This post goes to the facebook group Home Bakers Guild, as part of their Blogger Tuesdays. 

Hi all,

I am back. And you have no idea how glad I am to be back!

I am happy, because if it weren’t for the Guild and Blogger Tuesdays, my blog vacation would have become a blog break! It was already bordering somewhere there, but let’s not go there now. There will be a post, every Tuesday recipe the whole of this month. Let’s begin with that and slowly take it from there.

Like I wrote last week, we shifted to U.S. one and a half months back. Right from finding a steering wheel in the passenger seat in your car (they switched it, would you believe!!) to finding just empty space inside the closet (in India, you will have built-in shelves inside wardrobes), everything is different. None of the changes are big, but it’s been a deluge of small ones.

The inevitable question from everyone has been,”How do you find the place? Do you like it?”. It’s a simple query, but I find it the most difficult one to answer. Because I miss home the minute I hear it. Coming to think of it, I don’t even know which home I am missing – our house, my in-laws house or my parents’ house… food for thought!

But then, that’s life and you go where it takes you. And be happy about it. It’s different from what we have known all our life, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It means that you need to open up a bit more.

And once you open up your mind, you might enjoy a different, but delightful experience. Not unlike the cake here.

Whoever thought sandwich can get dressed up like this!?

Smogastarta is a popular sandwich cake from Sweden. It’s savory and is served chilled. It’s apparently served for birthdays, weddings, funerals and all sort of gatherings (says Wiki).

It’s really versatile…it can be an appetizer (small individual portions), lunch or even a wedding cake! It’s a non vegetarian dish by default, but again it can be easily adapted into vegetarian or a vegan avatar.

The sandwich filling options are endless. I tried my usual Nita Mehta cottage cheese filling. Egg salad would be good with this. A combination of potatoes and peas mashed along with some pudina chutney would be wonderful and filling as well. The ‘frosting’ recipes also vary a lot. It usually includes cream cheese, but I was happy with thick yogurt itself.

Do try out this cake. A truly ‘hatke’ (different) cake..

Recipe source: the internet, Saveur

Ingredients:

• Bread, home made or ready made. If baking at home, a 6″ round pan would be the best
• Sandwich filling of your choice
• Decorations : vegetables of your choice
• Yogurt and mayonnaise for the ‘frosting’

What I used: 

• Three slices of whole wheat bread, cut using a sharp lid
• Filling 1:  (Recipe source: Nita Mehta’s Sandwiches book)
  • 2 tbsp cottage cheese or grated paneer
  • 1 tbsp tomato ketch up
  • 1/2 tsp ginger garlic paste
  • 1 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
  • salt and pepper for seasoning
• Filling 2:
  • 2-3 tbsp finely chopped salad vegetable (lettuce, carrot, cabbage)
  • 2 tsp mayonnaise
  • 1 tsp thick yogurt
  • salt and pepper
• Outer frosting:
  • 3/4 cup thick yogurt (this qty varies depending on the size of the bread)
  • 2-3 tbsp mayonnaise (this varies in proportion to the yogurt)
  • salt

Method: 

If you are baking the bread, follow the recipe and bake it in a 6″ round pan. Once it’s baked and cooled completely, level the dome and cut into one or two layers.

Here, I have used a sharp dabba for cutting the bread into a circle. Three slices for two layers.

Make the fillings. This is cottage cheese + ketch up + ginger garlic paste + coriander leaves. Mix and fill one layer.

Fill the other slice also with filling of your choice.

Make the ‘frosting’ recipe by mixing yogurt and mayonnaise. Add salt to taste. Check the seasonings and adjust per taste. Add this to the assembled sandwich.

Coat the sandwich all over and decorate as per your wish. Since I was covering the bread all over with coriander leaves and cherry tomatoes, I was not striving for a smooth finish.

You can decorate with chopped cucumber, boiled eggs, lettuce, carrots…whatever you like and goes well with your sandwich.

Chill and server your smogastarta. Enjoy!