Here I go again, publishing a ‘not so traditional’ recipe for Holi. A couple of years back, we had published a recipe for colourful cookies for Holi. Anindya insists on maintaining a publishing calendar, which helps in planning recipes for the season or for an upcoming festival. Contrary to popular belief, I am quite the lazy bone in the family. Doesn’t mean that I sit around doing nothing. No, I do not have that luxury. However, in layman terms, I am chilled out. I have always managed to do things at the last moment without panicking. It takes real effort to wind me up and push me to do things against my wish. Now you know Anindya’s power? It’s un****ingbelievable!! So, this year, for Holi, I decided to do both a traditional recipe as well as an uncoventional colourful recipe.
Red Cake Pops get published in Indulge
About a month back, Sharmishtha from Indulge, the lifestyle supplement of The New Indian Express, requested us for two holi recipes, which were not run of the mill and had to look colourful. Thanks to her, we have two recipes for holi ready with us much before Holi. Cake pops with beetroot powder and ALu torki chaat. The cake pops were an accident. Well, not really an accident. I always make cake pops, whenever there is any leftover cake which no one wants to eat. This time, I was blessed to have some beetroot powder in my pantry from Bombay Brasserie. I was thinking of ways of using the beetroot powder. Other than using it in hummus or soup, I wanted something different.
The rare peaceful afternoon and the red cake pops are made
As I indulged myself in making the cake pops using lots of chocolate and butter, my mind wandered into how I could make these cake pops interesting and something different. It was in the afternoon. The kids were asleep and Anindya was working. There was absolute peace and quiet at home- a rarity. It was one of those moments when you really enjoy being with yourself, doing something you absolutely treasure. The fridge had some leftover vanilla cake and some chocolate cake too. I was sure, I wanted a chocolaty cake pop. I roughly chopped some dark chocolate (I always have dark, milk and white chocolate in my kitchen for times like these) and then melted them with a little bit of butter. The best part is the aroma of butter and chocolate when they come together, fill up all the senses with the most beautiful thoughts. Crumbled the dry cakes in a bowl and then poured the glistening liquid chocolate into the cake crumbles. I did not want to add any more chocolate chips or anything else to this. Mixed it all up and turned it into a nice and smooth dough.
Suddenly I heard Brishti crying. Quickly washed my hands and ran to the bedroom before she could wake up. Mala, the nanny was on leave that day. All I had to do was rock the car seat. Brishti has outgrown her car seat but she loves to snuggle into her red car seat and take her afternoon siesta. Every now and then, someone has to rock her a bit and this can easily continue for a couple of hours, provided no one rings the door bell. The mighty door bell always wakes her up. After rocking the car seat for a few minutes, Brishti was back in her sleep and I was back to the dining table, rolling out my cake pops. Once all the cakes pops were rolled into small lemon sized balls (a little smaller than that may be), I went back into the kitchen and opened by baking cupboard, went through the ingredients and the packet of beetroot powder was on the top shelf. I looked at it for sometime. Opened the packed and smelled it. The taste was a blend of sour, sweet and earthy. The box of cocoa powder was right there, looking at me, asking me to pick it up. But my heart wanted something different. The beetroot powder was screaming out to me. I had to go for it.
I cannot tell you, how beautiful and gorgeous it looked when I started rolling the cake pops over a plate full of beetroot powder. The colour stood out and it was so vibrant. I took a few pictures with my oneplus instantly and posted them on facebook. I couldn’t hold myself from sharing the pictures. Anindya saw the post and called me. He said this would be the perfect recipe for holi and he would like to shoot them.
Hence, came the cake pops as a Holi recipe and we did a proper shoot the next morning. The cake pops with beetroot powder vanished within no time.
Two years back we made Colourful cookies for Tugga’s tiffin – https://pikturenama.com/colourful-cookies-and-especial-tiffin-for-the-son/
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Cake pops using beetroot powder
Ingredients
- 1/2 kg vanilla cake see notes
- 1/2 cup Butter
- 100 gms dark chocolate
- 1/2 cup beetroot powder see notes
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl, crumble the cake that you have using your fingers or two forks. In a microwaveable bowl, take the dark chocolate chopped into small pieces. Add two tbsp of butter to it. Then on a medium power, microwave for 30 to 40 seconds, stopping every 20 seconds to check and give a stir. Basically you will have to melt the chocolate without the chocolate seizing in the bowl. It might take a minute or so. It depends on the microwave power.
- In case you do not have a microwave, then take a heavy bottomed pan and toss the ingredients in the pan. Over very low flame stir and melt. Ideally it should be done on a double boiler but we are not going to need tempered chocolate here.
- Once the chocolate has melted, add it to the cake crumbs. Using a fork, mix thoroughly and then use your hands to knead the mix into a nice smooth dough. If you feel that it is not coming together, add more butter as required.
- Once the dough comes together, shape them into small balls and keep aside.
- In a bowl, take the beetroot powder and then take the balls one by and one and coat them with beetroot powder.
- You can serve them immediately. In case you want to serve later, then it is best to store the cake pops in the refrigerator without the beetroot powder and dust with beetroot powder just before serving.
Notes
- In this recipe, I have written only vanilla cake. You can use any leftover cake if you want or use a brownie cake mix box to bake a cake, cool it down and then crumble. You can use a mix of two cakes and it need not be exactly 1/2 kg. If you have more quantity, just increase the amount of butter to make sure that the cake crumbs can be brought together into a dough. In case you don't like too much chocolate, you can also make it using extra butter and some buttercream.
- In case you do not have beetroot powder, dust the cake pops with a blend of cocoa powder and castor sugar or even coffee powder with castor sugar. You can even dip the cake pops in molten chocolate, dark milk or white, upto you.