Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream | Our Darling Daughter turns 1

Last year this time I was in hospital, recovering after the birth of our daughter. Time really flies! Our daughter turned 1 this week.

She has been an angel cum a brat in last 1 year. Everyone believed the elder brother will give her a tough time but seems to me like the opposite here. 🙂

Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream

Till now I’ve never made a pink cake but this time I fell for clichéd & wanted to celebrate her birthday with a pink cake. I’ve come across several Neapolitan Cake/ bars/ ice-cream etc on various blogs. So even I gave in to the rage &  decided to do a Neapolitan Cake for her.

Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream

I wanted to keep the cake small so chose a small recipe & inspired my filling & frosting from Sweetapolita. I did a pretty sad job of decorating. V pitched in and salvaged some of it. Husbands have their uses too. To give due credit he seems to have a better flair at it than me. 🙂

Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream

I customized the cake – used regular milk for cake & felt that the batter was too thick so added another 1/4 cup milk. I baked the cake in 6″ pan. I made chocolate cake twice to get 2 layers. I increased the baking time accordingly. The cake was very soft & fragile & I strongly recommend using a baking paper on top to un-mold.

For frosting – I substituted raspberries with cherries in compote as it is easily available. I really wanted to use fresh mulberries as they are in season but to rotten luck I couldn’t find them on the weekend when I was ready to bake. 😦

Cherry Compote

I also added lemon peel & cinnamon stick to compote. The cherry compote was the highlight of the recipe. It is really worth licking off the spoon!

I also read in many places that to counter the sweetness of american buttercream, it is advised to use salted butter. I did 50-50 – half salted & half unsalted. But honestly speaking the frosting was not really what we liked as a family & I would stay away from buttercream from now on. It is too sweet & V absolutely didn’t enjoy the sweety-salty taste. I would be sticking to my tried & tasted whipped cream. American crusting buttercream is all the rage but somehow I think I would give it a miss. The only place where I would want to use is to pipe some roses 🙂

Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream

The cake was really nice, despite the sad decorating skills the cake looked pretty tempting. Taste was gorgeous despite the buttercream.

I recommend this cake without buttercream frosting, with just compote as filling & topping. Or using whipped cream in place of buttercream.

Eggless Neapolitan Cake filled with Cherry Compote & Buttercream

Eggless Neapolitan Cake

Recipe Source – loosely adapted from Is that really Vegan??

Chocolate Layer –

Ingredients –

• 1/4 Cup – Butter, unsalted
• 1/2 Cup – Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Cup – APF
• 1/4 Cup – Cocoa Powder
• 1 1/2 tsps – Baking Powder
• 1/4 Cup – Apple Sauce
• 1 tsp – Vanilla Extract
• 1/4-1/2 Cup – Milk (adjust consistency as per your needs) Cup – Milk

Method –

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180 C. Line & grease an 6″ round pan.
2. In a bowl, cream the butter using a hand mixer.
3. Add in all the dry ingredients. Mix well.
4. Add apple sauce, vanilla & milk.
5. Pour batter into the prepared pan & bake for 25 mins. Cool on a wire rack. Place another layer of parchment paper on top of the cake & then flip over to remove from pan. Parchment layer will allow it to be removed without falling apart.

Vanilla layer –

Ingredients –

• 1/4 Cup – Butter, unsalted
• 1/2 Cup – Sugar, granulated
• 1/2 Cup – APF
• 1 1/2 tsps – Baking Powder
• 1/4 Cup – Apple Sauce
• 1 tsp – Vanilla Extract
• 1/4-1/2 Cup – Milk (adjust consistency as per your needs)

Method –

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180 C. Line & grease an 6″ round pan.
2. In a bowl, cream the butter using a hand mixer.
3. Add in all the dry ingredients. Mix well.
4. Add apple sauce, vanilla & milk.
5. Pour batter into the prepared pan & bake for 25 mins. Cool on a wire rack. Place another layer of parchment paper on top of the cake & then flip over to remove from pan. Parchment layer will allow it to be removed without falling apart.

Cherry Compote –

Recipe Source – adapted from Sweetapolita

Ingredients –

• 1 1/2 Cups – Cherries
• 1 Cup (100g) – Sugar, granulated
• 1 Tbsp – Lemon Juice
• Lemon Peel of 1 lemon
• 1/2″ – Cinnamon Stick
• 2 Tbsps – Water
• pinch of salt

Method –

1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 cup of cherries, sugar, lemon juice, water & salt until they start to break down, stirring often, about 10 minutes.
2. Lower the heat & simmer until the compote coats the back of a spoon, about 15 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, and allow it to cool down. Remove lemon peel & cinnamon stick. When slightly warm, using a hand blender, blend the mixture till smooth. Since I used cherries, it was not very smooth.
4. Stir in remaining cherries. Keep covered & chilled for 3 days.

American Buttercream –

Recipe Source – adapted from Serious Cakes

Ingredients –

• 1 Cup – Butter, unsalted+salted
• 1/8 – 1/4 Cup – Cream, I used Amul
• 1 tsps – Vanilla Extract
• 4 Cups – Confectioner’s Sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 75 gms – Dark Chocolate
• Few drops Pink Color (optional) – I skipped it

Method –

1. Put room temperature butter in a large bowl & beat well for few minutes till no lumps are left.
2. Add vanilla, salt & cream. Keep the mixer going while adding. Make sure that they are well incorporated before adding sugar.
3. Add in sugar slowly so that it doesn’t fly around all the time beating. Continue beating till incorporated well.

Assembling the Cake –

1. Divide the buttercream in half. Add 3 Tbsps of Cherry Compote (1 Tbsp at a time) to one half of buttercream. You can add pink color here if desired. Set aside.
2. Divide the remaining buttercream into half. Add melted & cooled chocolate in one half of it & mix well till incorporated. Leave the remaining butercream vanilla.
3. On a flat base/ cake board/ turntable/ plate place a small dab of chocolate buttercream in the middle & then place 1 layer of chocolate cake on top of it, face up. Cover with 3/4 cup of cherry buttercream, leaving with about 1″ clearance around the edges. Now place a few spoonfuls of cherry compote in the center on top of buttercream.
4. Place vanilla cake layer on face up on top and repeat with cherry buttercream & compote. Place the last layer of chocolate cake face down. Cover the cake in plastic wrap & gently press the cake with your hands for aligning the layers if required. Chill for 30 minutes.
5. Remove from refrigerator. Remove the plastic wrap, do a crumb coat with vanilla buttercream. Chill again for 30 minutes.
6. Cover the bottom half of cake (sides) with chocolate buttercream, top half (sides) with vanilla buttercream & top of the cake with  cherry buttercream. Pipe design as desired.

Sending this to –

1. Bake Fest # 19 hosted by Tangy Minds, event started by Vardhini

Tools Molded Chocolate

I’m in a blogger’s block! Well I think that’s what it is. This post has been in my drafts for almost 2 months, and every few days I open it and want to start writing and then again I close it. But today I decided to tame the blogger’s block 🙂

Molded Tool Chocolate

I made these chocolates for my son’s birthday party & this along with the pin-wheel sandwiches were the fastest to be devoured & 2nd helpings asked. My son’s first passion is TOOLS, I do not remember how many tool kits we have bought him & his 2nd interest is chocolate so we decided to combine the two. My hubby’s colleague was traveling to US & he asked him to bring a chocolate mold in tool kit shape.

I used that mold to make these chocolates. And as I said they were worth all the effort & were a big hit at the party.

Molded Chocolate using Tool Kit Mold

Ingredients –

• 250 gms – Dark Compound
• 125 gms – Milk Compound

Method –

1. Chop both chocolate compounds into smaller chunks as it is easier to melt them uniformly.
2. Place them in a double boiler (or a thick bottom pan over a wide vessel filled with water) & gently melt the chocolate. When it is completely melted, remove from flame.
3. Fill a small bowl, with small amount of melted chocolate & gently stir it using a spoon. It will cool down the chocolate and also temper it. Though tempering is a very precise procedure & requires lot of expertise, this is a rough way of doing it.
4. Using a spoon pour the chocolate in the prepared mold. Place a melamine/ plastic/ glass plate on top of the mold. Do not use a steel plate. Allow it to set in the refrigerator for 5-10 mins.
5. Remove from refrigerator, and gently turn over on a plate lined with baking paper. You can store molded chocolate at room temp in air-tight box. I usually line with baking paper in between.

Linking this to –

1. Favorite Recipe – Non-Indian Food a event started by Swathi
2. Chocolate Lover by Daily Cuppa

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcakes | Healthy & Tasty | Happy Valentine’s Day

Since joining blogosphere I’ve come across the unbelievably RED Cake quite often. So even I decided to give it a shot. But when I started going through recipes I realized that this cake take ounces of red coloring to get this bright red color. I couldn’t get myself to use that much color. I found to my relief that there are many who feel similarly and have used alternative variations for getting the red tint/ color.

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake

I was quite tempted to make this Red Velvet Cupcake by Hannah of Bittersweet, but just couldn’t bring myself to add so much lemon juice, may be I will do it later.

I was quite happy when little R & D showed that a Red Velvet Cake is different shades of red from dark red to red brown also. So I guess I should own at the beginning that please do not look for that bright red here 🙂

After having a wonderful tasting beet cake a few months ago, I decided to make it into red velvet cupcakes. 🙂

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake

I halved the recipe and it made about 10 cupcakes for me. I skipped coffee here and replaced 1/2 cup flour with wheat flour. I made cupcake liners for this project using brown paper. You can use butter paper as well in place of that. I used my individual silicone muffin cups and lined them. I was really cautious and poured only little batter in each cup, so the shape didn’t turn out as the usual cupcake shape but little too small at the bottom (more like a cone) 🙂

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake

The color of the cupcakes is deep crimson & beautiful. I gave these cupcakes to a couple of neighbors and they all unanimously voted in favor of it as their kids ate it very happily. I’m specially putting a pic in which I’ve managed to capture right color of cupcake. [Please excuse my still deplorable photography skills. I really haven’t done full justice to the cupcakes]

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake

I served it topped with whipped cream. You can serve with traditional cream cheese or Waldorf-Astoria frosting. They taste extremely well chilled & do not smell or taste of beet.

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake –

Ingredients –

• 1/4 Cup – Vegetable Oil
• 3/4 Cup – Brown Sugar
• 1 Cup – Beetroot Puree, (boiled, 2 medium size beets)
• 60gms – Dark Chocolate, melted
• 1 tsp – Vanilla Essence
• 1/2 Cup – APF
• 1/2 Cup – Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 tsp – Baking Powder
• a pinch – Salt

Method –

1. Pre-heat oven at 190 C. Grease a muffin pan or individual cups.
2. In a mixing bowl, cream together oil & brown sugar. Add beets, melted chocolate and vanilla. Mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, sieve flour, baking powder & salt, mix well.
4. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined.
5. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 mins, till a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
6. Cool in the pan for 10 mins. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Linking this to –

1. Let’s Bake Love – My own event
2. Lets Cook/ Bake for Valentine – Simply Food
3. Bon Vivant # 12 – Sumee’s Culinary Bites
4. Sweet Luv – 2013 by Cook’s Joy
5. Favorite Recipe – Non-Indian Food an event started by Swathi
6. Bake Fest # 16 guest hosted by My Cook Book, event started by Vardhini
7. Chocolate Lover by Daily Cuppa

Eggless Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Lacquer Chocolate Glaze

I had 6 beets sitting in my refrigerator. Every Sunday V would give me those scowling looks when he would browse through the vegetable basket before his weekly trip to the veggie market (mandi). Well you guys also don’t scowl, it is not my fault!

The story goes, when I told V that since now our little angel is starting her solids, please bring some beets. For next 3 weeks 2 beets came and sat happily in the basket. How do I explain to V that his little daughter is not gobbling up the beets as fast as he is getting them. Honestly, do I need to explain! I made beet salad & veggies from the 2 beets but how many continuously even can we consume. We all like beets but it is a veggie which we eat but not on a regular (read, weekly) basis.

So what do I do with remaining 4! I googled for some dessert recipe with beets & I couldn’t believe there were 100’s of results waiting to be explored. In the end I settled for this recipe from the book Vegan Table at Epicurious.

I replaced canola oil with vegetable oil, used dark chocolate in place of chips. I also increased the quantity as I read the comments of readers that they added chocolate chips to give the extra zing of chocolate. Since my earlier Truffle Cake was a hit, I added instant coffee powder here as well. I increased the quantity of vanilla essence as I use the regular market variety & not the pure one.

Beetroot Chocolate Cake

I wanted to pipe some rosettes using crusting buttercream but ever since I saw this glaze, I have been dreaming of this delicious & shiniest chocolate glaze. This glaze has been taken from Rose Levy Beranbaum’ Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. So I decided to forgo rosettes & let the glaze take over my kitchen. Refer his tutorial or Rose’s for detailed instructions on how to pour glaze on the cake.

When I read the recipe, I had 3 obstacles to overcome – instant-read thermometer, gelatin & corn syrup. The task didn’t prove that difficult & I was happily on my way to making this glaze. I don’t have instant-read thermometer so I went by the timings given by Cenk.

I have been skipping corn syrup in most recipes till now as it is not readily available. But this time I knew that this amazing shine & pouring consistency is in part due to corn syrup. So I decided to make one on my own.

Beetroot Chocolate Cake

I replaced gelatin with same quantity of agar-agar. The activation of agar-agar is different than gelatin, so take care while doing so. It requires rapid boiling since the recipe requires boiling of glaze (the process is given below), while the gelatin requires chilling. But the quantity of agar-agar varied greatly if used in form of flakes & this is where my glaze went for a toss. As per conversion 1 tsp powdered gelatin can be replaced by 1 Tbsp flaked agar-agar, so I was suppose to use 2 Tbsp i.e. 30 gms of agar-agar. I was quite skeptical as half the amount is used to set a cheesecake. So I decided to use only 20 gms, but alas this was also quite a bit for a glaze. I increased the water to 1 cup to soak the China-grass. So instead of being a glaze, it became a thick ganache & didn’t even strain well after being allowed to cool for 15 mins.

My daughter has not been sleeping well for last few days during the day & this day also she decided to cry for attention, so after this fiasco of glaze I didn’t get time to re-make it & hastily spread the same ganache cum glaze on the cake allowed it to set for few hours. I was going to serve this cake as a dessert for some friends after dinner & was hoping that it does the job!

But despite this hiccup the cake was a delight to eat – perfectly moist in every bite, no hint of beetroot anywhere & chocolatey! Just yum! the surprise fan was our friends’ 1 year old son, who gobbled this up as fast as he could, I happily packed up the remaining for his snack. 🙂 When kids eat your home-made goodies, it’s all the appreciation needs for the effort gone in!

Beetroot Chocolate Cake

When this cake came out of the oven, my first thought was that this is the most beautiful cake I have ever made – deep cherry red in color, it rose perfectly & evenly, completely cooked throughout, easily de-molded. I just wanted to frost it up with whipped cream & serve as a more elaborate dessert. I know this is going to be my go-to cake & I would be using it quite often at my place! And I definitely would be making the glaze again with much lesser china grass & see how my second attempt goes and will keep you posted. 🙂

Eggless Chocolate Beetroot Cake –

Recipe Source – loosely adapted from The Vegan Table

Ingredients –

• 1/2 Cup – Vegetable Oil
• 1 1/2 Cups – Brown Sugar, packed
• 2 Cups – Beetroot Puree, (boiled, 4 medium size beets)
• 125 gms – Dark Chocolate, melted
• 2 tsps – Vanilla Essence
• 1 Tbsp – Instant Coffee Powder
• 2 Cups – APF
• 2 tsps – Baking Powder
• 1/4 tsp – Salt

Method –

1. Pre-heat oven at 190 C. Grease an 8″ round pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, cream together oil & brown sugar. Add beets, melted chocolate, coffee and vanilla. Mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, sieve flour, baking powder & salt, mix well.
4. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined.
5. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 – 50 mins, till a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
6. Cool in the pan for 10 mins. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Lacquer Chocolate Glaze

Recipe Source – minimally adapted from Cafe Fernando

Ingredients – makes 1 + 1/3 Cups

• 20gms – Flaked China-grass (agar-agar)
• 2/3 Cup – Sugar, granulated
• 1 + 1/3 Cup – Water, room temperature
• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp – Corn Syrup (recipe below)
• 3/4 Cup + 2 Tbsps – Cocoa Powder
• 1/3 Cup – Heavy Cream (I used Amul)

Method –

1. In a saucepan, whisk together sugar & 1/3 Cup water over medium heat. When the sugar melts, take off the heat. With the help of the whisk, mix in corn syrup, followed by cocoa. You will have a smooth & glossy mixture.
2. Stir in cream with a spatula & return pan to medium heat. Bring the mixture to a boiling point.
3. Simultaneously, in a small saucepan soak china-grass in 1 Cup water for about 10 minutes. Heat china-grass on low flame till melts completely. Immediately mix hot china-grass in the boiling cream mixture. Ensure the cream should boil at the same time as china-grass, so that thye can be immediately mixed together.
4. Remove from heat & cool until the instant thermometer reads 122-140 F, for about 15  mins.
5. Strain the mixture into a liquid cup & let it cool till the instant thermometer registers 80 F, about 1 hour. If you are making it ahead then make sure to re-heat to 85F as glaze will thicken.

Assembling the Cake – Have a small spatula ready to coat the sides.

1. Place the cake on a wire rack set over a large rimmed baking sheet or large heavy duty aluminum foil to catch the glaze.
2. Pour the glaze in an even circular motion on top, starting with the sides, allowing it to cascade over & coat them completely. Start pouring in the middle and as glaze starts going down the sides, pour the glaze about an inch from the edge to help cover the sides evenly. Reapply if needed. 1+1/3 Cups is sufficient to cover the cake in one go, but if required you can use the glaze accumulated in the sheet.
3. Allow the cake to sit for about an hour until the glaze stops dripping. Move the cake to a serving platter.
4. Allow the glaze to set for 4 hours for the fullest flavor. You can store the cake in air-tight container at room temp for 2 days or for 5 days in refrigerator. But make sure to bring it to room temp prior to serving. (a brief wave of hair dryer on set on low heat, will bring the shine back.)

Corn Syrup

Recipe Source – minimally adapted from eHow

Ingredients –

• 2 Cups – Sugar, granulated
• 3 Cups – Water
• 1/4 tsp – Cream of tartar or lemon juice or white vinegar

Method –

1. In a saucepan combine all ingredients over medium heat, bring to a boil, then reduce heat & simmer.
2. Put the lid on the pan & cook for 3 mins.
3. Uncover & cook, stirring often. To test drop a little in a glass of cold water, if it sinks to bottom of water, it is ready.
4. Cool the syrup & store at room temp. It can be stored upto 2 months.

Linking this to –

1. Bake Fest hosted by Anu for the month of Nov ’12
2. I Love Baking # 9
3. Christmas Event by Cook like a Bong
4. Merry Christmas Celebrations by Cook, Cook & Cook
5. Cookies & Cakes for Xmas by My Easy to Cook Recipes
6. Spot light: Healthy Baking by Recipe Junction