Ghee Cake

Ghee cake is a very soft n moist cake where we use clarified butter or ghee in place of butter. This is very famous in my home town Calicut and you get this almost in all bakeries. I am however not a big fan of this as it contains lot of eggs and has a distinct eggy flavour. But back home, most of my relatives are a dry hard fan of this. Neha is spending few days of her vacation with her aunt and its a perfect time for me to try out some egg based cakes 🙂 She doesn’t like me trying out any egg based cakes. So, when me and hubby decided to visit my native place for the weekend, I decided to try this cake for my relatives. Some of my niece and nephew doesn’t like any crunchy bites or nuts in cakes and one of my little niece had strictly instructed me to bring plain cakes for her when I meet her next. So, I have avoided adding any nuts in the cake. But you may very well add finely chopped nuts of your choice. I have used a 240 ml cup.

Ingredients:

• All purpose flour 200 gm
• Salt a pinch
• Baking powder 1 tsp
• Baking soda 1/4 tsp
• Sugar 125 gm
• Vanilla extract 1 tsp
• Egg 1
• Thick curd 60 ml (1/4 cup)
• Milk 80 ml (1/3 cup)
• Ghee 120 ml (1/2 cup)

Method:

• Preheat the oven at 150-160 degree Celsius for atleast 10 minutes.
• Grease an eight inch round cake tin with butter and dust it with flour. Tap out the excess flour.
• Sieve the flour, salt and rising agents 3-4 times.
• Powder the sugar and place it in a bowl. Crack an egg into this and add a quarter cup of fresh thick curd to it.
• Add ghee (clarified butter) to the sugar mixture and whisk it till the mixture becomes creamy. You can use electric beater or a whisk.
• Add vanilla extract and whisk again.
• Slowly add the flour in 2-3 batches and alternate it with one third cup of milk. Fold it gently. Do not mix vigorously.
• Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and tap it on the counter to remove air bubbles if any.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or till a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If the top appears very dull, increase the temperature to 170-180 and bake for 2-3 minutes.
• Take the tin out of the oven and allow the cake to cool in the tin for around 10 minutes.
• Transfer the cake gently onto a wire rack and cool it at room temperature. (Not under a fan)
• Cut and serve it along with tea or coffee.

Notes:

• You can add around a teaspoon of fine cardamom powder for a better flavour.
• You can sprinkle some finely chopped almonds or pistachios or cashew nuts on top.
• Most of the recipes that I read had 3-4 eggs for around 2 cups of flour, I have used one egg and used quarter cup curd. You may try omitting the egg and instead use half a cup of fresh curd. I shall surely try n update the blog.
• Make sure to use ghee and egg and all other ingredients at room temperature. I feel that you need to increase the amount of ghee for a more melt in the mouth kind of texture.
• You can omit the curd and use 2-3 eggs and separate the yolk and white. Cream the yolks with the sugar and finally fold in stiffly beaten egg whites into the batter. This will give you the real melt in mouth ghee cake.