P.S Cupcakes

Most Postgraduate colleges in India are situated in far off towns, or if they are close to a town, then auto rates are astronomical. All this leads to one thing: extremely hungry and starved for decent food MICAns. 

Pooja and I, thought of baking and selling cupcakes and cakes on campus. We sourced ingredients locally, bought chocolates from Bombay and brought all our baking goods from home. 

We call ourselves "P.S Cupcakes". From freshers' party gifts to birthday cakes and cakes just for the heck of it, we have covered it all, in a month. 

We baked these boob shaped cakes for a friend's birthday. 

This is the chocolate mud cake covered with ganache for another friend's birthday.

The brownie batter, before it went into the oven.

I leave you with my (our) new favourite recpe for chocolate cake, it is dense moist and a crowd pleaser.

Mississippi Mud Cake

Ingredients

• 125 gm dark cooking chocolate
• 100 gm butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup hot water
• 1/4 cup bourbon
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup self raising flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. In a large heatproof bowl, combine chocolate, butter, water and bourbon
3. Heat over boiling water, until the mixture is smooth
4. Allow to cool slightly, and add the flour and cocoa mixture
5. Mix in the eggs
6. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until firm to touch.
7. Use a chocolate ganache on top.

Yield: 500 gm cake
Prep Time: 00:15
Cook time: 00:40
Tags: chocolate, mud cake, egg

Not a Food Snob

I am a student, living with my parents in Bombay (ok, New Bombay). I have an allowance and all the produce at home is from the local vegetable guy. I don't have the luxury of buying organic foodstuffs because their price is just sky-high. I have to make do with the resources available to me.

In short, I guess what I am trying to say is that, I cannot afford to be a food snob. I use perfectly normal veggies and flour. So any kind of recipe which requires me to use blue-berries or any other berries, to pay for which I may have to sacrifice an arm and a leg, just gets adapted to fit what I have at home. 

So instead of golden syrup, which Nigella uses all the time. I just use honey and sugar syrup. I suspect it is something which tastes like a mixture of the two. 

No pecans? Use walnuts. 

Of course in India we don't get a million varieties of apples. Just two, red and green. So while baking anything which asks you to use smith apples, just use ones which a hard. The results will not be the same but close. 

Living on a budget also puts constraints on where I eat out. I mean I would love to frequent amazing restaurants which use A-grade ingredients, but I can't. Not all the time. So I like places which offer good food at a decent price. Though food is one thing I don't mind spending on, but Bombay can get extremely expensive and till I start earning such luxuries can wait. 

Where do you all eat? Any place you would like me to review or eat at?