Story of a Pineapple Cake

One of the cakes I always wanted to try was the basic, most primitive of all (Pakistani) cakes, the pineapple sponge cake! Although this cake is the most easily and readily available in any and every bakery in Karachi, I had some difficult time looking for THE perfect recipe (or any recipe for that matter) on the internet, primary reason being that this cake is not that famous in the west. As fresh cream is preferred frosting in our side of the world, they rely more on butter cream frosting, which is a bit too sweet for our desi taste buds. So, anyway I decided to do some local media search and found a few recipes, mixed and matched and voila! I got a soft, spongy, moist pineapple cake…absolute delight! :)



Basic Sponge Cake:
Ingredients
4 Eggs
1 cup flour
½ cup granulated sugar (I dint want the sponge to be very sweet, you can put more sugar)
1 tsp Vanilla essence
1 pinch salt

Use everything at room temperature esp the eggs

Method:
1.  Before starting, an 8-inch round pan should be ready, greased and floured.
2.  pre heat oven at 180 degrees
3.  Beat all 4 eggs, until foamy n frothy
4.  Add vanilla essence, and sugar to the eggs and keep on beating
5.  The entire mixture should increase in volume
6.  In a separate bowl, sift flour and salt 3 times to let the air pass through
7.  Add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, every time mixing in with the hand (open the hand, all fingers apart 
      and mix, try not to loose volume of the mixture)
8. Once everything has been incorporated, immediately transfer the mixture to the pan and place in the center
     rack of the oven. Bake for 20-25mins
9.  Do not open the oven during this time, check after at least 20 minutes else cake will fall from the center.

Topping/Frosting:

2 (200ml each) fresh cream packs
4 tbsp icing sugar
1 tsp pineapple essence
1 tbspn sugar in 1 cup water (cook to form a dilute mixture)

Method:
1. Use chilled bowl and cream, start beating
2. Add pineapple essence and the icing sugar
3. Continue beating till soft peaks form.
4. Also, add pineapple chunks in half of the cream

Assembly:
1. After the cake is baked, let it cool down completely
2. Then cut the cake into half
3. Generously sprinkle the sugar mixture to moisten the cake
4. Apply the cream mixture on the once side and place the upper layer on top of it
5. Again, sprinkle the sugar water on the top layer
6. Cover the cake with the remaining cream w/o the chunks

And as who know me know that for me most of the desserts are not complete until covered with desiccated coconut, hence I used the same to put the final touches to my very first pineapple sponge cake! 
Do try and lemme know how it turned out!!
Happy Baking!!

oh yea as you can see, when i was photoshooting the cake, a lil theif came to lick the frosting :D i think the sight just made my day :)

         Yum!!

New Year, new plans and hopefully some regularity on this blog:)

Im going to start this post by giving some lame excuses, yup lame lame excuses ....as to why my baking has suddenly taken a back seat and also as to why this baking blog became more of a photo blog!


well to begin with, i fell into the trap of "baking to orders", which is very very easy to fall into, since ppl are more than willing to pay for the goodies and who doesnt like sum dough! so when i started doing tht my focus moved from actual baking to fulfilling orders, and between toddler running after, house hold chores, a part time job and baking to orders, i stopped baking for pleasure which is where it all had originally started...and i lost sight of my goal! good thing is i realized what was happening and have more or less stopped taking orders! phew (not that i will never bake to order, i will in a year or two, with a proper infrastructure n all [God willing!])

secondly, i needed to shed off some weight and trust me this baking business is quite fattening ...like literally! see the thing is if i bake, some1s gotta eat it ....right! and since my mothers side of the family is forever watching their weight and hubby side of the family is nt that elaborate ...blah blah .....honestly when i bake i cant resist whatever i make and end up eating at least, if not more 80% of it! sigh sigh sigh ....So i decided to put a big full stop on my mouth (and baking endeavors) and successfully lost arnd 10Kgs!! am i kool or what ;) :) so now thats done, i am starting again! hence two of my new years resolutions are literally contradictory one loosing another 10 kgs and another being more regular at baking ....so lets c what becomes of that by year end 2011! hopefully i'd be able to achieve both .....fingers crossed
well that’s all for my lame excuses...for now at least :) hopefully the blog will be more active in the coming year....no not with more excuses but actual baking ;) :)

see you next year.....byeeeeeeee