I’m enjoying visiting my family in India but missing baking already!

Most Indian cooking is done on a hob and doesn’t require an oven. So it is a big challenge to find a half decent oven in households. My sister-in-law has managed to get hold of the best available option, commonly referred to here as an OTG (oven-toaster-grill).  It is a small box like appliance fitted with a baking tray & a removable grilling element. While a 12-piece cupcake tray can’t fit inside, it looks good for baking smaller cakes and tarts. I am going to try and bake a Victoria sponge in it today. Should be interesting to see how it turns out!

Now, off to the local supermarket to buy some ingredients!

UPDATE:
I went to the local supermarket here in Thane, India hoping to get some basic ingredients for my cake. Nothing fancy – just some plain flour, unsalted butter, eggs, caster sugar, icing and vanilla extract – things you can find very easily even in convenience stores in the UK. I could not believe how difficult it was to find the same things here! There was no unsalted butter available & no vanilla extract either! No free range eggs either 😦
The price of caster sugar and icing sugar was a higher than what I pay for in the UK when usually the cost of meals is far lesser here.
I went ahead and bought the salted butter with the least amount of salt on it and all the other local ingredients and went ahead with my cake.
The overall results were quite satisfactory – the cake was well risen and tasted soft and spongy. The salt in the butter altered the taste & colour (a bit yellow) slightly. The worst affected was the buttercream icing – I didn’t quite fancy the salty aftertaste.