Nigella's Gingerbread with fresh ginger

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! I’m a complete sucker for Christmas but don’t like getting excited too early about it as then I’m just all out of joy by the time the day comes. However it’s now the end of November and everything is starting to come together - the lights in London are twinkling, there is faux fur in most shop windows and the rain in coming down in sheets! Oh yes, winter in the UK has arrived.

When I get home out of the rain and cold there is nothing I like better than filling my house with great wintery smells. This basically boils down to stews and spices. So this week I was inspired to make gingerbread as it’s wonderfully aromatic and just has the most amazing texture to it. It also means I get to use golden syrup and treacle. I’m childishly happy that it comes in tins with a lid that needs prising off, and that no matter how careful you are there is always golden syrup over your hands that needs licking off. Simple things … I decided to use a Nigella recipe that uses fresh ginger as that sounded very nice, plus most of the ingredients can be measured straight into a saucepan that you then use for the whole batter. Less washing up and less mess.

The smell itself is reason enough to bake this but the finished cake has a dark luscious umptiousness (surely a Nigella word if ever there was one) to it which is quite incredible. As it’s a ‘tray bake’ in shape, and quite rich, you’ll get lots of little squares out of it to share around. I also imagine it would be good hot with custard so I’ll need to try that!

Ingredients

150g butter

125g dark muscovado sugar

200g golden syrup

200g black treacle

2 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated (I also added the juice that came off while grating)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

250ml milk

2 large eggs, beaten

1 tsp bicarb of soda dissolved in 2tbsp of warm water

300g plain flour

1.    Preheat the oven to 170°/GM3

2.    Get a largish saucepan – I used one that fitted on my electronic weighing scales so I could weigh straight into it. Add the butter, sugar, golden syrup, treacle, ginger and cinnamon. Melt these together on a low heat.

3.    Once melted add the milk, eggs and bicarcb in water and mix well.

4.    Now Nigella says to put the flour in a bowl and add the liquid ingredients in but I couldn’t be bothered with getting a bowl dirty. I just added the flour and mixed well with a balloon whisk. The cake came out fine.

5.    Put the batter in a lined roasting tin. Dimensions suggested were 30x20x5. I used a 26x18x5 and it was ok. Bake for about an hour but it depends on your tin dimensions. I’d say check after 45 minutes and adjust time accordingly. Mine needed 1 hour 15 mins.

6.    Now Nigella puts lemon icing on but I couldn’t be bothered. Plus it gets a wonderful sticky crust on its own which I quite like.

7.    Leave to cool before cutting (who am I trying to kid? Cut a corner out of the warm cake and demolish).



Chocolate Digestive Biscuits

Even with the ridiculous amounts of recipe books and magazines I have I do sometimes run short of inspiration. I suppose its' less about running out of inspiration and more not having something that I actually want to bake. I might have a load of recipes lined up to try but either due to the time they take, the ingredients they need or just then type of end product they don’t take my fancy. I can also get side tracked quite easily. If I see something that I like the look of all plans are scrapped and I go ahead and bake that.

I saw a post on a work colleagues Facebook page about the recipe to make digestive biscuits and was instantly hooked. Who wouldn’t want to make their own digestive biscuits?! They also looked very easy to make which is always an advantage when baking in the evening after work. This utilises a food processor and the dough can be made all in one which is always a bonus.

This recipe is for sweet ones but you can reduce the sugar and use them as a biscuit for cheese. I can tell you that the lower sugar version tastes delicious with a wedge of mature cheddar on top, enjoyed with a glass of wine. This make over 30 biscuits, depending on the size of your cutter.

Ingredients

200g porridge oats

200g wholemeal flour

1 tsp baking powder

130g brown sugar (reduce to 100g if you want these to go with cheese)

200g salted butter

4 tbsp milk

100g melted chocolate (I used dark as that was all I had but I made again with milk chocolate and they rock)

1.   Preheat the oven to 180°/GM 4.

2.   Put the porridge oats in a food processor and whizz until fine. The first time I did this I didn’t do it that long and the oats were a bit chunky. People at work said that they were almost like Hobnobs so if you want Hobnobs over digestives then I’d do 100g very fine and 100g barely whizzed to give a rougher dough.

3.   Add the flour and baking powder to the oats and pulse to mix.

4.   Add the butter and pulse to create a crumbly texture. It will start to bind together but that doesn’t matter. You could do this with your hands but why make another bowl dirty when you’ve got the food processor going?

5.   Add the milk and pulse again.

6.   Turn the dough out and press into a chunky disk. Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for about 25 minutes so it firms up.

7.   Then take it out and roll to about 3mm thick. It’s important the dough is thin because if the biscuits are too thick they don’t have that amazing crunch. Cut them out with something round. I couldn’t find by 6cm cutter so I just used a random sherry glass that was at the back of my cupboard.

8.   Bake for 18-20 minutes until a little brown around the edges.

9.   Once cooled spread chocolate on top with a palette knife and let set. Eat with a cup of tea and company. Obviously leave the chocolate off if you’ve gone with the version for cheese!

Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

 

Everyone seems more concerned with their diet these days. We’re bombarded with messages about nutrition on a daily basis with most of it conflicting. Quite a few of these are directed at food which, let’s be honest, is the more fun stuff. Cakes, biscuits and the like. Due to my love of baking this does cause issues as I only use butter, never margarine, and I won’t scrimp on full fat milk so some feel that they are unable to indulge. The Thew (my husband) avoids wheat and refined sugar so he’s immediately out of the tasting circle although he will sometimes have a slice of a gluten free cake if he’s feeling crazy!

There are those who are allergic to certain foods and these people have my sympathy. Not only do they not get to eat delicious desserts and cakes but the substitutes are generally fairly below average. There is a very lovely girl at my work who is allergic to dairy so when I saw Nigella’s Olive Oil Chocolate Cake I immediately thought of her. I make Nigella’s Clementine Cake, which is gluten free and is delicious, so I had high hopes.

The cake can also be gluten free but I didn’t have enough ground almonds at home to do that. It was raining outside as well so I wasn’t going to pop out and get some more. What you get for your effort is a wonderfully moist chocolate cake that is simply stunning for the minimal work that goes into it. I may try adding some ginger to this next time - this is a cake that encourages experimentation.

Ingredients

150ml regular olive oil

50g cocoa powder (I use Green and Blacks as its fab)

125ml boiling water

2 tsp vanilla extract

125g plain flour (or 150g ground almonds)

½ tsp bicarb of soda

200g caster sugar

3 large eggs

1.     Preheat the oven to 170°/GM3. Grease a springform tin with oil and line the base.

2.     Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl and add the boiling water. Whisk until smooth, add the vanilla, whisk some more and set to one side. Now it looks tempting to dip your finger in and try some. Warning - just because it looks like melted chocolate, doesn't mean it tastes like it!

3.     Combine the flour, bicarb and a pinch of salt and leave to one side.

4.     Put the sugar in a bowl with the eggs and olive oil. Whisk until very aerated and thick – this takes 3-4 minutes with a hand held mixer.

5.     Add the cocoa mixture followed by the flour mixture, beating together after each addition.

6.     Pour into your tin and bake for about 40 minutes.

7.     You can eat hot or cold so let cool for a few minutes if you want to eat it hot, or cool completely if you want it cold. I had it cold but I imagine that for those who aren’t allergic to diary, some double cream would do well with it.