Café Cariappa inspired Tosca cake

Hidden within the heart of the charming burg of Kodaikanal (Kodi) is a chic coffee house called Café Cariappa. And what a pleasant little spot it is. It is, quite literally, a spot. All of a hundred and fifty square feet in size and situated on the first floor of a rather inconspicuous building, this gourmet café is easy to miss. Owner and great conversationalist, Kishore brews his own coffee that he grows in his coffee plantation nestled in the hills of Kodi.

Antiques and collectibles are scattered on the wooden walls and eaves. In a nook under the front counter, there are shelves with delicate tea cups, saucers and Café Cariappa coffee packed in brown paper bags. And sitting shyly in simple display cases on the front counter are beautiful, rustic looking baked goods, all made in-house.

When we arrived there around 4 pm, we found ourselves cosily tucked into a corner on four small chairs and a tiny table. The next thing we knew we were diving into large sized portions of carrot cake and a Swedish Tosca cake. That was quickly followed by a serving of crepes with home grown honey. As Kishore explained, the carrot cake, a hand-me-down hit recipe, had the tiniest bit of carrot and a whole lot of everything else. But it was the delectable Swedish Tosca cake that I couldn’t stop eating (and later, thinking about). Kishore had got the recipe from his Swedish friend and substituted almond flakes that are traditionally used for the top crispy layer, with cashews. It is a wonderful, nutty classic cake that paired perfectly with my cup of Americano.

If you are in Kodi, you couldn’t ask for a more intimate place to spend an afternoon, surrounded by wooden floors and counters and touches of retro, reading or lounging peacefully in this home away from home.

I returned home with a plan to find out more about the Tosca cake and try a recipe. This quintessential Scandinavian cake is basically a simple sponge topped with a mushy caramel almond topping that seeps into the cake and hardens on top to a crunchy candy. Below is the recipe I tried. Thank you Café Cariappa for introducing me to this cake, it may be the best cake I’ve ever eaten.

Ingredients:

For the Sponge:

1. 150g unsalted butter, melted
2. 225g caster sugar
3. 3 large eggs
4. 2 tsp vanilla extract
5. 225g plain flour
6. 1.5tsp baking powder
7. 60ml milk

 For the Topping:

1. 100g unsalted butter
2. 100g caster sugar
3. 60ml cream
4. 2tbs flour
5. 120g flaked almonds

 Method:

1. Cream the sugar, vanilla and eggs until pale and frothy
2. Gradually, sift in the flour and baking powder together and mix
3. Mix in the milk and butter
4. Bake this batter in a well greased tin (I recommend a 9 inch tin) at 180 degrees C
5. While the cake is baking, prepare the topping. Put all the ingredients except the almonds into a small saucepan and heat gently, stirring, until the butter and sugar have melted and the mixture has thickened.
6. After 30 minutes of baking, remove the cake from the oven, stir the almonds through the caramel and pour over the top of the cake.
7. Return the cake to the oven at a higher temperature of 200 degrees C for 10 mins or until the topping becomes golden brown.
8. Remove the cake from the oven. The topping will be golden and bubbling. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then remove and cool on a wire rack.

Nine Things To Do In The First Week Of A Patisserie Course - Part Two

Everyday feels different at baking school. Nice different. It’s almost been a month but it is as if I am still attending an extended interview, showing up every day thinking I somehow need to prove I deserve to be there. Maybe that's good in order to work harder. And make all those days I spent at my totally non-baking-related job thinking about what I was going to bake that weekend worthwhile. On that note, back to my list of things to do to reach for the stars but also get the lay of the land.

5. Take copious notes: Our curriculum spans a lot, from all kinds of pastries to breads to custards to tarts to cakes. At an average, we execute 5 recipes in every class. There are just 5 months to cover everything and the classes are quite intensive. I realised on that very first day that the only way to get my head around everything is to take copious notes of the recipes, tips and techniques. I have a feeling that these notes will be the biggest cookbook I will own!

6. Learn how to give yourself a foot massage: The first thing I did everyday at my corporate job for nine years was to sit. Being stuck standing for hours on end on a hard surface is new to me. At baking class, you simply cannot get off your feet for five (sometimes more) continuous hours! The most you can do is wiggle your toes, shift back and forth from one foot to another, stand on one foot while lifting the other slightly off the ground and rotate the ankle. For some soothing relief to aching heels at the end of the day, learn how to do foot massage on your own feet.

Croissants check.

7. Carry the biggest boxes to take food home: At the end of each class, you will end up making more breads and desserts than you will know what to do with. So, pick and carry large, roomy boxes to class so you can fill them with freshly baked oven goodness. But unless you want to fight the battle of the bulge, as a general rule, give them away to your nieces, nephews, roommates and friends. I recommend not keeping any in the house at all. Why torture yourself?

Jim jam cookies, check.
Scones, check.
Muffins, check.
Brioche, check.

8. Roll up your sleeves: Part of working in a pastry kitchen is sharing in the cleaning duties. At the beginning of the course, we had a weekly cleaning schedule drawn out. The tasks include: cleaning the work benches, tidying up, and scrubbing and mopping the floors after class is over. But don't associate cleaning with drudgery. It can be a great stress reliever. However, if you’re not one to get into a zen state as you clean, plug your ears, play your favourite dance music as you clean, and you may actually work faster and be done sooner.

Taruni with her croissant tray

9. Brace yourself for uniform regs and inspections: Every day before you get to do anything in the kitchen, you will get inspected.  If it helps, build an acronym to remember everything. You have to put on your black socks, black shoes, chef pants and white shirt underneath your chef jacket. Tie your hair, use a hair net to ensure no hair escapes and wear your cap. Carry your apron and a side towel. If you don’t have all your uniform items, you may not be allowed in that day. It’s also in your best interest to iron your jacket and apron, though I don’t think you will get kicked out for looking wrinkly.  It might not be a terrible idea for you to shine your shoes (if they will take a shine), especially if you have Chef Avin as your instructor.

Although I make it sound almost like military, attending pastry school is probably one of the best things I will ever do. Every day is getting more and more demanding but it makes me happy to be doing something I love, getting better at it and being surrounded by like-minded people. Whether or not you enrol in a patisserie course to enter the pastry profession or become a better baker, I can bet that you will simply love the experience of putting some pedal to the metal and doing some dream chasing.

Nine Things To Do In The First Week Of A Patisserie Course

It is tremendously exciting when you decide to leave familiar ground, take a chance to learn something new or start something personally significant. The excitement is also accompanied by extreme self-doubt, strangeness and performance anxieties. If you are like me, there are moments when you lose your normal swagger and feel clumsy, like a shaky youngling trying to stand up right after birth. I've been on this roller-coaster before and experienced it anew three weeks ago when I started as the student of a 5-month Baking Science and Patisserie Diploma at a baking academy. The journey so far has been absolutely thrilling, to say the least. But, it has also been nerve-racking to interpret a somewhat alien language.

In order to not lose my nerve in the early stages of an intensive course such as this and be on my game, I started to list a few to-dos and not-to-dos. I am hoping they will prevent me from curling up in the fetal position on the floor at the end of my first month.

1. Figure out the 'tea' situation: Learning where the tea is, is a good strategy. It's also important to figure out the unwritten rules of the school that, if violated, may make people go ballistic. When is that 15 minute break? Which shelves are communal? Who washes the cup? At the baking academy I attend, there is a full-fledged cafe on the ground floor and our classes are conducted on the first floor. Is it ok to buy a cup of tea from the cafe like a guest? Be a sponge, and watch how people are doing things. And lastly, there's nothing wrong with taking your own tea bag and then asking for a cup of hot water from the cafe.

2. Get your act together: This academy is extremely organised. Apart from being a baking school, it is also a great place to improve your bad habits. If you have struggled with time management, quickly get to mapping out how you'll spend each day and begin putting it into practice. Getting organized from the start will make your life easier down the line. It will help you get to class right when it starts at 8 AM, finish pages and pages of hand-written assignments, not miss packing a single thing you will need in class (apron, jacket, cap, notebook, dusters etc.) and swim like a duck.

3. Form your ‘Oh Shit’ Team: Since feelings of anxiety are amplified in this stage of development, you may forget to carry a dusting cloth along or worse, miss something critical related to grooming (after essential rules of personal presentation have been made clear on Day One). You may also place a full tray of beautifully kneaded dough in the proofer instead of the freezer. Finding true OST members who are ready to rescue you during such moments will give you a safe place to stand for a while.

4. Test that first dish at home: Generally, when you are doing something new, it will not work perfectly the first time. But in that very first class, when you make perfect doughnuts such as you can see in the pictures here, you have got to be skeptical and execute it at home all by yourself to know for sure if you can reproduce the recipes without an instructor giving turn-by-turn directions. 

I’m pleased to report that, with no one reminding me that tablespoons are bigger than teaspoons or to not over prove the dough, I successfully baked half a dozen doughnuts a couple of days later.

This list is to be continued in the next post. I know that my ‘don’t go into the woods’ dreams will continue for a little while longer but ah, learning is growth is joy!

Zen and the art of mixing tea with biscotti

Twice each day, as I take my first sip of tea, a low roar fills my ears. It’s like there was a conch placed close to the side of my face and I could hear the sound of the sea through it. That is indeed unusual. As I got thinking about it, I felt what I was experiencing perhaps was this - this cup of tea is meditation, a clarifying potion, a sort of prayer. So then, George Orwell was probably right when he said that a good cup of tea can make you feel wiser, braver and more optimistic. As I gave it more thought, I wondered what would complement an experience as revitalizing as drinking tea. Surely, a biscuit. But not any biscuit. It’d have to be special.  And so I rummaged through recipes and discovered Biscotti.

Now, you don’t need biscotti, scones or cake with your tea. But it helps. I had never tried making biscotti before but last week I had this urge to have something with my tea and so I thought I would give biscotti a try. Now what are biscotti, really?

Biscotti are oblong-shaped biscuits that originated in Italy. They are twice baked, dry, crunchy and can be stored for a long time. The word biscotti means ‘twice baked or cooked’.  Traditional biscotti dough is exclusively composed of flour, sugar, eggs and nuts. There is no butter or fat. I followed a great recipe from Joy of Baking and made mine with chocolate and hazelnuts.

But what inspires me most about Biscotti is that they are a labor of love, like art. They are not your average cookies. Biscotti requires craft, deftness and precision. To begin with, the dough is extremely sticky. Then it needs to be shaped into a log and baked until firm. After a short cooling period, the log is sliced into diagonal slices and baked again to draw out the moisture, thus producing a crisp, dry textured cookie that has a long shelf life. Now you are only limited by your imagination when it comes to what you want to add to these: dried fruits, different varieties of nuts, seeds, spices, etc. Biscotti are also frequently found iced with melted chocolate or other frostings, and topped with nuts and even coloured sprinkles.

And so I made my biscotti and it greatly complemented my cup of tea. Which brings me to what this post is probably really about, the unqualified joys of a really good cup of tea. Tea with biscotti anyone?