This is truly the best ginger cake recipe I have found yet.  It originally came from The Reggae Reggae Cook Book by Levi Roots – one of my favourite recipe books but I have adapted it slightly!

Jamaican Ginger Cake
I make mine in a ring tin but you can use a loaf tin aswell.

Ingredients

100g/31/2oz butter, cut into cubes
100g/31/2oz muscovado sugar
3 tbsp golden syrup
150ml/5fl oz milk
1 large egg
150g/5oz plain flour
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2″ piece of ginger – peeled, grated and the juice squeezed from the gratings.

Method

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2. Grease a 20cm/8in ring tin or a 900g/2lb loaf tin with butter

Put the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a pan and heat gently, stirring, until melted.

Add the ginger juice to the milk and then add to the pan, pour into a jug and leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then add the egg.

Sift the flour, ginger, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Pour in the wet ingredients and gently mix together.

Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes (or up to 1 hour for loaf tin) or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

We enjoy ours with or without custard, its great as a pudding or with a cup of tea!  Enjoy.

I made two very nice cakes today….

If you like to cook and enjoy Caribbean food then Levi Roots Reggae Reggae Cook Book is a must to buy.  Its like a little food bible in our house.  The Jerk sauce is amazing and the ginger cake puts those oblong McVities cakes to shame!  Today I tried the coconut cake and Levi has not failed me yet again, its delicious.

Coconut Cake ala Levi Roots

Ingredients

175g self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

175 g butter, cut into cubes

175 g golden cater sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

50 g sweetened tenderised coconut or desiccated coconut

Finely grated zest and juice of 2 limes

Method

Preheat the oven to 180oC and line a loaf tin with the non-stick baking parchment.

Put the flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, coconut and lime zest and juice into a large bowl and mix together with an electric whisk. Start off slowly, and then gradually increase the speed. If you haven’t got a mixer, put all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy.

Pour the mixture into a prepared tin and bake for 45-55 minutes or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 1o minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The second cake I made was a Carrot Cake because I love them.

Carrot Cake with cream frosting

Ingredients

1 cup castor sugar

1 cup plain flour

1 and ½ cups grated carrots

2 eggs

½ cup oil – rapeseed/veg/sunflower/olive

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C/GM4.

Grease and line a loaf tin.

Place all ingredients into a bowl and mix well – I used my Kenwood.

Pour mixture into cake tin.

Bake for approximately 45/1hr minutes until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Remove the cake from oven and allow to cool.

Turn cake onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely before icing.

Carrot Cake Frosting

Mix 30g of spread/soft butter with the same quantity if cream cheese, you may add some lemon or orange juice with  about a tbsp of icing sugar.

Spread over cake.

Having tasted the most delicious macaroon ever the other day (thanks Ben!), I wanted to have a go at making my own.  I’ve never made macaroons before and as I never managed to get the recipe from a colleague, I hunted high and low on the web.  I went with this one, they weren’t quite as soft as Ben’s were in the middle but came a close second.

2 2/3 cups desicated coconut

2/3  cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup plain flour

¼ tsp salt

4 egg whites

½ tsp almond extract

1. Preheat the oven to GM3 and lightly grease and flour a large baking tray and set aside. 
2. In a medium bowl combine coconut, sugar, flour, and salt. 

Stir in egg whites and almond extract.

Using 2 teaspoons, mould small circles of the mix onto the baking tray, leaving an inch or two apart.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Put straight on a baking tray and leave to cool.

Decorate with chocolate or leave as they are and enjoy!

MALT LOAF – makes one 2lb loaf or two 1lb loaves

8oz/225g sultanas
8oz/225g raisins
3oz/85g butter
half pint/290ml water
12oz/340g self-raising flour
half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
8oz/225g soft dark brown sugar (the darker the better)
2 large eggs, beaten
3 tbsp malt extract

1. Preheat oven to 180c/350f/GM 4. Grease and flour 1 x 2lb loaf tin or 2 x 1lb loaf tins.

2. Put the dried fruit, butter and water into a large pan and bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes. Allow to cool a little.

3. In a mixing bowl, sift the flour, bicarb of soda and salt together then stir in the sugar.

4. Pour in the fruit mixture then add the beaten eggs and malt extract. Mix well with a spoon.

5. Pour into the prepared tin/s and bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes, then move to a lower shelf and bake for a further 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for five minutes.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not a great muffin baker, they defeat me more times than not – I guess I mix them too much, I read it’s a common problem when baking muffins.  While I was travelling from blog to blog, I stumbled across Joy The Baker.  This woman is my new heroine, the things she makes look amazing and I simply had to have a go of the Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins.

I’ve tried to convert some of the ingredients for us Brits!

Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12

100g unsalted butter

80ml whole milk

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups plain flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

200g Blueberries

For the Topping

40g cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/2 cup plain flour

3 1/2 tsp sugar

Preheat oven to 375f/190c/GM5 and line muffin tin with muffin cases.

Melt butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat, you need to stay near the butter and keep it on the heat until brown bits start to appear.  It does take a little while, it will start to crackle and after a while the crackling will stop and then very soon after brown bits will appear.  Take care not to get splashe by the hot butter!  Remove from heat.

Whisk the milk, egg, egg yolk and vanilla together until combined.  Add the browned butter and stir to combine.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl and then add milk and butter mixture all at once and stir gently to combine.  Gently but thoroughly fold in the blueberries.

It will be quite thick so resist the temptation to add more milk.  Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups and spread evenly.

To make the topping combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until crumbly.  Sprinkle evenly over the batter in the cups.

Bake until golden and a cake tester/stick comes out clean, about 20-30 minutes.  Cool in pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes then remove from the muffin tin.

Enjoy!

I’m having another go at Tiger Bread, after more research I discovered that it’s actually known in America as Dutch Crunch and there are more recipes available!  Yay!  So thanks to the ‘Bakingsheet‘ blog for the recipe, which I have very slightly altered by adding a dash (say half a tsp or so) of toasted sesame oil.

So, I prepared my usual white loaf and left it for 25 mins to prove and made up the paste except I forgot to wait 15 minutes for the paste to expand!  I spread the paste on quite thickly and left it to prove until it had doubled to its original size and stuck it in the oven.  It came came out quite well, its not quite the same as the Tiger Bread taste – doesn’t seem as buttery so maybe I will experiment a bit with butter instead of oil and slightly more sugar maybe as it didn’t seem to be as sweet either.  The loaf came out quite heavy but I’ve since Googled it and I think I have narrowed the problem down to my Kenwood, from the posts I read on various forums I need to add more water when using dough hooks on a Kenwood so we will see when I make another loaf on Thursday.

White Loaf
650g/1lb 5oz Strong White Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Sugar
1 x 7 g sachet Easy Bake Yeast
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil – I used Olive as we don’t have veg oil, you could use melted butter.
400ml/14fl oz Warm Water – I actually used 200ml warm milk & 200ml water

Place the flour, salt and sugar in a warm bowl and stir in the Easy Bake Yeast.
Mix to a soft dough with the oil and water.
Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes. (5 minutes if using dough hooks in a foo processor)
Shape as desired and put into an appropriate greased tin.
Leave to prove (rise) slowly until double in size – see paste recipe below
Place in an oven preheated to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7 and immediately turn the heat down to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.
Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and turn on to a wire tray. When cooked the loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Tiger Paste/Dutch Crunch Topping

1 tbsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (105-110F)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup white rice flour (not sweet rice flour)

I was looking for some bread inspiration and stumbled across the Allinson recipe site www.bakingmad.com.  I found myself browsing the world breads section, simply because I love bread with flavours, anyway I found Buttermilk Stuten, its apparently a German (could also be Polish, I cant quite get much from a Google search) bread and it reminds me of the semi-sweet bread that you get in an Iced or a Belgian Bun.  It is described as a breakfast bread and I can certainly see why, I really like it and thought I might make some icing for the top and Chris suggested I add cinnamon, so now it is my very own cinnamon bread – would go lovely with a nice fresh macciatio or cappuccino (which I’m very lucky to be able to have on hand, thanks to our fantastic coffee machine!  Next time I make it, I might add some sultanas, although it is delicious without.

Buttermilk Stuten

400 g (14 oz or 2 ½ cups) Allinson Strong White Bread Flour - I used Very Strong as it was all I had in.
75 g (3 oz or ½ cup Honey
1 tbsp Sea Salt
100 g (4 oz or ¾ cup) Butter, Melted
1 Egg
2 Sachets Allinson Easy Bake Yeast
225 ml (8 floz or 1 cup) Water (my butter was still warm so I just used cold water and added the butter to the water before mixing)

Place all the ingredients into a mixer with a dough hook attached.

Mix to a soft dough (I did it on no.2 with my Kenwood) and knead for 5 minutes.

Split the dough in to 3 and roll in to sausages then make a plait.

Place onto a greased baking sheet, cut slats across the top and leave to prove until double in size, this takes about an hour.

Bake at 190°C/370°F/Gas Mark 5 for 30 minutes.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Cinnamon Icing

1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp milk

Combine the icing sugar, cinnamon and milk to make the icing, you can add the milk slowly until you reach your preferred consistency, I like mine quite thick so add more milk if you want it thinner.

Drizzle over the cooled bread and leave to set – if you can wait that is!

Slice and enjoy with a lovely cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate.

Well I’ve been a very busy girl over the past couple of days.  With a picnic in the park looming, I decided to make some cupcakes I mean, you have to have cakes at a picnic, it’s the law, surely!  As I am loving the chocolate mayonnaise cake at the moment, I went for that in muffin cases.  As expected, they were divine and I whipped up a chocolate butter icing to go on top.

Chocolate Butter Icing

140g/5oz Butter, softened

250g/10oz Icing Sugar

1 heaped tbsp Cocoa Powder

1-2 tbsp Milk

Beat the butter until soft then add half the icing sugar and cocoa and beat until smooth.
Add the remaining icing sugar with one tablespoon of the milk and beat until creamy.

I spooned my butter icing on top of the cupcakes but you could use an icing tool.

We all love tiger bread in this house and generally end up buying a massive loaf almost every weekend so I hunted down a recipe and thought I would try my hand at making it myself.  As there is no real recipe give on a  Google search, various bloggers and forum posters have came up with recipes and what they think goes into the bread. It seems that yeast, rice flour, sesame (some use, some don’t), sugar and water are the key ingredients, I also read somewhere that malt extract is added. So from the various websites, I started with a mix-match of recipes and crossed my fingers!  The main part of the recipe came from here.

I started with making my regular loaf (apparently Tiger Bread is simply a white loaf with the paste spread on during the second rising process.  I usually use the fast yeast but only had the stuff that you have to prepare ahead – I bought it in error and had never used it before, so was a bit of a trial run in itself and unfortunately, the bread was far too yeasty to eat.  So, I made the dough in my food mixer and set it off to rise for an hour.  About 15 minutes before the end of the hour, I began with the tiger paste.  Once the dough was ready for its second rise, I spread the paste on the top.  After 30 minutes of proving, I popped it in the oven and waited impatiently for it to bake.

Well as you can see, it looks like Tiger Bread but it didn’t taste like Tiger Bread.  Like I said, the bread was too yeasty (have now bought the fast bake yeast again!) and the top was also very yeasty and far too sesame’y’.

So changes to make next time will be, leave out the malt extract, try with the fast bake yeast and a lot less toasted sesame oil.

The recipe below is assuming that the white bread dough has already been mixed and left to rise for an hour, punched down and ready to be left to rise for a second time.

Tiger Paste

1 1/2 tsp yeast
65ml warm water
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp sesame oil

60g brown rice flour

1 tsp malt extract

Mix together tiger paste ingredients and leave for 15 min. You may need to add a bit more warm water to loosen the paste

Preheat oven to gas mark 7/220C/425F

Spread tiger paste on to the surface of the bread and leave to prove for 30 minutes

Bake bread for 30 minutes at the given temperature or until loaf is ready.  If you tap the base of the bread and it sounds hollow the bread is cooked.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.