Ginger Cake

At the end of November, whilst I was still in Australia, I flew up to Brisbane to spend some time with my father's side of the family who I've never met.  Its odd to meet people who share your name and ancestors but live on the other side of the world.

My great uncle Brian and I share a birthday; he turned 80 this year when I turned 25.  I arrived in Brisbane after his birthday so whilst I was staying with him and my great aunt, I wanted to make a cake, just because I could!

Brian requested a ginger cake because his mother used to make one when he was a boy and he hadn't had one since - no pressure! A look around led me to the Caked Crusader's blog and her recipe for 'Traditional Ginger Cake'. The blog of the baking superhero was one of the first baking blogs I followed when I became interested in baking , so I was pretty confident a recipe from here would be delicious!

One slight problem cropped up in the process however; I was shocked (not an overstatement) to discover that I couldn't get a jar of stem ginger in the supermarket in Australia. It may have been the branch I was in or this may be a national problem, but it meant no glaze for the cake and I used chopped candied ginger in the cake.  

Traditional Ginger Cake (from Caked Crusader)
225g self raising flour
4tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g unsalted butter
100g golden syrup
100g black treacle
100g light brown sugar
50g steam ginger, finely chopped
2 eggs
200ml milk

Icing
4 tbsps ginger syrup from the stem ginger jar
4 tbsps boiling water
200g icing sugar

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C and prepare a 20cm square cake tin.
2) Use the rubbing-in method to combine the dry ingredients until they have a texture like bread crumbs. You can blitz them in a food processor if you have one/are lazy/have long fingernails.
3) Heat the golden syrup, black treacle, sugar and diced ginger in a large pan over low heat until the sugar has dissolved -  there should be no visible sugar crystals. Once dissolved, raise the heat and cook for a couple more minutes before removing from the heat.
4) Carefully beat the eggs and milk into the hot syrup - being careful means be aware that the egg may scramble as the syrup is hot and that looks weird and won't taste good!
5) Beat the crumb mixture into the syrup and stir thoroughly until combined.
6) Pour into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes.  Allow it to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing - cover the cake with glazed when it is in the tin by piercing it with holes and pouring the glaze over.

We had ours sans glaze with ice cream - it lasted for over a week in tupperware!

1 Million Gingerbread Biscuits.....

Gingerbread is arguably an all year round dietary requirement, and Christmas can only be made better by gingery goodness in many baked forms (my house was a BEAUT, post to follow) so I opted for easy-peasy gingerbread biscuits in what I thought were festive shapes.

I must admit that I got some ideas from Rosie Alyea's blog  (http://bit.ly/uBmtzO)  for icing my biscuits and for the little house shapes... they looked so cute when she used them as cake toppings!!

I made some angels and gave them little dark chocolate or icing dresses to wear.









..some houses...

...and some festive stars!

Be-Ro Gingerbread Recipe (makes 16 gingerbread people and 1 million little biscuits)
300g self-raising flour
3 tsp ground ginger
100g caster sugar
50g butter/margarine
3 tbsp golden syrup + extra to eat when no-ones looking
4 tbsp milk

+ decorations/icing/chocolate

1) Heat oven to 160 degrees and grease and line a baking tray.
2) Warm the sugar, butter and syrup in a pan till well mixed and add to the dry ingredients.
3) Add milk and mix to a firm consistency.
4) Tip out onto a floured surface and knead the dough well; roll out to desired thickness and cut into shapes.
5) Place on a baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes until golden; when you first take them out they will be soft but they harden as they cool .
6) Once cooled, decorate and have fun.

Oh hello Christmas.....

I've known for some time (approximately 23 days) that its' December and my extensive education and calendar collection lead me to the knowledge that December ends in Christmas, and an endless list of baking possibilities. Having put off baking anything resembling a mince pie or refined carbohydrate for as long as possible, I succumbed today to the draw of the (totally overloaded) baking cupboard and went a bit over the top..... We've had building work going on in our cottage for about 1 million years (...18 months) and this past week we've finally got into our new living room - to celebrate this, and Christmas, we had the builders in for a glass of champagne this afternoon and 'a mince pie'. 'A mince pie' escalated when I was left on my own to around 56 mince pies, a huge pile of gingerbread biscuits, fudge and cupcakes.

A rather unfestive looking table, but there you go!

Rather pleased with my pretty little mince pies: last years were heart shaped because my star cutter went on a tour of the home counties, so I'm making up for it this year!  These are almond shortcrust pastry, incase you were wondering...

I made gingerbread cupcakes with milk chocolate icing after seeing some on Sweetapolita's blog (my favourite) here http://ow.ly/893fk and thought I'd have a play when mum mentioned the Christmas drinks; her icing is fluffier looking than mine, its been a LONG time since I last iced a cupcake so I may have done a hash job

The rum and raisin fudge was a bit hit and miss - last years attempt at fudge ended in me learning that you do actually have to get the sugar as hot as the recipe says you do, so this year I really tried to get it hot, but somewhere after that I sort of failed again and my rum and raisin never really set solid. But, it does taste very rummy so I'm probably drunk now thanks to being a massive lightweight with a sweet tooth.

Naturally I made far more mince pies than anyone could ever eat and stuck at the end of the table were some with orange shortcrust pastry and full tops so they look like little pies!

Recipes to follow when I need to do procrastinate in a more serious manner.