Gingerbread with Lemon Icing

You just have to have gingerbread at this time of year, don't you? Now I'm talking about gingerbread cake here rather than gingerbread biscuits.

The cake is very easy to make, although I will admit that it does leave a few more dirty dishes than my usual cakes (ie one bowl and a cake tin), for this one you will also need a good heavy pot, you can do it with a lighter one too, but you will have to stand over it and stir constantly to avoid it catching on the bottom.

For this cake you will need;

150g butter
125g dark brown sugar
200g golden syrup
200g treacle (don't worry if these two aren't exact, its near impossible to weigh while pouring it from the tin)
1tsp grated fresh ginger
1tsp ground ginger (dried)
2tsp ground cinnamon
250ml milk
2 eggs, beaten
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
300g plain flour

Preheat your oven to 170C (150C for fan assisted).

Sieve the plain flour and bicarb into a large bowl;


Put the butter, sugar, syrup, treacle and spices into your heaviest pot and melt over a low/medium heat, stirring to make sure the sugars don't catch on the bottom of the pot, if they do catch dump it and start again because the finished cake will just taste burnt even from the smallest catch.



Once melted, remove from the heat for a minute or two. It should look thick and glossy, like melted chocolate;



Add the milk to the sugar mixture first to cool it and then add the beaten eggs, while stirring.




Then just pour this mixture into the bowl along with the flour and bicarb and mix well to combine. Pour the mixture into a well greased (and lined if you prefer) large cake tin. The one pictured below is a 12 inch tin.



Put the cake immediately into the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Test the cake after 45 minutes. It will be ready when moist crumbs stick to the skewer when testing. It is a very moist cake. Invert the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.



I always use wooden skewers, so you may have less sticking to a metal skewer but the crumbs should look something like this.



Once the cake has completely cooled, mix up a quick batch of lemon icing using;

200g icing sugar
1-2tbls lemon juice

make an incredibly light and free flowing icing sugar which accepts a little more liquid than other brands like McKinney's or Tate & Lyle which are a often a lot more compacted (and in my mind already contain a little moisture because they're packed in paper rather than plastic). Start off by adding just 1 tablespoon, you want the icing quite thick but still spreadable, add as much as another tablespoon of lemon juice if needed. I find it depends on the brand, SilverspoonSilverspoon is always my very first choice when it comes to baking for all sugars.

Spread the lemon icing across the top of the cake and (if you can contain yourself) although to set somewhat before serving.



**Update - Since baking this cake I have baked it again, except this time I divided the batter into two 1 pound loaf tins and baked them for 35-40 minutes. I didn't ice the cakes and instead served them thickly sliced and spread with good butter. I really enjoyed the gingerbread loaves as did the rest of the family and I'll be making them this way a lot more often, perhaps with a little less milk and a little bit of grated raw apples added to the batter. I'll let you know how that one works out.

Coffee Cupcakes

This is my daughter's favourite cake in the whole world. When the weather is miserable, as it is today we make cake and these are her first choice each and every time.

I should start off by explaining that I recently realised that in the US a coffee cake is a cake eaten with coffee and that it could be a plain sponge cake, a flavoured cake such as cinnamon flop or even something like crumb cake whereas here in the UK a coffee cake is a cake flavoured with coffee traditionally a sandwich cake with coffee flavoured butter cream and topped with chocolate vermicelli.

These cupcakes are a variation of that recipe



Preheat oven to 180C (350F) and gather your ingredients;

Start off with a two egg simple sponge recipe, weigh the eggs and add the same weight of sugar, butter and self raising flour. Add to that 1 tbls espresso or any strong coffee and 1/2 tsp baking powder.



Put all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and beat for a few minutes until pale and fluffy.




Line a muffin tin and divide the batter between 12 liners then bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes.




Transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack and leave to cool completely before frosting.




Place 3 oz butter and 6 oz icing sugar in a large bowl and beat until creamy, add to that 1 tsp strong coffee and beat again until well combined.





Top the cupcakes with the frosting in which ever way you find easiest. I tend to put it in a bag and pipe it on, or if you prefer you can spoon it on or turn the cupcakes upside down and dip them in the frosting.




I topped these cupcakes with chocolate curls instead of the chocolate vermicelli because I just like the look of the little curls on top.




And this would be a 4 year old sized bite, rather than a mummy sized bite.

The Ultimate Chocolate Brownies

No frills, spills, faff or frosting just deep, dark, fudgy, chocolate goodness.

Now, I'm not actually allowed to make brownies any more unless I make enough to go around so this recipe makes a lot of brownies but its pretty easy to cut the recipe down if you're trying to be good. Honestly though, I would and probably could eat this entire batch myself. I'm not saying I'm going, just that I could. Besides if you're going to fall off the wagon anyway, sure you might as well jump.

Start off by preheating your oven to 180C (350F) or 160C if your oven is fan assisted, then gather together your ingredients.

375g dark chocolate
375g butter (unsalted if you have it but if you don't just omit the salt in this recipe)
500g caster sugar
6 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
225g plain flour
1 teaspoon of salt (only if using unsalted butter)

Start by putting the butter and chocolate into a heavy based pan and put over a low heat to start melting.




Like so...




While that gets going put the sugar, eggs and vanilla into a large bowl (bigger than the one I started with).




Beat the sugar, eggs and vanilla until combined but you don't need to go light and fluffy with brownies just make sure its all mixed together.




Your chocolate and butter should be pretty much melted by now. I tend to turn off the heat when there are still a few lumps and just swirl it in the pan until they melt. Allow the chocolate and butter to cool slightly, it doesn't exactly need to be cold or even room temperature, just bear in mind that if its too hot you will cook the eggs and you don't want to do that.

Once the chocolate has cooled a little start by drizzling the melted chocolate mixture into the egg mixture whilst whisking the eggs, once you've added about half the chocolate this way you can start to just glug it in there, but still keep whisking.



Next add your flour and salt (if using) and use the whisk again to get it mixed in. Brownies aren't like muffins you do need to make sure the mixture is smooth.




Now for the pan. We like our brownies tall around here so I use a 10 x10 inch pan for them, although for regular depth brownies stick to the 13 x 9 inch pan. Line the pan first with foil or parchment paper and then pour the brownie batter into the pan.




brownies and 40 minutes for If you use the 10 x 13 inch pan bake the brownies for 25 - 40 minutes. I know that sounds like a huge gap in times but 25 minutes will give you gooey brownies, 30-35 minutes for fudgycakey brownies, to each there own and all that.

Because I used the 10 x 10 my brownies took 1 hr 10 mins for fudgy, shave about 10-15 off this for gooey and add the same amount of time for cakey ones. See, simple as!




Let the brownies cool in the pan (I know) for about half an hour before turning them out. If you went for gooey brownies I would suggest leaving them to cool completely in the pan as there's a certain amount of "setting" involved in the really gooey ones and you don't want to risk them falling apart, or worse still a steam burn while trying to get them out of the pan.

Once the brownies have cooled, cut them into as many pieces as you like, bite sized pieces, big flat slabs whatever takes your fancy.




Dust them with a little icing sugar to get across the idea of the craggy surface on top in the photographs although the icing sugar is completely unnecessary:)




Open mouth, cram in entire brownie, lather, rinse, repeat.

Enjoy!

My Victoria Sandwich Cake

I love a bit of Victoria sandwich cake. Nothing too fancy or over the top, plastered in frosting or sprinkles. Just a slice of nice traditional cake.

First gather your ingredients together and preheat the oven to 180C (350F).

I used my simple sponge recipe for this cake.

I started with four eggs for a 8inch layer cake. The four eggs weighed 250grams exactly which almost never happens, but makes me very happy so I weighed out 250grams of butter, caster sugar and self raising flour.

Place all four ingredients into a large bowl and add one teaspoon of baking powder and one tablespoon of lemon juice which helps to break down the gluten in the flour and make the sponge lighter.




Using an electric hand whisk, beat the the ingredients until pale and fluffy which should take five minutes or so.




Divide the batter between two greased and lined 8 inch cake tins and bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Test the cakes by inserting a skewer into the centre of the cake, it should come out clean or with a couple of moist crumbs but not batter.




Allow the cakes to stand in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack and leaving to cool completely.



Once the cakes have cooled completely its time to assemble the cake.

Start by choosing which of the two cakes you like the look of best although it doesn't really matter, this is a plain snacking cake and not a fancy display piece, but still.

Take the other layer and place upside down on a cake plate (or just with the smoothest side facing up).




Now here's the thing. I like a bit of butter cream in my Victoria Sandwich but for a lot of people this would be complete sacrilege punishable by death.

But I'm hoping that the people who do know where I live, love me enough not to attack me on a dark alley on the way home over a bit of butter cream so I'm going to go ahead and add it. If you really can't stand the thought then by all means leave it out and skip straight to the fruit.



Spread on a good layer of strawberry or raspberry jam or by all means use fresh crushed fruit. You don't want the layer of jam to be too thick or the top layer will skite about all over the place when you try to cut it.




Then pop on the top layer and give it a little dusting of caster sugar, not icing sugar. It's the one thing I'm strict about.

And you're all done.




Well, nearly all done.




There you go. Now you're all done!



That's a mummy sized bite for anyone interested.

Pink Panther Birthday Cake

I have no idea why but this cake really took it out of me, compared to the monstrosity I made last year (which took over a week to make).

This barely took a couple of hours from pulling out the kitchen aid to throwing all the dishes in the sink, but it felt like a lot longer.

Anyway.

I started with my simple sponge recipe. I wanted to fill two 10 inch cake tins so I grabbed six eggs, weighed them and measured out the same weight of butter, SF flour and caster sugar.




Usually I throw everything in the bowl, turn on the machine and walk away but this time I pain stakingly creamed the butter and sugar before adding the eggs one at a time followed by the flour...




Ahem...

You should end up with a pale fluffy cake batter.




Toots asked if the cake could be strawberry so I added three large spoonfuls of seedless strawberry jam (which didn't change the colour at all) and a couple of drops of food colouring paste.




I divided the batter between the two cake tins and proceeded to make a well in the centre of the cake, smack the pans off the counter and say a silent player that the cakes would come out flat. I hate to trim cakes before decorating them. It seems to me that the structural intergrity of a cake is in the crust and if you have to remove it before adding a fair amount of weight in frosting, well it has just always ended in disaster for me.




In the end the cakes did come out reasonably flat. They had a very slight dome on the top but I fixed that by cooling the cakes upturned which flattened out the slight dome. I wouldn't recommend doing this if the cakes have a large domed top because forcing that amount of cake down on itself will ruin all of the lovely lightness you've worked so hard for earlier on.




I used to decorate my cakes on an upturned plate, but at the end of the day you still have to move it to a cake board or cake plate and there just isn't any point in tempting fate when there is a much better way.

In this case I was using a cake board so I grabbed the board and cut four, four inch wide strips of greaseproof paper. Arrange the greaseproof around the edges of the cake board, you will have a square of unprotected cake board in the centre which the cake will comfortably cover, then plonk the cake in the middle.

I spread a thin layer of seedless strawberry jam on the bottom layer of my cake to try to help that strawberry flavour along a little bit.




I then added a layer of buttercream (250g butter/500g icing sugar/tsp clear vanilla) before placing the second cake on top.

If you plan to completely cover a cake in buttercream then you want to add a bit more buttercream in between the layers than you think you need, once you have the second cake in place press down slightly so that the buttercream is pushed out between the layers.

A little bit of buttercream overflow will make covered the sides a hell of a lot easier, trust me.




Then completely plaster the cake with buttercream. Make sure sure your buttercream goes right down on to the greaseproof paper. Don't worry about making it look too pretty at this stage, just get a good centimetre or so thickness of buttercream over the entire cake.

I always start at the top of the cake and add enough buttercream so that I can spread it right to the edge and then push it a little further to create an overhang of buttercream all around the edge of the cake, then when you come to frost the sides there is very little chance of catching the edge of the cake and pulling any crumbs off.

The trick is to make sure your pallet knife doesn't run dry. Stop spreading about an inch short of where you think you should stop, you'll still have buttercream on the knife and won't risk pulling any crumbs off the cake.

Then put the cake in the fridge for about 20 minutes to chill.

Have a cup of coffee, you deserve it.

Once the cake has chilled a little, get a cup of boiling water, a drying cloth and your pallet knife ready. Alternate holding the knife in the water to heat the blade, drying it off and using it to smooth the buttercream. This method works very well and I prefer it to applying two layers (a crumb layer and a final layer) of buttercream.




I used a little picture of pink panther to decorate the cake (you can just see it in the photo below).

I dyed the leftover buttercream a dark pink and used it to draw the outlines of his face and write Happy Birthday. I still had some left so I added the little swirly bit around the edge.

Then I mixed up some plain icing using icing sugar and a little milk. I used this to make the three different shades of pink, the yellow and the black which I just poured in between the buttercream outlines and allowed it to flow out and fill the gaps.

Then I just whipped the greaseproof paper out from under the cake to leave a lovely clean, splatter free board and called it a day.

I just hope its what Toots had in mind.

Guinness Cake

Forget Nigella's "throw chocolate in and people will buy it" attitude. This is the original and best (IMHO) Guinness Cake.

8oz softened butter
8oz dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
10oz plain flour, sifted
1-2 teaspoons ground mixed spice
8oz each of raisins and sultanas
4oz chopped glace cherries
4 oz chopped mixed peel
4 oz chopped walnuts
1/4 pint Guinness

Cream the butter and sugar together until creamy.

Beat in eggs one at a time.

Fold in the flour, mixed spice, fruit, nuts and peel and 4 tablespoons of Guinness.

Pour into a greased and lined 8inch cake tin and bake at 160C (325F) for one hour, reduce oven temperature to 150C (300F) and bake for another 1.5 hours.

Cool in the pan and then turn out onto a flat surface.

Prick the base of the cake and feed with the remaining Guinness.

Store in an airtight container for at least 10 days before eating. It produces a dense, moist fruit cake.

A good recipe to make a couple of weeks before Christmas to serve to guests.

Simply Sponge

I have a simple, completely fool proof method for making sponge. Whether it be cakes, cupcakes or fairy cakes you want this recipe will get the job done.

Take the required number of eggs, two for an 8 inch pan, three for 10 inch, four for 12 inch and so on...

Now weigh your eggs still in their shells and put the same weight of self raising flour, butter, caster sugar and finally crack in the eggs. Beat well with a whisk or hand held beater and use in any recipe calling for sponge.

Whether it be Victoria sponge cake, cobbler or little fairy cakes it always produces a lovely light sponge.

Chocolate Bundt Cake

I didn't bake a lot over Christmas this year which is something I regretted because I love to bake, even more so at Christmas. Something about always having homebaked cakes, buns, bread and cookies around the house just makes it seem more like the holidays.

My Dad always made fun of my pathetic attempts at baking and cooking when I was younger and for good reason. Coconut ice anyone? Even I couldn't force down a piece of that anymore.

But in the last five years or so, he's had a complete change of heart. Something about me actually being a pretty good cook when I put my mind to it. Nothing like blowing your own horn eh?

Still it seems once I got past the idea that food had to be expensive, elaborate and slaved over I started to cook well and more importantly, bake well.

My Dad is a baker. He works in a bakery. So he has really started to enjoy the things I make. I tend to make far too much as there are only three of us in the house so at least half of everything makes its way to his house.

My Dad has made a point the last few years to give me kitcheny items for birthday and Christmas presents. This year was no exception. He gave me a very large (I get the hint dad) cake tin. It's 28cm across and comes with two bases, one decorative ring mould base and one plain flat base. It would be about the size of the bottom layer of a pretty big wedding cake if I used the flat layer, so I didn't.

I've never baked in a decorative tin before, apart from Toots little teddy bear and butterfly silcone moulds, but nothing this size and I wanted to make sure the cake would come out of the tin in one piece.

It did.

Doesn't that just look (almost) too good to eat. Notice the huge slice taken out of it before I could even take the photo.

It's the simplest recipe to make as well.

One Bowl Chocolate Cake

Taken from a recipe on zaar called The Absolute Best Moist One-Bowl Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake. I can say that it definitely more than lives up to its name.

2/3 cup cocoa, sifted (I didn't bother)
2 1/4 cups plain flour
2 cups sugar (I used about 1 1/2)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt (I didn't use any)
1 1/2 tsp instant coffee granules
1 1/2 cups unsweetened orange juice (I only had sweetened and thats why i reduced the sugar and I used half orange and half water)
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil. (Actually you could probably replace some of this with apple sauce if the thought of all that oil puts you off)

Pre-heat oven to 180C (350F)

Generousy grease a bundt pan. (I would say this recipe would do three 8 inch cake tins or a 13 x 9 inch tin)

Put all ingredients in one large bowl and beat until well conbined. Pour into cake tin and bake for approximately 1 hour until done. Mine took just a little less than one hour, so probably best to test from about 45 minutes onwards.

If your using a 13 x 9 pan I would test from about 35-45 minutes and for the smaller 8 inch tins from about 25 minutes onwards.

Its best if you have moist crumbs left on the toothpick when testing for doneness, like brownie crumbs.

The recipe on zaar also includes a recipe for a struesal, half fill the pan, sprinkle over the streusal and pour the rest of the batter over, but I didn't use it.

The glaze I used was just a simple ganache, equal quantities of double cream and dark chocolate. Heat the cream in a pan until just before boiling, add the chopped chocolate, let it sit for a minute or two and then stir until combined.

I should really have let the glaze cool a bit more before pouring it over but I just couldn't wait to try it so most of it wound up puddled on the plate.

Still good though.