Birthday Cake and 'Crisp n Heavenly' Shahi Tukda

Happy new year to all the foodies and friends. I hope you all had great time on 31st evening and 1st January with everyone preparing there delicacies to start the year on a sweet note. 1st Jan is always special at my home as its my hubby's Birthday and a start of the year.

This 31st we went to see the fireworks at Space Needle. It was just heavenly. The space needle looked like a spaceship with all the smoke of the fireworks in its background. If any of you visits Seattle, do visit this attraction, you sure will love it.

This time on his birthday I decided to try icing for the cake. I was searching for various egg less recipes for icing. I got many recipes of whipping cream but in the grocery store which are near to our homeI could not find a whipping cream which is heavy in fat. They say the fat content of the cream should be 35% to 40% for the icing to become creamy and thick. So I found another recipe which uses Condensed milk. This icing is easy to make but quickly hardens as it cools. So you need to be very fast in spreading and decorating your cake. Taste wise it was really good. I spent almost 5-6 hours playing with this icing. There were many new things and I learnt a great deal about them. The end product was good and all the hard work was successful..:)

Other special and the simplest sweet dish I made for this special occasion was "Shahi Tukda". Many must be aware of this dish. Its a dessert made out of bread. Some call it shahi pudding. There are various variation of this. Everyone should sure try out this dish as its going to be liked by everyone. It looks very appealing (really Shahi) and tastes very refreshing. Good one to impress guests and family.

Icing Ingredients:

Find the recipe of egg less chocolate cake here.

For Icing/Frosting:

14 oz tin of Condensed Milk

4 tbsp unsweetened Cocoa powder

1 tbsp Butter
1/2 tsp Vanilla essence (optional)
White and Brown chocolate cubes to make curls

Icing Method:

1) Heat sauce pan on medium heat and add butter, condensed milk and sieve cocoa powder in it.

2) Continue to cook for 7 to 8 minutes stirring continuously.

3) Once it becomes thick (spreadable consistency) add vanilla essence, mix well. Frosting is ready. Quickly spread it over the cake using a spatula. If you want to decorate with the design do it real quick. If the icing hardens heat it a little again.

4) To make chocolate curls, melt the chocolate in a pan. On a flat platform spread this chocolate and cool it a little in a freeze. After a while using a cheese slicer draw a straight line down the cooled chocolate platform and get curls. If they are breaking it means the chocolate needs to be heated a little so that it molds into the curls. My curls where not perfect but with practice I will sure get them more curly :).

Shahi Tukda Ingredients:

Serves 8

4 Bread loaves
About 750 ml Milk
3-4 tbsp Custard powder
3/4 Cup Sugar (adjust as per sweet taste)
1 tsp powdered Cardamom (Elaichi)
Shvings of Pistachios and Almonds ( Badaam, Pista )

Shahi Tukda Method:

1. Make equal halves of all the bread loaves. Now to make them crisp there are two options.
Either you can deep fry them in oil  or make toasts in the oven. I made toasts and they taste exactly same as the fried one. So oil conscious people should go for toasts :).

2. Heat milk in a sauce pan and add custard powder and sugar to it. (Make the custard the way we make it for fruit custard / fruit salad). Keep stirring till the milk thickens a little. Care needs to be taken as there are chances that the milk sticks to the bottom of the pan. Hence continual stirring is important. Once done adjust the sweetness and cool it in a fridge. When in fridge you should stir it every short time intervals for some time.

3. To make almond and pistachio shavings, soak them into water for a while. Take the almonds and turn them so the widest point faces parallel to the cutting implement (knife). Cut the almonds into wafer thin slices and repeat same with pistachios.

3. Keep one piece of toast in a serving dish or a bowl is preferred. Add custard milk on top of it so that the piece of toast gets covered. Now top this with almond and pistachio shavings.  Sprinkle this with Cardamom (Elaichi) powder.
Shahi Tukda is ready....:)

I am sure everyone at home will like this. For people who do not like sweets but need to be specially treated this is the perfect dessert.

Tips:

Condensed milk is sweet in taste so there is no need to add sugar in icing.

You may add some water to frosting to make it easy to work on. You may also deep spatula in cold water, this will help to spread frosting easily.

The Icing Method may not be the perfect one but it was sure a nice learning experience.