Mother's Recipe #2

Finger Millet + Fresh Fruit Cake

This recipe is carried forward from my great grandmother, to my mother and now to me. This cake is not really a fancy dish, but a humble, no fuss, eggless sweet dish, made from the less used flours in the house, combined with seasonal fruits to add a much required freshness. The egg is replaced by yogurt. Hence the cake has a nice balance of sweet and tangy flavours. Cakes in those days were generally steamed in a double boiler as opposed to baking in ovens. Perhaps this method keeps the cake more moist.

My mother and my great grandmother used to make it with semolina + jowar/ sorghum flour with yogurt and fresh mango. I decided to add my own touch by using ragi/finger millet flour, which is rich in iron. I have used fresh strawberries for the “Valentine’s day” context ;)

Ingredients -

• Ragi/ finger millet flour - 1 and 1/2 cups
• Multipurpose flour/ Maida or Semolina - ½ cup
• Fresh fruit (strawberries) - 1/2 cup finely chopped fruit + 1 cup roughly chopped fruit for mashing into the batter.
• Butter - 1/3rd slab
• Baking powder and Soda Bicarb - 1 teaspoon each
• Sugar - ½ cup
• Jaggery - ½ cup
• Yogurt - 2 tablespoons
• Milk - ¼ litre
• Ghee - for greasing the baking tray
• Almonds/walnuts - about 6 Nos, if you like nuts.
• Fresh Cream - just a dollop.

Freestyle Method -

• Take one bowl for the dry ingredients. Sieve all the flours. Add powdered sugar and powdered jaggery into the bowl. Add baking powder and soda bicarb.
• Into another bowl - (the wet bowl) - add butter, roughly chopped strawberries and yogurt. Mix well.
• Add the dry mix to the wet mix . Stir firmly with a spatula adding milk as required. Then blend with a hand mixer till a dosa-batter consistency is achieved.
• Add finely chopped fruit and nuts towards the end. No mixing after this process.
• Grease the baking tray with a few drops of ghee. Pour the magical potion into the tray. With ragi flour, the batter gets a nice light brown “chocolatey” colour, without the cocoa! That's a victory! The boys think it's chocolate cake ;) I understood the whole point of using the less used flours in such dishes. No one can pinpoint our underlying healthy intentions!
• Preheat the oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees.
• Bake the cake for 40 minutes.
• Take the toothpick test to see if you need another 5 minutes of baking or not!

Finally, I coated the cake with some fresh cream and thinly sliced strawberries to give a chic makeover to this rustic recipe from the villages of the western coast of India, where my great grandmother used to live.

My mother was a great cook and a quick learner, who became the favourite student of my great grandmother. I have become the student now! Everyone says, my personality is a combination of my mother's and my great grandmother's.  Thus these recipes have found a way of reaching out again, this time through me!

#yearofthemillet #milletcake 

:: Finger Millet + Fresh Fruit Cake::