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.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Ugh. It has just been a lacklustre week, I'm afraid. No one thing in particular, just a general build-up of bleurgh and hmph, topped with meh, with not nearly enough silly animal videos appearing on my Facebook news feed.

At least there's always www.cakewrecks.com ...

And cookies. But only if you make them yourself.

Often when I am wandering the aisles of my local supermarket, my eye is caught by little brown bags near the tills. Each contains 5 cookies, and they are usually on sale for just £1. Most of the time, I manage to stop myself from buying the bags by simply saying to myself if I really want cookies I should spend the time and effort making them myself. The flip side of this, of course, is that I then don't have just five cookies, I have LOTS AND LOTS OF COOKIES!!!

My general favourite cookie is a classic oatmeal raisin cookie. I guess this is mainly because it is so hard to go wrong with them - the oats pretty much guarantee they will be chewy, and they make you feel you are somehow being wholesome by eating them, what with all those whole grain oats and dried fruit. Of course, that is all a lie, as you'll know as soon as you start to make them (news flash: cookies are never healthy) but I like to pretend.

Last time I made these I used dark muscovado sugar and they were pretty darned good. This time, I only had dark brown sugar (yes, they are different - the former is less processed so still retains some of the goodness of molasses) and they were good, just not as good.

I thought I'd try using my food processor to mix the cookies. I started with the brown sugar and butter.

So yeah, the food processor didn't work so well on this one. I was kind of annoyed as it meant another bowl to wash, but it just wasn't working, even with the butter at room temperature for once. In a bowl was just fine - thankfully the baby had fallen asleep so I had use of both hands, always a plus.

Then in went some caster sugar, two eggs, and some vanilla.

Until it was a gloopy, happy mixture.

In my scales' measuring bowl I put flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Both my children asked, when trying the cookies, "is that cinnamon I taste?" It was.

I made sure to mix all those dry ingredients together to distribute all the spices and raising agents before adding it to the big mix. No one wants a spice free cookie. NO ONE.

Then all that got mixed up.

And then last but not least, in went my oats and raisins. The bigger the better for your rolled oats here, but quick oats will work fine too. And sultanas instead of raisins are satisfactory. Any dried fruit, really. One of my friends once just used one big measurement of muesli instead of mixing oats and raisins and said they were the best oatmeal cookies she'd ever made, so there's that idea too.

The final mix. Sad to think that our kids will never get to make mix tapes for their friends and/or romantic interests.

Then I used two spoons to plop lumps of the mixture onto lined trays.

My daughter regularly asked me if I was done with the spoons yet.

Then after 8 minutes in the oven, out they came. I like them to look brown at the edges and just slightly underdone in the middle, as they will cook a bit more as they cool. Muscovado sugar also helps prevent them drying better than dark brown sugar does.

Nestled in their tin. Looks like I've got more than five...now who wants a cookie? Don't they look good for you?

Oatmeal Cookies - adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups plain flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup butter 
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup raisins
• 3 1/2 cups rolled whole oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F/180C.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg into a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Mix butter and brown sugar. Add caster sugar, vanilla, and eggs and mix until well blended.
4. Sift (yes, again!) flour mixture into butter mixture and mix well.
5. Fold in raisins (or chocolate chips or chocolate covered raisins) and oats.
6. Spoon 1.5 inch balls onto non-stick cookie sheet.
7. Bake at 350°F for 6-9 minutes, rotating half way through baking. They will look slightly underdone in the middle but brown at the edges and will continue cooking while they cool.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

As you may have guessed, I do a fair amount of baking, but there is one recipe that people request more than any other: lemon drizzle cake. It's a fairly simple cake, lifted to incredible heights by the fact that you soak the cake in a syrup made simply of lemon juice and icing sugar. It is lovely both paired with a cup of tea or presented as pudding, always feeling light thanks to the citrus content.

On this occasion I was making it as a thank you for special someone who hemmed my husband's trousers and gave us chocolate for our Rocky Road. My children had been excited to see me getting out baking ingredients, and were disappointed when I immediately explained the cake was for someone else. However, when I explained that person was the one who made our recent Rocky Road possible, they were in full agreement that said person deserved cake!

I got started once the kids were in bed, meaning everything was not at room temperature. 

This was one hard block of butter. If you are skilled, you might manage to just soften it slightly on a low setting in your microwave, but I always end up with a molten crater and hard edges when I try doing that, so instead...

I beat the butter into submission. It took a good few minutes, but eventually the friction did the job just fine.

Then in went the caster sugar. Granulated sugar in the USA has the same consistency as caster sugar here...why is that? Granulated sugar here is slightly chunkier.

Ah, nice and creamed.

Then lemon zest was added so it looked like this.

Then the eggs went in one at a time. I used to just always add the eggs all at once, in spite of instructions saying to do it one at a time. Then I read an article in Cooks Illustrated that said you do in fact get a superior cake if you do them one at a time and you'll spend less time overall mixing it (it takes fewer strokes to do it one at a time). So now, when I remember to, I do them one at a time. It's all very scientific here in the Calwell kitchen.

At this point the mixture looked a bit curdled and gross. That's normal in my experience.

I trusted myself that it would get better.

And saying a small prayer, added the flour.

Once that improved it, in went some milk. The photo at the top shows a whole milk container, but it actually contained semi skimmed milk, as my other milk jug split slightly, spilling milk all over my stairwell. I managed to save enough to decant into the jug above and have been fooling everybody with it since. Annoyingly it was also just after the stair cleaners had visited.

There - a nice, smoothish batter. It went into a lined loaf tin, but I forgot about taking a photo until it was in the oven, and I'm not about to show you what the inside of my oven looks like.

It ain't pretty, I can tell you that.

While it baked, I juiced a couple of lemons. At the moment, this piece of plastic is one of my son's favourite toys.  Toddlers...

On went some icing sugar...and some caster sugar, since I ran out of icing sugar. Oops.

I stirred it to combine it and then heated it briefly in the microwave to help most of it dissolve. If it doesn't all dissolve, that's fine - it leaves a nice crusty sugary glaze on the top when that happens.

Out came the cake.

I then took a toothpick (skewers work better, or simply a sharp knife will do) and poked holes all over the top.

Like so.

Then I poured on the syrup.

And it oozed in all over the top, drifting down the sides. I then left it overnight to cool and soak all the juices through.

The next day I brought it in and presented it to my colleague. She immediately announced that a whole cake was too much for her, that she would end up eating it in one sitting.

So instead, she chopped it in half.

Because it's totally ok to eat half of this cake. Not that I would know what that's like. Ahem.

She gave half of it to another colleague who gets really excited about my baking. REALLY excited.

You can see how the syrup drenched the middle of the cake here - heaven on a plate I tell you.

Nigella, you're the best.

Lemon Drizzle Cake (adapted from recipe for Lemon Syrup Loaf Cake in How to be a Domestic Goddess)

Preheat oven to 180C/350F

125g butter
175g caster sugar 
2 eggs
zest 1 lemon
175g self-raising flour
4 Tbsp milk

for syrup:
juice 2 lemons
100g powdered sugar

1 loaf tin - preferably lined for ease of cake removal

Put butter in large bowl.  Beat and mash and mix with wooden spoon until fairly fluffy.  Add sugar and beat and mash and mix until a lighter shade of fluffy and even consistency throughout.Add zest & eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.  Fold in flour then mix in milk.  Pour into loaf tin and bake.  Test after 45 minutes (knife should come out clean). Meanwhile, heat lemon juice and sugar until sugar is dissolved (either on the hob or in short bouts in the microwave).  Once the cake is out of the oven, punch loads of holes in it with a knife or skewer and pour the syrup over the top.  Leave to cool in the tin so all the juices are absorbed fully.