Chocolate ginger cupcakes

A fair few months ago I went to a friend's baby shower and her sister-in-law had made a selection of delicious cakes. My favourite were her chocolate ginger cupcakes, a name which does not begin to describe the mix of flavours hiding inside. I made a version of them for the cake sale at the school Christmas Market today, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

4oz brown sugar
5oz self raising flour
1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/4tsp ground nutmeg
4oz soya margarine
2 eggs
2tbsp golden syrup
3oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Method

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, then add the eggs, margarine and syrup.
Whisk with an electric whisk until smooth then add the chocolate and mix together.
Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 150c for about 20 minutes, until cooked through.

When cool, the original recipe calls for whipped cream on top with chopped Crunchie bars sprinkled on top. I made frosting with philadelphia, butter and icing sugar, then sprinkled the Crunchie on top. To make them dairy-free, I have spooned cooled, melted dairy-free chocolate over the top, then topped with chopped honeycomb pieces.

Gingerbread Pudseys

It is Children in Need time, and today at school we held a cake sale to raise some money. I was determined to theme my baking, and what better way than this?
I used my gingerbread recipe, then used rolled white icing and icing pens to add the details. Simple, yet effective.

Lime and ginger cake

I bought a large number of limes for my husband's birthday party, hoping for good weather and cocktail making. Unfortunately, the weather inspired tea-drinking instead, so I have a lot of limes to use up. I searched around online for a cake recipe, and found this one. I have adapted it a bit, so my new recipe is below:

Ingredients

200g soya margarine
175g caster sugar
Zest of 3 limes and juice of 2
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp ground ginger
50g desiccated coconut

for the drizzle:
3 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp ginger syrup
juice of 1 lime

Method

Cream the margarine and sugar, then add the grated lime.
In a bowl, mix the flour, ginger, coconut and baking powder.
Alternately add the eggs and tablespoons of the dry ingredients, mixing after adding each.
Add the remaining dry ingredients and the juice of 2 limes, then mix well.
Tip into a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 50 minutes at 180c.
Leave to cool for 15 minutes in the tin, then make lots of holes in the top of the cake with a skewer.
Slowly pour the mixed drizzle ingredients over the cake, allowing it to soak in.

The original cake had stem ginger in the cake and on the top. I only used the syrup left over from a batch of biscuits I made at the weekend. I think the flavour of the cake would definitely be improved with the extra ginger, but it was still delicious without it.

Ginger beer

We like ginger in our house. It is possible that we like ginger more than anything else when it comes to both sweet and savoury foods, so it seemed like a natural progression to try to make some ginger beer at home. My mum gave me a kit that she acquired some time over Christmas, and last week we gave it a go.

You mix boiling water with the ginger seasoning, lemon juice and sugar then leave to cool. You then sprinkle the yeast sachet onto the liquid, cover it and leave somewhere warm for 3 days. I used the airing cupboard, and had to be careful not to let any errant socks fall in!

After 3 days you bottle it in a 2 litre fizzy drink bottle and put it back in a warm place for 3 more days. Every day we dutifully released the pressure and returned the bottle to the airing cupboard to brew.

Today was the day of reckoning. We opened the bottle and the ginger beer spurted out everywhere, but mainly into a jug. We added ice to cool it and took our first sip... It was foul. Emma sniffed it and refused to taste it, and I don't blame her! It was like liquid bread dough and I am pretty sure we must have done something wrong (I can't see what, as we followed the instructions to the letter), so I don't imagine we will be using the rest of the kit. This does not bode well for my idea of brewing from our grapes this year.

Ginger and lemon cookies

I have been making apple, oat and cinnamon cookies for a while, and although they are delicious, I thought I might try a new twist on them today. We are going to see some friends tomorrow, and I thought a batch of cookies would be a nice gift for them. I decided to substitute the apple and cinnamon for ginger and lemon, and here is the recipe:

Ingredients

100g soya margarine
70g golden granulated sugar
50g light brown soft sugar
1 egg
140g plain flour
50g oats
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 pieces of ginger in syrup
1 lemon

Method

Cream the sugars and margarine together, then add the egg and mix well.
Add the flour, oats and bicarb and mix to form a soft dough.
Drain the ginger and chop it finely.
Use a sharp knife to carefully take the top layer of skin from the lemon, trying not to get too much of the white pith from underneath. Chop the pieces of skin up really small.
Add the ginger and lemon to the dough and mix well.
Dollop 24 blobs of the dough onto lined baking trays and cook for about 13 minutes at 180c.
Leave to cool slightly on the trays, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
When cool, sprinkle icing sugar over the biscuits.

Jubilee biscuits

Yesterday, I thought I'd make something quick to tide us over until the big cake making session on Monday. We will have our village tea party on Monday afternoon, so I need to provide something special for that. I wanted biscuits, but couldn't be bothered with the hassle of rolling out dough, so this recipe was perfect.

Ingredients

300g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice
125g soya margarine
100g light brown soft sugar
80g dark brown soft sugar
50ml hot water
1 tbsp golden syrup

Juice of 1 lemon
Icing sugar

Method

Rub the flour, bicarb, ginger, mixed spice and margarine together to make crumbs.
Stir in the 2 sugars.
Melt the golden syrup into the boiling water and then stir this into the crumbs to make a soft dough.
Using a dessert spoon, dollop around 24 balls of dough onto lined baking sheets and flatten slightly with your fingers.
Bake at 180c for about 15 minutes, then leave on the trays to cool for a bit.
Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar together to make a thick paste.
Put the biscuits on a wire tray to finish cooling, then spread a layer of icing on top and finish with some sprinkles.

Gingerbread biscuits

We make gingerbread biscuits a lot. The girls like big ones that they can take for packed lunches, but we also make lots of little ones for nibbling at home. I tried a few dairy-free recipes for gingerbread, but the best by far was actually an Annabel Karmel one I found online. The dough recipe just uses soya margarine instead of butter and that's it. We have so many cutters, but today the girls wanted bears and circles, and I chose the old-fashioned gingerbread men and little diamonds. I always make diamonds, when you cut them out you can cut them very close together, so you don't have to keep pressing the leftover dough back together and re-rolling. I guess a square cutter would be just as good for doing this.


These are great biscuits for a decorating session, either just my two girls or with their friends. I make up a small bowl of icing sugar and water icing and give them a variety of sprinkles and decorations. They spoon a little icing onto each biscuit and then arrange and sprinkle the decorations to their hearts' content. It keeps them amused for ages, and they can eat their creations too. I found the tidiest way of doing this is to give them a few biscuits on a low sided baking tray. This way, the sprinkles don't roll all across the table and they can re-use what lands in their tray.

Meringues and custard

I made a resolution at New Year to cook something new every week. Each new food would be something that I had not tried before, to increase my culinary skills. I have spent a lot of time with my nose in the Wagamama cook book, and have been pleasantly surprised by the ease of cooking those dishes. My addiction to baking has meant that most of my new dishes have been sweet ones, often eye-wateringly sweet at that.

I have a fabulous book that my husband bought for me called Homestyle Cookies, Muffins and Cakes which I am working my way through. I have to adapt most recipes to make them dairy-free as Charlotte is allergic to milk protein, and all the recipes I have tried from this book have adapted beautifully. Two of our favourites are the ginger tray bake and the orange and poppy seed cake (my version is below).

Anyway, I realised that I had never tried to make a meringue before. This thought escalated, as my ideas generally do, to incorporate the school bake sale that is happening this friday, themed around St George. White meringues and red fruit, it all seems to be coming together nicely. So I did a practice batch to see if I could do it and voila, the result:

I used natural sugar, not white, so they are a bit brown, but they are fluffy and crunchy so I guess I got the cooking right. A good friend who has chickens dropped some eggs in for me this morning, so I have the ingredients to make some more with white sugar, ready for the sale tomorrow.

All good? Not quite. I tried to make dairy-free custard with the extra egg yolks, and created a bubbly, lumpy, wobbly goo that the children refused to eat for their pudding last night. The flavour was ok, but the texture was so wrong it was untrue. I think I'll stick to Alpro cartons in future.