My Great British Bake Off - Part 1

I don't know about you, but I always feel far more enthusiastic and energetic when the sun shines.  Maybe that is why I found myself being super motivated this weekend and channelled that motivation and enthusiasm into baking.

If you ever needed to rely on me to actually feed and nourish you, you would probably starve!  I have to confess that my husband is the one that does the cooking in our house.  He's very good at making his own sauces for curries and chilli etc and, unlike me, everything is ready at the same time (I do struggle with my timings!).

However, if you were happy to simply live on cakes and cookies then I'm your gal!

So it was that this weekend, enthused by the lovely weather that I decided to go on a bake-a-thon and stock the cupboards and freezer with supplies for the month.

My daughter seems to have inherited my dessert genes and is really the cake baker in the family.  I am not quite sure how she does it but her cakes are always so moist, and they come out of the tin in one piece!

Now I should add at this stage that we have frozen a lot of what is about to follow and haven't just "pigged out" this weekend!

First up was the tried and trusted Ginger Cake from the Dinner Lady Cookbook.  We amended the recipe from the one in the book slightly, but it always tastes absolutely great and never seems to last very long in our house.

Ginger Cake

Ginger Cake

Ingredients

Method

225g self-raising flour 2tsp ground ginger 2tsp mixed spice 115g brown sugar 115g golden syrup 115g butter 2 eggs 150ml milk

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl.        Melt the sugar, syrup and butter in a pan for 5 minutes.  Be careful not to boil.        Beat the eggs and milk together.        Add the beaten egg mixture, together with the melted butter mixture to the dry ingredients to make a soft batter.        Pour into a 1lb loaf tin and bake in a preheated oven (160°C/325°F/Gas 3) for 35 minutes until springy to the touch.

Next up was Golden Syrup Cake.  One of the blogs that I follow is A Spoonful of Sugar Designs and they recently posted a recipe for Golden Syrup Cake.  Now I LOVE golden syrup so just had to try this recipe.  You can find the details for the recipe on their website here.  We tried half of the cake and froze the rest and I have to say that it was delicious, lovely and moist, a little bit chewy and, for those of you who are perhaps not to sure about the idea of a golden syrup cake, didn't taste overwhelmingly of golden syrup.  Even my son (who has the fussiest tastebuds and doesn't like syrup) enjoyed it.

Golden Syrup Cake

Next up was a chocolate cake.  This was another one I tried from a blog that I follow over at Retromummy.  

Chocolate Cake

Again, we froze half and have indulged in the other half. This was one of the nicest chocolate cakes I have ever tried.  I can find that most other chocolate cakes have a tendancy to be a bit dry but this one was lovely and soft and moist.  We will definitely be making this one again.

Finally, the last cake in our Great British Bake Off was Fruit Cake.  Again, this is a tried and tested recipe in our house although I am not entirely sure where the original recipe came from.  I do know that the original recipe calls for seperate measurements of currants, sultanas and mixed peel.  As we invariably never seem to have these individually in our baking cupboard we usually cheat and use a total quantity of mixed fruit which has a bit of everything in it.

Fruit Cake

Ingredients	Method
4oz butter 6oz caster sugar 6oz currants 6oz sultanas 2oz mixed peel (or 14oz mixed fruit) 8fl oz water 1tsp bicarbonate of soda 1tsp mixed spice 4oz plain flour 4oz self raising flour 2 eggs	Put the butter, sugar and fruit into a pain and bring to the boil for 1 minute. Let the mixture cool for about 10-15 minutes, stirring regularly. Add the eggs to the mixture and beat in. Add the flours a little at a time and mix in. Pour the mixture into a 2lb greased tin and bake in a pre-heated oven (140°C) for 1 hour 15 mins.

This is the moistest (is that even a word?!) fruit cake ever.  Packed full of fruit but not dry and crumbly, perfect to have with an afternoon cuppa.

I also made (LOTS) of cookies at the weekend but I think I will save all your waistlines for now and let you have  the details for the cookies in Part 2 later.  For now, if you decide to try any of the recipes above I hope you enjoy them as much as my family do.  I would love to hear what you think of them and what your favourite cake recipes are.

Sharon x