December Celebrations!!

So December is a great little time for my household. A Birthday and an Anniversary, on the same day. so the menu had to be awesome as well.

For Anniversary, it was mom's favorite Banana tea cakes, in the form of a rough cake with message encrypted with cashew-nuts on top!! A clever little trick I say, and U should steal.

For Birthday, it was the Birthday Boy's favorite Rum Souffle cake. A traditional recipe made with a basic choux pastry and eggs. I flavored it with a good glug of dark rum. If you want the recipe. write to me and I will show you exactly the way I made it!

The little bowl on the side, it was a traditional Bong dish called Payesh. Made on auspicious occasions such as a Birthday or Anniversary, its a celebratory rice porridge, uniquely flavored with jaggery made out of dates.

And thus celebrations were on full bloom!! Cheers!!

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Cheers!!

Whole-Wheat Banana Tea Cakes

A tough week!! A maddening rush to change address and moving with a baby... Huff puff!! So in this rush and in this frenzy, I had to device a wholesome fast and quick recipe for a snack at all times for all members of this change. My sweet loving bong family needed a sweet treat and nothing was better than these oh-so-awesome banana tea cakes!!

 The idea to this recipe is not entirely mine. A very close friend of mine, I lovingly call her Suki, gave me this idea. She was baking a pudding with sugar syrup instead of just sugar. I loved it!! And I decided to try it out. It came out awesome as expected. This is actually a swirl to my earlier No Butter, No Flour, No Egg and Yet a Cake recipe, but with whole-wheat flour instead of semolina.

Ingredients

3 Ripe bananas (big)

1 cup whole wheat

1 tsp Sodium-bi-carbonate (baking soda)

1 tsp baking powder

3 pods of cardamom, slightly crushed

½ cup grated Coconut

½ cup Sugar

½ cup water

¼ cup Cashew nuts

2 tbsp oil

A pinch of salt

Method:

Make simple syrup out of the sugar and water and put in the cardamom pods in it to steep out its flavour in the hot syrup.

Mash the bananas well and add the soda-s, grated coconut, salt and oil to it.

Now combine the syrup and bananas, and mix in whole wheat flour ¼ cup at a time, till it reaches the perfect cake batter consistency. The addition of flour will depend on how long your syrup steeped on heat. So to get perfect fluffy cake, get it to a nice spoon dropping consistency. If you feel your batter is too thick, add another tbsp of oil. 1 cup of whole wheat was good for me and I removed my simple syrup the moment sugar was dissolved.

Oil the tea-cake moulds and pour in the mixture with a help of an ice cream scoop. You can decorate with cashews on top. As the cake doesn’t have anything which will fluff it, the nuts on top will show and get roasted beautifully in the oven.

Preheat the oven and bake for around 20-25 mins at 200 degrees c or until a knife put in centre comes out clean. Remember to always check for doneness, right at the centre. Once done, let it cool and enjoy.

Cheers!!