Saturday 28 April 2012

Keeping The Cake Tin Filled

 - orange and honey gingerbread and hazelnut brownies.

I only intended to make the gingerbread, to keep us going over the weekend, but the texture was so weird that I thought it might be inedible, so I quickly made a batch of brownies as well. By the time I mentioned to the others that I thought I'd have to bin the gingerbread, FB had already eaten some and said it tasted fine to her!

Front - brownies; back - gingerbread
I used this recipe, but instead of equal quantities of black treacle and golden syrup, I used a mixture of roughly equal parts of honey, golden syrup and black treacle, and added the grated zest of a medium sized orange. Although the gingerbread was delicious, the texture was too dense and stodgy. I think the honey made the mixture too acidic, so that the bicarbonate of soda was activated and used up before the cake batter was properly set.

The brownies were made following this recipe, adding 50g each of chopped toasted hazelnuts and chopped milk chocolate, instead of just chocolate. This is now my 'go-to' recipe for low saturated fat brownies, but it is important for the best texture to beat the eggs and sugar for the full five minutes.  I think I tried to cut a corner this time, and they didn't have the usual volume.

8 comments:

Scotkat said...

This looks so tasty and have had a look at recipe .

Must make this :)

MissCakeBaker said...

I really like nuts in brownies. They look so good.

Baking Addict said...

I'm not a fan of ginger myself so will go straight for the brownies. You can never make too much to fill the cake tin as it magically disappears! :)

celia said...

Isn't it lovely to have enthusiastic eaters? The gingerbread actually sounds quite lovely, Suelle!

Suelle said...

Thanks, Celia - the flavour was good, it just needs a little adjustment on the raising agent, I think, to prevent the stodgy layer at the bottom.

orange99 said...

Just wondering - how would honey make anything more acidic?

Suelle said...

I might be wrong, but my understanding is that some ingredients, including honey, brown sugar and molasses, are acidic. That is why, when they are used in a cake, bicarbonate of soda is often used as the only raising agent. The bicarb reacts with the acidic ingredient, rather than an acidic part of the raising agent, to produce CO2.

I'm not sure why honey would make this batter more acidic than using treacle and golden syrup alone, unless it is a lot more acidic. It might just have been too dense and heavy compared to golden syrup.

Choclette said...

Oh yes, a full cake tin has got to be a top priority? Really like the sound of honey in the gingerbread, but I wonder if that was the reason it didn't rise so well. I've just made honey cakes where you leave the mixture with bicarb of soda & baking powder for an hour before putting it in the oven and they rose really well. I was a bit dubious about this the first time I tried it, but this was my third attempt and it's worked each time???