Beginners Cake and Icing

Here I'm, who just started to cook (may b I should say just entered kitchen :D) and all my friends knew exactly how good my cooking skills are... They dint pity (my marriage was nearing) me but my husband who s also my friend for more than 5 years ... But I considered myself lucky for having him (especially for his excellent cooking :)).. U see God always makes correct decisions.

So its only been few months since I started to cook. At this point I should definitely say both my Mom and Mom-InLaw are excellent cook. But of course I learned cooking from Mom-IL..an amazing teacher especially for making me good at cooking.. making it my hobby.. my passion....

One day I just bump into this idea of y cant I try baking!! I got this recipe from my sister...

Believe me this is a very simple cake recipe and also very much recommended for beginners..!!

Ingredients:

Plain flour / Maidha - 2 cups
Powdered / icing sugar - 1 and a 1/2 cup
Egg - 2
Plain butter (softened at room temperature) - 3/4 cup
Baking soda - 1 tsp
Milk - 1 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Cake mixture Preparation:

• Beat the egg well until it becomes lighter and looks like double the original quantity
• In a separate bowl mix powdered sugar and butter till the mixture combines well and becomes light and fluffy
• Add beaten egg to sugar+butter mixture, blend the ingredients thoroughly
• In a separate bowl prepare a mixture of maidha and baking powder, sieve them to avoid any lumps in the flour
• Gradually add this maidha flour to the afore prepared mixture of butter+egg+sugar
• During this process the cake mixture will become dense so milk can be added gradually to make it smooth
• Beat the mixture till the ingredients combine well and forms soft ribbon consistency..
• Finally add vanilla essence and blend again

Cake Pan Preparation:

• Grease the cake tin with butter and dust it by sprinkling maidha over greased surface evenly

Baking:

• Pour the cake mixture into greased cake tin
• Pre heat conventional oven to 180' (160' fan forced)
• Bake for 45 mins- 1 hr checking in between with skewer inserted is removed dry with no clinging batter
• Let the baked cake come to room temperature before slicing and icing it

Note to prepare cake without EGG:

• Instead of egg add additional 1/2 cup of butter to the cake mixture

And we are not done yet..!!. only the cake is ready, here comes our time for decorating and presenting cake on dining !!!

Icing Ingredients:

Egg white - 2
Powdered sugar - 3 to 4 cups
softened butter - 1 cup
vanilla essence - 1 tsp

• Gradually add powdered sugar to the egg white
• Once creamy mixture is formed add butter and bring the mixture to icing consistency which is good both for spreading and decorating on the cake
• Add vanilla essence finally and beat well

Best way to begin decorating the cake is using a small sized icing nozzle.. to check out the icing mixture consistency you prepared, fill small quantity of icing in the cone (ready made cones available in shops) with a regular writing nozzle. Use ur 2 fingers and let the icing from one finger to other.. move ur fingers away and the icing should not break...

Icing gel or liquid colors can be added to your icing...


Enjoy Vanilla cake and icing....

After my continuous baking experiments... this was my recent cake (my fav  chocolate flavour) baked and decorated...