How to make Velvet Beet Cake| Easy Velvet Beet Cakei

I have attempted to bake a Red Velvet cake on several occasions in the past. There’s a strong temptation to get the perfectly red one with beets and no fake colouring. Alas, I failed. So, I call this one a Velvet Beet cake and not a Red Velvet cake that I would have loved to call otherwise. It’s funny because, each time I got perfectly baked cake with pleasing results and good texture, it was sans that deep red colour that would qualify it to be called as a Red Velvet cake. It always ended up brown and chocolatey, often good to be christened as a nice Chocolate cake. Even the best of the beet cake recipes have not helped me.

So it stays to be a Beet cake, till I achieve the perfect palette of colours in them and share them with you here. :)

None can ever figure out that beets are sneaked in there. Not even the husband who saw me busy puree them late night and putting them together! He says he can’t imagine a cake out of beets. But why not, when we have cakes made from carrots? And you are sure to get a thumbs up. Don’t let the folks know there’s a vegetable in there. It makes them biased. Instead, let them enjoy, allow them to take second and third helpings and let the cat out of bag later. I bet you’ll get gawked looks like I did! It’s amusing.

I say this one is extremely healthy. Because I use olive oil instead of butter, beet puree makes up for the eggs, organic vanilla powder and brown organic sugar add depth of flavors instead of the refined one. So it’s eggless, butterless and certainly healthy with vegetable sneaked it. I feel no guilt when I feed my daughter the slices of this cake as she despises beets in their true form. This way though I sneak them into her and I am a happy mother to a cheerful toddler.

Velvet Beet Cake

Recipe minimally adapted from here

INGREDIENTS

1 medium sized, beetroot (boiled until tender, then puréed)
1/3 cup oil (I used Olive-Pomace oil)
1 1/4 cup organic brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. organic vanilla powder
1 1/3 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup milk (use any vegan milk of your choice, like soy or cashew milk for vegan option)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease the bundt pan with oil and dust with plain flour.

Wash thoroughly and boil the beet until its soft and tender. Using a blender/mixer, purée it to a fine paste along with milk and brown sugar. Opt for regular sugar if you don't have brown sugar. Next add in oil and vanilla powder/ extract and blend further until incorporated. Set aside. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the beet milk mixture and stir gently until all is well incorporated into the batter. Bake for 40 minutes or till done. Insert a toothpick in the center of the cake and test for done. Remove and allow the cake to cool on a cooling rack. Serve as is or with dollops of cream or ice cream.

I wonder what would have come of me if those several inspirational blogs (not food alone) around the web didn’t exist. Things wouldn’t have been so stimulating. Ideas novel and fresh, drawing verves to my relentless motivation and fueling enthusiasm to my ever fretful blogger’s mind. There are many I hop on, read through, admire and pass over. Then there are some that etch me to a point that I desire going back to them time and again. That element of ingenuity, a sense of magnetism, their charismatic aura draws me to them and leaves me awestruck every time I’m there. I applaud them for several aspects that speak uniquely for themselves; some for their splendid writing, others for their stupendous photography, some for their beautiful styling, some for being able to connect with common perceptions, many others for their superb repertoire of stories, food, recipes and travel. If I had to jot down the list of these influential blogs, I would end up running them in pages and not justify the right due to many unexplored too. So I stay put to that for now.

Apart from regular cooking and baking, these blogs that have paved way to my influences in photography too. Indeed, my foray into food photography came through this blog. Ever since I have been living the life of a food blogger, being behind a camera has become quite instinctive. Though being a creative person myself, exploring the depths of photography came to me only with time. I always loved styling and even on a personal level, looking neat and stylish is something I enjoy. I admire folks who carry off themselves well. My perspective for food is not any different.

I am no pro with photography and have come to terms with the fact that I can’t digest photoshop with ease. I love that I am still a home cook, do blogging and photography as a hobby, yet, I would love to master the intricacies and techniques involved in a good photography. My personal woes have been my limitations with time, while setting up a table for styling has been yet another constraint, so doing all of that and waiting for the perfect lighting to shoot photographs becomes one of my greatest challenge.

Well, it’s no excuse I know, neither it helps lamenting. But then blog hopping gives me a whole lot of inspiration. I dance happy feet when I come across sites where the photographs are moody, lighting imperfect, but the food shots as decadent as ever. This Sunday morning I spent time doing just that. I gazed at them, gawked in contemplation, soaked in every bit of their moody darkness. It’s time I kicked off my comfort zone of shooting bright buoyant shots and hover over to some dull moody snaps till I get over them. So here they come, at least for an attempt.

Although there isn’t much fancy to flaunt about this chocolate loaf, since it’s essentially a basic eggless chocolate cake that was baked in a loaf tin to break the monotony of a Saturday noon’s tea break, I will certainly emphasize on the couple of hours I slogged (read enjoyed) to get some lovely moody shots of these slices. On the bright sunny afternoon, before lunch I set this cake in my oven to be baked for our tea time snack. An hour later, our home smelt like heaven of heady chocolaty aromas gracing my kitchen. My daughter’s sharp wits sensed the cake being baked and we fed her some warm bites as she wailed for more of them. Not surprising enough, one among the first words that my daughter learnt to say was a cake! Yes, witty I said! The husband and daughter snapped away with their share of slices for the zillion photographs that followed of the remaining few, mostly underexposed to deliberation. I had no forethought to post the recipe here, after all its just a basic eggless chocolate cake. The clicks though made me happy and I thought this made a good beginning.

Basic Eggless Chocolate Cake

INGREDIENTS

1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 cup thick Curd/yogurt
1 cup vanilla sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C for 10 mins. Grease a butter paper and layer it in the loaf pan.

Sieve all-purpose flour along with cocoa powder twice and keep aside. Cream the vanilla sugar and curd until sugar completely dissolves. Add baking powder, baking soda to the creamed mixture and mix well. Leave aside for 5 mins and till bubbles appear on the mixture. Now add in softened butter and beat well. Next slowly add all-purpose flour in portions at a time and blend with wet ingredients. Beat well till creamy and thick.

Pour the batter to the loaf tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees. Then reduce the temperature to 180 deg. C and bake it further for 30-35 mins. Check using a fork inserted into the center of the cake. It should come out clean. Allow the cake to cool down for 10 mins, then invert and remove the butter paper. Slice them and enjoy with a cup of milk, tea or coffee.

I am not giving up baking with dark chocolate, but certainly you’ll see them reducing a bit in this space. You know well that all this while I have been using Morde Dark Chocolate in my bakes. While I have nothing against them and do love the fact that they are cheap (say 200 bucks for 500 gms), I’m increasingly aware that it comes at a cost that’s detrimental to our health. Stripped of all the cocoa butter and replaced with hydrogenated vegetable fats, including trans fats, it took me some determination for my daughter’s sake to give up on Morde or Selbourne and move to a better brand.

A while ago I asked my Bangalore buddies on FB if there was an alternative to it, since Cadbury’s Bournville was way too expensive for baking, but I got no satisfactory answers. What if there was a baking disaster? I would care not to lose night’s sleep over wasting couple of bars of bournville in my failed baking attempts! Does anyone have an answer please???

I love dark chocolates and biting into them makes me sensational. It evokes my happy moods.

I gambled into some cookie cravings this week while the weather wasn't so nice and chill as I would have loved it to be. For the first time I experimented with a bar of Cadbury’s Bournville dark chocolate and used them in baking like this Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies, least they fail, the less guiltier I feel about my failing attempt or the expensive bars. They are still too expensive for baking, but till I look for an alternative I may go with these. I baked these cookies for our evening tea and they turned out delicious our evening bites.

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Adapted from the Big Book of Baking

INGREDIENTS

88 gm plain flour
62 gm soft salted butter
42 gm brown sugar
28 gm white sugar
1/2 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking powder
62 gm chocolate chunks

DIRECTIONS

Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C. Lightly grease the baking trays.

Place all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat them till well combined. Please a teaspoonful of the dough on the prepared tray, giving sufficient space between them to allow spreading while cooking.

Bake in a pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes, or till the cookies are golden brown. Once done, transfer the cookies carefully to a cooling rack and cool them completely.

Notes:

* To adapt to a vegan version, replace egg with equal amount of flax meal paste. Use vegan dark chocolate and replace salted butter with a vegan butter substitute.

2nd February 2013: It was quite a relaxed Sunday. I plonked myself on my deep brown and black shaded sofa, threw my legs up on the aged teak coffee table that adorns my living and sat there gazing at a bunch of my favourite magazine collection from BBC GoodFood. The past one year has seen me as an ardent lover of their series and my subscription was due for closure. In the morning the courier guy had just hand delivered my last copy and I kept pondering if I should renew them or stick on to the 12 magazines I had at hand. They lay there in absolute desire to be flipped over again and again and as I made myself comfortable with a cup of coffee, I couldn't hold my fondness for them any longer and I flipped them all over again. I was lost and in love again.

And like it often happens, as I read through them, admire the photographs and get critical, flipping recipes over, I do not realize how I have lost on time. Admit, I spend a lot of my time, often quite futile over these cookbooks. Because it happens frequently that I take more than hours to pin down a recipe that I actually wish to recreate in my kitchen. Again I'm lost. I simply don’t feel guilty either.

So this Sunday wasn't any different. I dreamt of making a savoury, flipped over a couple of recipes and couple of magazines too. Pulao was done, the vegetable stew busy brewing up on the stove, so cooking was almost over. How about a salad I think. I flip over pages. I scan my pantry for those cheeses and herbs. I realize soon I need to stock them. I hunt for desserts instead to make my Sunday worthy. I flip over to the last page and there the beautiful raspberry brownies hold my utmost attention. I know what I have been looking for. Finally! I rush to my kitchen, pull my kitchen scales out, do a quick melt of butter in the microwave and stir all things good to bake these dark beauties.

So these brownies were made, ditto the way the magazine said, measuring out ingredients carefully by their weight, replacing the raspberries for some dried cranberries. I suggest you make them and you’ll know yourself how good they are. They are deep, fudgy and chocolatey with beautiful fruity bites from cranberries. A bit of cheating in your diet is all okay. So forget your fears, pick up a slice and devour them happily to your hearts content.

Cranberry Dark Chocolate Brownies

Inspired by Best-ever Chocolate & Raspberry Brownies from BBC GoodFood magazine

150 gm dark chocolate broken into chunks
125 gm salted butter
200 gm soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
70 gm plain flour
25 gm cocoa powder
100 gm cranberries (I’ve used Ocean Spray here)

Heat the oven to 180 deg C. Line a baking dish with baking paper. Put the chocolate, sugar and butter in a pan and gently melt, stirring well with a wooden spoon. Remove from the heat.

Stir in the eggs one by one, into the chocolate mixture. Sieve the flour and the cocoa and stir in. add in half the cranberries and scape the batter into the tray. Then scatter the remaining cranberries over the top of the batter. Bake for 30 minutes or 5 more minutes if you prefer a firmer texture. Cool before slicing and store in air tight containers for up to 3 days.

Just as I mentioned on my previous post on how life is like being a toddler's mom, I received an email from Sagarika, Madisons asking if I was open to do product reviews. Last year I was unable to be a part of some blogger events and give justice to product reviews that came into my mailbox since other priorities took up that space. However, this year began on a good note with a product review for newly launched Gone Mad – Choco Sticks that hit the market stands recently.

I received a pack of 24 Gone Mad Choco Sticks in a neatly wrapped card case promising the goodness of fudgy chocolate filling beneath a layer of thin wafer. The reason I took up to this review was because this wasn't the first time I had tasted Gone Mad Choco Sticks. My previous trip to my local supermarket saw me picking up this Cigar shaped choco stick, indeed to dress up a dessert and I loved it instantly. There are several brands and kinds of Choco sticks and wafer chocolates in the market, but this is one had me smitten. I do say that it's indeed the best I have had in recent times and if I had to really describe, it's sort of a crisp bite into a thin wafer that envelops a nice chocolatey-fudgy-brownie-kinda tasting filling. And that's delicious and addictive.

Garuda PolyFlex Foods Pvt Ltd has made a recent entrant into the wafer category with its Gone Mad Choco Sticks, and with the kind of catchy, chocolatey wrapping, a delicious piece of chocolate stick tagged at a decent price of Rs.5/- per piece it is sure to steal the show in chocolate segment of the market and make it popular especially among the kids. I handed a couple of these to my family and my friends and they surely enjoyed these bars.

On a flip side, I certainly think Garuda foods may need to work a bit on their individual packaging. These Choco Sticks are great no doubt, but if you go for their singles priced at Rs. 5/-, they crumble a lot and that too quite easily. The singles are quite fragile. If you buy the package of 24 sticks then you are saved, but if you go for their singles, you'll find most of the wafers crumbling and off the chocolate filling, mainly due to human touch and feel of the product before the purchase. And I saw that as problem even with the packaged ones.

Yet saying this I don't mean to demean these choco sticks. I do think the entire box of choco sticks can make up for a good picnic munching with your friends or a travel companion to beat those hunger pangs. They can be great birthday party treats or even a part of return gifts that most kids would love munching into. They can be used to dress a dessert which is quite what I did here. I made a quick Chunky Monkey Supreme Ice cream and topped it with Gone Mad Choco Sticks instead of chocolate chunks. They are delicious. There will be couple of more recipes that I intend to use these little addictive bars, but till then I do hope you enjoy these bars in this healthy, simple and delicious Quick Gone Mad Chunky Monkey Ice cream, a recreation of my Chunky Monkey Ice cream I made in the past.

Gone Mad Chunky Monkey Supreme

INGREDIENTS

2 bananas, peeled, chopped and frozen (I used yelakki bananas here)
1 Go Mad Choco Stick, crumbled
A tablespoon of honey (optional)
1 tsp. milk masala powder (make one at home with roughly powdered almonds, pistachios, saffron and cardamom)
Roasted and chopped nuts (almonds and pistachios)
1 Go Mad Choco Stick, broken to half, to garnish

DIRECTIONS

Place frozen bananas in your food processor. A tablespoon of honey is optional, you can add it if you like your ice cream sweet. Pulse until its mashed well and comes to consistency of ice cream. If you have difficulty while churning the frozen bananas, or if banana isn't binding, try adding 1-2 tbsp. non-dairy milk or wait for a minute or so to defrost slightly and then churn. Scoop out a ball of soft serve into a serving bowl. In a martini glass, crumble the go made choco sticks, top it with the banana ice cream and then spread generous pinches of milk masala powder, roasted and chopped nuts and garnish with more Go Mad Choco Sticks. Serve immediately.

I have great memories of playing wonderful set of indoor games with my long lost girlfriend A at her place. My sister and I would spend hours at her place frisking her most coveted collection of Barbies, boards and darts. Apart from being my dad’s boss’ only daughter she had an envious collection of indoor games and dolls to her kitty. Our office bungalows, where we lived then, lined adjacent and we would catch up either at her place or ours, our cartons laden with games of Scrabble, Ludo, Cards, Brainvita, Business and loads more.

We played endlessly in her company, often changing our games to bring around till boredom. In between these games, her mom, Mrs. B, stylish and chic, would elegantly bring in supplies of food and drink from her indulgent kitchen. It was a wonderfully evocative scene that blended food with imagination and made playing indoor games fun and inspiring, something that I foresee for my daughter too in future.

The moment we stepped in, her home wafted strong aromas sarson ka tel (mustard oil) which was traditional to their cuisine. Even today when I cook in Kachchi Ghani I am taken back to those luxurious evenings we spent at her place playing games in her bedroom, while blends of mystic aromas wafted through their kitchen enveloping the entire house with its essence till they pecked our nostrils and let our taste buds salivating. The Bengalis that they were, she often dished out hot pakoras, Beguni, Jhal Muri and more cooked in mustard oil, much to kids delight. She was an admirable cook exposed well to world cuisine and made various other non traditional dishes, many which inspired my mom too.

And like every Bengali, they too had huge fetish for fish and Mishţi (sweets). She doled out sweets and snacks effortlessly. Potlucks and birthday parties vouched these for proofs. Her puddings held a testimony to that. Not surprising we had never heard of clafoutis before, but strangely when I made this (inspired by Nigella's book, How to be a Domestic Goddess gifted by my hubby on Mother's Day!) and took a bite into this, it reminded me of puds Mrs. B used to dish out. Quite similar, just that they had no fancy names, but plain pudding. Dense, fudgy, not so cakelike, just a simple pudding. A cake sans the rising power from baking powder or soda. Call it a Clafoutis or whatever you like, this deep, dark chocolaty, intensely pudding kinds, is just right for the merry season of Christmas.

Double Chocolate Clafoutis

Inspired by Nigella's book, How to be a Domestic Goddess

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
2 eggs
4 tbsp. granulated white sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Handful of dark chocolate chunks

DIRECTIONS

Whisk together the cream, eggs and vanilla extract. Sift all of the dry ingredients together and and add this the wet ingredients. Whisk well to make a smooth batter. Pour the batter into ramekins or ceramic dishes and throw couple of chocolate chunks into the batter. Bake at 180 deg C for 20 minutes or until the clafoutis is golden brown around the edges. Serve hot with a dusting of powdered sugar.

I love October for being a fantastic season in all aspects. Its that time of the year when weather is pleasantly nice and the festivities add an alluring charm to wrap the year in good spirits. The rains have washed down all the dust away and the trees allay us with their new blanket in all shades of soothing green. Nip in the air may have to wait a little longer as misty mornings and chill evenings aren't here yet, yet the changing season reminds me that December is nearing and winter is close to beckoning, something we so much look forward to. Between these changing seasons, October beautifully envelops itself with festivities that makes it the best time for bonding with our family and friends. Indian festivals like Chaturthi, Dusshera, Diwali remind you that it's time you push aside all your worries, bury down your pressures, wrap up your tensions and move ahead to celebrate life with your loved ones, the time when festivals bring in joy and celebration and contentment to our lives.

And with all those festivals gone by and the ones we look forward to, I've have been on my toes all this month. I've been living out of my suitcase with lots of travel packed over weekends, spilling over festivals and the celebrations that have kept me busy through and through. A weekend getaway to Mysore, then to Hyderabad for work related meet, then to Mangalore for Dusshera, it's been one hell of a calender blocked month with me cruising places.

With all this up, my kitchen hasn't been the busiest place for me, unlike most of my weekends. I do hope I can throw my hands at cooking some sweet and savouries for this Diwali, while I have been fairly depending on my mom for her delectable festive goodies. With no elaborate cooking done by me this Dusshera , some Besan Laddu and the quick snacks I made for our Ganesha this Chaturthi, I hope I'll be get some time out to meddle in my kitchen this Diwali.

Yet, I can't seem to stay long away from my beloved oven. So I hopped over to bake another banana cake in quick desperation to baking, something which I did not intend posting here. If you take a peep into my drafts you'll be a little amazed to see the number of banana breads/cakes I have lined up, that I've had to forgo some. Infact, I've been planning to do a step-by-step for sometime now, yet haven't been able make time for that. The increasing number of requests for step-by-step have been pouring in. Keeping in mind it's eggless I am sure many would love to re-create them at home. Hope you like this one with big bites into nice chunks of chocolate chips. Delicious!

Banana Chocolate Chunk Squares

Before being a mother, I was a carefree, outgoing and extrovert. You could tag me as bindass, tomboy kinds who did not let too much of emotional upheaval disturb my life. When friends and colleagues discussed on how motherhood changed their lives emotionally and practically, I chuckled on the sly. I said to myself, probably they didn’t know how to handle their emotions or maybe they were too excited about hype over motherhood. May be our movies and snobbish soap operas influenced them a lot. Little had I known I too would be trapped into this mesh someday.

I never believed I was one of those kinds who would cling to my baby or blurt out tears at the drop of hat. Before being a mother myself, I did not see myself connecting well with kids. Naughty kids at supermarkets irritated me to the core. I wondered why parents did not teach them how to behave well. (I was a naughty one myself and got enough punishment for that). I hated cranky babies. I wondered how difficult it should be to make a snobbish baby shut up. I blamed their parents latently… till I had my own, who cried till her throat wouldn’t give up. Unbelievable!

And then I despised beggars who carried their crying babies around and went begging for money in cue of sympathy. I never encouraged begging and mercilessly believed that one should earn the hard way rather than beg easy way out.

A strange thing happened last evening. I was at my tailor’s shop getting my jeans altered. Right next to this shop is a small mosque where the evening prayers were being offered. A mother sat at the entrance pavement to the mosque begging for alms. Perfecting the timing and a wailing baby in hand, I could figure out she seemed to be a regular there. She tried her best to pacify him by rocking the baby in one hand while the other reached out for alms. As I waited for my job to finish, I stood there observing. The baby wouldn’t keep quiet.

Had it not been the maternal instincts in me, I wouldn’t have moved an inch by this sight. As I stood waiting, a couple of thoughts raced my empty mind. Why would any mother hurt her baby only to earn a few bucks? Though the mother looked shabby, she seemed healthy and hefty (reasonably, if I had to judge by a beggar’s standard), while the baby undernourished. May be the baby was unfed and hungry. May be it had a stomach ache. My heart went out for the yelping baby as it cried incessantly. With pitiful thoughts, I reached out for a change and handed it over to her with a hope she would buy some food for her starving baby. She accepted it monotonously.

I walked back home, my mind unrest, wondering what led to this deed of mine. I was never the one who was stirred by these actions in the past. Beggars never took my first glance, forget a second one. Then why was I moved? Was it the wailing baby? Or was it the baby’s hunger? Was it hurt to cry for driving sympathy? Was it unwell and not cared for properly? Was it borrowed from someone else for begging? Or maybe it was just sleepy. Was I assuming? Was it my own maternal instinct that led me to worry for it? I don’t know. I thought of my own baby and cringed to her. I don’t know where these emotions come from, I had never known them before, but they have taken over me now… Motherhood is such a warm, embracing feeling, but it makes you act stupid at times. Forgive me if I say this, but it does.

I sought an instant rescue from these cluttering thoughts in these Classic Dark Chocolate Brownies, adapted from the cookbook Chocolate: Food & Music. It’s a one pot recipe and takes hardly any effort apart from microwaving the chocolate and butter, now if you call that an effort! The original recipe has it made from white chocolate, but then these cakey brownies are wicked, filled with love from butter, sugar and decadence from dark chocolate and can be even better. How about some walnuts for some nutty bites? Sinful!

Classic Brownies

Adapted from Chocolate: Food & Music

INGREDIENTS

115g unsalted butter
225g best dark chocolate
115g plain flour
75g chopped walnuts
2 large eggs
115g soft brown sugar

DIRECTIONS

Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C. Lightly grease a square baking tin.

Roughly chop the dark chocolate into small pieces and microwave about 175g of it along with the said amount of butter till molten, approx. 2 mins. When melted stir together and then set aside to cool slightly. Next whisk the eggs and sugar well and beat into the chocolate mixture. Tip the flour and chopped chocolate and walnuts, then gently fold together with a spatula. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake at 180 deg C for 25 minutes or till the brownies are just down. Take out of the oven and allow to cool, cut into rectangles and serve warm.

As a child I was hooked to story books which eventually graduated to reading novels in my teens. The classics as they are called, I was often lost in thoughts on reading Jane Austen’s novels which were mostly set in a backdrop of classic, opulent English setting of the Victorian era. The emotionally powerful stories vividly spoke about English lifestyle and their culture. As a petite girl, these stories often left me mesmerized in fantasy. The stories had women carrying an unequivocal English dignity and austerity, replicating a sophisticated class that was explicitly an emblem of the elite British culture.

Food often made masquerading appearances in these novels. Like the scenes where the English women walked in through the long corridors, sweeping their gowns as they passed by, the house maids poured in steaming hot tea from vintage kettles to tea cups held by their saucers and they sat by the fireplace in their lofty countryside mansions, overseeing acres of green pastures, speaking softly, elegantly, slowly sipping away their afternoon tea along with freshly baked cakes, warm scented scones and buttery biscuits. You bet, I’ve fancied being a part of this culture.

I often loved the way life appeared over there, chic & classy, at least from the way it was depicted in these books, albeit a nostalgia for something I did not really know as a fact but only experienced through these books. More often I dreamt of taking a trip to the English countryside, sipping that afternoon cup of tea and taking luxurious bites into those warm scones and biscuits.

I wonder at times what took me so long to bake these scones. Oddly, I’ve baked classic cakes and English teacakes on couple of occasions, but never made a start with scones. Glad I headed for a start and I loved the effort that went into making these. It was an afternoon that went fruitful in baking these scones and savouring them to our satisfaction. Here's another attempt at a step by step to help you with these Chocolate Chip Scones.

Chilled butter, grated and cut into flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Butter being rubbed into the flour mixture till it resembles coarse meal, similar to bread crumbs.

Cream poured into flour, while chocolate chips being thrown in and dough brought together with light hands. Dough being rolled to form scones.

Dough being cut out into scones using a biscuit cutter. Pressing the remaining scraps back together to form another piece. Brushing the scones with cream for that golden crust.

Look at those oven baked beauties. Pass me those golden, light and creamy scones for my tea please!

Chocolate Chip Cream Scones

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
Handful of chocolate chips
1 cup heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

Pre-heat the oven to 220°C.

Place flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl and mix them well. Grate chilled butter into this mixture. Using your fingertips, rub butter into the flour mixture till it resembles coarse meal.

A few larger butter lumps are totally fine. Stir in chocolate chips. Stir in heavy cream and mix gently using a fork until the dough begins to form. Transfer the dough and all dry, floury bits to countertop and knead just until it comes together into a sticky ball.

Pat the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, gently roll it into a 3/4-inch thick circle. Dip the biscuit cutter in flour and cut out scones. With light hands, press the remaining scraps back together to form another piece (like what I did) and cutting until dough has been used up. The scones that are made from the remaining scraps will be little denser compared to the others, but they taste fine. Brush the scones with cream or milk for golden crust.

Place rounds or wedges on ungreased baking sheet and bake until scone tops are light brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Here are a few notes to get some well risen scones:

Do not knead or over mix the dough, else it will come out tough. Handle it with light hands. Lightly dipped the biscuit cutter in flour to cut scones from the dough. Don't twist the cutter, or the scones may not rise evenly. Place the scones side by side on a lined baking tray so that as they rise the sides will keep up straight and even as they cook. Finally, scones taste best served with some clotted cream and any fruit preserve. Serve them warm with tea for your evenings.

The recipe here calls for a good dose of heavy cream, and perhaps could be the reason why they are good to taste! Undoubtedly, when you do bake things made of butter and heavy cream in them, the resulting bite would only melt in your mouth.