Silken Tofu and some Silky Chocolate Cake - Part II

Have you ever seen a sachertorte? Or tasted one? It's an austrian cake made with no flour and a tonne of eggs. I have neither seen one, not  tasted one, but I've ogled over pictures of flourless cakes countless times. They look incredibly soft, silky, and rich, and it seems like one would need no teeth to chew this cake for it looks that silky. Here's a droolworthy picture of a flourless cake that I found on google.

Looks incredible right? I've always dreamt of eating a really silky, soft eggless chocolate cake. I've make plenty of different eggless chocolate cakes but somehow, they all taste pretty predictable. If you've been baking for quite sometime like me, I'm sure you're bored of the vinegar vegan chocolate cake, however tasty your friends may find it. Slightly hard on the outside, soft and moist in the center, with the rich aroma of cocoa powder. BORING. I was desperate for a new eggless recipe that was silky soft but without any butter and condensed milk.

Having made some silken tofu by myself earlier this evening, I didn't know what to do with it. I had only a quarter cup of silken tofu, and found Madhuram's eggless silken tofu chocolate cake recipe. Madhuram's recipes always turn out perfectly for me, but I instinctively made a couple of modifications to this one. Here's the best chocolate cake I've ever made.

Ingredients

1 Cup All Purpose Flour

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 Cup Oil (I used sunflower)

1/2 cup Yogurt/Curd

1/4 cup pureed silken tofu

1/4 Cup water

1/2 tsp Coffee Powder

1tsp Vanilla

1tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat the oven to 160 C or 325 F for 15 minutes

2. Sift flour,  cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda. Add sugar.

3. Add the coffee powder to hot water and wait till cool. 

4. Add the oil, curd, silken tofu, coffee mixture and vanilla essence to the flour mixture. Gently mix, do not beat the living day lights out of it.

This makes a rather thin batter, but it didn't worry me. After all, it was Madhuram's recipe :)

5.Bake for about 15 minutes or till a knife inserted in comes out clean.

What a cake!! Like her recipe name suggests, I can't believe it's eggless! It was soft, moist and so very silky!

If you're in a festive mood, slather nutella on the top and garnish with flakes of semi sweet chocolate. Or devour it in its simple silky way, it's irresistable!! I just helped myself to the fourth slice, I am going to show off so much with this cake! Thank you Madhuram!!

Silken Tofu and some Silky Chocolate Cake - Part I

Silken Tofu is often touted as an extremely versatile ingredient which can be used to replace so many ingredients. Eggs, Cheeses, cream, meats....It can be hard or soft, and has a chameleon like nature, soaking up whatever flavors you choose to give it.

Sounds amazing right.

Except, if you're a pocket conscious baker like me, the price of silken tofu can be a slight put down. Unlike its firm Chinese style counterpart, Silken Tofu doesn't exactly come cheap.

And yet, it is placed on such a high pedestal by so many food bloggers that I simply had to give this a try. As soy milk comes cheap, I decided to try making my own. It was after quite a bit of googling that I found that instead of Nigari or Magnesium Chloride, the traditional Japanese coagulant which I have NO IDEA where I can find, the oh-so-cheap epsom salts can do the job.

Since I already had a packet of epsom salts on hand, I immediately started fantasizing. Vegan Rasmalai! Vegan Rasgulla! ooooh!

Okay so I didn't really make those. At least not yet. But my silken tofu did come out beautifully. Not that I can tell, never having bought silken tofu from the stores before. But the chocolate cake I baked with my homemade silken tofu was simply brilliant.

So here's what you need to make your very own silken tofu.

Yield: about 1/4th cup when pureed.

• 400 ml of plain soy milk. 
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon epsom salt
• A Sieve or a Colander
• Cheese Cloth

How you do it.

1. Bring soy milk to a boil. This will take about 5 minutes.

2. While the milk is heating and is about to boil, heat the water and add epsom salt to it. This is the coagulant mixture.

3. Add the coagulant mixture to the boiling soymilk WHEN THE MIXTURE IS STILL HOT. this is very         important.



4. Once the soy milk begins to Curdle, turn off the heat. Let the curdling take place, leave the milk undisturbed for about thirty minutes.





5. Place the Sieve on a bowl, and place the cheesecloth on the sieve. Pour the curd and the whey into the cheesecloth. Wrap the ends of the cheese cloth over the curds.

6. Place some weight on top of the cheesecloth. I used another vessel with flour inside it for the weight. Most websites recommend leaving the curds under the weight for about an hour, but I left mine for two hours.


7. Your Silken Tofu is now ready to be used :)


8. If you want to store it, store it in a vessel with water in a refrigerator and change the water everyday.

Ofcourse, my tofu didn't take any particular shape. If you want your tofu in blocks, use a tofu box.












In Part II- the best, silkiest chocolate cake I have ever baked!!

My love for food blogs and my failures as a baker.

I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to baking, I've been a pretty passionate baker for more than a year now. The first time I put my heart and soul into baking a chocolate cake was for this friend's birthday back when I was in school. The result was fantastic, I earned the reputation of being a good baker over night. woo hoo!!

I guess different people are motivated by different things when it comes to baking. I mean, cooking is an art. You throw your herbs in, you hum a little tune, you modify things a little, and even if your dish doesn't quite turn out right, you alter this, you add that, and you have a fairly acceptable meal to present to your disgruntled family.
Baking is so not like that.
Once it's gone in the oven, it's gone.
Sometimes the batter tastes good, but the cake isn't right.
Sometimes the batter tastes not so great, but the cake is oh-my-god.
Sometimes the batter sucks. You shiver with fear, hoping it turns out like it did above.
and, *my world* sometimes, both the batter and the cake taste absolutely unbearable.

I'm writing this blog post because the smell of my most recent cupcake debacle still makes me feel slighty nauseated. *shudder*

I should probably mention here that I can't bake with eggs at home. My tam bram parents went no-egg sometime back, and honestly, I think I can do fine without that awful smell of raw eggs. It was when I googled for other options that I discovered the vast world of food blogs. Oh what a beautiful world!!

But it was when I stumbled into Sunita Bhuyan's website that I realised the magnitude of the word food blog. Oh my. That food photography!!! I'd go visit various recipes that I knew I was never going to try just to ogle at the pictures. All I wanted at that time was a glorious food blog of my own, with lots of tantalizing pictures and a pretty picture of myself at the top. *sigh*

And then there's Madhuram.  What a website! Her Website is pretty much the bible for the eggless baking newbie. What an EXHAUSTIVE collection of recipes! It was her website that opened me up to the whole food-blogosphere. Oh, such domestic goddesses, these food bloggers! They come up with one inventive recipe after another, and then take those sexy pictures, and we're left helplessly staring with desperate longing.

And there are people like me. Wannabe-kitchen-goddesses, who try and fail again and again to invent a perfect healthy, yet tasty cake recipe that the real kitchen goddesses may someday try out and say, "Oh, that was wonderful! Thank you so much!". Haha. Yes, I'm quite a dreamer.

Okay, it's not like I don't have the occasional success. How ever much I maybe stripping myself of my self respect with this post.

But my constant bold experiments have left me with enough disaters to write a book about, So Here's, in a nutshell, what I learnt from my failures this far.

1. DO NOT TRY TO BE OVERLY HEALTHY. I mean, it's a cake for crying out loud. WWF cakes made with pilsbury aata can earn you a bad reputation with your friends. Try it on your unsuspecting brother if you must.

2.DO NOT TRY AND REPLACE ALL THE SUGAR WITH DATE SYRUP AND EXPECT NO ONE TO NOTICE. I've had some of my worst disasters with date syrup, trying to create that magic healthy recipe. But to be fair, date syrup is AMAZING. Check out the chocolate chip cookie recipe with date syrup in this website. I baked them without eggs. Beautiful :)

3.NEVER MIX MANGO AND CHOCOLATE :( Those cupcakes in the kitchen I mentioned? They look incredible. And they're so soft and moist. And almost fat free. But smell them and you're going to pass out. NEVER  mix mango and chocolate.

So that's it for this post. I doubt anyone is ever going to read this. But if you're a food blogger and you've read this loooong post till the very end, and if you do experiment senselessly like me, please do make sure your food doesn't go into the bin. After all, there is a famine in Somalia and there's millions of hungry people out there :(.

Alright, Ciao!