Monday Bake - Spiced Muscovado Loaf Cake with Brown Sugar Icing

It's a bit chilly here at the moment.   I spent most of the first part of the morning in the kitchen, I made gingered beef with bay to go in the slow cooker for the day.  As I type this it smells amazing!    I was going to make biscuits but I didn't have enough greaseproof paper to line my baking sheets so I will make some next week.  After having a look at what I had in the baking cupboard I decided to I make this cake.  I had cut this recipe out of the Sainsbury's magazine a long while ago. 

Ingredients:
Cake:
175ml whole milk
2 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
75g dark muscovado sugar
75g soft unsalted butter
75g black treacle
100g golden syrup
200g self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 medium egg, lightly beaten

Icing:
25g very soft unsalted butter
40g dark muscovado sugar
25g unrefined icing sugar
1 tbsp double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180c, fan 160, Gas 4.  Line a loaf tine with baking paper.

Put the milk, spices, sugar, butter, treacle and syrup in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a simmer, stirring.  Sift the flour and bicarbonate into a large mixing bowl.  Pour the wet mixture onto the dry ingredients and stir well, add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 35 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out clean,  Leave to cool.

Place all the icing ingredients in a bowl and beat for 5 minutes until fluffy.  Spread on top of the cake.

This is a really quick and easy cake to make.   I would definitely make this again, probably without the icing and serve it spread with a little butter.

I have finally finished my crochet blanket, after frogging the edging several times, well I say finished I just need to block the edge.  Maybe a ta-da Thursday makes post soon!! 

Hope to see you next week,
Bakebakegirl

Today's top three Spotify songs:

1. 11.59 - Blondie
2. Picture This - Blondie
3. One Way or Another - Blondie

Monday Bake - Gooey Date and Stem Ginger Pudding

Sometimes you have to buy that one ingredient for a recipe.  For me over Christmas that was Stem Ginger for my Christmas pudding.   So this weekend I went in search of another recipe to use it in - didn't have to look far as my new Rachel Allen book had a recipe for Gooey Date and Stem Ginger pudding, you can find the recipe here.  A perfect for pudding after Sunday dinner.  Soft spongey top, slightly chewy round the edges with a lovely sauce on the bottom.

We had it with Mackies Vanilla ice cream - gorgeous - just as well as that is the only flavour I can get down here!

In the top picture I also have the leftovers of a bottle of dessert wine, again from my Christmas pudding - if anybody can suggest other recipes to use this up - please let me know! It's far too sweet for me to drink.

Hope to see you next week,

Bakebakegirl

Today's top three Spotify songs:

1. Love Plus One - Haircut 100

2. Dance Hall Days - Wang Chung

3. Never Tear Us Apart - INXS

Monday Inspiration - Thumbprint Cookies

Happy new year!

Now the tree and all its decorations has been packed away.  Christmas seems like a long time ago!

For Christmas I got three new cook books.  Rachel Allen's new book All Things Sweet, Nigellas Forever Summer book and Lorraine Pascals book A Lighter Way To Bake.

I have seen thumbprint cookies before, if you Google them there are lots of different recipes out there - mostly with jam centres.  In Lorraines book she has a version with fresh raspberries and blueberries. I decided to make some with the huge raspberries I had.

These were delicious on the day, however I stored them in a tin and were a bit soft the next day, caused I think by the raspberries.  But they did look very pretty with their bright pink tops.

Thanks for visiting,
Bakebakegirl

Today's top three Spotify songs:

1. Believe In Me - The Pierces
2. Budapest - George Ezra
3. Uptown Funk - Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars