Whenever my Mama visits us, he brings with him plenty of guavas from Pune. My entire family is a big fan of the luscious, fragrant fruit with it’s crunchy seeds. We love slicing them into four chunks and then sprinkling a mix of salt and chili powder on it before eating it. The sweet and sour fruit, which is packed with nutrients, does well when laced with a dash of mirchi.
Since the oven was frowning for it hadn’t been used in quite a few days, I decided to put the guava to use for a kitchen experiment. The result was loved, enjoyed and devoured so quickly that I don’t have a picture to put up on the blog :(.
Guava has an overpowering fragrance that you either love or hate. And I wasn’t sure how the aroma would end up being upon cooking the fruit. So, I decided to splash some rose essence in to get rid of the eggy aroma and to enhance the sweetness of guava. Since mirchi powder and guava were making my mouth water, I decided to add a dimension to the cakes with a dash of mirchi, for old times’ sake.
I initially wanted to make muffins, which means, I would combine the liquid ingredients and the solid ingredients separately and then mix it together to form a lumpy mixture. There were two reasons — a. I was in no mood to make frosting that a cupcake demands and b. Cupcakes are made with butter and I didn’t have any and again, I was too lazy to get out to get some.
So I used regular oil, and skipped the frosting for the sake of the waistline. I wasn’t too sure if I should pulp the guavas and get rid of the seeds but again, laziness trumped and I grated them in without a worry. Also, guavas tend to secrete water upon pulping, my ma warned, so I accounted for that and eliminated milk from my recipe.
Here’s how I made em:
(makes about 18)
I used:
2 medium sized semi-ripe guavas, grated
1 1/2 cups cake flour (use 1/2 cup oats, 1 cup wholewheat flour if you want healthy ones)
1 1/2 cup castor sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1-2 pinches of salt
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1tsp rose essence
1 tsp baking powder
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Line a 12 cup muffin tray with cupcake papers. In a large bowl, whisk eggs for three minutes until they turn a light yellow. Add half the sugar (make sure there aren’t any lumps) and whisk again before adding the rest of the sugar. Once the egg and sugar mix looks fluffy, add in the essence and slowly pour the oil in as you continue to whisk. Throw in the grated guava, chili powder, flakes and fold in. Now, sift together flour, salt and baking soda into the batter and use cut and fold method until the flour is mixed in. Spoon the batter into the cupcake papers. Be careful to only fill 3/4th of the cups. And in they go! Leave them in for about 20 minutes. They will have risen up and lightly browned on top.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing from the cupcake tin, leave them on a cooling rack and go make yourself some coffee. Enjoy the sweet n spicy cuppycakes and send happy thoughts my way 🙂
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