Cherry Cake

It has been ages since I baked cakes (Ages means couple of months for me!!) The last time I used my oven I heard some hissing sound followed by a spark and then silence. Ever since that day my oven never worked. Have been lazy to give it for service too!! So now its laying around in one corner of our home. Last weekend my husband got a craving to eat home made tea cake.(Ya men do get cravings, but they never use that word. Instead they say I feel like eating the tea cake you used to make, honey!!) Aaaahhhhhh then I too feel the same. But what to do now?? How to bake?? So he said lets try the gold old pressure cooker method.. And quite obviously as I had never tried that method I was very apprehensive about it. Though he had seen his mother make plain simple cakes in a cooker without any hassles, he never knew the technicalities. So we rang her up and checked out the methodology..

That morning while shopping for grocery, we also bought a pack of processed cherries to be put in the cake. That again was my hubbys mastermind - to make a Cherry Cake!! And trust me it was good. Except for the cherries, the recipe remains as simple as a normal tea cake.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups - Flour / Maida
• 1/2 level tsp - Baking powder
• 1 cup - unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 cup - powdered sugar
• 3 - Eggs
• 1 tsp - Vanilla extract
• 100 gms - Processed & candied cherries, chopped
• 2 tbsp - Warm milk

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease the tray. As I used the pressure cooker preheating was not required.
• Sift together flour and baking powder twice and keep aside
• Dust the chopped cherries in some flour and keep aside. This helps the cherries to be afloat. Otherwise it wud all sink onto the base of the cake
• Beat the butter until creamy. Add sugar and continue to beat till sugar dissolves
• Add egg one at a time and mix gently.
• Add vanilla extract and mix.
• Take flour in small quantities and slowly fold into the butter sugar mixture
• Add the cherries and mix gently
• Add some warm milk if the batter is too thick, mix well till small bubbles form
• Pour the batter in to the greased baking tray/cooker and bake for 30 minutes or till done. To check if done insert a knife and see. If the knife comes out clean the cake is done. (Note: If at all anyone is wanting to cook in a pressure cooker like I did, please follow few things. Firstly, use a 5 ltr cooker. Secondly, cook it on very low flame. You may open and check whether its done or not in between too. Thirdly a cake of this size will require 35-40 minutes)