winter-cakery

w i n t e r - c a k e r y
Like a grit bin, I'm made for winter really. A 'Celtic' transparent & freckly complexion lends itself well to being wrapped up in a hat and coat on winter nights with the steam of a cup of mulled wine keeping me warm!
Warm, spicy and tasty are the results I aim to produce when I bake during Winter.
I can throw together a Marieke Cake pretty quickly & add a dusting of icing sugar with some Christmas-related greenery in the middle. Alternatively, I cook some gingerbread biscuits. Gingerbread biscuits are so easy to make in all different sort of shapes and sizes (man/woman/star/heart/bell).

So for the recipe (which makes about 30 decent star shapes):
350g plain flour; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda; 3 tsp ground ginger; 1 tsp cinnamon; 125g butter; 175g brown sugar; 1 egg; 4 tbsp golden syrup
Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon (or other spices) into a bowl. Add the butter and blend together until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.
Gently beat the egg and syrup together and add the the dry mix until combined. Tip the dough out and knead it until it had turned smooth. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave to chill for 15 minutes.
Roll out the dough to a £1 coin thickness and use cutters to cut out your gingerbread shapes. Place on a baking tray and bake for 12 minutes at 170 degrees. Transfer to a cooling rack once cooked so they can begin to harden.

marieke-cake

m a r i e k e - c a k e . . .
When I was much, much younger my family would have Dutch girls come and stay with us for a few months and they would work in the hospital in an admin job to improve their business English.

Marieke was the third Dutch girl who came to stay with us and her first gift to us was a round cake. I think it is usually called kruidkoek (in Holland) but we refer to it as Marieke Cake. I’m not entirely sure how a Marieke Cake was transported so safely all the way from Holland but it didn't lose any of the flavour in transit!

I was old enough to appreciate a ‘big sister type’ when Marieke came to stay with us. She loved Leonardo Di Caprio almost as much as I did. We sat in the front row of the cinema when Romeo and Juliet came out, swooned in unison, and when she went back to Holland she sent me a beautiful postcard of his face – which I instantly stuck to my mirror! She inspired a lot of my idiosyncrasies (I was clearly eager to be quirky from a young age), gave me some amazing advice and was just so cool.

Marieke Cake is my favourite cake to make. It’s low-ish fat (in cake terms), smells absolutely delicious before, during and after baking and is quite difficult to mess up! It’s now become something of a tradition whenever I go home I have to make a Marieke Cake for my best friend, Maryam, and her family (her dad eats most of it though!).

Marieke Cake - someone stole a cranberry!

So for the recipe:
250g self-raising flour; 250g brown sugar; 2 tsp mixed spice (mostly cinnamon & nutmeg); salt; 250ml milk; handful of raisins.
Mix everything together. Pour into a round tin and bake for about 30 - 35 minutes at Gas Mark 4 (or until a skewer comes out clean). Simples!


This cake has quite a 'bouncy' texture to it once it’s cooked and I think part of the joy of it is the hole in the middle - but this is optional of course!!
I made this at Christmas time for the office and even people who don't like dried fruit loved the cake!!