Thursday, January 24, 2008

Rasbhari Cake (Cape Gooseberries Cake)


Rasbhari - the name itself conjures up plump juicy succulent images! This warm golden berry lives up to its name and I love the tart sweet taste it has....
I made my acquaintance with this delicious fruit very recently and was instantly smitten. Have you read those messages in the newspapers? - atleast the ones in Delhi have them - "Dear Girl in a blue suit,you were ahead of me in the queue for PVR tickets for "Welcome", I became yours then and there - please tell me who you are, Sunny"

Well, I did something like that too - trying to figure out what this fruit was and what I could do with it! The answers poured in from all you friendly bloggers who told me that this was the cape gooseberry - locally called "rasbhari". I hope Sunny was as lucky!

I found this lovely recipe for an upside down cake on The Cooks Cottage.....but I had too little of the fruit left to make it, so I adapted the recipe and made a cake by pureeing the berries and mixing it in with the batter. I used wheat flour instead of refined flour.

I was intrigued by the jaggery used in the original recipe and decided to keep it - that along with the berry puree gave this cake a lovely colour and crust and it tasted equally delicious!

Rasbhari Cake

Ingredients:

Cape gooseberries - 3/4 cup
Unsalted butter - 1/3 cup at room temperature
Jaggery - 2 tbsp grated.
Sugar - 1/3 cup
Wheat flour -1 cup
Rava - 1/2 cup
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Egg -1
Vanilla essence - 2 tsp

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 350F/180C, lightly grease a 6" cake tin, sprinkle the grated jaggery over the greased base and keep aside.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together till smooth and creamy.Beat the egg well.
3. Gently cook the berries in a pan with water just about covering it, when it softens and the skins start separating, take off the flame. Put the berries in cold water and peel carefully. Puree the fruit.
3. Sift the flour with the baking powder; add the vanilla essence and the pureed berries to the butter cream mixture and then mix in the flour and rava. Fold in the beaten egg with a cutting motion and combine into a dropping consistency batter.
4. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake at 180C/350F for about 20-25 minutes - check at 20 minutes to see whether a skewer poked in comes out clean.

11 comments:

FH said...

Hi Miri, Rasbhari title itself makes my mouth water!:D

Looks delicious, sweet and tangy. Perfect!:)

Sagari said...

WOWWWWW cake looks delecioussss miri

vimmi said...

Oh u get fresh rashberries there. what a lovely cake.

evolvingtastes said...

Miri, the cake looks lovely, and the recipe sounds good too.

bee said...

looks fabulous. i've been reading about this fruit on blogs, but have never tasted it.

Miri said...

Thanks Asha, Sagari,Vimmi,Evolving and Bee!

Pravs said...

wow! nice cake. Have not heard of this berry.Ingredients like wheat flour and jaggery must give this cake a special flavor.

Deeba PAB said...

WOW Miri...great to see the experimenting. It does look good!! Why aren't you on the DB list?

Miri said...

DB sounds like a dream right now - I need to cultivate the patience required to go through with all the things they come up with each month - like your beautiful meringue - I would have copped out at the first sign of disaster!!! ;)

sitinurulhawa said...

it must be delicious! we have this everywhere at kampung but never knew it can be like this hehe..

can i borrow your pic to put it in my blog?

Miri said...

Hi Sitiburulhawa - thanks for stopping by. You are welcome to use my picture as long as you give credit and link back to my blog - thank you :)