Ginger & Sultana Loaf

I'm a huge fan of very dark, sticky and spicy gingerbread and the last time I baked one, I posted it way back in 2011 here, so it's been a long wait...

Unlike the earlier gingerbread, this one won't knock your socks off, but it is a good, moist loaf with chunks of stem ginger and sultanas. If you can, use stem ginger (I used Opies Stem Ginger in Syrup which comes in a jar) as it really adds to the flavour of the loaf.  If not, leave it out (you'll still get the taste from the ground ginger) or use chopped crystallized ginger instead. 

Like most gingerbread loaves it improves with age over a week but as noted in my last gingerbread post, I've never tested that theory as nothing ever lasts that long (unless it's inedible).

And, as I've used one in my photo, let me just say how much I love hellebores or winter roses. I have little clumps of them under trees and their hidden beauty always makes me smile. One trick I learned from an English home and garden magazine was to leave the picked hellebores somewhere midway between the cold outside and warmth inside (the entrance way works for us) to let them adjust to a warmer temperature.  They then won't droop so quickly when they feel the heat. Me? I never droop in the heat - bring it on!

Ginger & Sultana Loaf

100g butter

100g dark cane (or soft brown) sugar

100g treacle

1 egg, beaten

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

150ml warm milk

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

50g sultanas

2 pieces of stem ginger, chopped (optional)

(I add any syrup clinging to the stem ginger too - nice & sticky!) 

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C. 

Grease and line a loaf tin.

Place the butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan and heat gently until melted, stirring constantly.  Allow to cool slightly, then beat in the egg.

Sift the flour and spices into a mixing bowl, then stir in the melted mixture and beat well to combine.

Mix the milk with the bicarbonate of soda and add this to the mix.  Stir in the sultanas and the stem ginger. 

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin. 

Pear & Walnut Gingerbread Cakes

When someone asked me for a recommendation for a dessert recently this one tripped off my tongue with no hesitation.  Spicy gingerbread, pears and warm butterscotch sauce are just the perfect combination for a winter pudding. I’ve been making this one since I first discovered it in Cuisine magazine seven years ago. 

After passing the recipe on to said friend, I then hankered to bake it myself.  That said, there was no foreseeable need for a large cake in our mini-household of two.  So I fell back on my tried and trusty Plan B – make smaller cakes!  The beauty of this was that those not consumed immediately are ready in the freezer for those days when I can’t resist something sweet with coffee (every day, then?).

The recipe given is for the entire cake and I urge you to make it whole.  The finished cake looks amazing with a circle of halved pears drizzled with butterscotch sauce.

However, if you want to make the smaller cakes, use lightly greased friand or cupcake tins.  I halved the recipe (and used one pear instead of three) and instead of creaming the first portion of butter and sugar to line the tin, I creamed all the butter and sugar (without adding any extra ingredients at this first stage) and dropped in about a teaspoon to line each friand mould. Into each tin, I placed two slices of pear. I omitted the walnut halves completely.  I then added the remaining ingredients (including the walnut pieces) to the creamed butter and sugar and continued as per the recipe stated.  I cooked the cakes for about 20 minutes.  Just test them by pressing lightly on top with your fingertips or inserting a cake skewer in the centre.  The halved recipe made about seven little cakes.

And as for the butterscotch sauce - who could resist it?  Well apparently I could after I failed to make it properly on this occasion.  I think I may have overcooked it as it hardened immediately when it was poured over the pudding.  Resembling wax drips from a candle I was then able to lift it off completely, looking like a toffee-coloured, plastic mould.  Oh well, fortunately the cakes were just divine even without the sauce.

Pear & Walnut Gingerbread Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce

Serves 6-8

210g butter

250g muscovado sugar

3 ripe pears, peeled, halved & cores removed (with a melon baller if you have one)

6 walnut halves

2 eggs

2 tablespoons treacle

250g flour

1/2 cup walnut pieces

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp each ground cinnamon and cloves

150ml warm milk

Preheat the oven to 175°C.

Cream 60g of the butter and 90g of the sugar and spread over the base of a 24cm-diameter cake tin.

Place the pear halves, core side down, on top of the creamed butter and sugar. Dot the walnut halves in between the pear halves.

Cream the remaining butter and sugar then beat in the eggs and treacle. Stir in remaining ingredients until well mixed but do not beat. Pour the mixture over the pears and walnuts.

Place in the oven and bake for 50-60 minutes or until you can tell the pears are tender when a skewer slides easily through a pear half to the bottom of the tin and the middle of the pudding batter is cooked.

Serve with the hot butterscotch sauce and a dusting of icing sugar.

Butterscotch sauce

240g caster sugar

240g brown sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

250ml cold water

1½ tbsp butter

½ tsp vanilla essence

Put the sugars, golden syrup and 150ml of the cold water into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugars and syrup.

Once boiling, stop stirring and boil until a little dropped into a glass of cold water forms a soft ball (5 minutes).

Remove from the heat, add the butter, the remaining water and vanilla and mix well, but do not beat.

Cool. It will become quite hard and crystallize once cold.

Just before serving, bring to the boil to melt and dissolve any sugar crystals.

Recipe from Ray McVinnie

Cuisine magazine Issue 111, July 2005

sticky gingerbread

I hadn’t tried gingerbread in a long time.  I love it when it is sticky, moist, dark and spicy.  No wishy-washy gingerbread for me, please.  And I prefer it baked as a loaf rather than cut in squares.  I am fussy, I know.

What brought this to mind was a conversation with my sister.  She had been to Smith & Caughey and had gingerbread and tea in their café.  We then reminisced about the dark Jamaican gingerbread with the thick white icing, purchased from Jenner’s department store in Edinburgh, which we had eaten as children.  I imagined my teeth softly piercing the cool, white icing to reach the contrasting warmth of the cake below and knew I had to have it again.

So, when my sister and her partner came round last weekend it seemed the perfect time to bake my version of this one – Dark Sticky Gingerbread from Rachel Allan – to see if we could muster up some old childhood memories.

I used chopped candied kumquats to add a certain stickiness to the cake. They're kind of marmalade-y.  As they're not something you would normally have to hand, I've just put marmalade as the ingredient.  You can leave this out altogether if you prefer.  I omitted (no, I didn’t forget, it was deliberate!) Ms Allan’s ginger syrup, which she poured over the "hot from the oven" cake.

I was intrigued that she used 1tsp freshly ground black pepper but I chickened out and only used ½ tsp – so much for liking hot and spicy but it did look like a lot of pepper as I ground it onto a sheet (makes for easy measuring).

One cookbook recommended leaving gingerbread for a week before eating.  Oh, for the patience and resolve to wait so long.  So no, this cake did not get seven days to mature and mellow.  It was lovely and flavourful as it was and just how I imagined it to be.  My icing could have been thicker though to achieve the remembrance of things past. 

sticky gingerbread

60g butter

75g (1/4 cup) golden syrup

50g black treacle (or molasses)

50g marmalade 

110g flour

25g self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp mixed spice

½ tsp freshly ground pepper (grind onto a Teflon sheet or baking paper for ease of measuring)

100g caster sugar

1 pinch salt

120ml milk

1 egg lightly beaten

icing (optional)

200g icing sugar, sifted

juice of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 170°C (Gas 3).  Line a loaf tin with baking paper.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter, golden syrup, treacle (or molasses) and marmalade (if using) over a low heat.  Set aside.

Sift the flours, bicarbonate of soda, spices and ground black pepper into a large bowl.  Stir in the sugar and salt.  Add milk and egg and mix until smooth.  Gradually add the melted butter mixture, stirring until well incorporated. The mixture will be fairly runny.

Pour mixture into the loaf tin and bake for approximately 50-55 minutes, or until the gingerbread is firm to the touch and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

Remove cake from oven and leave it in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Icing

Mix the sifted sugar with enough lemon juice to get the required consistency.  Spread over the top of the cooled cake and allow to run slightly down the sides. The icing will set slightly.

I've decided to make this my entry into this month's Sweet New Zealand as I've not had time to post anything recently.   This month's Sweet New Zealand is hosted by Couscous & Consciousness.  Sue not only has a lovely blog but kindly gave me some advice on things technical.  Thanks Sue, I hope you enjoy the gingerbread.