Merry Christmas

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                                   Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

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Aberffraw cakes

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These were mentioned recently on the GBBO, so I thought I'd find out more about them. They're made on the Isle of Anglesey and are a traditional biscuit really, not a cake. They're served sprinkled with sugar and even with cream and jam, like a scone. The bit I liked was that a scallop shell is pressed into the top to give it a shell-like pattern. Nowadays, a lot of the Aberffraw cakes have the pattern put on with a knife. I have a bag of scallop shells, brought back from France so I used a genuine one to make my pattern. The recipe is a 3.2.1  - quite common for biscuits. This means 3 parts flour to 2 parts fat to 1 part sugar. 175g flour 110g butter 55g caster sugar a little milk more caster sugar for sprinkling over Preheat oven 190C/gas5. Grease a baking sheet. I used a processor to make my dough. Put flour and sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter. Bind together with a litle milk to make a soft dough. Roll out and cut out circles. I used a 7cm cutter an...
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Pumpkin Cake

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 Now that Halloween’s over, thought I’d use the pumpkin I bought. I like to use the flesh in a cake or soup and to roast the seeds with a spice. You Need: 400g pumpkin flesh, grated, 200g plain flour, 1 tspn cinnamon and and 1 tspn mixed spice, 2 tspn baking powder, 3 eggs, 125g soft butter or margarine and 125g caster sugar Preheat oven 190C/ gas5.   Grease and line a 20 cm round tin or a 900g loaf tin In a bowl mix together the flour, spices and baki g powder. In another bowl beat the fat and sugar till creamy. Add the eggs one by one and mix in, then add the flour and stir together. Add the pumpkin and fold  Bake for 15 mins then turn oven down to 180C/gas 4 and bake for a further 30-35 mins. Cool on a wire rack.  I decided to make a quick glacé icing and added a tspn of cinnamon to it. The cinnamon icing gives it a nice spicy kick. The actuelcake is very moist. Quite a soft texture. It was good with vanilla ice cream and my neighbour, as usual, put custard on his...
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Apricot and Ginger Loaf

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I haven't made a loaf cake for a while, but having a sort out of my baking cupboard, I found some wholemeal flour, stem ginger and a bag of dried apricots that needed using. Thought they'd make a good combination in a loaf cake. I find using just wholemeal flour make cakes too heavy for my taste, so I always do half wholemeal and half white. It's a quick loaf to make - preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4 and grease a 900g loaf tin. Put 115g wholemeal flour and 115g plain flour in a bowl with 11/2 tspns of baking powder. Add 150g soft light brown sugar, 115g butter, 2 eggs, zest of a lemon and 2 tbspn of milk. Beat together using an electric mixer for about 2 mins then fold in 175g of dried apricots [not the ones you have to soak] which have been chopped. Finely chop 3 pieces of stem ginger and you need 4 tbspns of the syrup from the jar, Add these to the cake mixture. Thinly slice 1 more piece of stem ginger. Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin and level the top, then arra...
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