Friday 14 February 2014

Gingerbread with Lemon and Candied Ginger Glaze

The end of the world is upon us: floods, blizzards, parcel slips saying "sorry we missed you" when you only left the house for FIVE MINUTES...

Oh, to be in a happy place, like Cherry Tree Lane, accompanying Mary Poppins on her daily errands to the piano tuner's and then to Mrs Cory's shop for some gingerbread. 

GINGERBREAD, YES! 

Not gingerbread cookies (yes, Elizabeth, I will be trying your recipe sometime soon, hopefully) but gingerbread cake, with a lemon topping to cut through the heaviness of the spices. Easily to slice up and serve to the masses, this is a winner.

First, the gathering. I honestly only do this these days if I'm blogging the recipe, usually it is just a frenzied grabbing out the cupboards as I go.

Into the pot went the sugar, butter, fresh ginger, spices, and molasses. I do get annoyed with ginger measurements in recipes that talk about Tbsp, tsp, etc. Do they mean before or after it is grated? II never know, and I suspect different cooks measure it different ways. I much prefer when they say to peel and grate an inch/half inch long piece. The recipe I had called for dark treacle and golden syrup, but I just added their liquid measures together and used molasses because it seemed easier. And I greased the measuring cup before I poured the molasses in, because that makes it a heck of a lot easier to get it out.


I heated it up until everything melted together.


Like so.


I turned off the heat, then in went some milk.


And some eggs, pre-beaten


It's all very wintery up in this pot. Not so much outside - Scotland seems to have been spared most of the arctic fury this year.


The gooey mass then gets poured into the flour and leavening agent.


Then lots of stirring takes place to make sure to get rid of pockets of powder. Cause I've not done that before and it hasn't been pretty. It is a very liquid batter.


It also goes into a fairly large pan. I've had a few gingerbreads overflow in my time, so I like to err on the side of caution here.


I checked it 10 minutes early, and low and behold it was already done. Like this, with some powdered sugar maybe on top would be fine, but I like a little something extra.


I took the icing sugar I needed and put it in with some crystalized ginger. This, I confess, was a bad move. I should have just chopped the ginger separately. You'll see why later.


I pulsed it to get the ginger into smaller pieces.


Then I poured in some lemon juice.


Unfortunately, the result looked like someone had been sick all over the cake, not what I was looking for. I should have just done the glaze on its own, then sprinkled little pieces of chopped ginger on top of it. Live and learn.


The big flaps of paper sticking up the sides did mean it was easy to take out of the pan for cutting.


See what I mean? It doesn't look at all appetizing at this stage.


Mind you, like this, it looks just perfect. Tea, please.


You'll find a link to Nigella's original recipe here.

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