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.