I had been wanting to try this for a while now. I made this almost two years ago for Diwali when mom dad were here. After that it just slipped out of radar so this time when Ajoy asked me to make these I was not sure if I will remember what I had done and the learning's from the last time. But thankfully I had rough notes from then that I had sent to mom. So it was pretty easy to recollect. This time it came out perfectly and I did big photo session of them :) so I cannot find any excuse to not post this. This recipe has to be easiest to make and something that will get you lot of appreciation in return.


Ingredients
6 Cup Cashews
1 Cup Milk Powder
2 Cup Sugar
Pinch of Cardamom Powder
Silver Leaf

Method

• Grind cashews into fine powder in the mixer
• Mix the cashew powder and milk powder together
• Heat tawa till very hot and then take off the heat
• Add the cashew and milk powder mixture into the tawa and keep stirring till the mixture is warm to touch. Keep aside in a bowl
• Heat 1.5 cup water with sugar to make 2 string syrup.
• Add in the cardamom powder and the sugar syrup in the cashew mixture and mix well. Knead to get the soft dough.
• On a baking pan or any big plate, lay out butter paper and put the dough and press it hard and spread the mixture.
• Apply the silver leaf and let the mixture cool for atleast couple of hours.
• Cut the kaju katlis and serve.

Notes
Getting the sugar syrup right and kneading well is one key for the success.
Also when spreading the mixture into a plate, pressing it hard and then smoothing it with butter paper will get you correctly set katli.

This was one of my impromptu attempt to bake something that turned out quite great. It had been long time since I had the frosting in the fridge so thought about baking something to use that one and these cupcakes worked perfectly well with the frosting.


Ingredients
2 Cup Sugar
2 Spoon Vanilla Essence
1 Egg
1/2 Cup Oil
1 Cup Milk
1.75 Cup Maida
1 Cup Coco Powder
1 Spoon Baking Powder
1 Spoon Baking Soda
1/2 Spoon Salt
2 Spoon Instant Coffee

Method

• Preheat oven at 325F/160C
• Mix together egg, sugar and vanilla essence.
• Add in oil and milk and whisk the mixture over medium speed.
• Sieve maida, coco powder, baking powder and baking soda couple of times to form homogeneous mixture.
• Add the sieved contents and salt in the egg-oil-milk mixture and whisk on low speed till well combined about 2 minutes
• Warm 1 cup of water with coffee in microwave for about a minute.
• Add the coffee to the cake mixture and whisk on low speed for another 2 minutes.
• Line around the cupcake pan with around 14 cup cake liners and fill them with the cake mixture about 3/4th level in each.
• Bake in the oven for 18 minutes.
• Allow the cakes to cool off for at least an hour and then serve with frosting and optionally filling

Notes

I didn't use the filling but chocolate ganache would be great option.
I used chocolate butter cream that I have made previously to frost another cake as the frosting and it went well.

Almost 3 years ago I took classes from Wilton about cake decoration where they taught us lots of basic plus advance decorations along with their standard recipe for icing. I modified it a bit to get this chocolate butter cream.


Ingredients
2 Cup Vegetable Shortening
1.5 Cup Coco Powder
1 Spoon Vanilla Essence
10 Spoon Milk
450g icing sugar
Pinch of salt

Method

• Mix shortening, essence and milk together till smooth
• Sieve together icing sugar, coco powder together.
• Add it to the shortening and mix well with the hand mixer till ingredients mix in properly.
• Add salt and blend for about two minutes till creamy.

Notes
Cream lasts almost half an year if stored in airtight container in the fridge.