FIG AND FRANGIPANE TART

Almost a whole month has gone by since my last post and I'm due for a catch-up.  You may be tempted to think that no baking has been going on chez nous but that is definitely not so.  We have been so busy that finding time to post is the problem.  On top of that, it has been so debilitatingly hot that I just haven't felt like writing anything much.  

Some friends came round for an "eclipse party" on 12th August and one of them brought with her a small box of beautiful purple figs.  Her fig tree has produced tons of fruit this year, a year when we have had more heatwaves than ever before, the result of which is that we have hardly any produce at all.

I looked through all my French themed cookbooks for a recipe.  There were more for savoury dishes than sweet ones but I really wanted to make a dessert.  I found one in Rick Stein's wonderful book "Secret France" which is based on the equally wonderful TV series of the same name.  In the days when we were only part-time in France we would watch our recording of the series to help us get through grim Derbyshire winters until we could return to our house in France in the spring.  You can see his recipe here.

His recipe was for six small tartlets and I wanted to make just one large tart so I did a bit of internet research to reassure myself (not that I really needed to) that the ingredients would work for one large tart.  That's when I found a recipe on the brilliant blog "La Recette du Jour" written by Veronica.  She had a couple of very handy tips that I decided to adopt.  You can see her blog post here.

We were having a number of people round for an evening BBQ where I wanted to serve the tart.  The weather was hot, 30°C in the kitchen by the afternoon.  It would make sense to bake the tart early in the morning so I used Veronica's tip, made the pastry case and the frangipane mixture the day before and kept it in the fridge overnight.  It worked!

Veronica's recipe also includes instructions for ginger custard to serve with the tart.  I thought that sounded like a great idea but couldn't face standing at the stove to make custard from scratch.  Instead, I bought a pack of ready made "crème anglaise", the very thin version of custard that is ubiquitous in France.  I stirred a tablespoon of syrup from a jar of preserved ginger into it and served it cold with the tart.  It was a big hit with the guests.

The tart was delicious, something a bit different from my usual offerings, easy enough to do and looked gorgeous.

Ingredients

1 pack of ready made, ready rolled shortcrust or sweet shortcrust pastry (mine was plain as that's what was available when I went shopping and in this heat I wasn't keen to make an extra journey to another supermarket)

For the filling

100g butter at room temperature

100g caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

½ tsp almond extract

100g ground almonds

9-10 figs, quartered vertically into wedges, depending on the size of your figs

a sprinkling of flaked almonds

To serve

1 pack of ready made crème anglaise

1-2 tblsp ginger syrup from a jar of preserved ginger, to taste.

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk6.

Use the pastry to line a 20cm loose bottomed tart tin.  Line with baking paper and fill with baking beans and blind bake for 10 minutes.  Remove the paper and beans and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes.

To make the frangipane filling, beat the butter and sugar together in a medium bowl, either with a wooden spoon or an electric hand whisk, until smooth.  Add the eggs and almond extract and whisk in.  Stir in the ground almonds and mix well.

Transfer the almond mixture to the pastry case, spreading it out evenly, and level the top.

At this stage you can keep the tart in the fridge until needed or overnight.

Set the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk5.

Arrange wedges of fig on top of the frangipane.  Don't worry if they look like they are just perched on top of the filling and don't sink in; the filling will rise up as it bakes.

Scatter flaked almonds over the top.

Bake for 20-30 minutes until the frangipane is golden and cooked.  Turn out of the tin carefully when still warm.

Serve warm or at room temperature with cream, ice cream, crème fraîche or ginger crème anglaise.

Serves 8-10 slices.

FOCHABERS GINGERBREAD

 

This cake was quite unlike anything I had made before.  It comes from a book by the Scottish food writer Sue Lawrence, Fochabers being a small town in the north of Scotland, not far from Inverness.  The recipe includes dried fruit, black treacle and beer.  (It also includes mixed peel, which I didn't have as all of mine had gone into the Christmas cake, so I added the same quantity of chopped walnuts instead.)

It started when Nick spotted a Nordic Ware tin that was less than half price in a sale in the fancy kitchenware shop in Loches.  Having bought me a lovely new tin I thought he deserved a cake and his favourite is a ginger cake so I looked through my cookbooks for a new recipe to try.

I remembered the rule not to overfill the tin with mixture and made just five little buns with the excess.  Soon after they came out of the oven, we had unexpected visitors, a friend and her two granddaughters, aged thirteen and four.

I pointed out that the cake was probably a very grown up cake with beer and treacle and that the children might not be too keen but I was wrong.  They both loved the little buns and there were barely a few crumbs left.

The cake had a firm texture and would be excellent for a picnic or to be handed round at a gathering as it didn’t fall into a mass of crumbs in the hand.  It was somehow not too sweet, not too gingery but satisfying.   We had the last two slices toasted and buttered.  It was not the sort of cake you might serve at a fancy tea party but definitely worth remembering.  It would be perfect for St Andrew's Day which is on 30th November.

Ingredients

170g unsalted butter, softened

170g light muscovado sugar (or light soft brown sugar)

4 rounded tablespoons black treacle

1 egg

340g plain flour

60g sultanas

60g currants

60g ground almonds

60g chopped mixed peel  

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice

½ tsp ground cloves

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

142ml (¼ pint) beer

Method

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 130°fan / gas mk 2.  Grease and base line a 20cm square tin or a 900g loaf tin.  If using a Bundt tin grease with cake release paste (see side bar for recipe).

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy.  Heat the treacle gently in a small pan or microwave and add to the mixture.  Stir in the egg and combine well.

Mix in the flour, ground almonds, currants, sultanas, mixed peel and spices.  

Dissolve the bicarb in the beer then beat into the mixture.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, level the top and bake for 75-90 minutes until it passes the skewer test.  (The deeper tin will take the longest time.)

Remove the tin to a wire rack and leave the cake to cool in the tin before turning out.  If using a Bundt tin, turn out after 15-20 minutes.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

APPLE CHUTNEY

Every year our apples fall from the tree too soon, heaps of them.  Most are unusable due to insect damage and end up in the compost but most years I manage to salvage some.  This year I decided to make some chutney.

I adapted a recipe on the Good Food website to what I had in stock, using Melfor vinegar instead of cider vinegar, demerara sugar instead of light muscovado and a mixture of raisins and sultanas.  You could also add other spices than just ginger: maybe cinnamon or even curry powder.

Peeling and chopping so many apples is not my favourite pastime so I've given it two stars for the amount of tedious work but it's a delicious chutney.  It goes well with our new favourite French cheese - Laguiole, which is not dissimilar to a strong cheddar and can usually be found amongst the Cantal cheeses as it’s from the same region of France.  

I'm sure it would go equally well with pork pie, sausage rolls and cold meats.

It’s ready for eating straight away but can be left to "mature" for a few weeks.

There was such a huge quantity of ingredients that I had to cook mine in two separate pans, dividing them equally between the two.  Interestingly, one lot cooked quicker than the other, the wider, flatter pan finishing first by several minutes!

I remembered a tip from, I think, a James Martin recipe on how to tell if your chutney is ready.  It should be nice and thick and when you drag your spoon through it there should be a clear trail which only fills with liquid very slowly.  If it refills immediately cook for longer, in five minutes intervals.

At the time of writing you can see the original recipe here.  The comments suggest it’s a very popular and successful recipe and there are interesting tips and ideas.

Ingredients 

1.5 kg cooking apples (prepared weight) I had about 1.7kg.

750g demerara sugar

500g mixed raisins and sultanas

2 medium white onions

2tsp mustard seeds

2tsp ground ginger

1tsp salt

700ml Melfor or cider vinegar 

Method

Put all of the ingredients into a large saucepan (or divide equally between two), bring to the boil gently then simmer uncovered for 30-40 minutes or until thick and ready (see picture above).  Stir frequently and adjust the heat so that that the chutney doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan.

While the chutney is cooking sterilise eight suitable jars by washing in hot soapy water.  Rinse well and put jars and lids on a baking sheet in the oven set at 140°C for 20 minutes.

Allow the chutney to cool then fill your jars and seal tightly.  Once opened they should be kept in the fridge.

Makes 6-8 jars of chutney.

PARKIN (can be gluten free)

 

Years ago I made Parkin using oatmeal for a Bonfire Night party and was disappointed with the result.  There was something slightly too gritty and serious about it - that's the best way I can describe it - not sweet or sticky enough.  I can't remember which recipe I used but do remember thinking that I probably wouldn't bother making any again!

The Parkin that my mum used to make every year for Bonfire Night wasn't really Parkin at all, it was just a plain but utterly delicious tray of ginger cake made to the Be-Ro book recipe.  You can read about that here.

Anyway, having been asked to make some for another Bonfire Night gathering I wondered what to do.  I have no idea if you can buy oatmeal as such in France so I set about finding an alternative recipe that was almost authentic but also like the sticky ginger cake we all love.  I came across one on the Sainsbury's Magazine website.

It was stunningly good.  Just like proper Parkin without the grit and with all the stickiness of a perfect ginger cake.  You can (for now) see the recipe here.  (These links do have a habit of disappearing.)

Ingredients

175g plain flour (gluten free flour also works)

125g porridge oats

200g caster sugar

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 balls preserved ginger, finely chopped (said to be optional in the original website but it's well worth it) or use 1 extra tsp ground ginger and 1 tsp mixed spice.  My favourite way to chop preserved ginger without becoming extremely sticky is with a small fork and a small sharp knife on a small chopping board.

200ml semi-skimmed milk

110g butter

2 tbslp golden syrup (about 40g)

Method

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 130° fan / gas mk 2.  Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin.

In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.

Put the milk, butter and golden syrup into a small pan and heat gently until the butter has melted.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and beat with a whisk.  Add and whisk in the preserved ginger.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 45 minutes.

Cool in the tin and then cut into 16 squares.  It keeps well for several days and if anything improves with keeping.  Remember to line your tin or box for storing it with baking paper not foil as apparently (according to the website) it will stick to foil.

Cuts into 16 generous portions.

PARSNIP, DATE AND CLEMENTINE CAKE

It's been a dull, grey weekend, the oven whispered "bake a cake" around lunchtime, and with a few parsnips lurking in the fridge, some lonely clementines in the fruit bowl and an unopened packet of chopped dates in the cupboard, a particular cake sprung to mind.  It's many years since I made it and the original comes from one of my most  favourite food blogs written by Dominic Franks.  You can see the last time I made this cake to Dom's recipe here.

Several people expressed a certain amount of scepticism when I made a cake using parsnips a few weeks ago, but on actually tasting it "ate their words".  Parsnips work just as well in a cake as do carrots, courgettes and other vegetables.  (I draw the line at kale.  The kale and apple cake I made a few years ago was truly horrible and I still shudder when I think about it!)

This time I used the dates instead of sultanas and, as both dates and parsnips are fairly sweet, I omitted the small amount of honey.  I also decided not to glaze it with the honey and clementine glaze either.  It was sweet enough without it and the top already looked nice and glossy so I didn't ice it.  I also decided to grate the parsnips a bit finer, using the medium grater on my box grater, which produced a nice cloud of fluffy parsnip which would be more easily concealed in the cake if anyone had doubts about it!

I made it as a traybake, with the walking group debriefing session in mind and it worked beautifully.  It was moist, delicious and kept well - possibly being even better the day after baking.  It was a huge hit with the handful of intrepid walkers that braved a cold, grey and muddy walk then retired to the bar.  There was only the slightest twitch of a raised eyebrow from our French members who by now probably realise that the English, although bonkers, can make a good cake from peculiar ingredients.  One even compared it to pain d'epices - and had a second slice.  Praise indeed!  A winner!

Ingredients

150g chopped dates

juice and zest of 4 clementines (or satsumas, mandarins or maybe 2 small oranges)

3 large eggs 

175ml groundnut or sunflower oil

200g soft light brown sugar

200g self raising flour

50g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground cinnamon

200g parsnips

Method

Put the dates and clementine juice into a small pan.  Add a little water if necessary to ensure they are covered.  Bring to the boil, turn off the heat and set aside to cool.

Peel and grate the parsnips, using the medium fine side of your grater, grating only the fleshy part and discarding the tougher core.

Preheat the oven to 170° C / 150° fan / gas mk 3½.  Butter and line the base and sides of a large traybake or roasting tin measuring about 33 x 24 cm.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and flour until well blended and creamy.  This is easy enough to do with a wooden spoon.

Add the soaked dates including any liquid and all the other ingredients including the clementine zest.  Mix well.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden brown and cooked.  Cool in the tin.

Cuts into 12-16 slices or squares, depending on how many people you want to feed.

LIGHT GINGER CAKE

On the day I made the banana, pecan and maple syrup cake from the previous post, I felt obliged to make a ginger cake as well.  Nick doesn't "do" bananas and ginger is his favourite kind of cake.  And in any case, in the midst of storm Eunice and the aftermath of storm Dudley, it was a thoroughly nasty day outside so what better day to bake not one, but two cakes!

It's a Mary Berry recipe called "mild ginger loaf" from her "Fast Cakes" cook book, and I baked it in my small oblong roasting tin rather than a loaf tin.  This produces a slightly flatter cake rather than a tall loaf.  

The recipe calls for 50g stem ginger and there were just two balls of it left in the jar in the fridge.  On weighing it out, 50g turned out to be just 1½ balls so I decided to use the last half of the last ball, along with some of the syrup from the jar, for icing and decoration.

Nick declared the cake a hit.  It was certainly delicately spiced and with a lovely, even crumb.  Definitely a good one for when it's blowing a hoolie and you need an easy to bake, easy to eat, cake to go with your tea or coffee.  I intended to use the last pieces as a pudding with some custard but when I looked in the tin, they had already gone........funny that!

Ingredients

For the cake

100g baking spread (I used Stork)

100g light muscovado sugar

2 tblsp black treacle

225g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground ginger

50g stem ginger, drained and chopped

2 large eggs

For the icing

½ a ball of stem ginger, diced

3 heaped tblsp icing sugar, sieved

ginger syrup from the jar

Method

After chopping the 50g (1½ balls) of stem ginger, preheat the oven to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.  Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (or small roasting tin) or use a paper liner.

Put the baking spread, sugar and treacle into a medium pan and heat gently until melted.

Put all the other dry ingredients into a medium bowl and stir together.  Add the melted mixter, the chopped ginger and eggs and beat well until thoroughly blended.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake until done, about 45 minutes.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

To make the icing, put the icing sugar into a small bowl and mix in enough ginger syrup from the jar to make the consistency of double cream.  Slather or drizzle this over the cooled cake as you prefer and dot with diced bits of the remaining piece of ginger.

Cuts into 8 - 10 squares or slices.

GINGER AND COCONUT TARTS

 

This is another variation of one of my favourite Be-Ro book recipes.

They are called in the book "rich coconut tartlets" and are essentially jam tarts with a coconut topping.  My mum used to make them by the dozen most weekends.  The last time I wrote about them I had made a version using quince jelly which you can see here.  In that post I originally gave a link to the recipe on the Be-Ro website but, like so many links, it has disappeared!  It's so annoying to get all excited about baking something you've seen in a blog, only to find that when you look up the link all you get is "Error 404"!  

Comparing these to the quince ones it looks like there is much more topping.  That's probably down to using a large egg instead of a medium one.  The large free range eggs we now get are huge!!

I love the knobbly, rustic and home made look!

For these tarts I used Sainsbury's ginger preserve, a favourite jam that I like to have on toast.  I've also used the same jam to fill my pear and ginger upside down cake which you can see here.  (Robertson's make a ginger marmalade which would work nicely too.)  I finished each tart with a bit of crystallised ginger, popped on top before baking. 

This week's weather.

They are perfect for the current weather.  As I write this hail is falling and covering the ground like snow.  This day last week we were basking in 20°C and lighting the barbecue, thinking that this lockdown business is not so bad.  Such is the nature of April weather in Derbyshire, especially during the Easter school holidays!   April showers, I suppose!

Last week's weather - prior to the schools breaking up for Easter!!

Ingredients

100g shortcrust pastry - home made using 100g flour or shop bought

a few teaspoons of ginger jam or marmalade

50g soft margarine

50g caster sugar

1 egg, beaten

50g dessicated coconut

12 pieces of crystallised ginger (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease a 12 hole patty tin.

Roll out the pastry and cut twelve 3" (7.5cm) circles using a fluted pastry cutter.  Gently press one circle into each hole and put about ½ tsp jam in the centre of each one.  (This doesn't sound much but any more will cause the jam to leak out and boil over when cooked.)

In a small bowl, beat together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in the egg and the coconut.

Plop about 1 tsp of the coconut mixture on top of the jam in each tart, teeming and ladling until it's all used up and shared out evenly, and push the mixture to the edges of each one to seal in the jam.

Drop a piece of crystallised ginger into the centre of each one.

Bake for about 20 minutes until the coconut mixture is risen and golden.  Cool before serving as the jam will be very hot.

Makes 12 tarts.

THE BE-RO GINGERBREAD CAKE - the taste of my childhood

 

Nick is not really much of a cake person.  Although for someone who claims not to like cake very much he has made some pretty special cakes himself.  He often tackles the recipes I would shy away from because they're too fiddly  - he just gets the ingredients weighed out and gets on with it, head down and completely focused. 

 However, of all the cakes in the world, his absolute favourite is a ginger cake, and he waxes lyrical about the Be-Ro book ginger cake.

I got out my copy of the Be-Ro book and as I weighed out the ingredients memories of past ginger cakes came to mind.  My mum and my grandma used to make this same cake, using the Be-Ro book recipe, it was a family favourite.  It was made in a small oblong meat roasting tin.  We didn't possess a huge collection of different tins in those days.  There was a pair of sponge tins, a bun tin for fairy cakes, maids of honour and mince pies, a baking tray and a deep cake tin for the Christmas cake.  It was very much a case of make do with what we had and in fact a lot of old fashioned recipes didn't specify the size of tin at all.

This recipe uses the simplest of ingredients that would have been standard fare in everyone's pantry in the 1950's and 60's.  No fancy flours or the kinds of ginger that feature so often in modern recipes.  I doubt my mum would have ever even seen or heard of fresh ginger.  Ginger came dried in a jar.  (In fact I'm not sure that in the very early days if it didn't come in a tin.)

I hadn't made one of these for donkey's years.  Yet it's the best ginger cake you could wish for.  Just look at that sticky, glossy top and the dense, even crumb.  It has a spicy treacliness that's absolutely divine.  The taste of my childhood and just as way back then, the kitchen smelled wonderful all afternoon.

Ingredients

225g plain flour

a pinch of salt

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

50g soft dark brown sugar

100g margarine

175g black treacle

50g golden syrup

150ml milk

2 med eggs, beaten

50g sultanas (optional, I omitted them)

Method

First, measure your margarine, treacle and golden syrup directly into a small saucepan.  Heat gently until the margarine has melted, stirring all the time.  Remove from the heat, stir in the milk and set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 130° fan / gas mk 2.  Grease and line the bottom of an 18cm square or 20cm round tin.

Sift the flour, salt, spices and bicarb into a bowl.  Stir in the sugar and mix well to combine.  Add the beaten eggs and mix well.  Stir in the cooled treacle mixture.  Add the sultanas if using and stir again.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 - 1¼ hours.  Mine was done in 1 hour so check early on.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Cuts into around 16 slices.

CHOCOLATE AND GINGER CAKE and the importance of licking the spoon!

 

It was my little brother's birthday recently and he came to have a socially distanced lunch with us to celebrate.  He's ten years younger than me and not so little any more!

 

The forecast was for a nice warm, sunny day so we opted to have a barbecue.  For dessert I made a raspberry trifle, a favourite of his and of Nick's.  For a birthday cake a chocolate and ginger cake was requested.  At the back of my mind I vaguely remembered a Mary Berry recipe for the very same thing and with a bit of googling found it in several places.  One is on the Sainsbury's website here and the other is on the Happy Foodie website here.

 

I have given both links because links have a habit of disappearing after a while.  I find it really annoying to find that a link for something I have got all excited about has disappeared altogether, but that's the nature of the internet I suppose.  Hopefully with two links to go at one of them should still be there in a couple of years' time!

 

In any case, the recipe comes from a book entitled "Mary Berry cooks the perfect" and of course that's where I had originally seen it - although my copy is in France and we are not.  Yet.

 

 

This particular book is a "how to do it" kind of book, not just a series of recipes.  However, Mary in her wisdom omitted to remind the reader of one very important fact.

 

You should always lick the spoon, as soon as possible.

 

When I was a little girl I was always allowed to lick the spoon.  As soon as the cake was in the oven I couldn't wait to do it and, with no little brother around for the first ten years of my life, I had it all to myself.  It's a custom that I have continued to this very day and it has on several occasions saved the day.  This day was one of them!

 

On licking the spoon I thought "it doesn't taste sweet enough".  Within nanoseconds I had realised why.  The carefully weighed out sugar was still in a little pot on the worktop and not in the cake!

 

The cake had only been in the oven for about three or four minutes at the most (I'm that eager to get to the spoon licking part) and it was still liquid.  I whisked it out of the oven at the speed of lightening.  Getting the mixture out of the tins and back into a bowl was a messy job and the tins had to be washed, greased and relined.  Luckily it's an "all in one" kind of cake recipe (my favourite kind) so all I did was beat the missing sugar into the mixture as evenly as I could and get it back in the oven pronto.   

 

The cake was delicious and a great success.  You would never have known how close it was to being a complete disaster- although you might have if I hadn't licked the spoon so promptly.

It had a lovely texture, a good chocolatey flavour with a hint of ginger and the frosting looked pale and inviting against the darkness of the cake.  The only thing I did differently to the recipe was to decorate with sprinkles rather than shavings of preserved ginger.

 

It was a hit with the birthday boy and everyone else and I shall definitely be adding it to my list of favourite cakes.  But I'll try to remember to put all the ingredients in next time.

 

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

EMERGENCY GINGER CAKE.

 

My brother, who lives 60 miles away, has been in more or less solitary confinement for six weeks and has barely ventured out except to buy food, most of which he gets from his small local Co-op. 

 

One of the things he struggled to get was bread.  No problem, he thought, as he has a breadmaking machine.  Then he discovered, like the rest of us, that there was no flour to be had in the shops, even extending his search to larger supermarkets. 

 

 Anyway, I have been lucky.

 

In our local Tesco and Aldi I managed to get some self raising flour - Homepride in Tesco and own brand in Aldi.  I didn't have high expectations of the Aldi flour but in fact it was perfectly ok.

We also have in our area a small chain of shops called Taylor's who are actually corn merchants.  They look like pet shops as they sell pet food and accessories, but they also sell excellent flour.  Apparently the local flour hoarders haven't realised that you can buy flour in a pet shop so there is usually some available.

 

I parcelled up a supply of bread flour to send to my brother so that he could make himself some bread.  Also some dried yeast, granulated sugar and a few other bits and pieces that the panic buying locusts had cleared from his local shops, including soap.  I also included a loaf tin (in case he preferred to just make the dough in the machine and bake the bread in the oven and apologising for the colour - pink), the box of Homepride SR flour and a jar of ground ginger so that he could make a cake. 

 

I thought about what recipe he could use with what he was likely to have in stock, adapted this recipe for sticky ginger cake from the Clandestine Cake website, and decided it might be best to try it out myself first.  I substituted granulated sugar for the brown sugar, more ground ginger for the preserved ginger, used Stork instead of butter because it creams so easily by hand and drizzled it with golden syrup as I didn't think he would have icing sugar in stock.  Because it was baked in a loaf tin, not a round tin, it took 15 minutes longer to bake.

 

 

I explained how to line the tin with baking paper, although a bigger piece than this would have been better.

 

 

 It turned out to be a very nice cake. 

 

It would of course have had a different flavour using the brown sugar and preserved ginger in the recipe, but it was lovely.  It was nice and gingery with a soft, even crumb and would also be excellent as a pudding with some custard.  Most people could make it from what they have in the kitchen cupboard.

 

Ingredients

 

180g Stork margarine (or any spreadable butter, or really soft butter)

180g granulated sugar

3 eggs, beaten together in a small bowl

180g self raising flour

5 tsp ground ginger

2 tblsp golden syrup

 

1 tblsp golden syrup for drizzling

 

Method

 

Grease a 900g (2lb) loaf tin.  Cut an oblong of baking paper and use it to line the tin.  Slashing the corners will make it easier to fit neatly into the tin.  Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.

 

Put the margarine into a large bowl with the sugar and beat like hell with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy.

 

Add the eggs in thirds, beating in well.  Add a spoonful of flour if the mixture seems to curdle.

 

Add the flour, ginger and golden syrup and stir in gently.  (Don't beat.)

 

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden brown and done.

 

Remove from the oven and poke holes in the top of the cake with a skewer or knife point.  Drizzle some more golden syrup over the cake, probably about a tablespoonful, and spread over the cake with the back of a spoon.

 

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes.  Use the edges of the baking paper to carefully lift the cake out onto a wire rack. 

Remember it will be fragile while still warm so, if it doesn't lift out easily, place a plate on top of the cake tin and invert it so that the cake drops out of the tin.  Then lift off the tin and place the wire rack on top of the bottom of the cake and tip it upside down again so that the cake ends up the right way up on the rack.

 

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

PEAR AND GINGER CAKE and an illicit cup of rosé wine.

 

This is a cake that I made regularly for many years.  I'm surprised I haven't written about it before but can't see that I have.  The odd thing is that the book the recipe comes from mysteriously disappeared some time ago.  The only other recipe in the book that I used was for something called Italian bread pudding and in my post about that I do refer to almost taking the book to the charity shop several times.  Which suggests that I didn't in the end.  Or did I?

 

 

I also have the same recipe copied out and filed away in my documents on my laptop, which further suggests that I did that before taking the book to the charity shop.  I'm not convinced.  The net flow of cookbooks is into the house, not out of it.  I suspect that the book is lurking in an as yet unopened box of miscellaneous packing dating back to one of our three house moves of recent years. 

 

 

About a week ago, I invited family members to afternoon tea, courtesy of Zoom.

 

It was a great success in that we all managed to log on and natter for a while.  I was somewhat disappointed when we were the only ones who took the "tea" part of it seriously.  And seriously we did, with triangular egg and cress sandwiches (no crusts), scones, the last two chunks of our Easter cake and - the pear and ginger cake rustled up especially for the occasion.  We did however substitute a nice chilled rosé wine for tea in the teapot - the milk jug and sugar bowl were just for show and to complete the illusion.  Nobody seemed to notice!

 

 

This is a very quick cake to put together.

 

 

Pear and ginger is a lovely combination and the cake was just as I remembered it, perfect for afternoon tea - or to accompany an illicit glass of rosé!

 

Ingredients

 

For the cake

175g unsalted butter

175g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

1 tblsp (6 teaspoons) ground ginger

3 eggs, beaten

 

For the topping

450g ripe pears

1 tblsp demerara sugar

25g butter

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk4.  Grease and line the base of a 20cm round springform tin.

 

Put all of the cake ingredients into a large bowl and, using an electric whisk, beat together until smooth and well combined.

 

Spoon the mixture into the tin and level the top.

 

Peel the pears, halve and remove the core with a teaspoon or melon baller.  Slice thinly and arrange the slices on top of the cake.  Sprinkle with the sugar, dot with the butter and bake for 35-40 minutes until done.

 

Cuts into 8-10 slices.