How to make a Vegetarian Rooibos Tea Cake with Microwave

You may have read recipes for a Chocolate cake with a microwave oven. But how to make a Rooibos tea cake?

My final product!

Ingredients

3 full scoop of tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 full scoop of tablespoons sugar 

3/8 teaspoon baking powder 

3 tablespoons soya milk

3 tablespoons rooibos tea

 

Butter (equivalent to 3 tablespoons once melted) or 3 tablespoons of hazelnut oil

1/4 teaspoon natural vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder

A mixture of nuts (macadamia nuts, pecans, pistachio, almonds, and cashew). 

I bought this South African Rooibos Tea from Amazon.com. It is good and reasonably priced.

Instructions 

Strong Rooibos Tea

1. Make a thick Rooibos tea by adding one tablespoon of rooibos tea to a glass and add just barely enough boiling water (like 6 tablespoons).

2. Wait for 5 minutes for the Rooibos tea to be ready.

3. In the meantime, put the all-purpose flour and baking powder in a big microwave-safe round glass container. If you have self-raising flour, you can use 3.25 full tablespoon scoops of that instead of this mix. Add sugar and mix with a spoon thoroughly to make this mix uniform.

4. Add butter, vanilla extract, and soya milk. If you are a vegan, please feel free to replace the butter with hazelnut oil.

5. Carefully add about around 3 tablespoons of Rooibos tea. Make sure to filter as you add the tea to the mix, as you don't want the particles in the cake. Alternatively, you may just use the Rooibos Matcha tea as it gives you a thick tea without the complexity of filtering.

Preparing the final mixture

6. Add cinnamon powder. Thoroughly mix everything with the spoon into a perfectly smooth mixture. Make sure the butter is mixed properly also.

7. Microwave high heat 90 seconds.

8. Carefully topple the container to a flat plate and slowly tap on the back of the bowl for the cake to fall on the plate.

9. Decorate with nuts.

10. Ready to eat in 2 minutes once it is not hot anymore.

This is sufficient for 2 people. But if you are as obsessed with Rooibos tea as me, you may finish it on your own!

Thursday, 18th of April, 2013

An attempt to make milk rice for the Sri Lankan New Year

It is interesting to see how the time is going too fast, and I realized many things have changed this year. We are almost finishing the first trimester of the year. 

Weeks 32, 33, & 34 - I was updating Llovizna with fortnight (if not weekly) reports on my stay in Lisbon. However, the past few weeks were going pretty fast with the presentations, mid-evaluations, and other stuff, which made me forget the blog. I didn't fail to notice a considerable drop in the blog views this year, probably due to the infrequent blog posts, and even the posts are just becoming personal and deviating from the highly technical nature of Llovizna. I am still happy that I didn't let Llovizna starve without posts.

Sinhala Tamil New Year is the mostly celebrated Sri Lankan festival. I tried to create a milk rice for this, though I am not sure about its success, as I ate all of it myself. :D

Today, whilst doing the virtual execution project, I was thinking how the year 2013 is becoming yet another year of changes. The impact of this year is surely remarkable, and I hope this will become a highly effective year just like the years 2002, 2004, 2010, and 2012 for me. Lisbon is getting greener. As I walk towards ISCTE-IUL, I see new leaves appearing on the trees fresh and young. I walk down the streets without the winter clothes. Spring is here. I feel, I will remember this day for many of the upcoming years.

Lisbon - Weeks 30 & 31

Cooking in Lisboa!

[30/03/2013] - This week comes with the Easter vacation, which was not really a vacation, as we had projects to be completed for the checkpoint.

[29/03/2013] For the past few days this week, I have been cooking myself, and interestingly, it came out pretty well. Within 3 days since I started cooking, I have even started to cook without a recipe. So much win, and yet another mission successful of the year 2013. There is a Nepal restaurant (Restaurante Kathmandu) close to my apartment which has a good Chicken mango curry. So I decided to try and cook it. 

The mango recipe of Fish or Chicken are pretty simple. First you cook Chicken in Coconut milk without adding spices (no curry powder or chilli powder), except onion, garlic, turmeric, ginger etc, and eventually start adding Mango milkshake, as the chicken is cooked. Mango milkshake was made with one mango, two cups of yoghurt, some milk, a little salt, and a tablespoon lime juice as the ingredients. The final flavor of the sauce is mostly yummy mango. Cooking with coconut milk was just to cook the chicken long enough, without spoiling the mango flavor. So the only difference is, replacing the chilli powder/curry powder combination with the mango milkshake. Make sure the mango milkshake is not burnt. It easily gets burnt and sticks to the pan, as it is sugar. Adding it later to the pan helps avoiding this, while preserving the sweetness. I tried banana apple milkshake too. But Mango seems better. You should give a try to mango.

Obidos

Fish Mango curry, Leaves curry, Carrot mango curry, and Rice in the image above. It was a huge success for the 3rd night of my cooking. Fish mango curry was a dish inspired from the Chicken mango of the Restaurante Kathmandu. However, I guess, I am the first to invent Fish Mango in this way.. :D Recipe (my own recipe.. haha..)

[27/03/2013] - We paid a quick visit to Obidos. It is a lovely neighbourhood. Regular bus services are available from Campo Grande of Lisboa, operated by Rodo Tejo. (Return trip, 2* 7.55 Euro). Obidos is famous for its ginga (cherry wine) in small chocolate cups. We had some fine ginga and played chess at Pousado Do Castelo.

[18/03/2013] - Freeport is a huge open shopping centre (centro comercial) situated in Alcochete, across the Tagus river, which can be reached by the bus 431 from Oriente, and many other means, pretty easily. The shopping centre was not that interesting, though it is considered to be the largest outlet in Europe. However the bus travel over the Vasco da gama bridge, which is considered the longest bridge in the Europe, was interesting.

3 months have already passed this year (almost!). Happiness, Excitement, Craziness, Sadness, Depression, and Stupidity - everything that comes in a mixture, slightly overdose, and that is my year 2013.