I have always had a huge mental block against eggless cakes. In my head, cake is meant to involve eggs and butter. Anything without either of them is not a cake. Maybe it’s a muffin. Maybe it’s something else. But it’s not a cake.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that the eggless cakes sold in local bakeries in India are not actually eggless. There’s no way that I can prove that hunch. But it’s a nagging feeling that hasn’t gone away in years.
But in a country where a huge percentage of the population is vegetarian, eggless cakes and other desserts are unavoidable. I’ve been turning a blind eye to the whole situation and have resisted trying an eggless recipe. To the extent that I always found various other desserts to make if my grandmother or other vegetarian aunts were over for dinner.
But after seeing Revati’s cake a few days ago, I decided I would try it. She made it sound pretty damn awesome and took some kickass pictures to top! I had the perfect opportunity yesterday for AK’s cousins birthday. His mother-in-law is a pure vegetarian and that gave me the perfect excuse!
I won’t get into the details of the cake, because Revati explains it so well. Only change that I made was to use only all purpose white flour instead of a combination of whole wheat & all purpose flour. And I used an 8″ round pan rather than a square.
Here’s what I used for the Peanut Butter Frosting:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt, if you’re using unsalted butter
Here’s the cake…
Once the cake was cool, I set about making the frosting. First, I measured out the sugar…
Then the butter…
If you’re Indian, you already know how much we love our Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul. If not, then check these out. Moving on, I beat the butter and sugar together on high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes…
Then I measured out the peanut butter, added it to the butter-cream and beat some more, about 2 minutes…
Stirred in the vanilla and AK took a test-taste!
And voila! It was tasted, tested and approved! Now for the fun part! I plonked (just love the word) some big spoonfuls of the frosting on the cake and began spreading as I pleased!
And ended up with this…
8″ circle of chocolate-peanut yumminess!
Verdict: this was an excellent eggless cake, but given a choice I would still pick the eggy-buttery sinful version any given day!