Hot Ginger Cake

Yesterday I made a ginger cake and realising I hadn't been blogging for a while, I decided to share it with you.

It is very gingery (of course; that's why it's called hot) because it has ground ginger inside and fresh root ginger scattered on top. It is also quite a heavy cake due to the amount of treacle inside.

I found the recipe in this book. The cake turned out well apart from the fact it didn't rise much (which was odd because it had both self raising flour and baking powder in it) so I'll definitely be making more things from this book.

New Cook Books

For Christmas I got two new cookery books and my Mum got one too.

Supper with Rosie - I haven't made any thing from this yet but it looks good and quite simple.

Mary Berry's ultimate cake book - I have made a marmalade fruit cake from this book. I have made a few variations to the recipe: it said to use currants, sultanas and glacé cherries but I but I didn't have the last two so I used dried apricots instead.

It also said to plonk all the ingredients in and mix them up. But I did it the proper way, creamed the butter and sugar, added the eggs then folded in the flour.

Comptoir - I have been to this Lebanese restaurant and the food was so nice I made…

These pastries. They have to have special pastry made with honey.

The filling is feta, halloumi and mint. 

The cheese stays quite fresh in the pastry so they last for about a week.

Catching Up!!!

So it is almost the end of 2013 I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I thought I'd do a lot of catching up for the new year. I have split this post in to two parts: savoury and sweet.

Savoury

First I thought these squashes looked really funny with the empanadas in front so I photographed them.

I love this twisty wreath of bread even though it is very complicated to make. when you have made the dough you roll it out and sprinkle blue cheese and walnuts then you roll it up and cut it lengthways and finally twist it into a wreath. It is good straight from the oven on a cold December night to warm you up.

Now here is a very useful tip when making pies to stop them sticking: shred some grease-proof paper and sit the pies on top.

Sweet

I made these fairy cakes quite a while ago but here's another useful tip: when you are looking for a nice smooth top to your cakes, slice the top off and use runny icing, not too runny though! I use the tops to make trifles with.

One morning I made some blueberry pancakes for breakfast (Do you like my onesie?). They turned out quite sweet and would do nicely as a desert. 

This is a very exciting pudding as suggested by it's title: coffee chocolate volcano!

You fill the hole with walnuts and pour a coffee sauce thing on top  letting it run down the sides.

The next two things are from the Linda Collister's Baking Bible.

These chocolate biscuits are like meringues; crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, a brilliant texture.

You are supposed to cut this into bars but I personally prefer breaking chunks off. This is completely topped with pecan nuts but is soft and chewy underneath.

Finally a big almond cake to finish off. I can't remember much about this rather dense cake apart from that it tasted good and sank in the middle a lot!

I hope you have all enjoyed this very long post. I also hope you had a merry Christmas and will have a happy new year!

Christmas Cake

Yesterday I decorated our Christmas cake with marzipan, some how I managed to prevent food colouring anywhere (apart from my hands!)

Only four more nights 'till Christmas!!!

Mince Pies

Mince pies is one of my favourite festive foods so I decided to cook them. I made my own tart pastry without cheating!

I am now about to make some more pies with the leftover pastry.

Cheese and sweetcorn

I have been forgetting to take photos recently, so I am doing a post about two things I made a while ago - when we had almost too much sweetcorn (we also had a lot of cheese, not that I can have too much sweetcorn or cheese)! I decided to make up my own recipes (based on the Good Housekeeping book, obviously).

Firstly I decided to make cheese and sweetcorn scones and found they kept for a surprisingly long time.

The cheese sprinkled on top just before entering the oven worked brilliantly.

I found we had a pack of puff pastry in the freezer so I mixed up some cheese and sweetcorn and poured it over the the pastry and decorated it with some home-grown tomatoes.

It looked and tasted like a pizza!

Dried fruit cake

 You can use any dried fruit in this cake but I used what the recipe suggests: figs, prunes and dried apricots.

I found the recipe in this very useful book.

You are supposed to cook this cake for 1.5 - 2 hours but I accidentally left it for 3 hours it was quite dry so it kept very well.

Chorizo and tomato cake

This sounds a very odd idea, I know; but this 'cake' is actually savoury!

 I didn’t think I would enjoy this savoury cake much because I usually hate sundried tomatoes but I actually loved them in this!

 I also used pistachios but now I wish I had brought them ready shelled because it took me a long time to get from here…

to here!

I completely coated the top with sesame seeds to make a crisp finish. The little pieces of chorizo gave it a brilliant texture!

Beetroot Hummus

Although this dip takes a lot of preparation it is definitely worth it; it is an excellent way of using up beetroot and stale bread.

You boil the beetroot first so that it goes nice and soft.

Then you give it a whizz in the food processor.

The roasted walnuts give it an amazing texture; almost crunchy.

It keeps for about a week in the fridge if you loosen it up with a bit of oil now and again.

Unfortunately we can't take this in our pack-ups anymore because it is too messy in the tiffin boxes we are using this year!

I thought I would share some pictures of our PET pigs, they are now four and a half years old.

Quiches

I made up this recipe but copied the cheesy sauce from Good Housekeeping book. The vegetables I used for the filling were all home/allotment grown.

I have been using a lot of sweetcorn lately because we've had an over load at the allotment and even though we have corn on the cob every night  there are still lots left!

Sweetcorn, red onion and courgette.

I decided to do them cupcake size so I could pop them in a lunchbox without having to slice them up.

I just found I haven't got any more photos of my mini quiches so I'll do a bit about my first full size one.      

I used a slightly different filling for this one: red pepper, red onion and courgette.

I fried them all together with a tiny bit of oil.

I blind baked the pastry first so the sauce wouldn't make it soggy.

I took a slice of this to Chelsea Flower show because my school entered a 1940's garden and got 6 tickets!