Tag: Christmas receipe

Recipe: Ginger Loaf Cake with Zesty Lime Icing

With my son at home, I’m having to up my snack game. He gets the usual healthy offerings of fresh fruit and yoghurt, but sometimes a slice of cake can be just the motivation he needs to plough through his home learning for the afternoon. This simple ginger loaf cake is a quick and fairly frugal bake which will satisfy even the hungriest little learner.

Ginger Loaf Cake with Zesty Lime Icing

When I bake this, I usually double the recipe and make two. I wrap the second one up for later in the week and the cake is usually even better after a couple of days resting in an airtight tin.

Ginger loaf cake with zesty lime icing

Ingredients
200g self raising flour
200g soft brown sugar
5 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
55g baking margarine, plus extra for greasing
1 medium egg, beaten
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
240mls hot but not boiling water
Lime icing
100g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 a lime
Zest of 1 lime

Ginger Loaf Cake with Zesty Lime Icing

How to make your Ginger Loaf Cake
Preheat the oven to 160c. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment. I like to use loaf tin liners because they’re much easier.

Put all of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl, with an electric whisk (or a big spoon if you prefer) combine all the ingredients into a smooth batter. It will look a bit runny, but it’ll be ok once baked, I promise.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tin. Bake in your pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes, or until golden brown and the top is springy to the touch. If the top is browning too quickly and you’re worried about it burning, cover the tin with tin foil.

Once your ginger loaf cake is baked, leave it to cool thoroughly, I usually leave mine overnight to make sure it’s properly cool.

Ginger Loaf Cake with Zesty Lime Icing

To ice your cake; zest a lime and put the zest to one side ready to sprinkle over the top. Sift your icing sugar into a bowl, then gradually add in the juice of half a lime, stirring until you get a stiff but spreadable consistency.

Spoon the lime icing over the top of your ginger loaf and then sprinkle the zest over the top. If you’re a neat and tidy person, you might want to leave it to one side for a few hours for the icing to set. Although if you’re greedy like me, then you can just slice it into thick pieces and gobble it down quickly with the icing still dripping.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try these Grasmere ginger biscuits or this sticky ginger cake with cinnamon frosting.

Ginger Loaf Cake with Zesty Lime Icing

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

I do love mince pies, but sadly the pastry doesn’t love me. This Christmas I thought I’d try making a batch of alternative mince pies, but with filo pastry and in the style of a spring roll. These Mincemeat Filo Rolls were really, really lovely. The great news is they didn’t take very much time at all and I managed to roll up the lot whilst sat at my kitchen table watching The Motherland Christmas Special, which was only 30 minutes long.

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

This recipe makes 24 mincemeat filo rolls and they would keep well for a few days in an airtight container. You can eat them cold or warm them in the oven if you prefer. They’re lovely dipped in brandy cream or just as they are.

Mincemeat Filo Rolls

Ingredients:
1 packet of filo pastry
2 jars of mincemeat
100g melted butter
Icing sugar (optional)

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

How to make your Mincemeat Filo Rolls:
You’ll need to work pretty quickly as once the filo pastry is out of the packet it starts to dry up.

Line two large baking trays with baking parchment and pre-heat your oven to 180°.

Unroll your filo pastry and cut into quarters. Open your jars of mincemeat and get your melted butter ready. Below is a pictorial guide on how I put them together. I took one quarter of a sheet, brushed it with melted butter and put another sheet of filo pastry on top. I then put a heaped teaspoon of mincemeat on the pastry and brushed the edges with melted butter.

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

As you can see, I folded the filo in on the long sides and dabbed some more melted butter along the edges to seal everything in, then rolled them up tight. I put each one with the edge side down on a baking sheet, and once I’d finished I brushed them with more melted butter and put them in the oven.

Bake in the oven for around 30 minutes. Check on them at about 20 minutes and remove from the oven when they’re golden and crisp looking. Leave them to cool because hot mincemeat is essentially fruity lava, once they’re cooler you can dust with icing sugar if you like and serve them with boozy cream or brandy butter.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try –

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

Easy Recipe: Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

I love a bit of ginger cake and at this time of year it’s a lovely warming bake to make for the family. It’s sticky and spicy and you can dress it up for Christmas, or dress it down for every day cake eating if you prefer. This sticky ginger sponge cake with cinnamon frosting is special enough to serve for an occasion, or you could glitz it up a bit more and serve it as an alternative Christmas cake, and it’s about as easy as can be.

Easy Recipe: Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

It is a really simple bake, do not be alarmed by how much water you need to use, or how wet the batter is when you put it in the oven. It comes out beautifully. It’s also worth noting that if you can bake the layers and leave them wrapped up for a few days, the ginger flavour improves. So it’s a good make ahead bake if you need that.

If you like ginger but don’t want it to be too strong, you can always reduce the amount you use in the recipe. I like it to be quite feisty, so I’ve used quite a lot here.

Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

Ingredients
400g self raising flour
400g soft brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
110g baking margarine, plus extra for greasing
2 medium eggs, beaten
4 tablespoons of golden syrup
480mls hot but not boiling water
To make the frosting you will need…
250g unsalted butter
350g icing sugar
1-2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon
Milk, a couple of tablespoons
To decorate, 3 ginger nut biscuits and some gold glimmer sugar

Easy Recipe: Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

How to make your Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake

Preheat the oven to 180C/350FGas 4. Grease and line 4 8inch cake tins with baking parchment.

Put all of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl, with an electric whisk (or a big spoon if you prefer) combine all the ingredients into a smooth batter. It will look a bit runny, but it’ll be ok once baked, I promise.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tins, make sure there’s an equal (ish) amount in each tin. I weigh them to make sure they are more or less the same. Bake in your pre-heated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown and the top is springy to the touch.

Leave them to cool in the tin. Once cool, you’re ready to build your cake.

To make your buttercream frosting beat the butter and icing sugar, ground cinnamon and 1-2 tablespoons of milk together until smooth. Taste the buttercream, you can add more cinnamon if you prefer and more milk if you feel it needs to be softer.

To put you cake together, cut the domed tops off 3 out of your 4 cake layers, saving the best looking one for the top. Put your first later on your cake stand or plate, carefully spread some of the buttercream on top. Top with the second layer and cover that in more buttercream. Do the same with the third layer and then top with your prettiest layer.

You can decorate it however you want, there was enough buttercream for me to smooth some around the sides of my four layer cake tower, and I think it made the cake look a bit prettier. I piled the rest of the buttercream on the top of the cake and then crushed some ginger nut biscuits and mixed in a couple of teaspoons of some glittery sugar I had left over from another bake, then spooned them over the top.

This ginger sponge cake looked very pretty and tasted absolutely fantastic. This is such a good cake for a ginger lover. Lovely stuff.

For the people asking how do you make ginger cake sticky, I think it’s the golden syrup. I think it sort of seeps out of the sponge over time and makes it all sticky and lovely. I might be wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments!

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try these Grasmere ginger biscuits.

Easy Recipe: Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting