Old reliables!

August is a crazy busy time at my work and we have to work some very long hours. Therefore, cake is a necessity to see us through! However, working long hours means that I haven’t had the time or energy to be creative or try anything new – definitely time to stick to making old reliables! 

One of my most reliable and best-loved recipes is my sticky ginger cake with lemon icing. I made three of these a couple of weekends ago and they all turned out beautifully. The fabulous thing about this cake is that it lasts at least two weeks, and even improves for being left to mature. The cake has a deep rich flavour and moist, sticky texture that is beautifully balanced by the sharp tanginess of the lemon icing.

Another of my favourite recipes is my Primrose Bakery lemon layer cake (made also here). This week, I decided to keep it really simple and just make a two layer cake (225g golden castor sugar, s-r flour and butter, 1.5 tsp baking powder, 25g cornflour, 4 large eggs, zest and juice of 2-3 lemons). I sandwiched the two layers with lemon curd, smothered the sides with lemon buttercream, filled the top with curd and then topped with buttercream piped stars around the top edge. Apologies – it was all a bit of a rush and I forgot to take a photo! This cake always tastes deliciously moist and zingy! 

Finally this week, I decided to make my Apple Amazing Cake – a cake that I have made loads of times but not for ages. It’s a fairly simple cake to make – as long as you remember that it will take about 3 hours to bake! It’s a mammoth of a cake, so great if you are baking for lots of people. I was a little disappointed with this cake this week – it just didn’t have the flavour that I remembered. It is quite a savoury cake – more like a light fruit cake. I’m not quite sure why it wasn’t right this time – could have been the apples – I’ve always made it with huge Bramley apples, but this time the shop only had fairly small measly apples and I wonder if they were lacking flavour. I also over-cooked the apples slightly, so that they were fully reduced to a mush, rather than having a few nice juicy lumps remaining. Think that I may need to give this another go in a few months when apples are at their best, to see if this recipe really is as good as I remember it to be!   

Sticky Ginger Cake with lemon drizzle icing

It’s been a busy baking weekend! It was the Ever Hungry Husband’s (EHH) birthday last week while we were on holiday, and so, as tradition goes, he has to take cakes into work. The trouble is, there are over 60 people to feed at his work! The easy (and cheaper) thing to do would have been to get him to buy 6 bags of 10 doughnuts from the supermarket. But I like a challenge!

So, after a lot of deliberation and searching of the recipe books and files, we decided on Sticky Ginger Cake, flapjacks, Apple Amazing Cake, Raspberry Bakewell Slices and a Caramel Layer Cake.

The great thing about my Sticky Ginger Cake recipe is that it keeps for up to 2 weeks – the flavour keeps developing and it keeps beautifully moist and sticky. I’ve had the recipe for ages – no idea where it came from originally! However, if you follow the instructions carefully, it comes out beautifully every time and tastes fantastic!

Sticky Ginger Cake with lemon drizzle icing

Ingredients

1.    225g self-raising flour

2.    1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda

3.    2 tbsp ground ginger

4.    2 tsp ground cinnamon

5.    2 tsp ground mixed spice

6.    115g butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing

7.    115g dark muscovado sugar

8.    115g black treacle

9.    115g golden syrup

10. 250ml whole milk

11. 85g drained stem ginger, finely chopped

12. 1 egg 

For the icing

1.    100g icing sugar, sifted

2.    Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

3.    Lemon juice

Method

1. Preheat the oven to fan 160C/conventional 180C/gas 4. Butter and line an 18cm round, 7cm deep cake tin with parchment paper.
2. Put the flour, bicarbonate of soda and all the spices into a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
4. Put the sugar, treacle, syrup and milk in a medium saucepan and heat, gently stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
5. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to just below boiling point. (It will split and go lumpy at this point – don’t panic! This is normal!)
6. Add the stem ginger to the flour mixture, then pour in the treacle mixture, stirring as you go with a wooden spoon.
7. Break in the egg and beat until all the mixture is combined and it resembles a thick pancake batter.
8. Pour this into prepared tin and bake for 50 minutes-1 hour, until the cake springs back when touched.
9. Leave to cool completely in tin before turning cake out. (To freeze: wrap in greaseproof paper, then in cling film. Freeze for up to 1 month.)
10. To make the icing, mix together icing sugar and lemon zest, then gradually add lemon juice until you have a smooth, slightly runny icing, adding more juice, if needed.
11. Put icing into a disposable piping bag and drizzle icing in a zig-zag pattern over surface of cake, turn cake around and drizzle again to create the cross-hatched finish.
12. Cake keeps for up to 2 weeks stored in an airtight container.