Swiss roll with strawberries and fresh cream

Baking is therapeutic to me, no matter however tired I am I can bake even from my sleep. Now that it’s summer holidays time is perfect, with lots of free time in hand and enthusiastic  boy  at home I look for any excuse to bake. He loves baking too, maybe more than baking he likes to eat what we bake :)

Whenever we go to friends place we take the opportunity to bake something to take with us. Since it’s summer and strawberries are in abundance in supermarkets I wanted to bake something summery yesterday to take to a friends and after brainstorming for a while we settled with this swiss roll.  It’s such an easy thing to whip up and tastes really awesome. Believe it or not, it was so good that I baked another swiss roll again today and that’s all gone too !

Ingredients

Self-raising flour – 100 gm

Caster sugar – 100 gm
Butter – 100 gm

Baking powder – 1 tsp

Salt – pinch

Eggs – 2 large

Vanilla extract- 1 tsp

 To spread

Strawberry jam – 2 tbs

Double cream 250 ml

Icing sugar – 2tbs or according to your sweetness

Strawberries – 150 gm

Method

• Beat butter and sugar until mixed.
• Break eggs and beat for a minute or so.
• Add vanilla extract and beat.
• Finally add the dry ingredients and beat until mixed.
• Spread the batter evenly in a Swiss roll tin/ bakeware and bake at 160 degrees for 15 minutes.                                                                                      
  
• Invert the Swiss roll onto to baking paper and roll it tightly while it’s hot.                                                                                                                                      
• Let it cool down
• Once it’s cool, unroll the cake from baking paper.
• Spread jam evenly on top.
• Beat the cream with sugar and spread it on top of jam.
• Finally chop strawberries and sprinkle it on top of cream layer and then roll it back again.                                                                                                                                                                                                         
  
• Chill it in the fridge until it’s ready to be served !   

Nankhatai/ Indian short bread cookie

Hope you all are doing well. I haven’t disappeared anywhere, I am very much here. As much as I want to share recipes here, I really can’t fit in time for blogging. But rather than abandoning the blog forever I would try and update it whenever I can.

It’s finally summer holidays here and unlike every year we didn’t go to India this year but stayed back hoping to enjoy British summer. It’s a shame that the school holidays is in July -August, so past few years we have been missing  British summer and  in India it’s Monsoon time. So basically we never get to enjoy summer at all, by the time we come back it’s almost autumn again. So I really hope British summer won’t let us down! So far we did get few glorious days and we have been enjoying the sunshine. I hope it continues like that.

Today’s recipe is Nankhatai, believe it or not   I had serious troubles to get this cookies right. I followed many recipes but my cookies always came out flat ! It tasted nice but I didn’t get the nice dome shape. When I was almost about to give up on this cookie I remembered that one of my friend has baked this cookie before and it was perfect. So I rang her and got  the recipe. I was still apprehensive about how it’s going to come out, I watched like a hawk near the oven door and voila my cookies came out perfectly. It not only tasted nice but had the beautiful shape I wanted.

Ingredients( makes 16-18 cookies)

Plain flour – 1 cup /120 gm

Baking soda – ½ tsp

Salt – a pinch

Ghee/clarified butter – ½ cup /100 gm

Powdered sugar – 60 gm

Cardamom powder – ½ tsp

Pistachios – few ( crushed)

Method

• Sieve flour, baking soda, cardamom powder, salt and keep it aside
• Mix ghee and powdered sugar in a bowl.
• Add the dry ingredients and mix. Knead it with hands into a smooth dough.
• Let the dough rest for ½ an hour for the flavours to mingle
• Scoop out small balls from dough and make small balls ( 16-18 balls)
• Place them on a baking sheets few inches apart 
• Press the crushed pistachios gently on top of it
• Bake it an preheated oven at 180 degree C for 15- 17 minutes.