Happy Birthday Mr Jackson

Given the time of year as temperatures start to dip, leaves plunge off of branches and blustery winds make us want to stay inside and indulge in nice things, I thought this ginger cake was perfect my friend's birthday as it's spices and all around sugary goodness meant that it could be consumed with a glass of mulled wine while standing outside and watching fireworks.

The cake itself looks battered... and that's because it got a beating travelling from Mornington Crescent all the way to Leyton. Two tube lines and a lot of waking later, the icing had fallen off the sides of the cake. I iced it with a cream cheese icing (admittedly my favorite way to ice a cake these days) but don't think I put enough icing sugar into it. The extra icing sugar would have made it much stiffer. Ho hum.

The cake itself, however, was very good and the recipe I used came from the ladies who run a local cake shop called The Primrose Bakery. http://www.primrosebakery.org.uk/PAGES/Welcome.htm

The recipe is really user friendly but has a lot happening at once.

Here it is!

165g unsalted butter

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger

1 tbsp caster sugar

250g self-raising flower

2 tsp ground ginger

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

175g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs

185g good quality dark chocolate

124ml golden syrup

250ml buttermilk

heat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4

Grease and line two 2X20 sandwich tins

1) Put the chopped ginger and caster sugar into a bowl, stir and set aside for a few minutes. In a separate bowl, sift the flower and spices

2) Cream the butter and brown sugar in a big bowl. Beat in the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. It might look a bit curdled but don't worry about it.

3) Melt 60g of chocolate in a double boiler. Pour in the syrup and whisk until smooth.

4) Add the melted chocolate and sugar ginger to the creamed butter and beat again. Next, add the dry ingredients in stages, alternating with the buttermilk, only beating so that the ingredients are just blended. Chop the remaining chocolate and fold into the mixture.

5) Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!!!

The cheesecake that went horridly wrong

Making a bad cheesecake is like getting fired from a job: humiliating and sad. Now although on the outside, this cheesecake looks like it should have been a little (or large- depending on who you are) slice of cheesy heaven. But when I cut into it at a recent family gathering, I knew already it was going to be a disaster. The knife went straight through, and with a good cheesecake, the knife should feel like it sticks a bit. I have been obsessed with trying to make regular recipes low fat (only because I enjoy the challenge more than anything) and took no exception with this cheesecake. I know this isn't where I went wrong. It was too eggy. Too many eggs made it light and fluffy... so I have revised the recipe:

16 digestive biscuits

1/3 cup butter (I used low fat marg)

750g cream cheese (I used low fat)

3/4 cup maple syrup

2 eggs

1/2 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F or gas mark 4

1) break the digestives into a blender with half of the walnuts and whizz until a fine crumb develops. Melt the butter in a pan and mix with the cookie and nut mixture. Press into the bottom of a spring board pan and put in the fridge for ten minutes.

2) In the blender whizz together the cream cheese and 1/2 cup of the maple syrup until a fine consistency is reached. The blend in the eggs one at a time until well mixed.

3) Pour the mixture into the set cookie base and bake for 45-50m or until a knife comes out clean and the cheesecake has cracked

4) Once cooled, pour the remaining 1/4 of maple syrup over top the cheesecake and decorate with the remainder of walnuts

See if this works for you better than the original worked for me. Long live the cheesecake!