that I picked her recipe for the fruit cake this time.

Christmas Fruit Cake

I halved the original recipe and also replaced half of the butter with extra virgin olive oil, thinking if I could cut down few of the calories. I know, I shouldn’t be talking about calories during this time of the year, especially when there is so much around to indulge in.

Christmas Fruit Cake 2

So, if you don’t like replacing butter with oil, please feel free to indulge in more and keep all the nice promises you made to yourselves for the January.

Christmas Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Mincemeat

100 gm raisins, chopped if desired
100 gm currants
50 gm dried apricots
50 gm dates, seeded and chopped
50 gm almonds, chopped
50 gm dried apricots, chopped
50 gm dried cranberries, chopped
50 gm cashew nuts, chopped
1 cup fresh orange juice
Juice of 2 limes
Zest of 2 oranges
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder
1 tbsp cinnamon powder

Fruit Cake

500 gm mixed fruit,nuts,peel mincemeat
200 gm plain flour
70 gm unsalted butter, room temperature
80 ml extra virgin olive oil
100 gm sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup caramel syrup {Made with 1/2 cup of sugar caramelized.  Add some water and heat gently to liquefy. Cool.}
1 tsp instant coffee
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt {skip if using salted butter}
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. For the mincemeat, mix all the ingredients together. Cover and chill in fridge for at least one week.
  2. For cake, mix the mincemeat with flour and toss it thoroughly, so that dry fruit is covered in flour well.
  3. Beat sugar with butter and oil until pale and fluffy.
  4. Beat in eggs one at a time. Mix in caramel, coffee and vanilla extract.
  5. Add baking powder to egg and butter mixture and mix well.
  6. Add in flour and nut mixture to make a smooth batter.
  7. Transfer the batter into a 9 inch spring form cake tin and bake for around 1 hour 20 minutes in a 140 Celsius preheated oven.
  8. Let cool in cake tine for 10 minutes and then invert on to a wire rack to cool completely. The longer you keep the cake, the better the flavor becomes.

Nan Khatai, Traditional Indian Cookies

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"Nan Khatai, Traditional Indian Cookies"A very Happy Diwali to all you lovely readers. Festive season is around and everyone is so full of life once again. This is the time of the year, which everyone celebrates with joy and gaiety. A time to shop around, give and receive gifts, indulge in lots of sweets. A time when the whole country is lit up with diyas, candles and fancy lighting. There is only happiness, wherever you see.

And with so much of delicious food all around, inspiration to bake something for festival season grows stronger. And with that grows the To-Bake list. Barks, Cookies, Cupcakes and what not. But for Diwali, I wanted to bake something traditional, apart from chocolate, and also something which is not high on sugar.

"Nan Khatai, Traditional Indian Cookies"Last Saturday afternoon, after having lunch I was lazily browsing through the channels, when I saw these cookies on Rachel Allen’s Bake. And they caught my attention instantly. They reminded me of the childhood days when we used to buy Nan Khatai from a street hawker, who used to come and yell selling his cookies. There is a special feeling attached to them. A mere sight of them on screen, and I was ready to bake them off! Everything else was on back burner.

"Nan Khatai, Traditional Indian Cookies"A mix of very simple ingredients, which I am sure all Indian kitchens have in their pantry. And the recipe is quite easy to whip up, that you don’t need to be scared of baking them. I added a bit of green cardamom powder to enhance their aroma to match up to the festive season, which you may skip if you like them plain. And trust me, they’ll come out so perfectly done, that your friends and family will be highly impressed.

"Nan Khatai, Traditional Indian Cookies"Ingredients

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup semolina flour
1 cup ghee or clarified butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar, powdered
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp green cardamom powder {optional}
toasted almonds, to garnish

Instructions

  1. Whip sugar and ghee together in a bowl using a wooden spoon.
  2. Add rest of the ingredients, except almonds in the creamed sugar and ghee and mix well to form a dough.
  3. Let rest the dough for an hour.
  4. Taking one tablespoon of dough, roll it into a ball. Place all the dough ball on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  5. Press each ball gently with your thumb and tuck in the toasted almonds.
  6. Bake them for about 15 minutes on a 180 degrees preheated oven.
  7. Let them cool completely and enjoy them with your friends and family.