Recipe disasters

Ok... so sorry for leaving you all hanging from that last post. Work called and I had no time to finish my post again!

So these cakes of mine - not what I planned at all but rather scrumptious (so I am told). I had wanted to bake a spelt flour carrot cake for New Year's Day to take to T's parents' house. We were going to have dinner with his parents and his sister and brother-in-law whose house we had been staying at and I thought it would be nice to take a little gift. And as I cannot eat wheat I thought the spelt flour would work (for those of you who don't know spelt is an ancient form of wheat so unlike all the other non-wheat flours which require crazy adaptions to the recipes to make them work, spelt flour is pretty much the same as wheat - and I can digest it even though I can't digest wheat - weird that and something I attribute to the genetic modifications of wheat in the 70s).

So I got everything ready, only to find I was lacking baking powder. Here in the UK we don't all keep baking powder in the cupboard because we tend to use self-raising flour. So that's what I did... I went onto the self-raising and threw the plan of making a me-friendly cake out the window (it wouldn't be the first or last time I've baked something I couldn't then enjoy lol). So I got the carrots to prepare, only to discover that the only grater I could find in the entire kitchen was a parmesan one... oh how long it took me to grate all those carrots on such a fine grater!! But I finally got there and added the oil (instead of butter), sultanas, walnuts, sugar and flour and mixed until my arm felt like it might drop off and then mixed some more... then into the oven it went.

A couple of hours later it still wasn't cooked through to the middle *sigh*. Either my recipe was flawed or it just wasn't baking because I'd put it in the top part of the oven. I have only rarely used electric ovens so it could have been that but I think it was more likely to be the recipe because the one in the cookbook I used was so far removed from the one I have used previously it was almost another type of cake entirely!!

So at gone 10pm on New Year's Eve I threw out the spoiled cake and started afresh, this time on a recipe I didn't need a cookbook for - the good old Victoria sponge. It's a good job I didn't need the recipe book because it called for 6 eggs - SIX EGGS?!?! I'm sorry but no cake I have ever made has used that many eggs!

I'm sure you all know the basic cake recipe, but just in case you don't, it is usually 6oz flour, 6oz buter, 6oz sugar and 2 eggs. Nice and simple. Cream the butter and sugar together, fold in the flour and eggs, mix well until creamy with a good dropping consistency and place in a greased pan and bake in the oven until golden brown and springy to the touch.

The end product was, to my relief, a success. There was me telling T that I couldn't cook but I was a fantastic baker and the very first cake I baked for him was a disaster - oh the shame!! So in order to prove to him that it was just a fluke I decided to bake some ginger biscuits for him to take home to his family after he visited me this weekend. This was another recipe I had tried before with much success and so I knew it should work out well.

Again I was going to use spelt flour, but guess what... my spelt flour was now out of date *pouts*. So again it was back to the good old self-raising. But what was this? We had no self-raising... good job I now had baking powder and could make the biscuits with the plain flour in the cupboard lol. One day I will have a fully stocked baking cupboard, just you wait and see!

I cannot show you a picture of the finished biscuits because I don't have a camera - but they went down well with all who ate them so I am assured they tasted good. Below is the original recipe taken from my Lincoln Cathedral Cookery Book and then the adapted recipe (which is also one and a half the amount in the original because I wanted extra biscuits. My version was not of a consistency that would roll into balls, so I just plopped dollops of the mixture onto the greased trays and they still came out crunchy round the edges but chewy underneath so all was well!)

The original recipe by Ann Marsh of Lincoln

8oz self-raising flour
2 5ml teaspoons ground ginger
pinch salt
8 oz demerara sugar
4 oz butter
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
almonds

Set oven at 325 F/170 C/ Gas mark 3. Sift flour, ginger, and salt and add sugar. Rub in fat. Add beaten egg and milk. Mix well and form into 36 balls. Place on greased tray and flatten a little. place a split almond on each and bake for 30 minutes.

My alterations

12oz plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 5ml teaspoons ground ginger
1 5ml teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt
12 oz demerara sugar
6oz butter
1 and a half eggs, beaten
1 and a half tablespoon milk
almonds

prepare as above.

Let me know if you try the ginger biscuits and how they turn out.