easy dessert recipes

The easiest desserts are not necessarily the no-cooking ones. In fact, one of the best dessert-making strategies is to learn how to make great sponge cakes. They’re fast and easy and can be combined with a thousand other things, which will make the final product look like you’ve been working very hard at it.

Pure vegetarians should remember a few basic substitutes. There are self-raising agents which can be used in most recipes. Besides there are tricks, like using extra oil and a raising agent like baking powder. For binding purposes, the substitutes you can use include soya milk, mashed banana, plain silken tofu, soya cream or agar agar. To get a dry, firm texture, use bread-crumbs or oats.

Get the following ingredients in place -

200 grams of condensed milk
2 3/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda (soda bicarb)
2 tsp icing sugar
1/2 cup butter melted (60gms)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
100 ml milk
100 ml soda water

Procedure –

Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar together. Put them aside. Pour the condensed milk in a bowl and add the butter. Beat them till the mixture is smooth. Add the flour, folding it into the mixture slowly. Add a little milk whenever the mixture begins to get stiff. Keep stirring the mixture (in the same direction). The more you stir, the lighter and softer the cake will be.

When all the flour has been folded in, start beating the mixture, which is known as batter. Do this for about ten minutes. Then add the soda water and stir it until the batter is smooth.

Now grease a cake-tin or a baking dish and pour the batter into it. Place this inside a pre-heated oven (300^o c), and bake the cake at 200^o c for the first few minutes. Reduce the heat to about 150^o c now, and wait for the cake to be done.

To check whether the cake is ready or not, you can pierce the center of the cake with a skewer or a knife and see if it comes away clean. If it is sticky with batter, you need to cook it a while longer.

This is a very basic recipe for a vegetarian sponge cake. It will serve about six people. Although it is nice as a plain cake, but you can do a number of things with it. You can pour hot chocolate sauce over it, and sprinkle some nuts. Or you can slice it down the middle, horizontally, and put a layer of cream and icing in-between. Or you can simply cut it into chunks and dunk it into some frozen custard, for an interesting combination.