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:
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| Waiting for the heart-shaped cake to cool down before icing it (I forgot to take a picture of the iced cake) ;) |
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| 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:
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| 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.
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| The next day I opened it and it looked darker in colour and had created a skin on the top of it. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Happily baking away. |
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| 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!!
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| The finished cake!! I was video calling my friend Iulia while combining all the layers ;) |
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| 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
