Eggless Black currant tea Cake/ No baking powder cake with dried black currant

Hello there, it is December! Christmas & New Year mood is on right? Then you must be thinking of baking and kitchen should be filled with that baked aroma!

Here is an easy to make cake recipe for this year end… It is a similar to my other cake recipes with a rich flavour of black currant. This is a ‘no baking powder’ cake which is as spongy and good as using baking powder. This cake was liked by my family, sister & cousin's family and I am very happy to share the recipe here in this post!   
You can also try other bakes such as Ghee Residue Rava ButtermilkCake, Guava tea Cake, Cucumber wheat jaggery tea cake with coconut flour, Eggless Pumpkin Cake, Eggless Custard powder Spongy Cake.

I used the 'Natural Vanilla Sugar' for the flavor of this cake which I received from a friend Vidya Lakshmi of ‘Sahaja Natural Farms’. Thanks Vidyakka for this wonderful product that you shared to us with love, it makes the magic. 

Ghee residue is an optional ingredient in this cake. It gives the extra flavor if add it. Thank you Shri Kripa for the initial idea of ghee residue cake recipe which I learnt from shrikripa.in, not wasting ghee residue anymore!

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Baking time: 25 minutes

Serves: 250 grams of cake

Ingredients:

Wheat flour – ½ cup

Plain flour/ Maida – ½ cup

Fine Semolina/ Chiroti rava – 2 tbsp

Dry black currant – ¼ cup

Milk - ½ cup

Buttermilk (fresh/ sweet) – ½ cup

Butter/ Ghee – ¼ cup

Salt – a pinch

Sugar – ¾ cup

Cinnamon powder (fine) – ¼ tsp

Baking soda – ½ tsp

Natural Vanilla sugar – ½ tsp

Ghee residue – 1 tbsp (optional)

Method:

• Soak dried black currant in half cup of milk for 1 hour.
• Once it is soft, blend it using a mixer coarsely. Do not over do this step as black currant chunks in the cake enrich the taste.
• Take a large mixing bowl, add buttermilk and sugar, stir to dissolve sugar.
• Add blended black currant milk to the above. Mix well with a spatula.
• Add ghee/butter in room temperature. Add ghee residue (if using that) too.
• Beat well once with the spatula to spread it evenly.
• Add in all the dry ingredients like rava/ semolina, wheat flour, maida, salt, cinnamon powder, vanilla sugar and baking soda.
• Mix well with the spatula so that there is no lump formed and all the ingredients combined well.
• Grease baking tray of 8 inch square, pour the batter/ mix.
• Now preheat the oven to 180deg Celsius. Bake it for 20-25 minutes or until an inserted fork comes out clean.  It took 25 minutes for me.
• Allow to cool down, invert the cake. Cut and serve warm with tea or coffee!

Notes:

• You can bake a plain vanilla flavoured tea cake by just omitting the ingredient ‘black currant’.
• Baking time changes from oven to oven. So keep monitoring the cake after  20 minutes of bake. Do not open before 18-20 minutes.
• If you change the baking tray size, baking time varies.