The Triennial Chocolate, Fig and Ginger Panforte

For some reason, I have made this Panforte, for Christmas, at three year intervals - 2014, 2017 and again this year. Perhaps it's going to be a tradition!

Panforte is a particularly suitable Christmas treat this year, when, if we are meeting friends and family at all, it's on a very restricted schedule with regards to both numbers and time. It keeps for weeks after making, so however few of you there are to eat it, you'll get through it without any waste. 

This year, this panforte will almost be all mine! Apart from a brief visit from both my children on Christmas Day for an exchange of presents and a meal together, the Covid restrictions mean, like many others, I'll be alone most of the time. That doesn't bother me - all I need is a good book to keep me happy, and it will only be a few days before we're all back into the routines of our lives. For me that can be quite hectic, as I volunteer at the local Food Bank, which has been very busy since the start of the pandemic.

I followed my original recipe from 2014, which was a compilation of several other recipes, in a quest for perfection. I could vary the flavours by changing the fruit, or leaving out the ginger, but this particular combination of chocolate, figs and ginger, together with the spices and hint of orange, works so well that I'm reluctant to make changes.

Here's wishing you the best 

for this Festive Season, 

with hopes that 2021 

will be better for all of us!

Date and Ginger Flapjacks

Another roll out of an old favourite - flapjacks are really quick to mix and bake so are ideal for occasions when you don't have much time, or just want to make something from store-cupboard ingredients. I think I overdid the ginger here, so the flavour of the dates didn't come through strongly, but their chewiness added to the texture. The recipe is really simple, and can be made in one bowl or saucepan, depending on how you want to melt the butter, syrup and sugar together.

As long as you don't exceed 150g, you can use any combination of dried fruit, nuts or seeds that you have in stock, or know you family likes, adding appropriate spices or other flavouring, such as citrus zest.

For a 20cm (8") square tin, melt together 160g butter, 70g of golden syrup and 100g of light muscovado sugar. I do this in a large bowl in the microwave, but it can also be done in a saucepan on the hob. When all the butter has melted add in 240g porridge oats, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 80g of chopped dates and 50g crystallised or glacé ginger,  both chopped quite finely. Mix until well combined then transfer to the baking tin, which should be lined with baking parchment. Press down firmly to give an even layer, then bake at 180C for about 25 minutes, to give a chewy flapjack. If you like a slightly crisper finish, bake for a few minutes longer. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then mark into bars or squares, but leave in the tin until completely cold.

Dark Banana Ginger Cake

I feel as if I should apologise for three consecutive posts featuring loaves, but they are so practical now that I'm only baking for myself. Even with a small loaf cake, I often freeze part of it - mainly to save my waistline, not because I couldn't eat it all. Loaf shaped cakes are easy to portion and stack tidily in the freezer. In this case, I was able to bake this full-sized recipe (the second on the page) from the ever reliable Dan Lepard, but split it between two small loaf tins rather than bake it as one large 20cm (8") square cake. The cooking time for the smaller loaves was still 50 minutes.

I made a few changes to the recipe, some of which seemed inconsequential to how well the recipe worked - I used white bread flour, crystallised ginger instead of glacé, and added some ground spices to the recipe (1 teaspoon ginger and 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice). The final change was a bit more worrying - I only had two large bananas, which I was reasonably sure would weigh enough, but when the peel was off there was only 200g of flesh, not the 300g asked for in the recipe.

It was too late to back out at that stage so I went ahead, wondering if I needed to add anything to replace the missing 100g of banana. If the batter had been really thick, I might have added a tablespoon or two of natural yogurt, but it was very liquid, so I decided to go ahead with nothing else added.  I noticed afterwards that Dan says in the introduction to the recipe that the bran in wholemeal flour soaks up the liquid from the mashed banana, so maybe losing the bran and using less banana cancelled each other out!

I really liked this cake, it was firm and close textured but not heavy, and it still smelled and tasted of banana. I think adding a little extra spice was a good idea as even though I was using fiery crystallised ginger pieces it was nice to have some spice flavour in the cake crumb too.

Fig, Chocolate and Ginger Panforte

This is a repeat of the recipe for Fig, Chocolate and Ginger Panforte that I made three years ago. This year I used gluten free flour and divided the mixture between two 6" (15cm) foil pie cases for baking, as I wanted to take one as a gift to friends, where I knew that some of the other guests required gluten free food. I also left out the orange zest, although, after tasting, my memory of the first one tells me that that it's better left in! I kept the baking time the same, as the smaller panforte were similar in depth to one large one.

Panforte is ideal for this time of year, as it is more like a confection than a cake, and seems to keep for ever once it is baked. I cut the cake that I kept for myself today, over three weeks after making it and it tasted just as good as the when first made. It's very rich, so best cut into small slivers for serving.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 

TO YOU ALL!

Fig, Ginger and Chocolate Loaf Cake

This is a simple, small loaf cake, made by the rubbing-in method, so you don't even have to think far enough ahead to allow time for your butter to soften. It can be in the oven within a few minutes of gathering the ingredients together. You can add any combination of dried fruit, nuts, chocolate, spices and other flavourings to the basic cake recipe; I chose some of my seasonal favourites - dried figs, crystallised ginger and dark chocolate.

This recipe makes a fairly robust cake, but as long as the batter isn't too loose, it will support quite chunky pieces of fruit and nuts. This means that it's possibly to taste all the individual additions. The combination of figs, ginger and chocolate worked really well together, although a touch of spice and orange zest would have made it even more festive.

Ingredients
200g SR flour
100g butter or hard baking fat (such as Stork)
80g caster sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
milk to mix
*100-150g 'add-ins'
1 tablespoon demerara sugar (optional)

*  I used 50g each of dried figs, crystallised ginger and 70% chocolate, all chopped into similar sized pieces

Method
Preheat the oven to 175C and line a small (1lb) loaf tin with baking parchment or use a loaf-tin liner.
Put the flour into a large bowl and rub in the butter, as if making pastry, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Mix in the sugar.
Add the egg, vanilla extract and enough milk to give a fairly soft batter - you'll need at least 5 tablespoons. Just stir the batter briskly - don't beat it!
Fold in your chosen 'add-ins'.
Transfer the batter to the baking tin, level the mixture and sprinkle with the demerara sugar, if using.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, until a test probe comes out cleanly.
Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Apricot, Date and Ginger Flapjack

Flapjacks are often my 'go to' recipe, when I need something quick to mix and bake. In this case it was after an afternoon working in the garden, so that the flapjacks could bake while I was getting dinner ready. Once you have melted the butter and sugars together, it only takes a few more minutes to get the tray into the oven. The other good thing about flapjacks is they are ideal for using up the last remnants of bags of dried fruit, to stop them building up in the store cupboard.

Ingredients
60g dried apricots
40g dried dates
30g crystallised ginger
160g butter
70g golden syrup
100g light muscovado sugar
240g porridge oats

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C, and line a 20cm (8") square shallow baking tin with a single piece of baking parchment, folding it into the corners, so that the sides of the tin are lined too.
Chop the dried fruit and ginger into pieces about the size of a sultana.
Melt the butter,  golden syrup and sugar together - I find it easiest to use a mixing bowl in the microwave, but a saucepan on the hob is fine too.
Add the oats, dried fruit and ginger and mix together thoroughly. Tip into the baking tin and spread evenly, pressing down firmly with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 25 minutes until golden. This baking time gives a chewy flapjack; if you like yours crisp, then add a few more minutes.
Cut into squares or fingers while still hot, but cool completely in the tin before removing.

Chocolate Marmalade Brownies

When I first made this recipe, for Chocolate Marmalade Brownies, almost seven years ago, I thought the recipe was a keeper. Making them again, only recently, I'm not quite sure what I saw in them in the first place. They were pleasant enough, but more like cake than a brownie, and the one word in their name that is meant to describe the added flavour is the thing I couldn't taste at all! The walnuts, cayenne and ginger (an extra addition, part of the chocolate used) were all much more prominent flavours than the marmalade.

The only changes I made to the recipe were to bake in a slightly smaller tin (20 x 30cm), which added five minutes to the baking time, and to use chopped dark chocolate containing crystallised ginger instead of plain chocolate chips.

Really, the only thing to recommend this recipe is that the brownie batter is made with cocoa rather than chocolate, which could be useful if you were short of chocolate. However, if you're the sort of person who regularly bakes brownies, I can't see you being the sort of person who runs short of chocolate - I get twitchy if there's ever less than 500g in the house!

Date and Ginger Chocolate Chip Biscuits

Biscuits aren't one of my favourite things to make; in general there's too much faffing about to make them worth the effort. They might look more decorative but you can usually get the same amount of eating pleasure from a traybake cut into squares or bars, with lots less work for the cook. However, put the name Dan Lepard to a biscuit recipe, and it's one I'll look at twice, and by the second time I'll probably be eagerly searching the storecupboard, to check I've got all the ingredients. It's no coincidence that this is my second biscuit bake this year (see here), and they are both Dan's recipes - previously I hadn't made any biscuits since July last year!

I think it must be the (sometimes unusual) combinations of flavours that Dan uses, and that he tries to maximise the impact of those flavours, which makes his recipes so appealing to me. In this case, I love the combination of dates with chocolate, and ginger with chocolate, as well as dates and ginger, but the only time I've ever used the three ingredients together is in another Dan Lepard recipe - Chocolate Passion Cake, where the dates were used as an egg replacement rather than a flavouring ingredient.

These Date and Ginger Chocolate Chip Biscuits, published on the Good Food, Australia site, were relatively quick and easy to make, as the method is based on melting butter and sugar together, before mixing in the other ingredients. I used cocoa, rather than carob, and dark muscovado sugar but otherwise followed the recipe exactly.

I portioned out the biscuit dough using scales, and got 21 biscuits out of the mix, not the 24 suggested in the recipe. As I was using the fan oven, so that I could put in two trays of biscuits together, I cooked for the minimum time suggested.

These biscuits were as delicious as I expected. Rich in chocolate flavour, with large chunks of fiery ginger which were a delight to chew on. I find dates quite neutral in flavour (which is why they're often used as a sugar replacement these days) but I think that they really enhance the impact of chocolate and they certainly contributed to the chewiness of these biscuits.

This shows how the chocolate melted and tried to escape!

My only slight disappointment with the biscuits was that any chocolate chunks on the outside of the dough ball melted during baking, leaving a lot of melted chocolate on the baking paper, and on top of some of the biscuits. This might be down to my choice of chocolate, but as these biscuits were really only chunks of chocolate, dates, and ginger held together with the minimum amount of dough, it would be difficult to make them without any chocolate chips on the surface. I've not looked into bake-stable chocolate in detail, as I've never really needed it, but my impression is that it's quite expensive - possibly only for perfectionists, which I'm not!


I'm sending these to Choclette's We Should Cocoa link-up for March, over at Tin and Thyme. There is no theme to the link-up, any recipe, using any form of chocolate, is welcome.

Orange and Ginger Brownies

an extra post for Chocolate Week

I wasn't going to post this recipe, as it was a hurriedly made treat for my son to take home with him after having dinner with us, and I wasn't sure I'd get time for any photographs, but I've been reminded several times on Facebook that it's Chocolate Week this week. Nearly every week is chocolate week here, but I hadn't planned a post based on baking with chocolate.

This was my basic brownie recipe, which is dense and fudgy, with the zest of an orange and some  crystallised ginger added. Delicious!

Melt together 140g butter and 140g plain chocolate. Add 300g light muscovado sugar and the finely grated zest of an orange, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. If necessary, cool this mixture a little before the next stage, so that the mixture isn't too hot to take the eggs. Add three eggs, one at a time and beat in. Sieve in 160g plain flour and 3 tablespoons of cocoa and fold in. Lastly fold in 50g (or more if you have it, I was using the last of a pack!) of crystallised ginger, chopped as coarsely or finely as you like. Transfer the batter to a 20cm (8") square tin, lined with baking parchment, and bake at 180C for about 30 minutes until just set. Cool in the tin.

Sesame and Ginger Oat Biscuits

 - made from pastry scraps!

I've used this recipe before, when I've had a substantial amount of leftover shortcrust pastry. Last time I reduced the sugar in the original recipe and made savoury oat biscuits, this time I left in the suggested amount of sugar, added some sesame seeds and some crystallised ginger and made some fairly plain, not too sweet, biscuits which provided welcome relief from the excesses of rich food over the Christmas period.


It's more of a baking tip than a recipe - you weigh your pastry leftovers, then add the same weight of rolled oats and half that weight of butter and sugar. I started with 180g of shortcrust pastry, so added 180g of oats, 90g butter and 90g of soft brown sugar. I also added 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds and 50g of finely chopped crystallised ginger.

After leaving the bowl of ingredients for half an hour or so, for the pastry and butter to soften, everything is kneaded together either by hand or in a food processor. The dough is then rolled out to about 5mm thick and cut into shapes of your choice. These take about 15 minutes to bake at 180C - they need to be firm but not coloured too darkly.

The recipe I used, plus some other suggestions for using up leftover pastry, can be found on this link to the Guardian 'Readers' Recipe Swap'.

Chocolate and Ginger Flapjack

As a sort of antidote to Christmas, when chocoholic cooks often try their best to impress their friends and family with showstopping desserts, cakes and other home-made treats, the theme for this month's We Should Cocoa challenge is........ Simple Recipes!

The We Should Cocoa challenge, to use some form of chocolate together with a monthly theme, was devised by Choclette at Tin and Thyme, but this month's theme of Simple Recipes has been chosen by guest-host Lisa, at Lovely Appetite.

I guess everyone's idea of simple will be slightly different, but to me, a simple recipe is more about ease and speed of preparation and cooking rather than the number of ingredients. After all, there aren't many ingredients in a macaron, but only an expert would call then 'simple' to make!

The recipe for Chocolate and Ginger Flapjack couldn't be much more simple - melt chocolate, butter, golden syrup and sugar together in a large bowl in the microwave (or in a pan on the hob, if you prefer). When all the chocolate has melted and the mixture is quite hot, stir in rolled oats and crystallised ginger pieces. Transfer to a baking tin, bake, cool and eat - simple!

To make sure the flavour of the flapjack wasn't as simple as it's recipe, I used 100% cacao, and the ginger was from a Christmas box of Turkish crystallised ginger pieces which were really fiery - I don't think I've ever eaten ginger that hot before! The bitterness of the cacao, and the heat of the ginger, gave these flapjacks a taste which might not appeal to children, but the effect could be toned down by using a chocolate with a lower percentage of cocoa solids (say 60-70%) and a milder ginger, or even replacing some of the ginger with dried fruit such as chopped dried apricots, so that the flapjacks taste sweeter.

Ingredients
100g dark chocolate or 100% cacao (I used Willie's Peruvian Black 100% Cacao)
100g butter
65g golden syrup
100g caster sugar
250g rolled oats
100g crystallised ginger, chopped into pieces about 1cm cubed (leaving the chunks of ginger quite large makes sure you get a good hit of the heat when it's eaten!)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (160C fan) and line the base and sides of a 20cm (8") square baking tin with baking parchment.
Melt the chocolate, butter, syrup and sugar in a saucepan on the hob, or in a bowl in the microwave. The mixture needs to be quite hot to dissolve the sugar, but doesn't need to boil.
Add the oats and the pieces of ginger to the chocolate mixture and stir until the oats are well coated.
Transfer the mixture to the baking tin and spread into an even layer, pressing down firmly with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 25 minutes, then cool for 10 minutes. at that point, while still warm, mark into squares or fingers of the desired size. Leave in the tin until completely cold.

This recipe makes flapjacks which stay together well and are chewy rather than crisp and crunchy. If you prefer crisp flapjacks bake for a little longer - another 10 minutes, perhaps.

I'm also entering these flapjacks into January's AlphaBakes challenge, where co-host Ros, at The More Than Occasional Baker has chosen the letter G. Ros alternates her hosting duties with Caroline, at Caroline Makes. G is for Ginger, in this instance, of course!

Buttermilk Fruit Cake

When I decided to make a chocolate and banana cake, and was looking for recipes, I initially decided on a chocolate chip cake using buttermilk. When I changed my mind, I was left with a carton of buttermilk which needed using quite quickly, as it didn't have a long 'use-by' date. Another search for a recipe was on! This time I wanted something seasonal, not too big, and not too fancy.

This fruit cake recipe, found on Joy of Baking, which adds dates, spices and other dried fruit to a buttermilk cake batter, fit the bill perfectly. The recipe didn't need any eggs, which was quite intriguing, just relying on the action of bicarbonate of soda with buttermilk to raise the cake. I didn't have currants or raisins needed to follow the recipe exactly, but used 100g sultanas and 100g of a mix of chopped dried apricots, sour cherries and crystallised ginger instead.

Making the cake was straightforward - just mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients, then stir in the dry fruit, so only a saucepan, a couple of bowls and a spoon was needed. As my buttermilk was cold, I melted the butter in a saucepan, then added the buttermilk and just warmed it slightly. I also dropped my dates into the measured flour, then cut them into small pieces with scissors, rather than chopping them on a board - much easier.

The thing I really enjoyed about this cake was the spice mix; allspice isn't something I use often but it really worked well with cinnamon and nutmeg to give a warm and peppery background flavour to the dried fruit. Overall the cake was moist and well textured - the absence of eggs wasn't obvious.

Baking the cake in a 9" x 5" tin made what my mother would have called a 'slab cake' - something deeper than a traybake but shallower than normal for a cake. I think a smaller baking tin would have made a cake with better proportions, but it may not have cooked as well; I'm sure there was a good reason for that sized tin being used.

Date Gingerbread

More seasonal baking! Something dark and spicy this time. This recipe comes from one of my oldest baking recipes book, which was published in 1974, the year I got married.  It's so old that the weights and measures are just in ounces and pints (although it does provide American cup volumes too!), and the oven temperatures in Fahrenheit!

I'd usually translate to metric weights, but I was feeling lazy, so I switched my scales to 'lbs and oz' instead. The book gives the basic cake recipe, then suggests variations; I wanted to try the fig and walnut version, but couldn't find any figs in my slightly ramshackle storage system, so made the date version instead. I increased the ground ginger to 3 teaspoons instead of 2, and added an extra 2oz of crystallised ginger pieces too, to ramp up the ginger levels.

Ingredients
4oz butter
2oz light muscovado sugar
6oz black treacle
2oz golden syrup
1/4 pint milk
2 eggs
8oz plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon mixed spice
3 teaspoons ground ginger
4oz chopped dates
2oz crystallised ginger, in small pieces.

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 150C and line a deep 8" (20cm) square cake tin with baking parchment.
Melt the butter, sugar and syrups in a pan over a low heat, just until the butter has melted. Add the milk and cool.
Beat the eggs and add to the melted mixture.
Sift the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl, then add the liquid and stir just enough to combine the ingredients - check there are no pockets of unmixed flour. Do not beat!
Fold in the chopped dates and crystallised ginger.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 75-90 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean. Cool in the baking tin, and leave for a day before cutting, to allow the top to become sticky.

Note - my cake cooked in only 60 minutes - I suspect modern ovens are more efficient than most of those around in the 1970s!

This cake was moist and spicy - sometimes the old traditional recipes can't be beaten! The little pieces of dates added a chewy caramel note and the crystallised ginger added extra heat.

Ginger Brownies

I wanted to bake something for my son, who needed a little bit of TLC after an unpleasant hospital procedure. Unfortunately this happened in the middle of the recent heatwave, and while I was happy to quickly mix something and throw it in the oven (and then get out of the kitchen), I wasn't in the mood for complex or new recipes.

As he loves chocolate, it was simplest to fall back on my trusty brownie recipe. This time I added ground ginger, mixed spice and crystallised ginger pieces to the mix. It was easier to use crystallised ginger rather than stem ginger in syrup, as the pieces could be cut with scissors where necessary, and I didn't get sticky in the process.

The basic method is: Melt together 140g plain chocolate and 140g unsalted butter. Cool to lukewarm and beat in 300g light muscovado sugar and three eggs, one at a time. Sift  160g plain flour, 3 tablespoons cocoa, 1 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of mixed spice together, and fold into the chocolate mixture, then fold in 100g crystallised ginger, cut into small pieces if necessary.

Spoon the batter into an 8" square tin, lined with baking parchment, and bake for around 30 minutes at 180C, depending on how gooey you like your brownies. Cut into squares or fingers while still warm, but cool completely in the tin before removing the brownies.

This was a nice amount of spice to use in the brownies - not too strong, but complimenting the warmth of the ginger pieces in the batter, I've reduced the amount of sugar I use in this recipe - it used to contain 400g - but the revised version still makes a dense chewy brownie, just the way we like them!

Ginger Tiffin Loaf

First off, I have to say I'm not keen on tiffin, or refrigerator cake, as it's also called. It seems to fall uncomfortably between cake and dessert, but never seems to be quite right for either. As a cake, it suffers from needing to be kept cool, as a dessert it suffers from being too hard, when cold, to eat with a spoon. The best refrigerator cake I've made was this Delia Smith recipe, which I cut into single bite size pieces, to eat after dinner, with coffee - that was very rich, though, as it had rum and cream in it, and only suitable for adults

Still, I'm always up for a challenge, and this month the We Should Cocoa (rules here) challenge, set by Choclette at the newly re-vamped Chocolate Log Blog, now called Tin and Thyme, is for no-bake chocolate treats.

I based my recipe on one for Javanese Ginger Squares, from Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes (Unwrapped). I adapted it slightly to both make it smaller and make it in a loaf shape with a 'built-in' frosting. This was the first time I've made a refrigerator cake with condensed milk - my recipes usually use butter and golden syrup melted with the chocolate - but I was pleased with the texture when the chocolate mixture set.

Ingredients
300g plain chocolate (I used about 70g of 85% and the rest was 74%)
90g unsalted butter
310g condensed milk
125g gingernut biscuits, broken into rough pieces
100g crystallised ginger, chopped into small pieces
40g flaked coconut

Another 30-50g crystallised ginger, cut into thin slices, to line the base of the loaf tin. The exact amount you need will depend on how thin you slice the pieces, how closely you pack them together and the size of your tin! I used a 2lb loaf tin.

Method
Melt the chocolate in a large bowl, over a pan of simmering water.
While this is happening, grease the loaf tin and line with baking parchment; greasing the tin first helps to hold the paper in place.
In the base of the tin, lay the slices of crystallised ginger - either in a neat pattern, or just packed fairly closely together. These will show on the top of the tiffin when it is turned out of the tin.
Add the butter to the melted chocolate, remove from the heat and stir until the butter has melted. Stir in the condensed milk.
Put the loaf tin onto your scales and carefully spoon in 200g of the chocolate mixture, helping it to spread evenly without disturbing the slices of ginger. Make sure the chocolate spreads right to the sides of the tin. Chill for ten minutes.
Add the biscuit pieces, coconut and ginger pieces to the rest of the chocolate mixture, mixing well, then carefully spoon it onto the chilled chocolate mixture already in the loaf tin, spreading it evenly and packing down well to avoid air gaps. Chill for at least 8 hours - overnight is best.
Remove the tiffin from the tin, turning it top down onto a serving plate. Carefully remove the baking parchment.
Cut in slices to serve. Store in the refrigerator, covered with foil.

I thought the tiffin was better if the slices were allowed to warm up a little before being eaten. The ginger flavour was quite muted when the tiffin was really cold, but got stronger as it warmed up.
The mosaic of ginger slices on top of the tiffin, along with the layer of chocolate mixture without any additions gave the appearance of fudge frosting when the loaf was sliced. I liked this effect, so it was worth putting in the extra effort. I think I crushed the biscuits a bit too finely - more bigger pieces would have looked better.

My husband really liked this, so at least one of us was pleased with it! I liked the flavour combination of chocolate, ginger and coconut and was pleased that even with the condensed milk, it wasn't too sweet, thanks to the proportion of 85% chocolate used, but unfortunately it didn't make me like the concept of tiffin more.