Eggless Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake - Eggless-baking February Challenge

My tryst with frosting cakes is not much to boast about. I have had the icing bags and nozzles for two years now and I have hardly used them. Firstly, baking the cake in the limited time I have on weekends is challenging enough, with a little pair of hands bungling the recipe unknowingly in her zest to help her mommy bake the goodies. Secondly, waiting for the cakes to cool down hardly happens. She wants a bite of the stuff immediately as soon as the cake is out of the oven. Thirdly, she might want to help me with the frosting too and thus I might finally snap at her after the prolonged attempts at bungling, sigh! I guess, I am the world's worst mom. She shows so much zeal and care to help me out and I call it bungling :(. 

Anyways, I have frosted cupcakes with buttercream a couple of times, and a bundt, pound cake with buttercream. I have used ganache once for an eggless chocolate cake. I have never used whipped cream to frost cakes. So why am I delving into statistics? To apologize in advance for any offensive attempts at frosting in this post!

This recipe seriously gave me jitters. I did not want to frost with buttercream. I certainly did not want to make 2 cups of buttercream and use it on a large cake. 

I decided to make the batter without adjusting the original recipe except for the eggless variation; I then decided to make two small 6 inch cakes and a host of cupcakes. I made just 1 cup of buttercream, and frosting 4 cupcakes and one 6 inch cake. 

As always, the original recipe from Hershey's goes first. I shall present the cake recipe only in both the original and eggless form. The frosting is normal chocolate buttercream and the recipe is from Hershey's verbatim.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
2  eggs
1 cup milk
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups sugar

Method
1 Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.
2 Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. 
Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. 

Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
3 Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. 
Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. 
Frost with "PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING. 10 to 12 servings.

Variations
ONE-PAN CAKE: Grease and flour 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Heat oven to 350° F. 
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely. Frost.

THREE LAYER CAKE: Grease and flour three 8-inch round baking pans. Heat oven to 350°F. 
Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. 
Cool completely. Frost.

BUNDT CAKE: Grease and flour 12-cup Bundt pan. Heat oven to 350°F. Pour batter into prepared pan. 
Bake 50 to 55 minutes. Cool 15 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely. Frost.

CUPCAKES: Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups. Heat oven to 350°F. 
Fill cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely. Frost. About 30 cupcakes.

Now for the eggless version.

Eggless Variation

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup milk powder  + 1/2 cup milk (See Note)
1 cup milk
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups sugar

Method
Heat oven to 180 degress C. Grease and flour two 6-inch pans and some cupcake moulds.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
Dissolve 1/2 cup of milk powder in 1/2 cup milk and keep it aside. Add milk, milk powder paste, oil and vanilla to the dry flour mix; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. 

Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans. I used 2 small round cake moulds (5-6 inches) and 6 cupcake moulds.
Bake the small cake moulds for 40-45 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. 
Bake the cupcakes for 22-25 minutes. 
Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. 
Frost with "PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING. 10 to 12 servings.

Note I used Nestle's sweetened milk powder and so I reduced the quantity of sugar by 1/2 cup. Since adding 1/2 cup milk to the milk powder made the batter even thinner, I wonder if I should have just used the milk powder without the additional 1/2 cup milk. 

"PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING


1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
2/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.

I halved the recipe for the frosting and made 1 cup of buttercream. I used it to pipe some roses and stars on one 6-inch cake and 4 cupcakes. I still had about 1/4 cup buttercream. I plan to use it as a spread on bread within the next couple of days.

Verdict: The batter was too thin and I felt, I could have just used milk powder instead of dissolving it in another 1/2 cup milk. The texture was fine and the cake tasted good, except that one cake sunk in the middle.

Lamington Cupcakes - July Eggless Baking Challenge

A lamington is a sponge cake of Australian origin in the shape of a cuboid, coated in a layer of traditionally chocolate icing then desiccated coconut. Although they are of Australian origin they are frequently seen in South African Cafes too.

The chocolate coating is a thin mixture, into which cubes of sponge cake (one cookbook states 4 cm per side) are dipped, and the chocolate is absorbed into the outermost layers of the sponge where it sets. (Similarly, the strawberry jam or chocolate icing is absorbed into the sponge.) The cubes are then covered with coconut and left to set. Optionally one could use Lemon icing instead of chocolate icing.

I had once made a Vanilla tea cake, which I later sliced up to make lamingtons. You can refer to those two posts. These are the original recipes using Eggs. I was delighted to see that this is the Eggless baking challenge for the month of July. 

However I had one major hurdle - my oven. My microwave oven is not fixed as the turntable motor is not available. I am unable to use it for heavy duty baking or cooking. But I was itching to try this out, lest I miss out on the fun this month as well :(. So I decided to bake lamington cupcakes. 

I had one perfectly over-ripe large banana to substitute for the 2 eggs that the joyofbaking recipe calls for. I happily woke up on Sunday morning having dreamt of baking this goodie and the results being mind-blowing. When I started gathering the ingredients, I could not find the banana. It turns out that my mom found the banana in an over-ripe state and consumed it, thinking it is of no use if kept for another day. So now the second hurdle. What else can I substitute the eggs with? I cannot use butter-milk/yoghurt, as the recipe uses milk. Fortunately I had two choices, one pack of Brittania cream-cheese or one tin of condensed milk. I decided to go with cream-cheese.

Lamingtons Recipe (Adapted from joyofbaking.com):
2 cups (260 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs <--- substitute with 1/2 cup cream cheese
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk --- Refer to Note 1

Lamingtons: 
Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Butter, or spray with a nonstick cooking spray, 12-16 cupcake moulds. 
In a large bowl sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
In bowl of electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until soft. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). Add cream-cheese, beating well.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with flour.  
Spoon the batter into the cupcake moulds. Bake in preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the moulds and let them cool on a wire-rack. Once the cake has completely cooled, put the cupcakes in a box, and wrap the box, in plastic wrap and refrigerate (to make them easier to frost) for several hours or even overnight.
Note 1: The batter was on the thicker side and I found that the cupcakes had become a little crusty. I could have easily increased the quantity of milk from the original 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. 
I cooled the cupcakes and did not refrigerate them. Instead, I frosted the cupcakes as soon as they had cooled down. 
I used the recipe from David for the Chocolate icing part:
For the chocolate icing: 6 ounces (170 g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped - 1/2 cup 1 1/2 ounces (40 g) unsalted butter - 3 tablespoons 3/4 cup (180 ml) milk, whole or lowfat  2 cups (220 g) powdered sugar  2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutch-process (sifted if lumpy) 2 tablespoons boiling water
Make the chocolate icing by melting together the chocolate, butter, and milk in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.  Remove the bowl from the pan of simmering water when smooth, then whisk in the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.
Assembling the cupcakes:
1 1/2 cup (200 g) unsweetened shredded coconut, spread on a large plate <--- Refer to Note2
Note2: It would work very well with dry dessicated cocunut. But I had only fresh coconut on hand and I shredded it.
Pick up every cupcake and dip it into the chocolate sauce, rolling the cupcake over to coat all sides with syrup. Immediately roll the frosted cupcakes over the dessicated coconut and leave on the wire rack to set.

Verdict: Delicious and sinfully delightful, yet I feel it could have been better if there was a little more liquid in the batter.

Eggless Strawberry cupcakes

Saturday afternoon at home... My little girl refusing to take her nap. That is a regular scenario on weekends. She postpones her naptime as much as possible and finally she gets so cranky and heavy-eyed, that she falls asleep at 8PM without having had dinner :). So I always try to put her to sleep before 4PM atleast. That way she gets some shut-eye and can start her non-stop chatter all the way through dinner and bed time!

When I try to put her to sleep, we both lie down singing rhymes, telling stories and talking in general about her school, her friends etc. Sometimes out the blue she would suddenly tell me "I want cake" or "I want lollipop". I have standard replies to most of these demands and I can postpone fulfilling these demands for a while. But sometimes she is persistent. Then I have to promise to have the cake ready when she wakes up from the nap. Such was a demand one Saturday afternoon, that I had to bake a cake to offer the little girl when she wakes up from her nap.

I had strawberries in the fridge and I had to use them up. I was planning on making another jar of strawberry jam. But I finally decided to bake some strawberry cupcakes. I borrowed the recipe from Anshruti's blog.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup - plain flour
1 1/2  tsp - baking powder
1 tsp  - baking soda

1 cup - milk powder (I used sweetened milk powder. I increased the quantity from 3/4 cup to 1 cup, since I used sweetened milk powder, I then reduced the sugar quantity)

1/4 cup - packed powdered sugar or fine sugar (I reduced the sugar from the original 3/4 cup, as I used sweetened milk powder)
1/2 cup - butter
250 g - strawberries, sliced
1 cup - milk
1 tsp - vanilla extract
A few drops of lemon juice plus 2 tsp sugar for the strawberries
 

Method:

Line the tin with cupcake liners.

Clean and slice the strawberries. Mix in the lemon juice and the sugar and keep aside for about 15 minutes to half an hour.
This helps to bring out the flavour of the strawberries.

Sieve the flour, baking powder and baking soda.

 

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and the vanilla with a hand blender or with a wire whisk, about 2 to 3 minutes.
Mix in the sugar and the milk powder and beat until soft. Stir in half the flour, add half the milk and beat until soft, for about 2 minutes.
Put in the remaining flour and milk and beat again until soft for 2 minutes.
Mix in the strawberries with their juices.
Pour the batter into cup cake liners and bake at (160C/325F/Gas Mark 3) for 25 to 30 minutes or till done (until a skewer comes clean).

Verdict: This cake was a great hit. It was super fluffy and soft. This is one of the best Eggless recipes that I have tried. So did my little girl love it or not. Well it turns out that her desire to eat a cake had died down post her nap. But we sure did savor the cake :)

Red Velvet cupcakes

I was always fascinated by the red-velvet cake and cupcake recipe. The rich deep red colour with the white cream-cheese frosting. I was looking forward to making it for quite sometime now. Finally I decided to bake it on my daughter's birthday. She is fond of cupcakes and I decided the chocolatey flavour and the bright red colour will be to her liking. I was not wrong :).

I adapted the recipe from joyofbaking. The original recipe makes 12 normal size cupcakes. I used mini-muffin pan. So the normal recipe would have made 36 mini-cupcakes for me. I doubled the original recipe to 72 cupcakes. I served her friends who dropped in for the party and sent some to her school too.

Since this is a chocolate cake, and we do not get cream cheese here easily, I decided to frosted the cupcakes with white-chocolate ganache.

Red Velvet Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons regular or Dutch-processed cocoa powder (I used Cadbury's)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk (I used 3/4 cup yoghurt + 1/4 cup water)

1/2 tsp red food coloring paste

1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

Red Velvet Cupcakes: 

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C and line 12 mini-muffin tin with paper mini-cupcake liners.

In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until soft (about 1-2 minutes). Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

In a measuring cup whisk the buttermilk with the red food coloring. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter mixture, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour.

In a small cup combine the vinegar and baking soda. Allow the mixture to fizz and then quickly fold into the cake batter. 

Working quickly, spoon the batter into the 12  muffin cups and smooth the tops with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 10-12 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.

Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes and them remove from pan. Let cool completely before frosting. Either spread the frosting with a knife or offset spatula, or use a large 1M Wilton open star decorating tip to pipe the frosting.

For the Frosting:

I decided to use the White chocolate ganache frosting recipe from Diana's page.

Ingredients:
4 1/2 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped
1 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar (I pulsed normal granulated sugar for 30-60 seconds in the blender. For 1 cup of granulated sugar, I added 2 tbsp of cornflour before pulsing)
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Pinch of salt

Instructions:

1. Melt the white chocolate in a double boiler. Stir until smooth. Let cool to room temperature. 

2. Sift the confectioners' sugar into a medium bowl. Stir in the milk and vanilla. Add the butter and salt and beat until smooth. Stir in the cooled white chocolate. Refrigerate until firm enough to frost the cupcakes, about 30 minutes.

Makes enough to frost 12 normal cupcakes. I did not scale this recipe as I did not plan to make large rosettes or anything. This was sufficient to frost 72 mini-cupcakes. I was in such a rush as the children had already started coming in as I was preparing the frosting. Apologies for this clumsy frosting :(

Verdict: The cake was soft, moist and smooth, very "velvety"; aptly named. The children devoured it. My daughter ate up close to 4 cupcakes, as they were cooling down. The other children picked up one each even before I could start frosting and they could not wait to taste them again with the frosting. This was a hit, just wish I could have made this ahead of time so I could have decorated it better.

Vanilla cupcakes

When I started experimenting with cakes, it was always a simple chocolate cake I would try out; as I only had that recipe in my microwave recipe booklet. I came across some silicone muffin cupcake moulds at a nearby store and bought them to try out cupcakes with the same recipe. The cupcakes always turned out great, but the first few round cakes I tried were a disaster, and that's another story. So I proudly made chocolate cupcakes and gave them to my grandmother who was visiting. She took one bite of this and immediately remarked "Yennamma intha cake karuppa irukku. Kasakkuthu vera". (What is this dear, these cakes are black in colour and they taste a little bitter?). I was so disappointed :(. So I immediately tried out vanilla cupcakes with the same recipe omitting the Cocoa powder make some normal butter cream frosting to spread on the cupcake. Needless to say, these bright cream coloured sweet cakes, won her over :)

Here is the recipe:
Flour - 2 cups
Baking Powder - 2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Butter - 1/2 cup (room temp, unsalted)
Sugar - 1 1/4 cup
Eggs - 2 (room temp)
Milk - 1 cup (room temp)
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line/grease muffin pans. I use silicone cupcake moulds and hence I skip this step.

Sift Flour, baking powder and salt, 3 times. Keep aside.
Cream butter and sugar well.
Add Vanilla essence mix well.
Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.

Mix the flour mix and milk to the butter-sugar-egg mix in three additions, starting and ending with the flour.
Fill each cup 3/4th with the batter and bake for 20 minutes. I took them out in just 18 minutes.
Remove and let cool on wire rack for 10 minutes. Invert and remove the muffin pans and cool completely.

This makes 18 muffins (standard size), but some of my muffin cups are large and hence I could make 14 muffins.

I frosted these with Chocolate fudge. This is the first time I tried frosting a cake. I had recently purchased the icing bag and nozzles from IBCA and I was thrilled to try it out.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting:
120 g unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract.

Melt the chocolate in a saucepan. Alternately you could place it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. In another bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and beat well until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract. Add chocolate and beat until the frosting is smooth and glossy.

Pipe any design you wish on the cupcakes. I was only trying out the various nozzles this time and the frosting was quite ridiculous to look at. I sprinked some coloured sugar balls too.

Carrot Cupcakes

I came across this recipe for carrot cupcake at joyofbaking. I wanted to try it out over the Easter weekend, as my confidence was boosted with the success of banana loaf a couple of weeks back.

Changes I made to the recipe:
I omitted the raisins and added 1 cup of walnuts instead of half a cup.

The only time consuming part in this recipe is the shredding of carrots and apples. There is no beating/creaming of oil and sugar involved. The recipe just states mixing the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, combining them and then adding the shredding carrots and apples.