Lord Ganesha's Prashad!!

We all love a perfect bite of cake, don’t we? But we are never adventurous enough to try and offer it to our darling Hindu gods, during their days with us in our house. We are about to celebrate a 11 day long festival to mark the presence our most lovable elephant god, Lord Ganesha! Let’s entertain him this season with a good dose of lovely soft and healthful cakes, which I am sure his sweet tooth is going to devour heartily.
I have developed 2 perfect recipes, using his favourite fruits- bananas and coconuts. I know many communities refrain from using all-purpose refined flour (APF) for the Prasad. And that’s why I have specifically tailor made both these recipes to suit the religious sentiments well. No eggs, no butter, no APF, perfect Prasad material! Ganpati Bappa Morya!!

The first in the series is my simple, yet decadent Coconut-Banana Rawa Cake. Made with a few basic prashad ingredients, its crispy roasted on the edges, but soft and melt in mouth in the centre. Perfectly fit for our ever so strong, yet so gentle Lord Ganesha!

Ingredients:

3 Ripe bananas (big) or as I used, 9 of the mini ones

1 cup semolina (wheat sooji/rava)

1 tsp Sodium-bi-carbonate (baking soda)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp Cardamom powder

2 cups Coconut milk

1/2 cup Sugar

1/2 cup Cashew nuts

A pinch of salt

Method:

Dry roast semolina over low heat in a wok until aroma wafts off. Then soak that rava in coconut milk for 2 hours.

Meanwhile mash the bananas well and add soda, salt, sugar and cardamom powder to it. Let it sit out so that the sugar gets a bit of time to loosen up.

After 2 hrs, mix all of them together and put in the cashews.

Oil the cake mould and pour in the mixture. 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 40-45 mins at 220 degrees c or until a knife put in centre comes out clean. The cake will be a little difficult to bake as the stubborn rava does take a little more time to cook than your usual cake. Remember to always check for done-ness, right at the centre. Once done, let it cool.

Some other relevant picks from archives- 

• 2012 August - My Rustic self: Baked Apples!!
• 2013 August - Ahoy Nimbu-Colada Pops!!!

The next recipe I chose for this Ganpati season is a whole-wheat based cake, where I added a twist of sugar syrup over normal sugar. This helps in keeping the cakes moist from the inside, and you definitely wont miss the all-purpose flour or eggs in it. Easy and fun to put together, its the perfect dish to get the kids involved too, to help out in the whole Prashad making process. 

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!!