A little bit of this and that

A little bit if this..these are called Nanaimo Bars and you can find the recipe here

And a little bit of that..a chocolate orange tart - no recipe really - just used ingredients at home all in a biscuit base.

Boozy rum and raisin cake

Yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life - I discovered Modern Bazaar on Arjun Marg :) I'm ecstatic - its covers everything from chocolate to cheese! I mean, I'm literally dancing in my chair! I've been longing to go to Flanders Dairy on Lodhi Road - but its just SO far away from here (or so it seems). Until I discovered Modern Bazaar - they keep a decent stock of Flanders cheese - I picked up some yummy smoked scamorza (which made a delicious Lebanese pizza). Yes, it is also a grocery store - it has all the regular khana peena stuff - was pleasantly surprised to find zatar and sumac as well. It is literally almost all that I was missing about Mumbai - except dear Arife, ofcourse.

This was followed by a trip to Le Marche - heaven knows why - but I think we ended up going there as part of the loitering in MGF Mall program. Le Marche has a patisserie/bakery section called Sugar & Spice. The stuff looks quite neat - doesn't taste all that great. The husband, always on an impulse purchase spree, was found caught staring at a rum and raisin pastry. No way was I going to let him buy it for.. 75 bucks a piece! I had to make it had home - making a mental note to avoid so much frosting - wanting to keep it simple. Having a basic sketch in mind, googling the recipe was a must - though surprisingly not too many turned up. Broadly, followed one I found on Allrecipes but here goes. It turned out quite lovely moist and boozy - a few hours in the fridge made it even better - dense rich rum chocolate cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup dark rum
• 2/3 cup black raisins soaked for a few hours in rum (amount of raisins can be increased)
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 Egg at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 2/3 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/3 cup cocoa Powder

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Prepare a 9 inch round baking tin.
• Boil one cup water and transfer into a mixing bowl.
• Add soaked raisins followed by melt butter and beaten egg and sugar.
• Sift flour, cocoa and soda.
• Add to wet mixture taking care not to overdo the mixing
• Bake for 35-40 mins - making sure the cake passes the clean toothpick test.

The cake looked rather plain was toying on idea of a rum ganache frosting or a simple glaze icing. As you can see from the pics, the cake had been cut and by popular demand was left as is. Such a simple recipe - what I would do differently next time would be up the quantity of fruit. I did contemplate on adding spices - then thought it would remind one, too much, of a Christmas cake! But will try it anyways.

Ok, I need to make a trip to Modern Bazaar, I'm totally in love with the place, for now!