metaphoricallove

Baqar Khani Uncle rang our doorbell every day at 6:00 p.m.

It often felt as though he carried the secrets of the universe in the large woven basket resting against his hip.

I knew the usual suspects by heart: a crate of eggs, a loaf of bread. But tucked among these ordinary staples was the one thing I yearned for.

With its irresistible, barely-there flakiness, Baqar Khani was a stubborn ghost fighting for its right not to be.

Bold sugary granules led the opening attack, they tricked one into thinking the pastry would be easy to grasp….all sweetness, all promise. The first chew, however, revealed something far more complex: a pastry nearly impossible to pin down.

As I write to you, these memories feel equally elusive, buried beneath fluorescent certainty and grocery chains.

Still, every now and then, I stumble into a chaotic Pakistani grocery store and experience the same irrational thrill: perhaps this time, I’ll finally find some good old-fashioned Baqar Khani.

Earlier this week, chasing that familiar high, I dragged my partner through eight hundred square feet of pure chaos. He followed dutifully, his arms overflowing with crinkling packets of the stuff.

By the time we got home, I already knew what I wanted to do with them.

Recipe

The goal isn’t to use Baqar Khani merely as decoration, but to bring a classic tea cake together with the pastry I have always associated with peace.

Ingredients

Cake:

• 113 grams salted butter (softened)
• 160 grams brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 180 grams all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 120 ml evaporated milk

Topping:

• 1 cup Baqar Khani (crushed chunky, I did it with the back of a wooden spoon)
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp melted butter

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Cream the softened butter and brown sugar until smooth and spreadable.

   • Soften your butter before starting this step. You'll know it's ready when pressing a finger into it leaves a dent.
   • Also please use a deep mixing bowl for this – I didn’t and I was scraping sugar off my kitchen countertop, not fun.

3. Whisk eggs into your butter sugar mixture, until the batter is smooth.

   • Pop your vanilla essence in at this point, or don’t – I forgot, it was fine.

4. Prep dry ingredients in a separate bowl

   • This is the fun part: just toss the dry stuff together (your flour, baking powder, and baking soda). If you’re fancy, sift. I’m not fancy, so I dumped.
   • Please remember to weigh your ingredients with a food scale (if possible). This is not fancy, this is a necessity because we’re dealing with chemistry.
   • I failed grade 11 chemistry, btw. So you can trust me on what not to do.

5. Fold the three amigos together in one bowl: dry ingredients, wet ingredients, and the evaporated milk.

   • Use one of these folders, they’re great for…Folding.
   • Tiny note on technique: Add one-third of the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, followed by one-third of the evaporated milk, and gently fold until just combined. Repeat until everything has been incorporated and the batter is thick and smooth.

6. Pop the cake mixture into an 8-inch cake pan, cover with the Baqar Khani topping.

   • The topping components should be mixed together before you add them on top of the cake.

7. Send your child to the mines for 40–45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

My cake looked like this:

If your cake doesn’t look like mine, eat it anyway. Baqar Khani has never been particularly interested in being pinned down.

Happy baking!

Xo,

M