After a really long time, I got to bake this cake with Amma and it sure did bring back all the old memories. My interest in cooking started with baking, and Amma always made sure that even as a lil girl, I could be part of the cake making process. While she thought that the electric beater was "dangerous" for me, she would let me & my bro take turns to cream the butter and sugar with the wooden spoon - the old fashioned way. Well, technically this creaming stage is very crucial to a cake *and the texture of the cake depends on it & hence when the cake turned out good, she would attribute its success to us. Now, which 5 year old kid wouldn't want that sort of cake mixing skills up her sleeve and if that wasn't enough, as an incentive we got to to eat a lil bit of the oh! so yummmm cake mixture too. I always looked forward to baking cakes (no surprises there!) and I still do.
So it was indeed a treat when we got to bake one of our timeless favorite cake after years, and for the first time, we swapped our roles -this time she was my kitchen hand and I was the main chef !!
This was also a birthday cake for a very genuine , unpretentious & a truly gem of a person - 'Bhai'.
He and his family hold a very special place in our hearts, because theirs is one of the very few loving and selfless families left in this world.
Now the cake was a jolly good lucky one, because it got to travel with us the whole day from Sydney to New Castle and to Hunter Valley where it patiently waited for us in the car as we hopped from one vineyard to another, in search for the best wine. Well, to be honest, we were just having a good time wine tasting and in due course, happened to find the best wine.
Anyways, here's the recipe. I love this cake- its a rather simple one, but the whole marble effect makes it look like you have invested a lot of hours in it. This is adapted from Mrs BF Varghese's ' Recipes For All Occasions - Part 1 'a cookbook that 3 generations of our family women folk have religiously followed.
Flour - 2 cups
Baking Pwd - 1 ½ tsp
Milk - ½ cup
Butter - 1 cup
Sugar - 1 ¼ cups
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp
Eggs - 3
Semi Sweet chocolate (chopped) - 50 gms
Salt
Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. In a stainless steel bowl, placed over a saucepan of simmering hot water, melt the chocolate. Remove from heat and set aside.
Cream butter and 1 cup sugar. Beat the egg yolks and add gradually to the creamed butter beating all the time. Fold in the flour, adding milk and vanilla essence alternately. Whisk egg whites stiff, add ¼ cup sugar and beat again and mix all the ingredients together.
Pour half of the batter into a separate bowl and stir the melted chocolate, mixing well. Put a spoon each, of the chocolate batter and the plain batter alternatively into a greased tin. Then, with a fork, gently draw swirls on the cake batter to marbleize it. Don't over mix it, or you won't have that marble affect.
Bake at 350° F until a toothpick inserted in the center, comes out clean.
You can try variations of this, with coffee / caramel etc instead of the chocolate batter.
* Creaming is one of the most important stages in the whole cake making process. It incorporates the maximum amount of air bubbles, held in by the fat, so the cake rises in the oven and becomes light in texture. Basically, the cake rises from its air bubbles expanding from the heat of the oven, steam generate from the liquid ingredients and the carbon dioxide generated from the baking powder/baking soda.
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