Coffee Anecdote

Scene: (Charlie baking – Two and a half men)

Charlie: Not bad aye Jake. This tastes pretty good.

Jake: Yes, Uncle Charlie. You bake so well.

Charlie: I know. And those chefs on TV show off as though they are curing leprosy.

Me: hahaha so true!

I am not a cook. The kind of cooking I do, I don’t even need a kitchen. It’s really that bad. Not an exaggeration. Plain truth.

But baking. Let’s talk more about that. I am a sloth of the first order. I love coffee and hope that a cup of it magically comes to my hands every morning.

And one day, magic happened.  I felt like baking. A little finger running on the internet and I found a recipe. Coffee, I love. Cakes make me happy. So, coffee cake it is!

Did I forget to mention that I do not have an oven? Well, I don’t. I have been baking often these days and have fallen truly madly deeply in love with my Pressure Cooker.

To me, baking a cake is easier than preparing Maggi noodles and the fulfillment it gives is what I think people feel after childbirth. Okay, exaggeration there.

So buck up fellow sloths. Let’s bake a cake and make our hearts happy.

Tips: If you were me, a baby baker, I’d advise you to follow the recipe to a tee.

Beat in only one direction, ALWAYS. This is mandatory.

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour/maida

1 tsp baking pwd

3/4 cup brown sugar or granulated white sugar

1/2 cup soft white butter (or a little lesser, say 1.4^th)

2 eggs, room temperature

1/4 cup low fat milk

2 tbsps instant coffee powder (I prefer Nescafe Sunrise)

1 tbsp boiling water

1 tsp vanilla essence

Steps:

You could also refer to the following picture.

1.     Sieve 1 cup maida and 1 tsp baking powder, thrice. Finely.

2.     Add coffee powder to boiling water. Keep aside to cool.

3.     In a bowl, cream butter and sugar till smooth and creamy. You might feel that the butter is not enough. Trust me, it is. Cream as much as you can, add one egg at a time and beat till well combined. Add vanilla essence and coffee, mix well.

4.     Cover cooker with a plate and heat at full blast. Keep it on.

5.     Add the flour in three additions alternating with milk, starting with flour and ending with flour. Do not over beat, just mix till well combined. It might comes across as too thick, no problem. Keep beating and it will smooth out.

6.     Use butter to grease your baking pan. Be sure to spread out the butter thoroughly. Use sieve to sprinkle maida over the butter. Hold pan upside down and tap to ensure extra maida falls off.

7.     Pour batter into the greased and floured pan. Place inside the heated cooker and bake for 20 minutes on medium heat. It’s a good idea to open lid after 20 minutes and check if the cake is rising well.

8.     Close lid. Bake for 10 more minutes and check with tooth pick. If it comes out clean, feel good about yourself. If it doesn’t, bake for 5 more minutes and do so until the toothpick comes out clean.

9.     Remove from the cooker and cool for 15 minutes.

Cut apiece out and admire. As much as you want. Infact, you totally should. You just made an amazingly tasty coffee cake. Ta da!