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!

All new..Part II

To introduce the product, we are back in our healthy snacking space with a milk based snack for children. French food giant Danone, recently launched a brand called 'Fundooz' (they should have called it FunDude - with a fun dude looking character). They first came out with Fundooz Yum Creamy, flavored in strawberry and vanilla. Flavored yogurt. This product is called Yum Chuski which comes in chocolate and kulfi flavors.

The problem is that I have no idea what exactly this product is. Pudding? No. Milkshake? No. Evidently, it is a launch meant for children, so clearly, it doesn't appeal to 30+ me (not even the child in me). Right from the packaging, to the product and the caricature, I found down right ugly.

Then comes actual product (that the only word that come to mind) - the texture is exactly that of milk with lots of cornflour added to it. Goop.

Danone Fundooz Yum Chuski Plus comes in easy squeeze pack which I couldn't pry open, even when I tried to neatly pull it along the 'tear here' perforated dotted line. I used a scissor to cut it neatly. And no chuski business here, I scoooped all the goop out with a desert spoon. The husband liked the product - he works in the food business so I guess he knows better - this product certainly didn't work for me. Let me try it out on my almost 2 year old.