TWD- Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

In case anyone was having Christmas withdrawals, Heather of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie Bake.  You can find it on page 212 of Baking From My Home To Yours By Dorie Greenspan.

This gingerbread layers the ginger by using fresh finely chopped ginger, dried ginger and Dorie calls for stem ginger.  I had some ginger marmalade left over from one of the tarts ages ago so I fished out some the ginger bits and chopped them up.  That way, everything called for came from my pantry.  Nigella Lawson has a similar themed recipe in Nigella Bites but Dorie ups the ante with melted chocolate through the batter, chocolate chips and in case you are missing the good things comes in threes theme- chocolate coffee icing.

This was a nice recipe but, heaven help me I may be a bit of a purist here.  I think the added fat from the chocolate helped carry the layered ginger flavours but, I think I like it chocolate free better.  Patrick on the other hand will always vote for more chocolate…

Now go and check the TWD blogroll and see what other spicy treats there are to be had.

TWD- Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of  Meet Me in the Kitchen chose Berry Surprise Cake on pages 273-275 of Baking from My Home From Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

This desert is made up of a genoise sponge cake filled with cream cheese lightened with whipped cream and berries.  Dorie also suggested covering the confection with sweetened whipped cream but I took just one step back from that and topped out with ‘just’ the filling.

I decided to make 4x 4inch cakes.  Sadly my genoise fell.  I have made a few (with RLB recipe) and this is the first time it has happened to me.  I even used some of my precious bleached flour in this and weighed everything.   My eggs and sugar needed closer to 7 minutes to get properly ribbony

The only brightside is out of the 4 cakes 2 fell down to 1/3 of the time and the other 2 were at 2/3’s they also had slightly raised edges which meant I could in fact just sandwich them together with no tricksy carving.  I had a bit of batter left over and I made cupcakes in silicone cups.  The interesting thing is they didn’t fall. So I guess it wasn’t the leavening or temperature.  I can see that others had problems with the cake falling and Dorie suggests a bit of centre sinkage is normal.

I will consider problem solving another day.

This was a nice tasting cake.   I still have the grumbles about the genoise falling so it does impact on my general love in for this project.  I used frozen mixed berries and some cherry liquer to moisten the cake.  Genoise really does sparkle with syrup and doesn’t live up to it’s potential without it.

I may try some whipped cream on top for tomorrows cake (the advantage of making some smaller cakes he, he!)

Now go and check out the TWD blogroll for the other berry surprises!

TWD- Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

For this weeks Tuesdays With Dorie, Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake chose Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins on page 6.

The flavours in these are very Sante Fe red capsicum, corriander and jalepeno.   I didn’t have any cactus shaped muffin moulds so I had to make due with the ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ star.

Dorie mentions these can be a bit crumbly and I found that out despite spray greasing the silicone really well…

I think my camera is becoming unwell.  The batteries (all 3) now last only 4 shots and the macro which used to be super is not so fab.  Then to make matters worse the USB cable must have heard me grumbling so it hid itself for a couple of days!

Anyway, this was a lovely treat.  I will still climb up to the top shelf for Rose Levy Beranbaums corn bread recipe (all cookbooks up high to stop unauthorised childrens artwork, Liam is great with books but Patrick not so careful).  The chili and corriander add a lot and the red capsicum was quite pretty really.

Now go and check out the TWD blogroll and see what other treats there are around.  Oh, I did make last weeks challenge set by Dorie herself.  I will post about it very soon.