Lemon Cream and Ginger Cake

Sooooo, I was deciding whether I could still use this blog (since I am not a student anymore, and I created it with all my student flatmates and friends, but I decided I am always a student in life and I am usually baking with friends anyways ;)) As you probably know, this blog was created as a challenge to myself (and flatmates) to bake all the recipes in a cookbook by Martha Collison called Twist in under a year. We did succeed in making most of the recipes (besides many of the pastry recipes because they were a bit too fancy for our student times). Now that I am graduated, and haven't got a full time job (yet), I have heaps of time to bake recipes I didn't get to bake while at university. 

The second reason I decided to start this blog was to raise awareness and fundraise for a charity called Tearfund which tackle poverty around the world. During this time Tearfund is out in vulnerable countries helping people understand how to protect themselves against the coronavirus disease that is wide-spreading. They are also helping vulnerable people in more than 50 countries during this Lent Season to gain access to essential items and means of survival. However, they have been forced to stop holding public events, which is vital to their fundraising efforts for the charity to keep tackling poverty. All I ask is for you to consider giving a donation to hep them to keep doing their amazing work, and in return I will show you how to bake some amazing cakes :D 

Now to my recent bake!! I have recently been making a whole lot of ginger cakes. The reasons being: 1. I had to buy a large jar of stem ginger, which lasts only few weeks in the fridge, and one cake only needs one stem ginger, and 2. Graeme (my amazing husband) discovered that he actually loves ginger cake. Here is a photo of the ginger cake I made for his birthday last month: 

Waiting for the heart-shaped cake to cool down before icing it (I forgot to take a picture of the iced cake) ;) 

We had an online party for Graeme, and then played some games with people who stayed on for longer :D 

Needless to say, I have made the basic ginger cake recipe a few times before (Ginger and Rhubarb Cake being the first time I made it where I accidentally made 4 times the recipe) , but what I hadn't made was a Lemon and Ginger cake before. This recipe compromises of three different components: lemon curd, two ginger cakes, and the filling. So I started off by making the lemon curd the night before I was going to make the cake. 

The lemon curd was actually quite simple. I had made it once or twice before, but a few years ago, and so I thought it was much more complicated than it was ;) I halved the recipe, because I wasn't going to use it for anything else but the cake, so I only needed two unwaxed lemons. So in the small saucepan I added the juice and zest of the two lemons, 50g unsalted butter, 75g caster sugar and 1 egg plus one yolk. 

I then whisked on low until the butter was melted:

Everything added and the butter melted.

You then turn up the heat to medium and whisk until it thickens and can coat the back of a spoon (around 5-6 minutes). 

Graeme and I had bought these cute little jars from IKEA, so I washed and thoroughly dried one on low in the oven, and poured in my lemon curd. I then put it in the fridge and left it until I needed it the next day. 

The next day I opened it and it looked darker in colour and had created a skin on the top of it. 

Ready with my recipe

It was the next day, and so I had to now make the two ginger cakes and the filling. I had bought a packet of 8 18 inch disposable cake tins a few years ago at Wilko when I made a rainbow cake, so I decided to use two of those for the ginger cake. I greased them, and turned the oven on to 140 Celsius  fan. 

My two cake tins ready, and my cake batter on its way.

For the cake batter, like usual cake recipes, you first make the liquids to then add to the flour. In a medium saucepan I added 200g salted butter, 250g dark Muscovado sugar, and either 200g golden syrup or, like me, the rest of the golden syrup I had and the rest honey till it reached 200g. I then stirred until the butter was melted and I couldn't see any lumps of sugar. 

Do you like my smiley spoon? It is a souvenir from one of my home countries Finland :)  It makes me smile every time I use it. 

After that, I added 200g milk to cool the liquid down. I then usually leave it a bit to make sure it is cooling down, cause once I put the egg in too quickly and it scrambled!! Finely cut 2 stem gingers from your jar of stem gingers. Leave that on the side, add two eggs to the sugar mixture and whisk them in. Stir in the finely cut stem ginger.

Now the flour. In a medium sized bowl add 250g plain flour, and then 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger and cinnamon. Mix it a bit, and then add the sugar mixture. Whisk it a wee bit till it is just combined, then pour into your two cake tins. I made a mistake here!! Only add it till 3/4 way up the cake tin, otherwise it will overflow!! 

Then bake for 40 - 50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Happily baking away.

I noticed it was about to overflow, so I put in an extra tray on the shelf underneath, but it still got everywhere :o 

For this reason, my cakes took around 30 minutes longer to bake, as the skin was able to be created until it could all stay still and had overflowed ;) When it came out I had some serious crisis management to do. haha.

I decided to cut around the edges of the cakes, so that they were clean on the edges and could easily come out. I then put them on a wire rack to cool while I took out all the trays in the oven for Graeme to clean later on!

Next, I started making the filling. Get a large bowl, and to it add 100g cream cheese, 150ml double cream, 2 tablespoons icing sugar and 4 tablespoons of the syrup from the stem ginger jar. Whisk them all together until you get a nice cream that stays together. 

Now add it all together :D If the cake is now cool (I left it for an hour), place the bottom layer on a cake plate. Then smooth 3/4 of the filling onto the bottom layer. Add the lemon curd (the recipe says 8 tablespoons, but that would have been too much for me). Carefully place the second cake on the top, and smooth the last 1/4 of the filling on top. Walaa!!

The finished cake!! I was video calling my friend Iulia while combining all the layers ;) 

A slice, where you can definitely see the lemon curd :D 

Graeme and I both loved the combination for the tang from the lemon and the sweet from ginger. It is something I would make again, but probably not all the time ;) For special occasions :D 

I hope you all enjoyed this blog post!! Let me know what you liked and disliked about how I wrote out the recipe, and I will adhere my future posts to your preferences. 

Laura xx

Week 30: Ginger and Rhubarb Cake

I have been looking forward to this cake for a while!! It is the cake that is on the cover of Martha's cookbook, and along with the cake there are Candied Rhubarb twirls. I decided to leave this cake till Summer, because my grandmother always has heaps of rhubarb growing in her garden. She says that she does nothing to them and they just pop up every year, but I secretly think that she must put some special compost or something over the soil for it to always be so well crowded with rhubarb ;) haha

Picking and cutting the rhubarb from the garden

Getting the recipe all ready for baking

Measuring out the rhubarb

Boiling the rhubarb in sugar syrup

Grating the rhubarb to make the candied rhubarb twirls

Rhubarb strips. They look amazing!!

The awesome party of rhubarb and sugar syrup going on in the kitchen ;)

Boiled rhubarb ready to be placed on the cake before going in the oven

Sugar syrup ready to be a bath for the rhubarb strips

Dipping the rhubarb strips into the sugar syrup for the oven to dehydrate them ;)

The candied rhubarb procedure

Laying the rhubarb out on the oven tray in an orderly manner ;)

We then baked them on a low temperature for an hour, after which we should be able to twist them and then they would harden like the ones in the picture on the cook book. Well, hopefully ;)

Making the cake batter.

Just so you guys know, even baking students, who are becoming experts, make mistakes ;) haha.

So, I am not used to using decilitres, which is the Finnish unit of measurement. So I accidentally ended up making 4 * the amount in the cook book ;) Please don't laugh, it was very stressful!! ;)

So after a tad bit of unknowing what to do, we decided to divide the batter up and try to recreate it into one cake. Then we would leave the rest of the batter to bake into more cakes the next day.

Cake 1# out of the oven ;) 

I have to say, it tasted very puddingish :) The rhubarb really cut through the sugariness: perfect combo!!

Unfortunately the rhubarb twists did not work out too well :(  They tasted burnt, so we had to throw them out :( I will try making them again sometime

Cake 2# looked much lighter and the rhubarb did not sink to the bottom. I think it must be thanks to the extra flour that I added :D

Success!!

Even though we went through some tough times trying to get the cake to work, it came out amazing in the end!! I am so thankful to my grandmother and mother for putting up with my unknowingness ;)

This cake turned out amazing!! It is one to add to any home that has access to rhubarb!! :D

Below is an excerpt from a page called "More than a refuge", which discuss lives that have been affected by the labelling of a refugee. A guy named Ghasen was interviewed in Jordan, Iraq, and he was among those who was labelled a refugee. He ended up finding joy in the suffering when he found that Tearfund ran an exercise class for refugee men: 

‘These classes have given all of the participants self confidence and to have hope in life,’ Ghassan tells us. ‘There are other organisations that support us with food. It is important, but for me food is not more important than my soul. This helps me to be more at peace.’

If this brings so much joy to refugees, imagine what joy we have the power to place in other people's lives through the simply acts that we can all do together. For example, just baking for or with a friend, or doing exercises with your mum and friend (Hey Pamela!!). The list is, really, endless. These simple acts have the ability to turn suffering into joy. And if that is all it takes, why would we not be bounding to do all that we can to make a difference in other people's lives? 

We, at The Baking Students, are hoping that this blog will be a vessel to bring even just a little joy into people's lives. Even just by showing people how joyful baking can be through our laughing banter ;)

Till the next bake,

Laura from The Baking Students xx

Week 20: Apricot, Pistachio and Honey Upside down cake

The vegan cake for the almost-vegan queen!! <3

Unfortunately, Sophie couldn't have this cake, but she was fine with that ;) She doesn't particularly like fruity cakes (like this one) in general. 

But we were going to be making it anyways!! 

Crumbing the flour, sugar and vegan butter

This picture looks almost like Jennifer is clawing the butter, flour and sugar ;)

My turn to make the honey syrup

Sizzling away there on the hob ;) AAAHHH!! Who knows "Sizzler" the restaurant!! My favourite <3

Organising the apricots (canned, not fresh as it said in the recipe to use) hehe > rebellious bakers) into the honey syrup 

Pistachios!! They look like flower petals <3

The batter is almost ready!! We added half ground pistachios and half normal flour. 

Jennifer giving it the final fold

Pouring into cake tin over apricots, pistachios and honey syrup

Slowly filling up ...

It looks so cool!!!! :D

Out of the oven!! 

Turning it upside-down, so that it is right way up ;) If that makes sense!! haha

Looking so delish!!

It was soooo amazing!! I highly recommend this cake :D The almost-vegan queen in our flat said that it is better than any coffee shop cake, and I think everyone who tried it can second that! Please ask me for the recipe, because I want you ALL the try this!!! Seriously, the best combination. 

So this week Tearfund uploaded a post called "Standing Together Against the Darkness". It talks about a guy called Leandro Silva who goes into dangerous Brazilian neighbourhoods and helps to empower churches to start making a change for the better in their communities against violence and trafficking. After much amazing success in taking the violence and trafficking away from these notorious neighbourhoods, him and his wife started ALEF mission, with much help from other leaders, to bring this change to many of the poorest parts of Northern Brazil. If you would like to read more about this awesome mission, please click the link above!

I would love if could all please take 2 minutes and pray over these three points:

1. For Leandro and Adrylle, so they can continue to build and encourage ministers and Christians all over Brazil.
2. That the churches in Felipe Camarão will continue to overcome the violence and corruption in their district. 
3. For more and more churches and Christians throughout Brazil to catch the vision of working together for social change.  

Thank you guys!!!

Till our next bake,

The Baking Students

xoxo

Week 17: Gin and Tonic Cake

Sophie is very pleased with this weeks cake :) 

Now, I was very much opposed to this cake because of its associated with alcohol,  and therefore I took it off our list of recipes we would be baking for this cookbook (which would have been the only recipe we would not have baked), but that would have meant that we were telling a lie when we said that we were going to make all the recipes in the cookbook. And anyway, Jennifer was not opposed to it, so we collectively decided to make it.

It was going to hard to bake with something we had never tasted ;) [we takes gin after we baked the cake]

Nevertheless, we strive forward for a great cake!!

Jennifer whisking the wet ingredients into the dry 

Grating the lime

Mixing the grated lime into the batter

The batter (that had lime zest in it) tasted so good!! 

The lime juice with gin and tonic. There was only 25 ml of gin, so apparently you couldn't taste it, and definitely not get tipsy ;) 

In the oven. This time around, since it was a TWIST from the pink grapefruit loaf cake, it took much longer in the oven. We then came to the conclusion, after several attempts at baking, and the cooking time had been pushed past its time, that our new oven was not new anymore. I think, perhaps we over used it ;) hehe

Drizzling the lime, gin and tonic sugar concoction over the FINALLY BAKED loaf cake (It ended up taking 30 minutes longer in the oven). 

After much deliberation over what we should do with the rest of the gin, and my suggestion we should throw it down the toilet, I thought it would be a good idea in the end to taste a teeny bit of the drink. You know, just to say that we had. 

And so here is the video: 

Till next time,

The Baking Students xx