Parsi Mawa Cake

I was travelling the day before my husband's birthday this year, and at Mumbai airport, decided to pick up a Mawa cake from Theobroma as a birthday morning surprise. We had first come across Mawa cake at Sodabottleopenerwala which one year became our favourite restaurant - we went there 8 times in that year, a record for people who don't even eat out at restaurants that often! The warm Mawa cake was a real revelation - soft, moist and delicious without being super sweet.

It reminded me of the first time I had eaten pound cake, as a teenager back in Singapore. It was a Sara Lee frozen pound cake, eaten straight from the freezer, but managed to be so succulently soft and moist that I simply could not get enough. There was something so comfortably familiar and loving in the taste of it that I feel I've been looking at recreating that taste my whole life.

The Mawa cake at Sodabottle and at Theobroma are exactly like that taste of childhood nostalgia - moist, dense, familiar, sweet and untainted by any form of decorativeness that takes cake from being a comfortable friend to a formal acquaintance. It's quite like a pound cake, in its soft and moist taste - nothing sticks to the tongue or the palate in a claggy way, but just eases its way so smoothly down the gullet, you're left looking to the next bite and the next.

I was hit by a powerful urge to bake that from scratch today, having bought some mawa (khoya) from the neighbourhood market recently. I've got to say, I understand a phrase by one of my favourite authors - a cut-and-come-again-cake, after eating this one today. The kids piled on to it like they'd never had cake before, the elder ones putting away a cool three slices apiece. Having just baked it this evening, there is barely a fifth of it left! I'm not sure if I feel delighted everyone loved it or dismayed that it whooshed by so fast!!!

Oh well, at least it's not too complicated or time consuming to make!

Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1.5 cups sugar
1/3 cup softened unsalted butter
200 gms mawa
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees c.

Mix the dry ingredients and then all the wet, except the eggs. Beat together, then add the eggs one by one and beat to a smooth mixture. If it's clumpy, add a small portion of plain milk and beat until the mixture is smooth and dropping consistency.

Pour into an 8 inch greased and floured baking pan and bake for 45 minutes - if a knife comes out clean, it's done. It should have a lovely honey-gold colour.

If you insist on tarting it up - and I wouldn't - you can dredge some icing sugar in nice patterns over the smooth honey gold top. I did get a hankering for a smidgen of salted caramel icecream on the side - not the oversweet kind, but the kind that's genuinely a little salty.

It would probably be a great coffee time treat as well.

Burnt Butter Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce

I have been wanting to make a Burnt butter cake ever since I watched the last season of Masterchef Australia in which a contestant baked it. To me, burnt butter means only one thing - ghee - and as a true-blue Kannadiga, ghee is one of my favourite things to eat. Anything to eat can only improve if a dash of ghee is added, in my opinion.

Salted caramel is another flavour that I have begun loving, and during out vacation in Italy, we gorged on salted caramel gelato. At Diva a couple of weeks ago, I spied a new dessert with toffee and salted caramel and had to order it, so making salted caramel from scratch has been on my mind. Especially since I managed to create a Choco-ba-fee cake a couple of weeks ago which was a big hit - chocolate-banana-toffee, a new take on good old Banoffee. So I decided to experiment with it yesterday and let's just say the result far outdid my expectations. The cake is light and oh-so-moist, and the brown demerara sugar I used for the caramel topping was just mildly bitter, cutting through the sweetness of caramel. Yum and a must-repeat!

Ingredients (Cake):
2.5 cups plain flour
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
300 grams butter
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk

Heat the butter on a low flame until it melts, stirring occasionally, and then continue to heat till it turns golden brown. Take off the heat and put the entire thing, including the brown bits,
to cool in the fridge - it needs to be solidified but not hard.

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Combine the flour and baking powder in a vessel and keep aside. Combine the vanilla and milk and keep aside.

When the burnt butter is solid but not hardened, take it out of the fridge and beat it together with the sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one by one, continuing to beat at a medium speed.

Then alternately add flour and the milk mixture, while continuing to beat at a medium speed until both are used up - begin and end with flour.

Pour the cake mix into a 9 inch lined baking tin and bake for about 45-50 minutes. It's done when the knife comes out clean. Put aside to cool.

Salted Caramel Sauce:
1 cup brown demerara sugar
100 gms salted butter
1/3 cup cream
Sea salt to taste

While you're waiting for the burnt butter to cool, you can be getting on with the sauce-making.

Heat the brown sugar in a thick-bottomed pan or kadhai, whisking constantly, on a slow flame until the sugar is completely melted. It may clump a little but that's ok.

Once the sugar has melted, stop whisking and continue heating the sugar mix, swirling the pan occasionally, to ensure the sugar on the bottom doesn't burn up. When it starts turning a slightly darker brown, add the butter in and start whisking again until the butter and sugar are well mixed together. Then pour in the cream and whisk again until the mixture is completely smooth.

Take off the stove and wait for it to cool for a few minutes, then add sea salt to taste. Set aside in the fridge or otherwise to cool down.

To serve:
Take the cake out of the pan onto the serving dish. Ensure the salted caramel sauce is at room temperature and then pour over the cake. The sauce will drip down the sides of the cake, but that's part of its inherent gooey, indulgent charm. If you want to be stylish, you can add a dollop of whipped cream but it's unnecessary to the taste of this decadent dessert.

Recipe adapted from:
http://www.raspberricupcakes.com