Spelt Flour Gingerbread

I've alluded to health problems within the family in a few of my recent posts, which have cut down on my free time and resulted in very little baking taking place. I'm sad to say that I'm now entering a new phase of my life - living on my own for the first time ever. My husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour in June, after becoming ill while on holiday in France; an operation failed to halt its aggressive growth and he passed away last week, just 4 months after diagnosis.

I'm not sure what this will mean in terms of this blog - I love baking, but a small cake suitable for two to eat over a few days is too much for me to get through, especially as I'm prone to gaining weight easily. I could bake things suitable for freezing, but if I'm taking slices of cake, or rolls of biscuit dough, out of the freezer, that still means fewer opportunities to try new recipes. We'll have to see how things work out!

This gingerbread was baked when I was expecting family to visit over the weekend; what wasn't eaten was taken home by my children. It is as good as a traditional gingerbread, which gets a sticky top over time, but uses oil instead of butter. My original recipe uses plain flour, but this time I used a mixture of plain wheat flour and spelt flour - only because I haven't managed to keep my storecupboard well stocked lately, and didn't have enough plain flour. Because of the strong flavours of the spices and treacle in the gingerbread, I don't think the flavour of the spelt was evident at all, but it's nice to know the recipe worked with one of the more 'fashionable' grains.

Ingredients
150g plain flour
200g spelt flour
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons sunflower oil
150g caster sugar
1 large egg
250mls of roughly equal amounts of golden syrup and black treacle, mixed with 250mls hot water (ie 500mls liquid in total)

Method
Preheat oven to 170C (150C fan), and line a 20cm (8") square deep cake tin with baking parchment.
Put the flours, bicarb, spices and salt into a medium sized bowl and whisk together to distribute the spices evenly.
In a large bowl whisk the oil, egg and sugar to a smooth emulsion.
Add alternate portions of the flour mix and the syrup mixture to the emulsion in the large bowl, stirring just enough to blend the mixture together - no need to beat.
Transfer the batter to the cake tin and bake for 50-55 minutes until a test probe comes out clean.
Cool the cake in the baking tin.

Ginger Cake

This highly spiced cake, from The Nordic Bakery Cookbook (recipe here except that you only need 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, not 16!), might be called a 'ginger' cake, but the spices that dominated were cardamom and cloves - spices that aren't to everyone's taste. I really liked the mix of spices - cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cardamom - but would probably swap the amounts of ginger and cardamom if I made it again - just to make it more 'gingery'.

I found that following the recipe exactly made a very stiff batter, but went ahead and baked it anyway, despite my misgivings. I used a 20cm (8") springform tin, after putting the batter into the suggested tin size and worrying that it would overflow; the baking time was still the same. Even the larger tin made a very high cake, so I wouldn't try it in the smaller tin in the future; what I would do is add a few tablespoons of milk to the batter to loosen it and try and make the cake a little moister. The cake had a lovely close texture and wasn't too sweet, but it was a little on the dry side. This made it a good cake for everyday use - perfect with a cup of tea or coffee, but not the sort of thing you'd produce for special occasions. This is not a bad thing - you certainly don't want fancy baking all the time!

Chestnut Ginger Biscuits

How often do I complain that there isn't enough ginger in a recipe? It's probably more than 50% of the time, with recipes where ginger is supposed to be the main flavor. No such problem with this biscuit recipe from Dan Lepard, which used six teaspoons of ground ginger - the flavour was so fierce there was an afterburn (in a very good way!).

I had no problems with following the recipe; the only change I made was to use all treacle instead of part golden syrup. This was suggested as an alternative, to increase the liquorice-ness of the treacle flavour. I chilled the soft dough for about 3 hours before forming it into balls - which I did using scales to ensure uniformity. If my memory is correct, I got 25 biscuits out of the dough, and after baking they stayed soft like cookies rather than being crisp like gingernuts. I'd been expecting them to be crisp, so this was a surprise, but not really a disappointment.

There wasn't much to complain about with these delicious biscuits, although my husband suggested they would be better without being rolled in sugar. Once again, I felt that the chestnut flour was overwhelmed by the other flavours in the recipe; treacle, ginger and ground cloves all have unique and striking flavours. After my past experiences it wasn't a surprise that I couldn't distinguish the flavour of the chestnut flour, but I had just a little left to use up so thought the recipe worth trying. (I'm really talking myself into not buying chestnut flour again, unless someone can recommend a recipe where it can be tasted!)

PS - the second attempt at the Spelt, Lemon and Maple Drizzle Cake wasn't any better than the first. I managed to find white spelt flour and added half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the batter, but the cake still sank, this time even before the cooking time was up. Two attempts is enough - there are plenty of other cake recipes out there!

Gingerbread Cake

This is a recipe that I found when I first started baking with oil instead of butter. Health messages have changed since then, although low saturated fats are still advised by many dietitians when cholesterol levels need to be managed. I'm happy to bake with butter, but I really like this recipe, as it is quick and easy to put together, and makes a light but traditional tasting gingerbread - one where the top get stickier with time!

My recipe is an adaptation of this recipe for a Molasses and Olive Oil Gingerbread Cake, which I found to be too bitter and not spicy enough when I first tried it. I substituted golden syrup for some of the molasses/black treacle, increased the ginger and used sunflower oil rather than olive oil, as the flavour of olive oil is lost in a strongly flavoured cake.

Ingredients
350g plain flour 
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda 
3 teaspoons ground ginger 
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
90mls (6 tablespoons) sunflower oil 
150g caster sugar 
1 egg
250mls of roughly equal parts golden syrup and black treacle and 250mls hot water (mixed together in a measuring jug).

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 170C and line a deep 20cm (8") square cake tin with baking parchment.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, spices, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the egg, sugar and oil until emulsified.
Add alternate portions of the flour mix and the diluted syrups to the egg mixture, stirring just enough to mix evenly, but not beating.
Transfer the batter to the baking tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.
Cool for a few minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack.