Vanilla Cake

Vanilla Cake - Today i am going to show you how i made my made my first baked vanilla cake and how I did icing on vanilla Cake.

 

 

Ingredients:

1. All purpose flour (or Maida)- 1 and 1/2 cups
2. Eggs - 2
3. Butter - 1/2 cup
4. Sugar - 1 cup
5. Milk - 1/2 cup
6. Baking powder - 1 and 1/2 tsp
7. Vanilla Extract - 2 tsps
8. Oil - 1/2 cup

For Eggless version: 
Eggs help the cake batter to raise and gives fluffiness once baked. Replace eggs with 
Buttermilk - 1 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

Procedure:
1. In one bowl beat eggs, add vanilla extract to it. For eggless cake, mix buttermilk, salt and soda and then add vanilla extract to it.
2. In other bowl whisk butter and sugar properly.
3. In another bowl sieve flour, add baking powder and sift the flour carefully into bowl of sugar and butter mix and whisk properly. Meanwhile add egg mix and milk to this.
4. If you have an electric whisk then you can add all the above ingredients at a time and can whisk easily.
5. Grease a pan or steel bowl of desired shape square, rectangular or probably a round pan particularly with a flat bottom using oil or butter.
6. Pan of any shape particularly flat bottomed ensures even baking of the cake.
7. After greasing the pan you can apply a parchment paper or wax paper on it and then pour the above cake batter into the pan. Using such paper is optional. But greasing is mandatory.
8. Instead of using paper, it is preffered to sprinkle some flour on the greased tin and pat along sides and bottom and remove the excess flour which oozes out after sticking to the greased pan.

Using Oven:
9. Once you pour in the cake batter into the pan, place it in the oven which is pre-heated to 350 degrees F(175 degrees C) and then bake for about 30 to 40 minutes.
10. Cake is done when you insert a knife or toothpick in the cake and it comes out clean.
11. Take out the pan and allow it to cool for 1 hour approximately. After cooling cut the cake from along the sides of the pan. Then you can refrigerate or cut and serve. Plain vanilla cake is ready to eat.

Using Pressure Cooker:
12. In the absence of oven you can bake the cake in normal pressure cooker as well.
13. For this, pour water upto 1 inch high in a pressure cooker which is of 3 litre and above capacity.
14. Now place a stand in the water and then place our pan with cake batter on this stand.
15. Close the cooker with lid. 
16. Do not put whistle.
17. Steam for 30 minutes on a medium flame.
18. After 30 minutes, open lid and allow steam to escape.
19. Now heat without lid for another 5 minutes. Take out, cool, cut and serve.

For Frosting/Icing:

Different types of icing can be done like royal icing, cream cheese icing, butter icing etc. I used butter icing.

Butter Icing Ingredients:
1. Powdered Sugar - 1 cup (Grind sugar in mixie and you get the powdered sugar :) )
2. Unsalted Butter - 1/4 cup
3. Milk - 2 tsps
4. Food Colour - 2 tsps (I used green colour)
5. Strawberries - Optional

Procedure:
1. Whisk powdered sugar and butter. Meanwhile add milk for desired consistency. And thus Icing is ready.
2. Take 1/3rd of the prepared icing and add green food colour to it.
3. Ice the whole cake on all of its sides with the prepared white icing using a spatula and shape the sides and top evenly.
4. Load green icing in piping bag, or plastic paper cone and start decorating the cake in different designs and write some message on the cake as well :). Use strawberries for garnishing.
5. Many tools like Measurement spoon and cup sets, cake moulds (pans) in different shapes and sizes, turn tables, spatulas, cake cutters, piping bags, nozzles for drawing different shapes on the cake etc are available in markets. Enjoy Baking I Do Love It :).