A homemade spongy and fluffy white cake often remains our definition of a beautiful baked delight which we use to coddle ourselves in our leisure time. But why limit oneself to a single option when these regular and fluffy white cakes can also be turned into Malai Cakes, made with the same ingredients albeit with some opulence of dollops of delicious malai or rabdi poured over it? The ingredients of the cake are the same, but the process of making the batter is a bit different, which starts with beating the butter into a fluffy paste and incorporating the wet and dry elements of the cake into it one by one.
Many Variants Of Rasmalai
If you pay close attention to the recipe of Malai Cake, you will find them eerily common to Rasmalais, The dish has almost the same constituents used for making rabdi and cake with slight differences. Besides the method of making it and the concept of soaking mithai with rabdi is just the same as Rasmalais. Some of the other sweets that are made based on the concept of Rasmalai are Kesar Malai Roll, Bread Rasmalai, Rasmalai Cupcake and Chena Payas.
Preparation: 1 ½ hour
Cooking: 40-50 minutes
Servings: 1 Malai cake
Ingredients:
For preparing cake:
• ⅓ cup salted butter or refined oil
• 200 ml milk
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• ⅓ cup yoghurt
• 1 cup refined flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
For preparing malai :
• 750 ml full-fat milk
• ½ cup milk soaked in saffron
• 2 tbsp milk powder
• 2 tbsp sugar
• A handful of sliced pistachios
• A handful of sliced almonds
Method:
• Take butter in a mixing bowl and whip it to make it soft and then add powdered sugar and whip it together.
• Then add yoghurt to it and whip vigorously until smooth.
• Sieve refined flour, baking soda and baking powder into it and mix with a spatula.
• Then add 200 ml milk in three parts to this mixture and mix and whip it nicely to make a smooth batter.
• Transfer this batter to the baking tray greased with butter and dusted with a little refined flour. Tap the tray a bit to spread the batter uniformly.
• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius and bake it for about 20 minutes.
• Alternatively, you can also bake the cake in a steam cooker for 30-35 minutes on low heat.
• In another pan, heat full-fat milk on high flame and keep stirring it until it boils.
• Then lower the heat and let it simmer.
• Meanwhile, mix milk powder with saffron-flavoured milk nicely and add it to the boiling milk.
• Stir it and cook continuously on low to medium heat until milk reduces 25-30 %.
• Turn off the flame and keep it aside to cool.
• Meanwhile, check the malai cake if it's baked, and when fully baked, pierce the cake all over with a fork.
• Then cut this cake with a knife into equal squares.
• Pour ¾ th of the rabdi over milk cake, and save the rest to be served when eating.
To get a maximum flavour of saffron in the milk, soak saffron strands for 30 minutes in warm milk. You can also substitute saffron with cardamom. This rabdi need not be as thick as rasmalai rabdi but will have a thin consistency. Refrigerate the Malai cake for an hour before eating as it will double up the enjoyment of eating this dessert.
