Mahua flower cake (Madhuca longifolia)

• Servings:
• Preparation time: 20 minutes.
• Baking time: 40-45 minutes.
• Total time: 65 minutes.

Over the years, I found that exploring rather experimenting cooking with ingredients of Indian ethnic flavours provides a greater satisfaction and motivation. Here I experimented with ‘Mahua’. Mahua being naturally sweet and delicious worked beautifully in cake.

Day before yesterday the delicious aroma enveloped not only my kitchen, but entire house.

Today it is marriage anniversary of my younger son. Mahua is fast growing tree, I wish my sweet daughter in law and loving son that their love and happiness grows faster like this tree.

Today I upload the ethnic flavour ‘Mahua cake’

Ingredients:

• Maida: 200 gm.
• Mahua flower: 50 gm.
• Sugar: 100 gm.
• Refined oil/ghee: 100 gm.
• Ghee: 1 teaspoon
• Milk: 100 ml.
• Baking soda: 1 teaspoon
• Baking powder: 1 teaspoon
• Salt: 1 pinch

Preparation:

1. Rinse the mahua flower; grind coarsely along with 50 ml of milk. Keep aside.
2. Sieve Maida and baking soda, baking powder and salt together (sieve 3-4 times) to make it airy. Keep aside.
3. Grind sugar and make powder. Keep aside.
4. Take a baking tray, put half teaspoon of ghee, and apply ghee all around the container from inside.
5. Sprinkle one teaspoon of Maida over it. Discard extra Maida. Keep aside.
6. Take a big mixing bowl, put sugar and mahua flower paste.
7. Mix it well with the help of hand blender/food processor. (About 4-5 minutes).
8. Add sieved mixture of Maida, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
9. Mix well, add milk and make a smooth batter, add refined oil and mix well, now cake batter is ready.

Method:

1. Choose the size of baking tray such that when batter is put into it, it gets half filled only, as after baking its volume gets nearly doubled.
2. Now bake it into preheated OTG at 160 degree centigrade for about 35-40 minutes.
3. Bake until toothpick inserted near the centre of the cake comes out clean, if it sticks, bake further few minutes. Let it cool.
4. Yum-yum-yummy cake is ready to serve.

Note:

1. You can bake it simply into pre heated pressure cooker on minimum flame.
2. Let it cool for some time and transfer into serving plate.

Mahua flower cake (Madhuca longifolia) by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.