Three Chimneys: Pears Poached in Green Ginger Wine

Served with a hot chocolate sauce. Required the purchase of a bottle of green ginger wine. After poaching and eating the pears, I wondered what to do with the leftover liquid. Put it back in the pan and simmered it down until very syrupy, then bottled it. Makes a good hot drink, diluted with some hot water.

Chocolate Gingerbread

No entries for a couple of weeks. Well, I did make some biscotti a few weeks ago, but I've been on holiday, so no baking got done since then. I was in Orkney, where I picked up some interesting flour, bere meal. There was a recipe leaflet to go with it, but I plan on using it a bit differently to the usual savoury scones and bannocks; hopefully I'll talk about that in a week or so.
Anyway, this week I was in the mood for cake. Thinking of Nigella's chocolate gingerbread, I thought I'd try a chocolate variation of the buttermilk gingerbread in my last post. Very simply, it's the same recipe, with the addition of some melted good quality dark chocolate. The method's also a bit different, more akin to a brownie. How did it turn out? Well, I think I had my oven a bit hot or left in it a little too long because the crumb's a little bit loose, but it tastes delicious.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams dark chocolate (Green & Black's, 70%)
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, melt together the butter and chocolate.
In a bowl or jug, beat together the sugar and egg.
Once the butter and chocolate are melted, allow to cool slightly then beat in the egg and sugar.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Buttermilk Gingerbread

Another recipe from a blog Baking Bites this time. It sounded delicious, and I haven't made gingerbread for a while, so I thought I'd give it a try. It does call for one ingredient I don't normally have in my cupboard: molasses. I suppose I could have substituted black treacle, but I decided it would probably be better to just hunt some down. I think it was probably worth it. I did make one main change to the recipe, substituting some of the plain flour with wholemeal. I'm going to make this again, but I want to try a chocolate version.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes.

Ginger Carrot Muffins

How much do you trust a recipe that you get from a web site? I suppose the answer to that depends on the site you got it from. Something from a food magazine, or a TV programme, or a well-know chef/cook can probably be considered to be fairly robust. The reputation of the source depends on the recipes, and we assume that those recipes are at least tested a few times, to make sure the kinks are worked out. Food blogs? Well, the authors seem to let you know when something was an experiment, or didn't particularly turn out as expected, so we can make a reasonable guess at how things might turn out for us. What about community sites, where anybody can submit any recipe, and make it available? Well, you're probably taking pot luck with those. And that's where the recipe I tried this week came from.
I like carrot cake and carrot muffins (Nigella Lawson has a wonderful recipe for carrot cupcakes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess), so when I came across this recipe for Carrot Ginger Muffins, I really wanted to give it a try.
Reading the recipe, it seems to use a method I'm not familiar with for muffins or cupcakes - that's more what I'd expect for a scone. So I decided to completely ignore that method, and go with my own feelings, based on my (OK, limited) previous experience with muffins. That means rather than rubbing the butter into the flour, the wet and dry ingredients get mixed separately, and then combined. I suppose that's one of the good things with 'community' rather than 'pro' recipes - you really get nervous about not following the pro recipe to the letter, whereas with the community one, there's less pressure.
The end result? Moist, fairly light carroty little muffins. Not really enough ginger for me, so when I do these again, I may add a little more. I think they could also have risen a little more - other recipes seem to have a little more raising agent than these did, so I may add a touch of bicarbonate of soda along with the baking powder next time. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?

Recipe:
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (about 30g)
1 egg
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 carrot, grated (about 150g)
1 teaspoon ginger root, finely grated
1/2 cup sultanas

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line a muffin tin with muffin cases.
Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly.
In a bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder and spices.
Combine the sugars in a large bowl.
In a jug, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla extract. Add the melted butter and mix.
Pour the liquid into the sugars and whisk together. Add the ginger root and sultanas, and stir through.
Alternately add the flour and carrot, mixing between each addition to ensure the ingredients are just combined.
Divide the mixture between the muffin cases. Bake for 25 minutes.

Dark Chocolate & Ginger Biscotti

Well, last weeks's honey rhubarb muffins went down well. Can't say the same for the rock buns - I'm really not impressed with them. Any of them left at the end of this week are going out.
So, another biscotti variation this week (again, based on One Smart Cookie). In the mood for some dark chocolate, and having some crystallized ginger in the cupboard, it seemed natural to put the two together. I wasn't quite brave enough to play around too much with the basic biscotti dough, so I settled for just chopping up the chocolate and ginger and adding it as chunks. I think it works quite well. You get something different with each bite - sometimes a bit of chocolate, sometimes a chewy hit of ginger, sometimes a bit of both. Maybe if I make these again, I'll try a chocolate dough, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Recipe:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter -- softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams crystallised ginger, chopped finely
75 grams dark chocolate (I used Green & Black's, 70%), chopped

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the ginger and chocolate to this mixture.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Stir until just combined. If it seems dry, use your hands to complete the mixing until the dough comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Divide in half. Shape each piece into an 8 inch by 3 inch rectangle.
Place the logs fairly far apart on the lined baking sheet.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until firm and starting to crack on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 275F/135C
Cut each log into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices (12 slices per log) with a sharp knife. Place slices cut side down on the baking sheet.
Return to the oven for 15 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 15 minutes.

Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Cookies

This is the first recipe tried from a new book - One Smart Cookie. It's a low-fat baking book, but not one full of strange ingredients, or recipes you wouldn't want to eat. It also doesn't use artificial replacements for normal ingredients; if you want sugar, you have sugar, not some chemical replacement. My only problem with the book - and it's not a big one - is that being an American/Canadian book, all of the measurements are in cups. Being British, I'm more used to grams/ounces.
Anyway, the recipe I tried was Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Chews. I made a small change to it - not having molasses, I used a mixture of golden syrup and black treacle. Not sure if I got the proportions quite right; I'll have to wait until I get comments from others who try the cookies.

Recipe:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup black treacle
1 large egg
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175C. Line some baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg, then the the golden syrup and treacle. Mix thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the dry ingredient mixture, a couple of tablespoons at a time, to the wet ingredients. Stir between each addition to ensure everything is well combined.
Drop large spoonfuls (level tablespoons/heaped dessertspoons) of the mixture onto the baking sheets, making sure they have room to spread. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until set.
Unless you have a large oven, you'll probably have to bake these in multiple batches.