The last of the gingerbread recipes, hurrah, if I wasn’t taking part in Sober October in aid of Macmillan Nurses, I think I may have opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. There are far too many gingerbread recipes in this book for my liking. Looking through this recipe it seemed very similar to the traybake recipe I have already baked.
The oven was put on to preheat at Fan 140°C and instead of greasing an 18cm (7″) deep square cake tin I used two smaller round tins – the reason behind this being I could give one of the cakes away – that way there wouldn’t be too much for us to eat! The bottom of the tins were also lined with parchment.
This was a reasonably quick recipe to put together – into a bowl I measured out 100g softened butter, 100g light muscovado sugar, 2 large eggs, 150g black treacle and 150g golden syrup. This was all beaten together until thoroughly mixed. 225g plain flour was put into a sieve, together with a level tsp ground ginger and a level tsp ground mixed spice . The dry mixture was sieved over the top of the wet mixture and folded in. This is one of those cakes where you can fold and fold and fold the flour into the mixture, but you will still find a lump of flour when you turn it into the cake tin! Finally, once I had convinced myself I had thoroughly folded in the dry ingredients, I stirred in 1/2 level tsp bicarbonate of soda and 2 tbsp milk.
The mixture was divided between the two tins (or put into one larger tin if you wish). Into the oven it went. For the large cake you need to bake it for an hour and then reduce the oven temperature to Fan 130°C and bake for a further 15-30 minutes after which time it should be well risen and firm to the touch. My smaller cakes I baked initially for 40 minutes and then reduced the temperature and baked them for another 25 minutes. Once they were ready, they were removed from the oven and left in the tin for around 10 minutes before I turned them out, removed the parchment and allowed them to cool on a wire rack.
Once cooled, it was time to ice them. For the icing you need 175g sieved icing sugar together with 3 tbsp stem ginger syrup and approximately 3 tsp water. The icing should be a spreading consistency. Once it is mixed and smooth, finely chop a 2.5cm piece of stem ginger and add this to the icing. Poured the icing over the cake and leave it to set. My icing was, as usual a bit on the runny side and I spent a while spooning it back over the top.
It was as the heading says an Iced Gingerbread with Stem Ginger. Nothing amazing, but then again ginger cakes aren’t my favourite cakes. The one we had disappeared pretty quickly, so it can’t have been too bad! Apologies for the photo, it was taken under fluorescent lighting quite late at night.
Self Raising Flower 