Stem Ginger Cake

Just look at those lovely syrupy sweet stem ginger gems. Who can resist not making something rich and decadently buttery with them?! I surely couldn’t so when a friend of mine fed me his ginger cake I had to go and recreate it. It has all my favourites, stem ginger, sticky golden syrup and deep dark black treacle. What you need for this gorgeous cake is:

Ingredients

100gm sugar

50gm butter

1 tablespoon golden syrup

1 tablespoon black treacle

200 ml milk

1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger or 1 tsp powdered ginger

Nutmeg

Cinnamon

4 pieces stem ginger plus syrup that covered them

2 eggs

1tsp bicarb

1 tsp baking powder

220 gm self raising flour

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 160C.

2. In a saucepan put the butter, sugar, treacle and golden syrup. Melt them together and them remove from the heat, gently stir in the milk.

3. Peal and grate the fresh ginger and add to the molten mix. Then grate the stem ginger and add to the molten mix. Stir in the syrup as well.

4. In a bowl put the dry ingredients together and crack in the two eggs and whisk them in a little.

5. Pour in the wet mix into the dry and whisk together gently. Pour into an oiled and lined loaf tin. Bake for an hour or until a wooden skewer comes out clean

I think this is a recipe that will change, I am looking to come up with a nice glaze for this that further enriches the cake but I have not decided on the flavour of the glaze. The cake is actually moist enough on its own but I feel like for full decadence a glaze is necessary. Perhaps something boozie.

Bon Appetite!

Marble Cake - Tea Time Wonders

As you may already know I love my tea time. It is a great excuse to indulge in lovely sweet things. One of those lovely sweet things that I love and that my mom has been making for me since I could chew is marble cake.

This light soft bundt style cake looks fantastic on the tea time table looks impressive with its lovely vanilla and chocolate swirls and is the perfect partner for your tea or coffee. What is even better is that it is very easy to make and very hard to get wrong.

You can actually have several different flavours of this as well, instead of cocoa powder for the darker colour you can use cinnamon, and instead of vanilla you can always flavour the light colour with rum, or banana or almond extract. I like a standard vanilla and chocolate marble cake and I love having a dolop of greek yogurt.

The flavouring and accompaniments are entirely up to you but for a standard marble cake you will need:

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1 cup of milk

2 tablespoons yogurt

½ cup of oil

3 cups flour

1 ½ cups of sugar

1 tsp of vanilla

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarb

2 tablespoons cooking cocoa powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 220C’
2. In a clean bowl whisk together the 4 eggs with the sugar until they turn very light yellow double in size and the sugar is pretty much dissolved
3. While still whisking slowly add the oil and then the milk and yogurt
4. Sift in the flour, baking soda and bicarb, and add the vanilla.
5. Grease either a loaf tin or a circular bundt cake tin and pour 2/4 of the cake batter into it
6. Add the 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder to the remaining batter and whisk in until fully incorporated.
7. Using a fork swivel in the cocoa batter into the tin. I tend to do figure of eights and just play around with it creating that lovely marble effect
8. Put in the oven at 220C for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 200 and bake for a further 45 minutes. Test with a wooden skewer and if it comes out clean the cake is ready.
9. Leave to cook in the tin before you take it out. You may need to run a knife around the edge to loosen it up.  

This is a great little cake, it is lovely for breakfast, it keeps very well for about 5 days. When it goes harder you can warm it up in the oven and cover it in nutella or tear it up in a cocktail glass rizzel with some booze, preferably some fruity liqueur, whip up some mascarpone with some double cream as if you are making a tiramisu maybe throw in some glace cherries. Hope this gives you plenty of ideas!

As you can see I didn't get the best marbeling effect with this one, but it was very yummy!

Bon Appetit!  

The Splendid Carrot/Beetroot Cake

Carrot cake is beloved the world over, with icing, with frosting or simply on its own we consume vast quantities of it. This marvelously humble cake is so easy to make, and can have so many variations to it. I add raisins as do many, but due to my loathing of orange and lemon peel I do not put any in, and yet many often do. One other gorgeously sumptions variation of the carrot cake is beetroot.

Beetroot!? In a cake?! You must be mad?! No, not mad at all, just madly delicious. the beetroot just like the carrot gives the cake a sweet moisture, but also adds extra depth with its slight earthiness.

I do not remember where I got the recipe I use from, I have been making this for a good 10 years and it has not failed me once. It turns out perfect moist cake after perfect moist cake. It is a favourite amongst my friends and colleagues and the cream cheese icing is luxurious and decadent.

Ingredients

300gm plain flour

Tell me that is not one BRIGHT cake! 

2 tsp cinnamon

1tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

200g soft brown sugar

4 eggs

250ml oil

200gm grated carrots or beatroot

150gm raisins

the peel of 1 grated orange or lemon - optional

For the Icing

150gm icing sugar

175ml double cream

300gm cream cheese

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C’ - grease either a 10 inch round tin or a loaf tin depending on the shape you want. I prefer to make mine in the loaf tin only because I find it easier to take out.  

Beat the 4 eggs with the sugar, add the oil. Combine all the dry ingredients, make sure you sift the baking powder and the soda to avoid lumps. Add the dry mix into the egg oil and sugar mix, add the grated carrots/beetroot and raisins and mix in well. The beetroot turns the mix a most splendid shade of fuchsia!    

Bake for an hour and twenty minutes. Leave to cool completely before you put any icing on top.

For the icing, put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix until you have a nice thick icing. Be warned it is excruciatingly yummy and you may want to make extra, it never seems to be enough.   

Bon Appetite!