Effortless, Eggless Cake Bake

1. We've been going through a bag of Entermann's mini donuts every two days, at least since after my birthday in the first week of March.
2. Baby P peeks into the oven every other day and asks me what's cooking in there.
3. Anya has actually started supplementing snacks with fruits.
4. A was caught red handed snacking on the girls' gummy vitamins, and made quite a case for himself when questioned.

I've ignored all these tell-tale signs of sugar deprivation in my family for quite some time now.

Nothing could shake that laziness inside of me.  I was so not inspired to bake anything anymore. Then last week, I stumbled upon an eggless cake recipe on Harini & Jaya's blog.  I was totally unprepared for it, for not only was the recipe an eggless cake, but it also did not require a trip to the supermarket for any substitutes either. Now, in all honesty, I don't mind bakes with eggs. And A and the girls don't care at all. But that means that I have to buy a dozen eggs, when I only use a couple for my bakes, and the rest languish in the fridge long past their life span - and then get thrown away. Or I pester A to boil those eggs for our girls to eat, for I will NOT cook eggs. But that's always an uphill battle.

Plus, on a whim, I had bought those adorable little springform pans some time ago that I was dying to try out. The decision was out of my hands now.  This cake was going to be made, and as early as possible. The initial plan was to do it over the weekend, but we got busy. Then  I forgot. But yesterday, when baby P peeked into the oven and repeated her question to me, I gave in. We baked the cake.

Eggless Mango Custard Cake

All purpose (AP) flour 1 cup

Baking powder 2tsp

Milk 3/4 cup + 3 tbsp

Custard Powder 1/2 cup

Sugar 1/2 cup

Oil 1/4 cup

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Warm milk in the microwave for about 45 sec, add the sugar and custard powder and blend it to ensure there are no lumps and sugar is dissolved.
3. Add the oil and whisk together for 1-2 min.
4. In another mixing bowl, mix the AP flour and baking powder together.
5. Slowly add the milk-custard powder while stirring to ensure even mixing. After adding the 3/4 cup milk custard powder mixture, my batter felt too dry, so I added another 3 Tbsp milk.
6. Spray your cake pan with a cooking spray, fill in the prepared batter and bake till a toothpick inserted comes out clean. For my pans, it took about 30 min.

My two cents: I pretty much followed the recipe from the original blog, with the following exceptions:

And this is how we bake our cake!

• I only used AP flour where as in the original recipe, they've use a combination of whole wheat and AP flours. Also, I only used 1 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of custard powder, instead of 1 and 1/2 cups ( I forgot the other 1/2 cup !!). Doesn't seem to matter.
• I left out the baking soda- my previous experience is that it tends to dry out my cakes somewhat. 

At the end of the day, I felt that my batter was too sticky- not the same kind of flowing consistency that I normally make. But I went ahead and baked the cake anyways. The cracks on my cake at the end seem to suggest that I should have listened to my own experience and added a bit more milk. My note for next time.

It so happened that I only had mango flavored custard powder on hand. So we ended up with a mango cake. But honestly, this is an amazing recipe. Just as spongy as the regular cakes. Definitely a keeper.

A finally, a little tip that I read somewhere- don't open the oven for the first 20 min when baking a cake. This will ensure that your cake doesn't buckle down in the middle. 

PS: My pans are about 5inch in diameter, and I got 2 cakes out of this measurement.