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).



Spicy Chorizo Sausage Rolls

Mondays aren’t the most amazing day of the week for people but for me once the working hours are done there is a feeling of the week having started and energy levels rising. I used to play netball on a Monday but when that finished I thought that I should put the night, and energy, to good use and start to expand my baking. There are so many recipes I want to try but find myself making the same things – mainly because those are the ingredients I have in my cupboard and fridge. I also want to start putting more personal twists on things so Mondays will become my night to bake.

It just so happens that I have an order to fulfil tonight (I said I’d bake in exchange for a favour).These have proved so ridiculously popular that I’m normally asked for these, over cake, if people are given the choice. The fact that I use ready rolled puff pastry does mean that these can be done really fast and considering my kitchen is tiny, and heats up fast, making pastry isn’t always on option. I also have ‘hot hands’ so when making pastry I tend to have to keep putting it in the fridge which I really can’t be bothered with!

Best eaten hot but most people only get them cold because I bring them into work. The heat comes from the spices, not the chorizo, so you can adjust to taste. Fresh chilli might also work but I prefer ground spice for these.

Ingredients

1 x pack of 8 pork sausages

1 x pack of ready rolled puff pastry

2 x smaller cooking chorizo or about 1/3 of a chorizo ring, chopped into small chunks

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp cayenne pepper (less or more depending on how spicy you want it)

½ tsp very hot chilli powder (I use Barts as everything else just seems weak compared to it)

1 egg, whisked (milk will do)

1.    Pre-heat an oven to GM5 or 190°.

2.    Remove the skin from the sausages and put in a bowl. I have made these – by accident – with reduced fat sausages and it worked. You just don’t get the wonderful colour from the chorizo and paprika oozing into the pastry as much. It does seem to give a firmer sausage in the middle so try whatever you like.

3.    Add the chorizo and spices and mix together. I always start with a wooden spoon and then realise I just need to get my hand dirty. I tend to have some water in the sink so I can do quick rinses without getting the taps dirty but I’m weird like that.

4.    Roll out the pastry a bit more as I don’t find the pack size is big enough and the pastry is too thick for a sausage roll. Just a little bit longer and wider should do it. Cut in half lengthways.

5.    Divide the sausage meat in two and roll between your hands so it fit the length of the pastry strips. Egg wash one edge of each strip, fold the other side of the pastry over the meat and seal by pressing along the join with a fork. I find something deeply satisfying in creating the fork impressions in pastry.

6.    Cut into each long roll into your desired sizes – I tend to get 8 out of each – and place on a baking tray (or two) and wash with the egg. Then cut a small hole in the top of each (I use scissors) and there you go.

7.    Pop in the oven for 20-25 minutes. If you’re using two trays and they are on different shelves the ones on the lower shelf might need more time. You basically want them to go golden and look like the picture. Then they’re done.

8.    Eat.