Eggless Chocolate Cake in a Pressure Cooker

For the third day of the marathon, I have a cake baked in a pressure cooker. I had actually planned on pressure cooker caramel pudding but the recipe I was counting on failed me. I tried another recipe which was up to par but was not totally convinced it was worthy of putting it on the blog. It still needs a bit of tweaking. As I was searching for more caramel pudding recipes, I found a pressure cooker cake recipe and further search lead me to Nags blog. After seeing her cake, I was convinced to give this pressure cooker cake a try. Her recipe was an adaptation of Tarla Dalal’s and I followed that recipe.

I made half the recipe and it turned out good. Cooking time was a bit off, it took longer to bake than mentioned in the recipe. I baked it on low heat but have a feeling cooking it on medium-low would have been the right heat to cook this cake.

I followed the recipe as give and made the substitutions mentioned in the recipe. I made an eggless cake and substituted eggs with milk and milk powder that was mentioned the recipe. The other substitution I made was using oil instead of butter or margarine. Oil substitution was not mentioned in the recipe but went ahead with it. I had my fingers crossed and luckily the substitution worked as I was running out of time. The substitution was cocoa which I substituted for melted chocolate, as mentioned in the recipe.

When baking in a pressure, the points to remember are not to use a gasket and not to use the whistle. Since the cooker would be used without any water, the whistle should not be use. This is very important. The cooker could explode, if cooked without water and with whistle. So please do not use the whistle when cooking a cake in a pressure cooker. Also, I was bit scared baking the cake fearing that cooker might explode. I sat in the kitchen while the cake cooked/baked. Nothing of that sort happened but please be cautious though. Nags has a separate post on how to make a cake in a pressure cooker.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup All Purpose Flour
• ¼ tsp. Baking Powder
• 20 grams or 4 tsp. Cocoa Powder
• ½ cup Powdered Sugar (I used Superfine Sugar)
• ¼ cup + 2 tbsp. Butter or Margarine or Vegetable Oil (I used Vegetable Oil)
• ½ cup Milk + ½ cup Nonfat Instant Milk Powder (I substituted for eggs. Check notes)
• ¼ tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 2 Walnuts Chopped or ½ tbsp. chopped Walnuts
• Butter for greasing the pan

Required Pans:

• 2 mini 4.5” Cake Pans (check notes)
• Pressure Cooker
• Steamer plate that comes with the pressure cooker or any plate on which the cake pan can be place

Preparation:

• Sieve together flour, baking powder, cocoa powder in a bowl and keep aside.
• Grease the cake pan and dust it with flour.
• In a bowl beat sugar and oil (butter or margarine depending on what is used). I used handled mixer and used the beat option.
• Add milk, milk powder, vanilla extract and beat until milk powder is well incorporated into the sugar mixture.
• Add flour and fold it into the sugar milk mixture. Batter should be in a flowing consistency. If needed add more milk.
• Put the pressure cooker on high heat and preheat the cooker for minutes. I cover the cooker with the lid. Do remember to remove the gasket from the cooker lid.
• While the cooker is pre-heating, pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle walnuts on top of the batter. Tap the pan to remove any bubbles.
• Place the steamer plate or any plate at the bottom of the pre-heated pressure cooker and put the cake pan on it.
• Close the cooker and cook on high or medium-high, depending on the size of the pressure cooker, for 5 minutes.
• Reduce the heat to low and cook for another 1 hour. My cake was not done even after 1 hour, so I increased the heat to medium low and cooker for another 15 minutes. Check notes for baking time.
• Open the cooker and check if the cake is done by inserting a tooth pick or a knife. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.
• Cool the cake for 5 minutes on a rack, then remove the spring from the cake and let it cool completely.

Note:

• Baking Times: I baked for 1 hour on low and since the cake was not baked, I increased the flame to medium low and baked for another 15 minutes. I recommend bake on medium low for 40 – 45 minutes. After 30 minutes check if the cake is done and bake longer, if necessary. My guess is it would take about 40 – 45 minutes for the cake to bake.
• For eggs: The recipe called for substituting 3 eggs with 1 cup milk and 1 cup milk powder. Since I made ½ the original recipe, it was easy substituting 1 ½ eggs with ½ cup milk and milk powder.
• Chocolate: Substitute cocoa with 20 grams of melted dark chocolate. To melt the chocolate, use a double boiler and add it to the sugar mixture along with flour or just before adding flour.
• I used one 4.5” mini spring-form cake pan but there was some left batter. For this recipe, two 4.5” cake pans or at least 6 ½ “- 7” pan would be needed to bake the cake in one pan. A bigger pan would work too.

This day in 2009 - Vegetable Dum Biryani
Recipes I posted this month in 2009 and in 2010 .
Blogging Marathon: To know more about the various themes and participating bloggers for this marathon, checkout the blogging marathon page
Events: This cake is on it's way to Cake Mela