Friday, March 30, 2012

Cardamom dry fruit cake


A day to go to reach a small milestone in my own blogging world.  Thank a lot to all of the enouragement.

Milestones have to celebrated, right? Right. So to celebrate the milestone and as a Thank You for all of you who dropped by, here is a Cardamom dry fruit cake. A simple cake with a lots of flavor. Often I try cakes using condensed milk , but this cake I tried with evaporated milk.

Ingredients :

1 1/4 cup -- All purpose flour
1 cup  -- Evaporated milk
3/4 cup -- Light brown sugar
2 nos -- Ripe banana
6 tbsp -- Unsalted butter
1/4 tsp -- Salt
1 tsp -- Baking powder
1/2 tsp -- Baking Soda
2 nos -- Cardamom
1/2 cup -- Chopped nuts and dried fruits



Method :
--- Pre-heat the oven to 170 C or 350 F.
--- Grease a 8" pan with butter.
--- Heat the evaporated milk along with sugar and butter, until the sugar dissolves. Let the milk to cool.
--- Meanwhile shift the flour, baking soda and baking powder.
--- Powder the cardamom and add to the dry mixture along with the dry fruit.
*** Here's a small tips to powder the cardamom. In a blender take few spoons of flour and add the cardamom and blend it  to fine powder. If using for any other sweet or dessert, blend the cardamom with few spoons of sugar. So that you will not get the cardamom pods while enjoying the dessert.
--- Mash the ripe bananas without any big lumps and mix it to the milk mixture. Add a 1/4 tsp of salt to it.
--- Add the dry ingredients in batches to the wet ingredients and mix well. 
--- Pour the cake batter into the greased pan and bake it for 25 to 30 minutes, till its done and a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.
--- Cool the cake completely before serving.
--- You can serve the cake with or without frosting.
--- I frosted my cake with a thin layer of simple banana chocolate cream and dusted with dry coconut flakes and sliced almonds.

You can enjoy the flavor of banana, coconut flakes, cardamom and dry fruits in every bite.