Chocolate Ginger Cake

Making all of these cakes is giving me cake gut (a lot like beer gut, but made of cake). I really need some help disposing of these that don't involve me force-feeding my 'becoming reluctant' work colleagues. I think I have ruined everyone's appetite for homemade cake and I am met with looks of narrow-eyed suspicion whenever I have a Tupperware container on my desk. My next cake after this one will probably involve marshmallows. This may help my shameless enabling turn a corner without anyone realising it.

This cake was challenging. Again, the recipe writing has left a little to be desired, but I have fixed it below for everyone. I think I did the recipe wrong; I tossed the chopped up ginger, as well as the ground ginger, into the mix, before realising that the chopped up ginger was essentially a garnish. You may notice my photo below shows no such garnish on the icing. I had a small amount of ginger left over as I wanted something with which to style my food, and didn't want to chop it up. Surprisingly, even with the extra spice, it wasn't very gingery at all. Nor was it very chocolatey. If you make this cake yourself, I think you should feel free to double the cocoa and ginger. This is essentially a brown cake. with chocolate icing. I'm assuming it's tasty. I have to confess and say I haven't even tried this one yet (well, I've tried it while preparing it, but not yet since it's been cooked). I'm a bit tired of cake, and there have been quite a few this last week.

I've noticed many of these cakes call for quite a lot of butter or margarine. As we all know, butter tastes better than margarine and I've been surprised to see margarine so often in these recipes. I was going to make a point about living in a time when margarine was still a relatively new product, however it seems my history of margarine knowledge is a little lacking; it has, in fact, been around since 1869. Maybe it kept better, or was more economical? I'm using butter for all of this cooking, but will probably go and get my cholesterol tested soon...

On a positive note. I am a third of the way through the recipes I'd chosen to cook for this blog. I have about 40 more recipes to prepare, and then I'll be figuring out how to make this into a cookbook! The home stretch! 

Chocolate Ginger Cake

330g (2 cups) butter or margarine

1 cup sugar

1 tsp. ground ginger

1 tbsp. cocoa

1 cup hot water

1 egg

2 cups plain flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

2 tbsp. milk

Chocolate icing

1 tbsp. crystallised ginger, chopped finely

Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease and line a baking dish with paper.

Boil the ginger, butter, cocoa, sugar and hot water for five minutes, turn into a heatproof bowl and allow to cool. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in a little warm water and add it to the beaten egg and milk. Mix this through the cooled butter chocolate ginger mix, then sift the flour and baking powder into this, stirring well.

Cook for 50 minutes, then turn out to cool. When cold, ice with chocolate icing and sprinkle with chopped ginger.  

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For those of you who are not in Australia, please find here a selection of Measurement & Temperature Conversion Charts which should help with the accuracy of your own cooking.

Date Walnut Cake

At work this week we farewelled a colleague who found the pasture was greener elsewhere, so it was with a little sadness that I prepared this Date Walnut Cake as a farewell baking gesture to someone I truly enjoyed working with. We will undoubtedly catch up on Instagram and at social events from time to time, so it's not a forever goodbye, and I hope T, that you love your new job!

I've been increasing my run distances of late, work has been a little busy, and a great way for me to empty my head is to run until I can run no more. (Run Natasha, Run!) Earlier this week, upon returning from my farthest distance yet*, all energised and motivated, I thought I'd give this cake a go, two hour cooking time be damned! Damn that two hour cooking time. I really should look at the clock before I put anything into the oven at night. I was really tired once the post-exercise euphoria had faded (post-exercise-high, low?) but the cake was worth it. 

Because of time constraints, I decided it would be better for me to ice the cake at work. The photo below is of a giant walnut encrusted cake sitting on my desk. The icing sugar all over my black skirt, and chocolate icing at the corner of my mouth were a dead giveaway that that particular cake was handcrafted by me. It was a bit ugly (big brown blob of a cake), so I went a bit crazy with the encrusting with walnuts; definitely a case of too much was just enough. I think it was nice. To be honest I'm getting a little fatigued by cakes, as are maybe my colleagues. No more guinea pigs. I will obviously keep going, however I need a new audience. 

*Humble brag. Subtle, no?

Date Walnut Cake

225g butter

2¼ cups plain flour

1 cup sugar

225g dates, roughly chopped

1 cup walnuts, chopped

2 eggs

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

¾ cup hot water

Preheat oven to 160°C.

Grease well and line with baking paper a 20cm cake tin.

Into a heat-proof container, place the chopped dates, bicarbonate of soda and hot water, leave for about 15 minutes.

Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs, flour and walnuts. Add the dates/soda/hot water mix.

Pour into prepared cake tin. Cook for two hours, checking at the 90 minute mark.

Once cooled, ice with icing of your choice  I made chocolate icing and it worked well with the richness of the dates. 

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For those of you who are not in Australia, please find here a selection of Measurement & Temperature Conversion Charts which should help with the accuracy of your own cooking.

Coffee Patty Cake

I don't like coffee. Apart from an occasional Greek or Turkish coffee, usually drunk late at night, I just don't like it. I don't mind coffee in other things though, coffee ice cream, coffee lolly drops, or Coffee Patty Cake such as we are looking at here. Weird I know, but I am well known for my high levels of fussiness. Have we discussed my abhorrence of pumpkin? Don't fret, we will — there is a cake yet to be cooked which is made from the revolting stuff. I may need to undergo hypnosis in order to eat it. 

Just what is a patty cake you ask? I looked high and low for an answer. Well, if 'high and low' means I Googled, then yes, that's just what I did. A Wikipedia article led me to this;

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can;

Roll it, Pat it and mark it with B,

Put it in the oven for baby and me.

According to Wikipedia — and of course Wikipedia is without error, ever — this is a modern example of one of the oldest surviving English nursery rhymes. The rhyme though was first recorded in the play, The Campaigners by Thomas d'Urfey in 1698, where a 'nurse says to her charges:...and pat a cake Bakers man, so I will master as I can, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and prick it, and throw't into the Oven'. 

The consistency of this cake is much like a wet bread mix, and means the mixture has to be shaped into the tin. If I felt like getting my hands dirty, I could have patted it. It's an easy leap from 'patting the cake' to naming it a patty cake. Maybe. I like words, so it's always interesting to have a teeny mystery solved about where a phrase or word comes from, and if there's food involved? Even better.

If you want to make your own coffee essence for this, please head over to Coffee Biscuits where there is a recipe.  

Coffee Patty Cake

115g butter

¾ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup self-raising flour

½ cup plain flour

Pinch salt

1 tbsp. coffee essence

3 tbsp. boiling water

Preheat oven to 160°C

Cream butter, add eggs one at a time, beating well.

Fold in sifted flour and salt, then add other ingredients.

Turn into a greased cake pan and bake in moderate oven for around 30 minutes.

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For those of you who are not in Australia, please find here a selection of Measurement & Temperature Conversion Charts which should help with the accuracy of your own cooking.

Orange Cake

Another orange cake, in order to use up a surplus of oranges as mentioned in my previous blog entry. This one was a little stickier because of the filling, but I suspect that will lead to its taste sensation success when eaten tomorrow morning. It's like a cake sandwich, topped with sugar. What's not to like?    

Orange Cake

115g caster sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup self-raising flour

1 tbsp. melted butter

Grated rind of 1 orange

Preheat oven to 160°C

Beat eggs until thick and pale in colour. Add sugar and grated orange rind. Continue beating till thick and creamy, then lightly fold in the sifted flour, stirring in the butter at this point as well.

Pour even quantities of the mixture into two well greased baking tins (round or loaf style, your choice), and bake for 20-25 minutes. Turn out to cool.

Orange Cake Filling

Grated rind of 1 orange

Juice of 1 orange

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp. butter

1 egg, beaten

Place all ingredients into a double saucepan (or heat-proof bowl placed over a saucepan filled with water). Cook over boiling water until thick (around 8 minutes).

Allow to cool completely before spreading between the layers of cake, then sift icing sugar on top of cake.

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For those of you who are not in Australia, please find here a selection of Measurement & Temperature Conversion Charts which should help with the accuracy of your own cooking.