Ginger Crunch Cake

I've been making this cake since I was a kid.  It's one of the first recipes copied into my (now almost 30 years old!!) notebook that I keep for recipes.  I love looking back at it with my developing hand writing and my spelling mistakes - I spelt ingredients wrong for about the first 20 pages.

Anyway, back to the cake.  It's a favourite and when I serve it I often get asked for the recipe.  So here it is.

Ginger Crunch Cake

Topping:
1 1/2 tablespoons of flour
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of butter

Cake:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1 cup of sugar
100 grams of butter
1 egg
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
1 cup of milk

Grease and line a 20 cm square tin and pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Topping:  Put all the topping ingredients into the food processor and mix until it looks like breadcrumbs.  Tip this into a bowl and put into the fridge until you need it.

Cake:  In the processor, mix together dry ingredients.  Add the butter and mix until it is cut in finely and evenly.  Beat the egg, milk and golden syrup together lightly.  Pour this into the mixer bowl until all ingredients are just combined.  Don't over mix.

Pour cake batter into tin and bake for 5 minutes.  Take out and quickly spread the topping evenly over the surface.  Place back in oven and back for another 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

The day of B's

Today I'm brewing,

baking,

and binding.

Brewing:  a ginger beer bug.

Baking:  two ginger-crunch cakes, one for the School Regatta tomorrow, one for the pantry tins.

Binding:  My tree of life quilt.  Do you like my faux piping?  Or would you call it a flange?  A decorative edging?  Whatever you call it, I like it, and I especially like that I got it pretty neat and tidy.  Two corners are done, two to go.  Do you measure your progress on hand-stitching binding like that?

Keeping the Kidlets Occupied

Nothing like a basic cookie dough recipe, a rolling pin and some cookie cutters for an hour of quiet fun.  This recipe was also useful because it used an egg yolk but no white.  And I have plenty of recipes that use egg whites but not the yolks!

100g soft butter
100g sugar
1 egg yolk
225g plain flour
about 2 tbsps of milk

Cream butter and sugar then beat in the egg yolk.  Add flour and mix well.  Stir in enough milk to make a smooth dough.  Roll out thinly on a floured surface and cut out cookie shapes.  Lay them on a lined or greased tray and bake at 180 degrees celcius and bake for 10 - 15 minutes or until just golden.  Ice when cold if you like.  A good bikkie for dipping into a hot drink.

A Finish!

I've been working up to making some clothes for myself.  I'm not a sempstress.  I didn't take Home Ec. at school.  I took what I thought at the time were loftier subjects like art and graphics and design.  And here I am, neither an architect nor an artist, wishing that I'd had the foresight to learn some true sewing skills.

I've made a few garments before, but so few I can list them:
A dress for my daughter,
A pair of trousers for me,
A dress for me.

And all done long ago.

But I'm sick of buying clothes that I don't really like but can't afford the ones I do, or garments that don't fit or flatter, or tee-shirts that I know were probably made by some poor bugger in a sweatshop somewhere.

Then I read this post by Chunkychooky and it motivated me so much that.....

I made me a nightie!  I am very impressed with myself.  I followed this tutorial from Sew Mama Sew!, used an op-shopped sheet and shirt, and I wore it to bed the same day I started it.

I was so chuffed with myself that it almost made up for the bad bad bikkies.

And thank you all for your suggestions about the disastrous biscuits.  I'm going to do a marathon bake tomorrow and freeze a whole lot of my good recipes so I have bikkies at a moments notice.  Then I'm going to dry out the yucky ones, crumble them and use them as muesli (granola), cheesecake base, and a slice base and maybe try a crumble topping too.

Save the Biscuits!

I constantly try out new recipes for biscuits (or cookies if you're from the USA!).  My son needs something in his lunchbox besides the staple fruit and sandwiches.  He'll get cold pasta, a slice of egg pie, maybe a scone or muffin every now and then, but when I'm in a hurry, a good hearty biscuit does the trick. 

I've got recipes that I loved as a kid - Rolled Oat Jumbles, Kiwi Crunchies, Chocolate Crunch, but Mr Fussy likes them for a short while and then goes off them. 

Today I tried Scroggin Lunch Biscuits.  I have it hand written down in my recipe book so heaven only knows where I got it from.  Peanut butter, butter, flour, sugar (I used rapadura, which is like brown sugar), eggs, vanilla, currants....sounds pretty good, but nope, they taste like sawdust.



Look good, smell good, taste.....blurk.

 Disappointed!!

And I used lots of good ingredients that I don't want to 'waste'.  Waste in our house means feeding to the chooks - I'll get them back in eggs, but still.....

So, please, if you have any suggestions on how to rescue my bikkies, I will be eternally grateful!  I'm thinking of bashing them up (venting my frustration), adding a bit of butter and sugar and using as a Fruit Crumble topping?  What do you think?

Yummiest Mud Cake...

I've ever made.  This isn't saying that much, 'cause I've never really made a mudcake before.  But I tell you, I'll be making a few more now.


This cake is so good that it gets better over time.  Seriously!  Most cakes get drier and you end up feeding the dregs to the chooks or serving it up with custard.  But we've just finished this one four days after making it and the last of it was like eating chocolate fudge.

Chocolate Mud Cake

250g chopped butter

 170g chopped dark chocolate

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/3 cups water

2 cups plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

1/4 cup cocoa powder

3 duck eggs (hen would be fine) lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a large saucepan melt the first five ingredients and stir over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved.  Then cool down for a short while.

Sift in the plain flour, baking powder and cocoa, add the eggs and vanilla and beat gently till combined.

Pour into a well lined cake tin about 20 cms square.

Bake for 1 to 1 & 1/2 hours on 150 Celsius.

I doubled this recipe and poured it into two cake tins.  Then I made a frosting recipe and layered the cake with it in between and covered the whole cake with a thin layer of the frosting.  Then I made a ganache recipe and covered the top of the cake thickly.  I melted some white chocolate and poured it on top of the ganache and artfully swirled it with a fork (looks real fancy!) into the ganache.  Then I shaved bits of white choc with a potato peeler onto the edge of the cake and added a sliced strawberry for colour.

Frosting

1/2 cup of cream

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1/2 tsp of vanilla extract

3 tbsps of cocoa powder

Whip the cream then beat in the sugar, vanilla and cocoa until stiff.  Done.

Ganache

8 ounces of dark chocolate, chopped

1 cup of cream

Heat cream until it just boils.  Pour over the chocolate and whisk until smooth.  I wanted a much thicker brew than this as I knew I was transporting the cake and it would be warm so I added about a cup and a half of icing sugar and beat until thick and smooth.

These recipes were all taken from the net, unfortunately I can't remember exactly where from as I wasn't planning to post them here.  So apologies to the original chefs - you have my undying thanks for the best birthday cake ever!  I have altered the recipes here and there to suit me and what I had available at the time.  

Spread the butter thick.

My Mum baked all our bread when I was a kid.  She had five loaf tins and they were put into service about twice a week (maybe once, I can't remember).  I loved her bread, even though at the time I wished I had shop white bread like everyone else (blurk!!).

Now that I'm regularly making my own bread, I want it to be like hers.  But Mum died when I was 16 and her bread was one of those things she just kinda made and never really had a recipe.

So I've been working on it.  And I've almost got it sussed - it's really good, and it's close enough to what I remember.

Recipe:

3 cups warm water
1 tablespoon of Surebake Yeast - this is one with bread improvers added but you probably don't need it, just use a little less regular yeast.
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
Put these all in a bowl and leave for 15 minutes or so to activate the yeast (I added my rolled oats now to get a bit of soaking time - if I was a real Western A. Pricer, I would have soaked them overnight).
Add 1 egg, 3 tbsps oil and 1 tsp salt and mix.
Add 4 cups white flour (stoneground, highgrade - whatever takes your fancy).
Add 2 1/2 cups brown flour and then maybe some more.
Mix until a quite wet and sticky dough forms.  Mix really well (almost like kneading) with the wooden spoon, you wouldn't want to get your hands in there - too wet.
Cover and leave to rise until doubled.
Mix really well with wooden spoon again then divide into half and 'plop' into two well-greased loaf tins.
Leave to rise again until well risen in the tin and then bake for about 45 mins, the first 10 mins at 200 degrees Celsius, the last bit at about 160 degrees Celsius. 

The original recipe was Grandmother Bread from Chickens in the Road Blog, but I added and changed etc etc and this is about right.  You can add linseeds, rye flour, cold porridge, any science experiments in the fridge, but I find as long as I have about 4 cups of white flour and a sticky texture, it turns out well.

P.S.  I also baked about a gazillion chocolate chip cookies today....after I washed off the toothpaste that dear daughter had applied to the cubed butter sitting on the bench softening.  The minty taste was hardly noticeable at all.  Note to self:  DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON AN ALMOST-THREE YEAR OLD!

My best baking hint....

When making chocolate brownie, wait until it is cool before tipping it out of the tin. And use a rack to tip it onto, not your hand.


You see, I was in a hurry and hadn't connected my brain. I tipped a very warm and soft brownie onto my hand to get it out of the tin and cut it up. Why was I in a hurry? Because I wanted to eat some.

My second best baking hint:

When making chocolate brownie, make a double batch!

Find my chocolate brownie recipe here.