Ginger and rum cake

I think I must be a contrarian baker.  Now that summer actually seems to have arrived, I know I should be thinking about strawberries, cream and other such light frippery….but what I really wanted this week was ginger cake.  And rum.  And dates.  And all things that make you think of colder weather (not that I even like colder weather).  As I said – contrarian.

This cake is always better the day after baking, and the day after that; it’s always the way with sticky spicy cakes – they need time to mellow and let their flavours mature.  I do have a penchant for rum and have a selection at home that would rival most cocktail bars; for this cake I chose a spiced rum as I thought the extra punch of flavour would work well.  Spiced rum always seems to have a vanilla note to it too and I never miss the opportunity to get a bit of vanilla into something.

You can taste each of the main flavours in the cake: ginger, dates and rum.  Putting the rum in the icing gives a raw hit – if you like your booze softer, and more baked, consider putting more in the cake and leaving it out of the icing.

Without checking through almost nine years of blogging, I don’t remember putting dates into a ginger cake before.  It was a good move – it turned a standard ginger cake into something more akin to a sticky toffee pudding.  You could leave the icing off this cake and serve it warm, as dessert, with custard or ice cream.  Personally, I am always partial to a white icing and a bit of the itchy teeth feel it can sometimes create.  Many older people I know have lost their taste for overly sweet things…I do sometimes wonder if it will ever happen to me.  I just can’t imagine being that person who winces when they eat something and say, ‘ooh, that’s a bit sweet for me’.  Does. Not.  Compute.

Ingredients

75g unsalted butter
100g dark muscovado sugar
125g black treacle
125g golden syrup
2 eggs
3 tablespoons rum – I used spiced rum
225g self raising flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
50g stem ginger, finely chopped
75g medjool dates – pitted and finely chopped

For the icing:
100g icing sugar
1-2 tablespoons spiced rum
1 tablespoon stem ginger syrup (from the jar of stem ginger)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/350F/gas mark 4.

Line a 900g loaf tin with baking paper.

Place the butter, sugar, treacle and golden syrup into a saucepan and melt together over a gentle heat.

Leave to cool for at least 5 minutes before beating in the eggs and rum – if the mix is too hot the eggs will scramble and leave lumps in the cake.  Not nice.

Stir in the flour and ground ginger.

Stir in the chopped ginger and dates.

Pour into the prepared baking tin.

Bake for 50 minutes – 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes in the tin, before de-tinning and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make the icing: mix the icing sugar with 1 tablepsoon each of rum and ginger syrup – add the extra spoonful of rum only if needed.  You’re aiming for a thick, glossy icing that has movement to it but isn’t so loose it will just run off the cake.

Spoon the icing over the cake and leave to set.

This cake gets better with age – it becomes stickier and more flavoursome.

Serve in generous slices with a cup of tea.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Banana and ginger cake

I had four bananas, slowly turning black on the kitchen counter, giving me that judgemental look as if to say, ‘yes, you manage to eat all the biscuits well before they go off, but look at us – unwanted and unloved’ and realised it was time to find a good banana cake recipe.

This cake is adapted from a Dan Lepard recipe and caught my attention because I have never seen banana and ginger combined and they are two of my favourite flavours.  I only made one minor tweak – changing his glace ginger for stem.

The flavour of this cake is rich and indulgent and gets better with age – the dark sugar seems to get stickier and more treacly.  It works well as a companion to a mug of tea, but is also great warm with custard for dessert.  The smell of it baking drove me half insane – sugar and spice; if there are happier kitchen smells I can’t think what they are!

The sponge is soft and lighter than you might expect.  The ginger is subtle and doesn’t overpower the banana.  Personally, being a ginger fiend, next time I make this cake I would up the ginger – probably with a teaspoon or two of ground ginger.

Don’t let the plain looks fool you; this is actually a glossy beauty and has become my go-to banana cake recipe.

Ingredients

For the cake:
200g dark muscovado sugar
300g ripe bananas – this is approx. 2 large bananas
125ml flavourless oil suitable for baking – I used light olive oil
4 eggs
75g stem ginger – finely chopped
200g wholemeal flour
3 tsp baking powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan oven 160C/350F/gas mark 4.

Line a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper.

Put the sugar and bananas in a bowl and mash until almost smooth – as long as there are no big lumps it will be fine.

Beat in the oil and eggs.

Stir in the ginger.

Add the flour and baking powder, stir well, then pour into the tin.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes or so before de-tinning and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Serve in generous slices.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Gingerbread houses

It isn’t Christmas without gingerbread and, much as I always love classic gingerbread men...

... I wanted to make something different to anything I’d made before.  I found this shop on Etsy selling cutters to make the cutest little gingerbread houses and I fell in love!  (Etsy is an incredible site; I know it gets some stick for some of the weird stuff you can find on it but I challenge anyone to spend 20 minutes or so browsing the site without finding something they want!)

The houses are a bit of work but can be made in stages, as gingerbread keeps very well for days and days in an airtight tin.  I always prefer piping on a flat surface so decorate all the panels and let the icing set, before assembling the houses.  As these are small they don’t require much icing to hold them together.

To provide a bit of scale, here’s a house next to my favourite mug (I dread to think how many cups of tea this cup has held!):

I’m not much of a decorator and – weak and pathetic as it sounds – get hand cramps if I do too much piping, so my houses are minimalist, but, if you’re better at that sort of thing you could really go to town.

The gingerbread was lovely – it was somewhere between ginger biscuit and the softer, more cakey, gingerbread.  It puffed up while cooking giving a nice smooth finish and the taste had just enough fire to it.  I don’t think it’s been a very exciting year for cookery books but this recipe came from one book that did capture my interest – Gingerbread Wonderland by Mima Sinclair.

This is likely to be my last post before Christmas so I shall sign off hoping that you all have a lovely day – doing whatever it is you have chosen to do! Happy Christmas everyone!

Ingredients

140g golden syrup
200g soft light brown sugar
200g unsalted butter
4 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
500g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg

To decorate: tubes of icing, and anything else you wish!

Method

Place the golden syrup, sugar, butter and spices in a saucepan larger than you need and melt together over a gentle heat stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved – you can tell when this has happened by looking at the back of your spoon: if you can still see tiny grains it needs a bit longer.

Increase the heat and bring to the boil (don’t stir during this process).

Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the bicarbonate of soda – it will froth up, hence using a larger saucepan.

Stir only until the bicarbonate of soda is incorporated and put to one side to cool – about 15 minutes should be enough.

Fold the flour and salt into the cooled mixture.

Beat in the egg – take care not to overbeat the mixture; as soon as the egg is incorporated stop mixing.

Tip the dough out onto a work surface or – and this is my preference – a sheet of non stick foil.

Knead until it is smooth.  Initially the dough will be very sticky and it will be tempting to add flour but DON’T!  This will make the biscuit tough.

Cut the dough in half and shape into fat discs before wrapping separately in clingfilm and refrigerating for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 160C/fan oven 140C/325F/gas mark 3.

Roll the chilled dough out between two sheets of clingfilm and use the cutters of your choice.

Place on a baking sheet lined with either baking paper or non stick foil.

Bake for about 6-7 minutes, if making a small biscuit, or until just starting to feel firm to the touch.  It will puff up during cooking and if it feels almost marshmallow soft, it needs a couple of minutes longer.

Leave to cool for at least 10 minutes on the baking sheet before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Decorate as you wish.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Ginger and parsnip cake

 

 

If I were to say to Mr CC I was making a carrot cake his response would be favourable.  However, when I made courgette cakes he prejudged them negatively even though he ended up eating them and liking them.  The Brussel sprout cake was admittedly ‘interesting’ (interesting in this context = bleughhhhhh! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!) but I made that before I met him so, other than hearing scare stories from survivors, he escaped it unscathed. 

 

Parsnips are basically carrots that have used higher SPF sunscreen (this view might not stand up to biological scrutiny) so I was torn whether to ‘fess up to their inclusion in this cake prior to serving it.  I decided not to and instead turned it into a game of ‘this cake has an unusual ingredient – can you guess what it is?’  He didn’t.

 

Parsnips, like carrots, have a natural sweetness but, unlike carrots, have an earthiness that added to the depth of flavour in the cake.  I’m not sure my palate would’ve detected that it wasn’t carrot but, once you know, the taste is subtly different.  The sponge was light and soft with tiny flecks of creamy coloured parsnip visible.  It was a lovely combination with the ginger. 

 

I attended the BBC Good Food show at the NEC last week and bought a bottle of ginger juice.  I used some in the buttercream; ending up with 2 tablespoons of ginger juice and 2 of syrup from the jar of stem ginger.  It added an extra bit of zing and heat – I do like my ginger to leave a lasting impression on my tongue!

 

I have never said, thought and written the word ‘parsnip’ as much as I have whilst baking this cake.  When you think about it, it’s a pretty odd word...and gets sillier the more you say it.  Parsnip.  Paaaaarsniiiipppp.  It’s a funny word – and I like it!

 

Ingredients 

For the sponges:
250g self raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
250g golden caster sugar
3 balls of stem ginger, very finely chopped
3 eggs
200g grated parsnip – this equates to two average sized parsnips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125g unsalted butter – melted but not hot (leave to cool for about 5-10 minutes)
Splash of milk, if needed 

For the icing:
400g icing sugar
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 tablespoons stem ginger syrup from the jar

 

Method

 

Pat the oven to 180C/fan oven 160C/350F/gas mark 4.

Line two 20cm loose bottomed sandwich tins with baking paper.

Place the flour, bicarb, baking powder, salt, ground ginger and sugar in a bowl and stir together.

Add the stem ginger and stir so that it is coated with dry ingredients and not clumping together.

In a separate bowl – a large jug is easier if you have one - beat together the eggs, grated parsnip, vanilla and melted butter.

Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mix and fold together, taking care not to over mix.

If the mixture is not firm, and doesn’t drop from the spoon easily, add a splash of milk.

Spoon into the prepared tins and level the surface.

Bake for approximate 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cakes comes out clean.  Mine took a bit longer – nearer 40 minutes, but it’s worth checking after 25 minutes as ovens vary.

Leave to cool in the tins for at least 20 minutes before turning out and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make the buttercream: Beat together all the ingredients until smooth and whippy.

Place one sponge on the serving plate and use a stingy 1/3 of the buttercream to spread over the top.

Place the other sponge on top.

Use the remaining buttercream to cover the top and sides of the cake.

Place your decorated gingerbread on the cake.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

 

Lincoln ginger biscuits and Grantham gingerbread

Mr CC and I had a lovely long weekend in Lincoln recently (Lincoln is in Lincolnshire – England’s second largest county); it’s very hard to find much wrong with a county that has two fabulous ginger biscuit recipes. I was going to split the recipes into separate posts but spent so long wondering which one to post first that I decided it would be easier to do a double post!

Grantham gingerbread:

Lincoln ginger biscuits:

The biscuits are quite different; their only shared feature is ginger. Lincoln ginger biscuits are a crisp ginger biscuit with a buttery/syrup background that adds depth of flavour.  They are a crisper, more buttery version of the ginger biscuits you will typically find in any supermarket.  Grantham gingerbread is more unusual – it is a pale gingery, buttery rusk of a biscuit with a hollow, almost honeycomb style centre; not like any other gingerbread.  Utterly addictive, we worked our way through the majority of the box we brought back in one sitting.  It was only because we closed the box and moved it out of arm’s length that any survived to the next day!

Like many great recipes, Grantham gingerbread came about by a mistake.  In the 1740s William Egglestone ran a coaching house in Grantham where people would stop for some rest and sustenance.  He made a mistake, mixing up ingredients, for his Grantham Whetstones (a hard flat biscuit which was sold at the time) and created these puffy little delights, which were so popular he continued making them.  Sadly, so many local bakeries have closed that it’s actually hard to find Grantham gingerbread for sale anymore.  I hunted all over Lincoln and found them in one shop – this biscuit is too good to be allowed to die!

I made the biscuits per the recipes in the Lincolnshire cookbooks I picked up whilst on hols; I would make a couple of tweaks next time and note these in the ingredients listings below; mostly the tweaks are upping the amount of ginger - I like my ginger fiery!

If the biscuits alone aren’t enough to convince you to visit Lincoln then look at this – it’s the stunning cathedral, lit so beautifully at night that it glows with golden beauty!

Lincoln ginger biscuits

Ingredients

350g self raising flour
225g caster sugar
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger – next time I would use 4 teaspoons
115g unsalted butter
10g golden syrup – next time I would use 30g to get a better spread whilst baking
1 egg, beaten

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/ fan oven 160C/ 350F/ gas mark 4.

Line two baking sheets with non stick foil.

Place the self raising flour, caster sugar, bicarb and ginger in a bowl and mix together.

Heat the butter and syrup together in a pan until melted and combined.

Pour over the dry ingredients whilst mixing.

Add the egg, again, whilst mixing.

Bring the dough together into a firm, stiff ball.

Take walnut sized pieces of dough and roll into balls.

Place on the baking sheet – well spaced – and flatten.  Place 12 per tray (I got 28 in total)

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch.

Leave to cool on the baking sheets before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Bask in to glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Grantham gingerbread

Ingredients

340g caster sugar
115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
250g plain flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1½ teaspoons ground ginger – next time I would use 3 teaspoons

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C/ fan oven 140C/ 300F/ gas mark 2.

Line two baking sheets with non stick foil.

Beat together the sugar and butter until light and whippy.

Beat in the egg.

Fold in the flour, bicarb and ginger.

Take small balls of the dough and roll into balls

Place on the baking sheet, spaced apart to allow for spreading, No need to flatten.  Place 12 per tray; I chanced my arm with 15 and the touched. (I got 30 in total)

Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the trays and bake for a further 20 mins (about 40 mins in total) or until golden and puffy.

Leave to cool and firm up on the baking sheet before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Brown butter spice cake

Christmas may be over but winter is definitely here, which is why I was drawn to a spicy cake this week.  This cake had so many lovely facets that appealed to me: tea, spice, treacle, brown butter and even a bit of citrus.  All the flavours were offset by a very simple classic buttercream.

It’s worth taking your time over making the brown butter.  Your nose will tell you without any doubt that there is a huge difference between brown butter and burnt butter!  Gently heat the butter and it will become foamy; let this stage pass and the butter will turn clear and a wonderful dark amber colour…and it smells divine.  It’s also a bit like caramel in that you’re better to take it off the hob just before it’s at the stage you want, as it carries on darkening and you risk taking it too far.

This is such a comforting, homely looking cake but it packs in so much flavour – the best of all worlds.  The tea and citrus lifts what would otherwise be a lovely but ordinary dense gingerbread; I expected the cake to be more sponge-like but it isn’t – it’s definitely in the gingerbread camp.    Not sure what I did but my cakes came out huge!  I had to shave a bit off each one just to get it to a size that would fit in any of my storage tins!  Still, it gave me the opportunity to photograph a whole layer:

This cake is a keeper, by which I mean you’re best off making it a day or two in advance – it gets stickier and more flavoursome.  Bring on the snow – I’m ready for it!

Ingredients

For the cake:
250g unsalted butter
250g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g treacle
250ml tea, made using 2 teabags
Grated zest of 1 orange
600g self raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon mixed spice

For the buttercream:
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200g icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
 


Method



Preheat the oven to 180C/fan160C/350F/ gas 4. 
Line two loose bottomed 20cm round sandwich tins with baking paper.
Now make the cakes: melt the butter in a pan until it turns brown (but not burned).  Do this over a gentle heat – at first it will foam, but will brown shortly after.
Strain the butter through a coffee filter or several sheets of kitchen paper into a bowl and leave to cool.
Beat the cooled brown butter into the sugar, eggs and treacle.
Stir in the cooled tea and orange zest (I put the zest in the tea so that it infused the flavour into the tea).
In a separate bowl mix together the flour, spices and baking powder.
Beat the butter mixture into the flour mixture.
Divide evenly between the prepared tins and level the surfaces.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.   Mine actually took a fair bit longer – nearer to 40 minutes.
Cool, in their tins, for 20 minutes before de-tinning and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.
Now make the buttercream: beat the butter until it is soft and whippy.
Beat in the vanilla and icing sugar.
Beat in the water.
Place one of the cakes on the serving plate and spread the buttercream over it.
Place the other sponge on top.
Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.
Eat.

Date and ginger cake

This sort of cake personifies the start of winter to me; it’s got lots of rich flavours and warming spice.  The dates taste like toffee and the gentle hint of chocolate in the background adds depth to what could otherwise be just another nice spiced sponge.  It has the lightness of texture that you find in really good sticky toffee puddings.  Oh, and if you’re still not sold it’s a doddle to make, smells divine whilst cooking and keeps for days thus, if you were so minded, you could eat the whole thing yourself!

I served the cake at room temperature but, if you omit the glaze, it would be great served warm with custard for a winter pudding.  I smiled when I typed that because one thing I have realised being married to The Custard King aka Mr CC is that pudding and custard is an all-seasons food!

This cake just grew and grew – it came out enormous! There’s practically a whole other cake in the huge dome!

I know some people are wary at using the C word too early, but I think this could easily be adapted to a Christmas cake for those who don’t want to go down the traditional fruitcake path.  You could go the easy route i.e. make it as I have but plonk some plastic reindeer on top, or change the tin to a traybake tin, increase the amount of icing and create a snow scene on top i.e. plonk some plastic reindeer, trees and snowmen on top.  You will notice from my suggestions that I am not much of a cake decorator…..

Ingredients

For the cake:

140g dates – stoned and chopped
410ml evaporated milk
100g soft dark brown sugar
225g plain flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50g stem ginger – chopped
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 eggs

For the glaze:

100g icing sugar

Enough stem ginger syrup to form a thick, glossy icing – add a teaspoon at a time

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C/fan oven 140C/320F/gas mark 3.

Line a 20cm round springform tin with baking paper.

Place the dates, evaporated milk and dark brown sugar into a saucepan.

Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring regularly, until the dates are soft and the sugar has melted – you can see this by looking on the back of your spoon; if you can see any granules you need to cook for longer.

Put the pan to one side to cool.

Place the flour, cocoa powder, ground ginger, bicarbonate of soda, stem ginger and butter into a food processor and blitz until there are no lumps.

Add the cooled date mixture and the eggs and blitz briefly just until the ingredients are combined.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 1 hour – it may take longer – or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin as initially the cake will be very soft.

De-tin after about 30 minutes and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

When the cake is cold you can add the glaze: use just enough stem ginger syrup to turn the icing sugar into a thick white glossy glaze.

Drizzle over the cake and leave to set.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Chocolate and ginger sandwich cake

I am extremely suggestible with my baking.  Like most bakers I have a ‘to bake’ list, but then I’ll come across a recipe in a magazine or online and think, ‘that’s what I’m baking next’ and the list goes out the window.  That’s what happened here – I saw this recipe in a Sunday supplement magazine and all I could think about was how lovely chocolate and ginger sponge sounded.  When I leave for work in the morning I have noticed the aromas of Autumn starting to appear and obviously Autumn means spice so this cake had to be!

This is going to sound a stupid question (possibly because it is) but why is stem ginger only ever in ball shapes?  Why not just irregular chunks – it would do the same thing but waste less ginger.  Who decided that the only appropriate shape for stem ginger was a sphere?  And why are they always roughly the same size, to the extent that recipes will say ‘use one ball of stem ginger’ like it’s an actual recognised weight?  Answers on a postcard to….

The ginger and chocolate are very well balanced in this recipe – you get a nice hit of chocolate followed by a gentle spicy warmth.  The sponge is particularly light with a lovely soft crumb.  Perfect to enjoy with a cup of tea. 

This post marks the 7^th anniversary of The Caked Crusader.  Seven years! Where has the time gone?  I’m now pretty close to a recipe for each day of the year...now that sounds like a good year!

Ingredients

For the sponge:

50g cocoa powder
6 tablespoons boiling water
4 tablespoons milk
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 balls of stem ginger, very finely chopped -I used my mini food processor to blitz it small enough; if you don’t have one then consider grating it
175g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

For the buttercream:

115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
225g icing sugar
2 tablespoons stem ginger syrup
1 tablespoon milk

To decorate: 1 ball of stem ginger, very finely chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Line two 20cm loose bottomed sandwich tins with baking paper.

Start by making the cocoa paste: Stir the cocoa powder and boiling water together ensuring that there are no lumps.

Stir in the milk and take care to eliminate any powdery lumps.

Put the paste to one side.

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and sugar together until smooth, whippy and creamy looking.  Do not skimp on this stage.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Beat in the ground ginger and the finely chopped stem ginger.

Stir in the cocoa paste.

Fold in the flour and the baking powder taking care that the ingredients are well incorporated.

Spoon into the prepared tins and level the surface.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cakes comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before de-tinning and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make the buttercream: beat the butter until it is pale and whippy.  I find that beating the butter first makes it lighter and easier to incorporate the icing sugar.

Add the icing sugar and beat until smooth and well combined.

Add the ginger syrup and milk and continue to beat until you have a lovely smooth  buttercream – the best test is to take a tiny amount on your tongue and press it against the roof of your mouth.  If it feels grainy you need to continue beating it to dissolve the sugar.

Place one sponge on the serving plate and spread half the buttercream over it.

Place the second sponge on top and spread the remaining buttercream over it.

Decorate with finely chopped stem ginger.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.