There's more cake at our house!

There's more cake at our house!

I wanted to share with my blogger friends that its my bday today! Yeah - I'm turning a year older and a year wiser and a year more expertise at cooking! LOL!

My husband got me this beautiful simple fudge cake - and it was my favorite - there was no trace of white in it - all brown - all chocolatey - just the way I love.

But, my daughter did ask me today - "Mommy - why did you not make your own bday cake? I want to have a party!"

My 100th Post - Another Black Forest Cake - Eggless version!

Hello Friends, Thank you all for all the support - reaching my 100th post today. I would not have been so motivated but for all the wonderful comments and encouragement from all of you!

Thank You!

It was my mother in law's bday a couple of days ago. She does not eat eggs and so I thought it would be nice to make an eggless cake for her bday. I wanted to try the black forest eggless cake.

There are only a couple of things that I found different between an eggless cake and full egged ( word?) cake - one is that the texture is totally different - the egg based cake is much more spongy and soft than the eggless. The other is that the eggless cake does not rise as much as an egg based cake. Now, some people use a can of soda to achieve this - but since my mil does not like soda too, I skipped that part. Apart from that, everything else is the same. Even though I did not add sugar as an ingredient, the sweetness comes from the condensed milk and the whipped cream and that is sweet enough.

I thought this would be a good post for my 100th post - kind of a celebratory post! So, let's cut some cake!

Here are the list of ingredients required - you can use half of these measurements for a smaller cake.

For Cake:

Self Rising Flour - 2 cups measured
Sweetened Condensed Milk - 1 can
Butter: 2 sticks
Cocoa Powder - 2 tsps
Baking Powder - 2 tsps
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp
200 ml water

For filling:

Make Whipped cream with -
Heavy Cream - 1 small box
Sugar - 1 cup
1 tsp Vanilla or Almond Extract

1 can cherry pie filling

For Chocolate Shavings:

1 big bar of Hersheys grated using a regular grater. Grate at slight cold temperatures for longer shavings!

Here is a snapshot of the ingredients required


In a mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients - flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda. Mix well until all combined.

In another mixing bowl, add the condensed milk. Melt all the butter or make it really soft and then add to the condensed milk. Add a tsp of vanilla extract. Beat all these together until well combined.

Like this.

Now, add the dry ingredients a little at a time and incorporate well into the wet ingredients. Add the 200 ml of water now and mix well.

Here's the final cake batter - yummy as it is - love to dip my finger and give it a lick - beware - no double dipping!

Pour the batter into a greased pan. I used a springfoam pan. Move the pan to a pre heated oven at 400F for about 10 mins. After 10 mins, reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for another 15 mins or until the cake passed the toothpick test.

Here's the cake all done - this passed the toothpick test with flying colors.

Move the cake to a wired rack and let it cool down. Using a serrated knife, cut the cake into two halves at the middle. Let both the halves cool down well. The cakes have to be totally cool for us to work the filling with the whipped cream.

While the cake is cooling down, let's prepare the whipped cream. I like to make this at home with heavy cream. Add a cup of powdered sugar to a quart of heavy cream and take out your mixer and beat it for about 5 mins until you start seeing little spikes! Perfect.

Like this. You won't see the liquid anymore - its' all whipped up!

When the cakes are completely cooled down, add a whole layer of whipped cream on the bottom and spread it out. Now, add the cherry pie filling on top of this. When done, cover this layer with the top layer.


Add more whipped cream to the top layer and spread around completely. You should not be able to see the cake through the whipped cream - it should be a big white mass!


You can make these chocolate shavings in advance and keep them in the refrigerator. Just use a regular grater and grate the chocolate.

Here's the delicious chocolate shavings! No fancy chocolates required - just plain old hersheys works great!

Take a handful of chocolate shavings and stick it around on top of the whipped cream. COver all sides and the top with the chocolate shavings.

Decorate on top with some maraschino cherries if you have - or you could pick a few full cherries from the pie filling and decorate with those.

Make this as pretty as you need it.

There it stands on my cake stand!


Our celebrations! My inlaws were happy and they liked the cake. My daughter was of course super happy she got to cut one more cake. Anybody's bday is also her bday!


You can also check out my other post for a regular black forest cake (with eggs) here.

Enjoy. Peace out!

My 100th Post - Another Black Forest Cake - Eggless version!

Hello Friends, Thank you all for all the support - reaching my 100th post today. I would not have been so motivated but for all the wonderful comments and encouragement from all of you!

Thank You!

It was my mother-in-laws bday a couple of days ago. She does not eat cakes with eggs and so I thought it would be good to make her a special eggless cake for her bday. Even though, I'm not a big fan of eggless cakes, I think I really liked this end product. The difference between the egged version and the eggless version is probably just a couple of points - the cake is not too spongy or soft like the egged version. And the cake does not rise much like the one with the egg. Now, some people add a can of coke to this for it to rise. But, my mil does not like carbonated drinks and so I could not add that too. The sweetness is the same even though I did not add sugar directly at all. The sweetness comes from the condensed milk and the whipped cream.

It is way easier than the other cake to make. Just a few ingredients - mix and bake.

Here are the measurements - You can halve this for a smaller cake.

Self Rising Flour: 2 cups
Condensed Milk: 1 can
Butter: 2 sticks
Cocoa Powder: 2 tsp
Vanilla Extract - about 1 tsp
Baking Powder: 2 tsp
Baking Soda: 1tsp
200 ml of water

Here's a snapshot of the ingredients needed.

In a mixing bowl, mix up all the dry ingredient together - the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder.

Melt the butter, if the butter is really soft, that works good too.

In another mixing bowl, pour the condensed milk and all of the melted butter.

Add the vanilla extract. Beat together the condensed milk, butter and vanilla extract.

Slowly incorporate a little but at a time of the dry flour mixture into this and mix well.

You will need to add the 200 ml of water at this point.


That's how the cake batter looks! Dent it a little bit by putting your finger in there and licking it - beware - no double dipping!

Pour in a greased cake pan. Bake this at 400F for about 10 mins in a pre heated oven. After 10 mins, reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for about 15 mins or until the cake passes the toothpick test!

There - its all baked - passed the toothpick test with flying colors!

While the cake is cooling, get ready to make some fresh whipped cream. Or you could just use readymade store bought whipped cream.

In a bowl, pour a quart of heavy cream and add a cup of powdered sugar to this. Whip well with a beater until the cream starts to hold its spikes! In other words, until the cream is firm. Refrigerate immediately when this is done until you are ready to use it.

There - this is all whipped up nice!

Use a serrated knife and cut the cake into two halves. The cake has to completely cool down before you start adding the cream frosting on here.


On the bottom half, spread the whipped cream.

Potato Podimas

This is a classic south indian dish. Always added as a dish in any celebratory meal. Easy to make. Tasty to eat. Carb laden - but Oh so tasty! Eat this with hot rasam rice and that feels like heaven!

There are various options when you cook this - some people make this white without any turmeric powder. Some add just turmeric powder and salt. Some add red chilli powder and even a little bit of sambar powder for a nice flavor. But, whatever the coloring options are, you always add fresh ginger and green chilli in here for the unique taste.

To get started, pressure cook a few potatoes. Whenever I do this, I pick one potato per person eating and add 2 to the set finally. So, if there are 5 people eating I cook 7 potatoes. That's a good proportion to go by. Peel the skin of the pressure cooked potatoes and set aside.

In a pan, add about a tbsp of oil. Add mustard seeds, jeera, hing, 1/2 tsp of urad daal, fresh chopped ginger and fresh chopped green chilli.

Slightly mash the potatoes with you hand and add to the pan.


Add salt, turmeric powder and a little bit of red chilli powder.


Mix up well and turn down the heat to medium. Let this just cook now.

When you roast it in simmer, you can see the nice red roasted part - this is my favorite part.


When the potato is nice and roasted, switch off the stove and add chopped cilantro.


Mix well. Some people like to add a little bit of lemon juice on top. I personally don't like lemon that much - but my husband loves it. So, he just adds it in his plate.

I just could'nt resist taking one more picture - this is for you all!


Enjoy. Peace Out!

Masala Vadai

Once upon a time, there was a paati (grandma) making masala vadai. There was a kaka (crow) that always stole paati's vadais. One day there was a cunning fox crossing the tree where the kaka was sitting with a stolen vadai in his mouth. The fox could smell the wonderful vadai smell and it stirred the appetite in him. He so wanted to eat that vadai. He thought of an evil plan to get the vadai. He told the kaka that the kaka had the most wonderful voice in the forest and asked if he could please sing a beautiful song for him. The kaka was floored by the compliment. He was stupid and opened his mouth to sing the song. And the vadai fell down and the fox picked it up, ate it and ran away!

Moral of the story - Eat your vadai before someone else gets to it! LOL!

And to eat yummy masala vadais, make it fresh at home and sit on your tree with a plate full of it!

Soak Kadala paruppu (Channa Daal) - about 2 cups for about 3-4 hours after washing well.

Just before you are ready to make the vadas, drain all the water out and move the daal to a mixie or blender. Add red chillies, salt and hing. Grind well to make a coarse paste. Don't make it too fine.

Like this.


To this, add fresh chopped green chillies, ginger, cilantro, and onions. Add some peanuts or cashew nuts for a nice crunchy bite.

Mix well. Do not add any water while mixing. Add salt if needed. You can also add a little bit of red chilli powder if you want more heat.

Fry in hot oil till the vadais are nice and golden brown.

There you are.

Sorry I did not get to take more pictures of the vadais finally! You probably know why!


Enjoy! Peace Out!