Orange Layer Cake with Orange Bavarian Cream for Diwali

Diwali fireworks are bursting around us as I type. We have all been sitting in the balcony with the little one who is enjoying the pretty starbursts with his great-grandmother, my Ammama. Although he does not like the noise too much and is now sitting on her lap with his fingers in his ears, staring at the sky! Ammama looks so happy, she has come to my parents home here in Coimbatore all the way from her beloved farm in Kerala, just to be with our little monkey. This moment is such a blessing.
  

Hope my Indian friends are having a wonderful Diwali filled with love and laughter and great food of course! 

Diwali is a Hindu religious festival celebrating the return of Rama and Sita after years of exile and is spread over five days. It is great that I was able to be in India during this time.You just cannot help getting caught up in the excitement. I enjoy the fireworks, beautifully bedecked women in their finest saris, jewelry and with jasmine in their hair, but most of all - sweets! It just would not be Diwali without the mandatory boxes of ghee and cardamom scented sweets that would arrive from friends. 

Cake is not typical to Diwali but I was inspired to make this cake yesterday- layers of soft, airy sponge with a touch of citrus zest and just sweet enough orange Bavarian cream with segments of fresh orange that burst as you bite them-citrus fireworks in your mouth!

The sponge cake is made with a lot of eggs but no butter. It is quite dry and slightly eggy-smelling on its own. But it absorbed the simple syrup I made with orange juice and sugar like a...well, like a sponge and becomes moist and tender with a filling and frosting. So for a layer cake, do not look past this simple sponge cake which is also quite easy to make and very easy to remember. If you are looking for a plain tea cake to eat on it's own, check out these instead. I was itching to add a dash of cardamom powder which  think would have been perfect with the orange but my kid brother (no longer a kid really) does not like cardamom too much so I controlled myself. Besides Diwali brings about a cardamom overdose anyway!Which ever way you try it -with or without the cardamom and for whatever reason you find to bake it, you will love it! Even if your Bavarian Cream does not set like me -I don't know why :( and is a little runny, it still tastes really, really good! 

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whipped cream cake- soft airy and cloud-like!

I am totally enjoying having my mom here. Whenever I am with her I hardly even enter the kitchen and happily relax and enjoy her delicious cooking. Everything -even things that I make all the time like dal and even coffee tastes better when mom makes it for me. Mothers have some extra special kaipunyam or magic touch, don't you think?
But I am always game to make the dessert so when she said she felt like eating cake, I happily obliged with this treasure from Rose Levy Beranbaum who is considered the Queen of cakes. This cake is apparently one of her most popular and with good reason. It is tender, airy and cloud-like. Perfect as a simple tea cake or as a layer cake underneath oodles of frosting and it is my current and absolute favourite- a definite must try for all cake lovers! 

Here is a close up shot so you can see how tender it is! Similar to an angel food cake in texture but minus all those eggs and so much easier to make! 

The main fat comes from heavy whipping cream and not butter. Yes you read that right, this unusual cake contains no butter, instead using cream. I am dying to buy a carton of cream and make this again with some simple whipped cream frosting or my favourite chocolate nutella ganache frosting with the leftover cream, or maybe slathered in some dulce de leche , or with some juicy fruit? Mmmm the possibilities! Since we practically inhaled this cake though, you can guess that it's pretty awesome on its own! 

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nutella ganache frosting roses & ruffles cake by you and me!

I have been having a bit of a blogging block lately. I have been cooking and baking and taking loads of pics with my brand new camera (!), and enjoying this wonderful summer bounty of  luscious berries and sultry peaches and enjoying trips to county fairs and bbq's, but just haven't been able to post anything for some reason or the other. 

But there is something I have been looking forward to for a long time, my mom will be here in two days! I am just waiting for her to arrive and hopefully do so much more this time than at her last winter visit. Looking forward to all the cooking we will be doing together too, and all that I will learn and have to share with you! And most of all, hand over the little monkey to the long awaiting hands of his grandmother :)
Then receiving this talented women blogger award by Femina Magazine what just the shot of motivation that I needed and I knew I had to post this cake that I have been meaning to for weeks and weeks. Since my birthday is long gone, this is the perfect occasion to post it!

 

I was so excited about baking my own fancy birthday cake with layers! and frosting! and filling! that I asked you for suggestions and what glorious ideas you all came up with! Each one was more tempting than the other. So instead of baking some 50 different cakes like I soo wanted to, I decided to control myself and combine all my favourite suggestions into one dreamy cake which was a true collaboration of ideas between me and you, and some of my favourite bloggers too!


Special thank you to those whose suggestions I just had to incorporate:


Cool Lassie: who suggested Red Velvet Cake, 
Aparna who suggested Martha Stewart's Ruffle Cake, 
Vimitha Anand and Divya Kudua who both know me soo well and said that birthday cakes are meant to be chocolate! 
Jardeeling who suggested an intriguing vertical layer cake! 

Soma who suggested a chocolate cake with a strong coffee flavor (aaahh!my own idea of Heaven! )

I chose these not because the other suggestions weren't awesome as well, but because I ( the birthday girl afterall) had a hankering for nutella and needed to narrow it down to the ones that would complement and not overpower the nutella. I tried making a ganache frosting with nutella and chocolate and it was  totally awesome! It is now my favourite frosting, the one of my dreams and just soo easy to whip up with just 3 ingredients: Cream, Chocolate and Bliss Nutella!

And now finally on to the recipe that I am truly sorry for having kept from you for so long!

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Chocolate Oreo Cake with Quick Fluffy frosting- Happy Birthday Ria!

"Birthdays are Nature's way of telling us to eat cake ;) Here's one filled with wishes for you Ria! Hope the year ahead is as awesome as you are!"

I am always looking for an excuse bake cakes. And what could be a better reason to bake a moist chocolate cake and slather it with fluffy clouds of marshmallow like 7 minute frosting ( which takes about 10 mins to make by the way) and crumbled Oreos than a galpal's special day! 

Yesterday was my friend and awesome blogger Ria's birthday and of course I immediately wanted to bake her a cake. Even though she lives at the other end of the country and would only get to see the cake, while I get to eat it, on her behalf of course :P  I then proceeded to happily spend all day looking for the perfect cake recipe and thinking of a pretty pink girly cake. As I called to wish her I asked her if she had any preferences, the birthday girl revealed that she would like chocolate. We got to talking about one of our favourite cakes to bake, which I know as my sis-in-law's easy but perfect chocolate cake, and which Ria knows as the Hershey's Perfect cake. 


The interesting thing about this cake is that it is made with oil instead of butter. Now there are lots of arguments about butter being the vital ingredient in cake and oil is like a dirty word when it comes to baking.  I agree that butter imparts a lot of flavor, but the thing about oil based cakes is that apart from being easier to make without all that creaming of the butter etc., they are incredibly moist and stay moist longer too. I have dabbled quite a bit with butter-less cakes since this discovery. 

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