EasyEaster bak1ng

From traditional European treats to an Aussie classic, celebrate Easter in style, writes GAURAV

Masand

ForChristians,Good Friday marks the end of 40days of Lent, whi.leEasterSunday,marking the resurrection,isthe rimeto celebrate!Butno matterif youcelebrate Easter ornot,herearesomelip-smacking recipes perfectfor parties andfamily reumoas.

Black Forest Cake

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Impressive and rich, Black Forest cake is always a crowd favourite; this family recipe will never let you down.

Ingredients

For cake (Double layer)

1 ½ cup condensed milk

1 cup self-raising plain f our

1 cupwholemeal self-raising flour

½ cup cocoa powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½cup/ 100g butter

2 tsp vanilla essence

¼ cup brown sugar

½cup milk

For filling

2 cups heavy cream

2 tbsp caster sugar

½cup morello cherries, chopped

10-12 maraschino cherries for garnish

Dark chocolate

Bowl for whipping cream and electric mixer attachments, kept for 1 hour in freezer

Method

Melt the butter and beat it with sugar until mixed.

Add condensed milk, vanilla essence. Beat together until you get a smooth mixture. Add the dry ingredients with milk and mixwith electric mixer.

Grease two pans evenly with butter. Divide and pour the mixture equally in two pans and bake in a pre-heated oven for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Using an electric mixer set on high speed, whip the creamwith sugar, until medium to stiff peaks form, for about 1 minute. Do not overbeat.

Spread 1/3cream mix on one cake and top with chopped cherries.

Add thesecondlayer of cake and spread 1/3 of whipped cream evenly on the cake.

Grate a dark chocolate block with mandolin slicer.

Spread the chocolate on the sides and top of the cake.

Addthe remaining whipped cream to a piping bag and decorate the cake. Refrigerate for 4-5 hours.

Garnish with maraschino cherries and serve.

"Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns." This old English nursery rhyme, associated with theend of Lent, is a favourite childhood memory. These buns are a crowd favourite and usually eaten on Good Friday

Ingredients

2 cups plain f our

1 cupwholemeal flour

¼ cup currants

3 ½ tsp dry yeast

30g melted butter

½ cup water for dry yeast

1 ½ cup lukewarm water and milk mixture

2 tspspice mix (cinnamon, nutmeg)

Ginger, small piece

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp salt

¼ cupself-raising f our (for the cross)

Method

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Add sugar to lukewarm water, mix until it dissolves.To activate the yeast, add to sugarwater mixture.This will make the mix frothy and yeastwill activate within 15 minutes.

Add this yeast, water and milk mixture, along with currants, to the four. Knead the dough, this will be sticky at the start. Add melted butter and remaining ingredients. Keep dough aside for 30 minutes to rise

Once it has doubled in size, punch it down and knead it again.

Divide the f our into 9 equal portions, give them a roundshapeand arrange them on a baking tray with some space in between the buns.

Let them rest for 30 minutes. You will see thedough rise and thesides might touch each other.

Mix self-raising flour with 1 tablespoon of water to form a paste, and add it to a piping bag. Mark a cross on the buns with the paste.

Bake the buns for 10 minutes at 225 degrees and a further 6-7 minutes at 200 degrees.

Check the readiness by inserting a toothpick. If it doesn't stick to the dough, the buns are ready.

Serve fresh with butter or fruit preserve.

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Upside Down Plum Cake

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Australia is blessed to have a bounty of sweet plums at this time of year. Enjoytheseasonal producewith this delicious cake recipe

Ingredients

¾ cup condensed milk

1 cup self-raising plain f our

¼ cup wholemeal self-raising f our (can replace with 1/3 cup plain self-raising flour)

¼ cup/ 50 grams butter

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp milk

¼ cup brown sugar (for glaze)

350gm Satsuma plums (or any variety of plumswith red flesh)

Method

Cut 4-5 plums in thin slices, and the rest into small pieces.

Heat thesugar with an equal quantity of water. Let it cook until it forms a thick and brown glaze.

Line a spring form cake tin with baking sheet, including the sides. Spread plum slices in concentric circles, glazing them with sugar. Melt the butter; beat together with sugar until mixed.

Combine with condensed milk and vanilla essence.

Beat till you get a smooth mixture. Add thedry ingredientsand themilk. Mix with an electric mixer.

Pour the mixture evenly into the cake tin and bake in a pre-heated oven for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean

Let it cool for 15 minutes

Place cake on a plate upside down Garnish with fresh plum slices Best served with ice-cream.

POORNA

STARRING: Rahul Bose, Aditi lnaamdar, Dhritiman Chatte1ee and Heeba Shah

DIRECTOR: Rahul Bose

At one crucial point in the telling of this I simple and heart-warming tale of a tribal girl's climb from the pits of poverty I to Himalayan heights, Rahul Bose, I playing an upright bureaucrat, asks the little Andhra girl what is her purpose for I climbing Everest. I

I "I haveno purpose_ I just want to do it," she tells her mentor honestly. I Thesimple confessional articulation exemplifies this film's mood. So rich in its message, so far-flung in its intentions and purpose and yet so intimate in treatment and execution, Rahul Bose wins you over with his honesty of purpose_

There areno duplicitous bones in the structure of this film.

Sure, thereare passages in this motivational tale that follow the rags- to-riches trajectory with textbook-ish precision. But the heart is in the right place, bringing to the narrative a kind of non-negotiable integrity that is at once compelling andwinsome.

Authenticity is thekey to the cogency of Bose's vision. He chooses actors and locations as true to the original milieu as cinematically possible. The restjust follows.

Thenarrativesweeps us into an emotional realism that is at once sparse and dramatic, pumping up the saga of resilience and humanism with vignettes and frames that form a panoramic arc over the film's rugged landscape.

Poorna's saga begins in an impoverished village of Andhra Pradesh and ends on the world's highest summit - Everest. It is an ambitious arc, navigated and tempered with a lavish affection for the downtrodden and an absence of patronisingpride in depicting the rise of a young underprivileged girl to heights of glory.

Little lshaan in TaareZameen Par had his Ram Shankar Nikumbh to steer him into the light Poorna has Praveen Kumar, a bureaucrat who belongs to that rare breed of civil servants who still believeshetook on thejob with the purposeof improving lives of the underprivileged. I've readsome very strange comments on how Rahul Bose has cast himself in a self-glorifying role.

Wait is that against thelaw? To play noble characters? Has that been declared a cognisable offence by a social order that thinks cynicism is cool?

It is easy to get cynical about a character whose heart bleedsfor those who are not given onesquare meal a day. There is an emotionally surcharged moment in the narrative where the conscientious bureaucrat eats a midday meal with schoolgirls to get a feel of the awful food that is served up by government-funded canteens. Rahul's Praveen Kumar doesn't flinch as he swallows morsels of the garbage Uunk food at its purest?)

But we do.

Throughout the telling of this inspiring tale of a girl who won't buckle under the pressure of poverty and cynicism, Rahul gives us the portrait of a bleak landscape lit up by a distant hope. He is the artiste who won't judge a value system that condemns the downtrodden to doom. But he won't condone it either. He can laugh with Poorna at her poverty - don't miss the sequencewhere the girls at the boarding school giggle and compareeach other s poverty - but he won't laugh at her condition.

Poorna is a littlegem with a big heart. It hasmany virtues. Aditi lnaamdar who plays Poorna is a prized find. So is young S. Mariya as Poorna's spunky but tragically vanquished cousin_ The scenes showing the two girls bonding are so heart-warming as to make us overlook the film's obvious faws of overstatement.

However, some of the other actors in incidental rolesseem to have come on board just to feel good about themselves for helping anoblecause.

Thefilm is shot with minimum fuss and optimum feelings. Whenlittle Poorna stood at the peak of Everest,I feltI was standing up there with her. Gloriously triumphant and hoping that what Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote 45 years ago for a just social order would come true soon: Kitne din aankhen tarsengVKitne din yun di/ tarsenge/Ek din tohbaadal barsenge/Ae mere pyaase diVaajnahin toh ka/ mehkegi khwabon ki mehfil.

Take a bow, Rahul Bose. Poorna is not just a tale of the triumph of thehuman spirit. We all have a Pooma inside us waiting to conquer our own Everest.

Subhash KJha