I have made a bit of a rod for my back at work by starting a tradition where I bake cakes for the team when it is someone’s birthday – well, I like to bake and if I bake for the team then it is not just me and Moose who are responsible for scarfing the lot. I then enlarged the rod some by taking requests. Last time it was lemon cakes with lime icing, this time chocolate ginger cakes. The recipe I usually use for ginger cakes is rather expensive and time consuming, so I decided to see if I could work out a recipe of my own. I really enjoyed the process and have this sneaking suspicion that I might have caught the baking bug. I am seriously contemplating asking for a food mixer for Christmas…
Anyway, the recipe turned out rather well. As always with baking, there is an element of guesswork and intuition involved, so have fun with it. It is a variation on a basic fairy cake recipe. The following amount makes about 15 standard fairy cakes.
Ingredients
- 100g margarine
- 50g caster sugar
- 25g dark muscavado sugar
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 2 medium eggs
- 75g self raising flour
- 25g cocoa powder
- 1-2 tsp ground ginger
- 2 medium eggs
Method
- Cream the margarine, caster sugar and muscavado sugar
- Mix the flour, cocoa powder and ground ginger together in a separate bowl
- Beat the eggs into the creamed sugar/margarine, one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour/cocoa/ginger mix with each egg
- Gently stir in the golden syrup
- Gently fold in the remaining flour and stir until smooth
- Pour into paper cases (about halfway full as the mix will rise)
- 1900C / GM5 oven for 15 minutes until firmly spongy to the touch
- Leave the cakes to cool
- Eat
- Go for a five mile run to burn off the calories
Tips
- Taste the mix before you pour it into the cases. Depending on personal preference, you might want to add more ginger/sugar/cocoa – the recipe is a bit guess work still on the ratios
- It is the dark muscavado sugar that brings some of the extra moistness to the cake. If you don’t have any, try brown demerara or just 75g of caster sugar and 3 dollups of golden syrup
- These cakes taste better once they are cooled as they all lovely and moist
Inspiration hasn’t struck yet on the best way to ice/frost these. In my head I am leaning toward serving them with a hot chocolate sauce, but that’s not really practical for taking into the office! Other ideas in the comments please 😀
(P.S. The lemon cakes were just the basic fairy cake recipe, with the zest of one lemon grated into the mix. For the lime icing, mix icing sugar with lime juice et voila)
I’ve been dying to bake a cake or pie some time again. It’s been ages. Definitely going to try and manage next week or so.
These, in any case, look great.
Get baking, it’s great fun! And these proved very, very popular in the office.
So when can I come and eat some? I don’t have an oven, so I can’t bake but I suppose I’d just be even more round if I could! I’d bake all the time!
Oh, and check your del.ic.ious feed Mrs, found a gem of a thing for you….
Come whenever you want to lovely lady, and I (or possibly Moose if you ask very nicely) will go into baking overdrive just for you, because your sheer magnificence demands it.
Seriously, you turn up at my house and I’ll supply the unlimited tea and cakes (and I might even make sure to have some cows milk in the house this time!)
🙂 It’s a date… just not sure when yet (sorry feeling very flaky- dunno if we are going away for the weekend or not yet)…
Take it you liked the gem then? 😀