Vegan fruit and nut cake/Christmas cake

This is kind of a practice cake for me to make few batches of it during Dec last week.My relatives are visitng us during that time and after that I would be visiting my native place. So I would be making atleast 4 loaves then. I planned to make a vegan cake and did not want to mess it up at the last moment. So made this cake to be sure that nothing goes wrong.

I adapted this recipe from three different sources...Jugalbandhi's fruit and nut war cake, Kitchen Mishmash's Fruit cake and JoyOfBaking's Boiled fruit cake. The cake turned out very good and I am going to use this recipe anytime I make fruit and nut cake.

I would also like to thank Vaishali whose writings inspired me to inculcate vegan habits into my diet.

I soaked the fruits and nuts for a week in orange juice. Raisins soaked in orange juice was a bit tart which I did not like, but others in the family just loved the cake as it was.

Here is the recipe

Ingredients to make a small sized loaf(around 12 slices)
All purpose flour/Maida: 1 1/2 cups
Brown Sugar/Demerra Sugar: 1 1/4 cup(I did not have that much brown sugar, I substiuted it with date syrup.)
Baking Soda: 1 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Water: 1/2 cup(if soaking the nuts in orange juice as you would get around 1/2 cup juice after removing the fruits and nuts. Otherwise use 1 cup water.)
Vegetable Oil or Applesauce: 3 tbsp(I used sunflower refined oil)

Fruits and Nuts (overal it should be 2 1/2 cups, any combination of it can be used)
Cashew: 1/2 cup(broken into pieces)
Badam/Almond: 1/2 cup(broken into pieces)
Raisins: 1/2 cup
Cherry: 1/2 cup(cut into small pieces)
Tutti fruiti: 1/2 cup
Orange juice: around 1 cup(I used freshly squeezed)

Soak the fruits and nuts in orange juice in a jar and refrigerate it for atleast a week. Its better to stir the fruits once daily. Next time I will not be soaking raisins.

Spice mixture
Powdered Caraway seeds/Shahjeera: 1 tsp
Powdered nutmeg: 1/4 tp
Powdered cinnamon: 1/4 tsp 
Powdered cloves: 1/4 tsp
Powdered cardamom: 1/4 tsp

Procedure
1. Pre heat the oven to 170 degree C and grease a cake pan or loaf pan with oil and dust with flour.
2. Sieve the flour, baking soda and salt together.
3. In a saucepan, over medium heat, bring to a boil the sugar, water, oil, spices, and raisins.( I did not boil raisins as I soaked them in orange juice. Next time I will not do this)
4. Boil for five minutes, remove from heat, and let cool till lukewarm.
5. Transfer the soaked fruits and nuts to a bowl and add vanilla extract and mix well. Keep the left over orange juice aside.
6. Transfer the lukewarm mixture to a large bowl and add the flour mixture 4 to 5 tbsp at a time and mix.
7. If the batter is too thick add the orange juice. Stir in the soaked fruits and nuts.
8. Transfer the batter to the loaf pan and bake for around 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

The cake tastes best when eaten the next day.(if you have the patience. :-)) Its moist, dense and hard to resist.

Advanced wishes to all you for a fun filled holiday season.

Aapam and onion chutney

I got this recipe for aapam and onion chutney from my cosister. This is one of the easiest and tastiest breakfast recipes. I well in love with it the first time I had it in my her place. The combination of aapam and chutney was perfect and adding carrot to the chutney was a nice idea.
Here is the recipe.

Ingredients for aapam that serves 5 adults
Raw Rice: 1 1/2 cups
Boiled Rice: 1 1/2 cups
Urad Dal: 1 tbsp(full or split)
Fenugreek seeds: 1 tsp
Baking Soda: 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Grated Coconut: 1/4 cup.( I completely omitted this, still the aapam tasted great) 

Procedure
1. Wash both the rice and urad dal.
2. Soak the washed rice mixture along with fenugreek seeds in water for around 3 hours. 
3. After 3 hours, drain the water from the soaked rice. Do not throw the water. Store it in a bowl. It can be used while grinding.
4. Grind the rice to a smooth mixture by adding water only when necessary. (I did the grinding in a mixer. If the quantity is more grinder can be used.)
5. Transfer the ground mixture to a bowl and add salt and baking soda and mix well.
6. Leave the mixture alone for atleast 8 to 10 hours.
7. To make the aapam, heat the non stick aapam pan(I did not have one, so I used the normal kadai). 
8. Keep the stove in low to medium heat and a ladleful of batter in the pan and swirl the pan so that the batter gets spread nicely.(I could not do the swirling, so I just spread the batter with the ladle itself.
9. Cover the pan with a lid.
10. Remove the aapam from the pan once it is cooked well.
11. Follow the same procedure for the rest of the batter.

Ingredients for small onion chutney
Small onion/Shallot: 8 to 9 numbers(peeled)
Channa Dal: 1 tbsp
Tamarind: a small piece(around the size of 25 paisa)
Carrot: 1 small piece or a quarter of a medium sized carrot(peeled and cut into medium sized pieces)
Dried Red chily: 1 long(or more as per spice tolerance level :-))
Refined Oil: 1 tsp
Salt to taste

Procedure
1. Heat a pan/kadai and add oil.
2. Saute the onion and red chily for 2 minutes.
3. Allow it to cool and and grind the onion and red chily with the other ingredients.
4. Add salt.
5. Season with few mustard seeds.

Enjoy the aapam with onion chutney.
Note: If you are not using a non stick pan, it is better to apply oil in the pan atleast once, just before adding the first ladle of batter. Since I did not use a non stick pan, I did this.

Vegan cashew and walnuts Quick bread

I actually started out making vegan sandwich bread. Unfortunately yeast wasn't active, so could not proceed any further. I then decided to bake a quick bread and searched in google. I liked Madhuram's vegan cranberry quick bread recipe the best. I made some modifications to the original recipe and the final result was good. I also doubled the quantity.

Ingredients to make 2 small loaves
All Purpose Flour/Maida: 4 cups(I used 2 1/2 cups maida and 1 /2 cups wheat flour)
Granulated Sugar: 3/4 cup
Lion Dates Syrup: 3/4 cup(Instead adding another 3/4 cup sugar, I added this)
Walnuts and Cashew: 1/2 cup (coarsely chopped)
Baking Powder: 4 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Flax Seed Meal: 2 tsp
Warm Water: 1/2 cup
Orange Juice: 1 cup(freshly squeezed is better)
Vegetable Oil: 1/2 cup(I used Sunflower refined oil)
Applesauce: 1/2 cup

Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 180 degree C and grease the loaf pan.
2. In a bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. 
3. Add sugar and nuts to the dry mixture and combine. 
3. Whisk/blend together the flax seed meal and water until white and foamy.I(I whisked for almost 5 minutes, but it did not turn foamy, anyway I used it.)
4. In another large bowl, mix together the flax seed mixture, orange juice, oil, dates syrup and applesauce.
5. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. 
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
7. Cool it before serving.

Note: Its better to check if the bread is baked after around 45 minutes. I did not do that and the bread got burnt at the bottom which can be seen in the photos.

Vegan chocolate cupcake

I made these vegan chocolate cupcakes sometime back. I saw it in Vaishali's blog and chocolate being my favourite flavour, I just had to try it. The cupcakes came out so well that people at home who are not big fans of chocolate cakes too loved them. The only addition I did was to add some walnuts to the cake.
Here is the recipe as adapted from Vaishali's.

Ingredients to make around 15 medium sized cupcakes
Almond milk: 1 cup (I used soy milk)
Vinegar: 1 tsp(I used apple cider vinegar)
Turbinado sugar: 3/4 cup(I used regular granulated sugar)
Canola or other flavorless vegetable oil: 1/3 cup(I used sunflower oil)
Vanilla extract: 2 tsp 
All-purpose flour/Maida: 1 cup
Cocoa powder: 1/3 cup
Baking soda: 3/4 tsp
Baking powder: 1/2 tsp 
A pinch of salt

Procedure
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degree C.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt and keep aside.
3. In a bowl, mix the soy milk and vinegar and set aside for a few minutes until it curdles.
4. Once the milk curdles, add the sugar, oil, vanilla extract and beat togeter until it turns frothy.(Around 2 to3 minutes. I used a hand mixer for this)
5. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in two batches, mixing well until the mixture is fairly smooth. Don't overbeat.
6. Line a muffin pan with paper liners. Pour the batter into each liner, about 3/4 full. 
7. Bake for around 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
8. Frost the cupcake(optional) and enjoy.