I am much more of a coffee person than a tea person. As a kid I never drank

either and when I was slightly older, I tasted cold coffee in the hot

sweltering summers. And my love for coffee was born! Of course back then, it

was just a very tiny dose of instant coffee powder in a sugary milk solution,

chilled down nicely to beat the heat. When I first moved to South India, I fell

deeply in love with the Indian filter coffee. Oh the aroma and smooth

taste! And then I tasted my first cappuccino .... and I knew that this was

a love to last a lifetime. And all this while I was never tempted to have a

single cup of tea!

When I got married, it was mother-in-law who would ask me to join in her

afternoon tea ritual. She would ask me to not have a full cup but just try a

bit and give her company. And all these years of giving her company have made

me very fond of a good cup of tea. Now everyone has their own definition of a

good cup of tea - mine is spiced tea with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and a

hint of clove in it. I like my tea medium sweet and lightly laced with skim

milk .... it is what most people would call a watery tea but that is the way I

love it and now coffee is my morning drink and tea my afternoon drink.

In India tea is also often accompanied with a myriad of snacks. One of the

most popular is rusk. It is a twice baked bread, which is dipped into hot tea

and it absorbs the tea in the countless holes and is a delight to bite into.

There is another version of rusk called cake rusk which is closer to Italian

biscotti. It is like a basic pound cake or sponge cake which is baked twice. It

does not contain nuts but is fairly rich in terms of its calorie content. The

cake rusk obviously tastes much better then its basic counterpart but I prefer

the latter as it is a snack I can have more often without guilt. Even the basic

rusk can be made with all purpose flour or wheat flour or sooji. Recently I

learnt to make Sooji bread from a very generous fellow baker and blogger

(Sunila Munjal) who shared her recipe with me. The bread itself was

wonderful and once I had made it, I felt I could make rusks also.

The recipe for the rusks was a bit different from the bread. I had to do a

couple of tweaks to the bread recipe to make it more suitable for rusks. I

added an egg to the dough to prevent it from becoming dry. I also added

cardamom powder and vanilla extract to the dough. Cardamom complements the

flavor of tea and vanilla is just something I dont do without when baking

anythign with eggs or sugar in it. Vanilla complements both these ingredients

so well! I add to pancakes, waffles, cookies, cakes, fruit breads, mousse,

ice-cream. It is the most essential ingredient in my baking pantry. Lately I

have switched from liquid vanilla extract to a thicker, sludgier version and I

love using it. It has more concentrated vanilla flavour in every drop! The

other thing different in terms of the ingredients is the sooji that I have

used. It needs to be a fine grade semolina. I got this one - Bob's Red

Mill brand. It is very fine and can be used for making pastas as well.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups very fine sooji (semolina). I like Bob's Red mill brand.

1 egg

1/2 cup lukewarm skim milk

1 tablespoon oil

1/4 cup honey

2 tsp active dried yeast

1/4 cup warm water

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cardamom powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

Method:

1. To the warm water, add 1 tsp sugar and dissolve

completely. Add the active dried yeast and allow the yeast to proof.

2. In a bowl

combine the semolina, cardamom powder and salt. In a separate bowl

combine the egg, skim milk, honey, oil and vanilla extract. Add the proofed

yeast mixture to the milk mixture and combine well.

3. Add the liquid mixture to the semolina and combine with

a spatula till the dough comes together. Ensure the dough is not very soft.

This needs to be a firm dough to enable it to rise well and hold its shape well

during baking. In case the dough feels very hard and does not come together easily,

add more water a tablespoon at a time till it reaches the desired consistency.

4. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and

allow it to rise till doubled in size. Once the dough has risen, punch it down and roll into a

log shape. Place this log in a loaf pan and allow to rise again.

5. Preheat the oven to 180C and once the dough has risen,

bake in pre-heated oven till golden brown.

6. Remove from the baking pan and

transfer the loaf to a cooling rack.

7. Once the bread has cooled, cut it into slices and then

into smaller pieces. Preheat oven again to 150C.

8. Bake these pieces in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes

till they become golden and crispy. Baking these on a perforated baking sheet

will produce better results. It also helps to flip the rusks once midway through

the baking process.

9. Allow to cool and serve with a hot cup of tea. The

rusks can be stored in an airtight container for upto a month.