Lemongrass and Ginger Cake

Thought I'd share this recipe with you. It was recently entered in the UKTV Food's Market Kitchen 'Bake a Cake' competition, and I'm pleased to say has won. This lovely cake will be made on an episode of Market Kitchen to be aired soon.

LEMONGRASS AND GINGER CAKE

Lemongrass, although unusual in a cake gives a lovely perfume to the cake, and the ginger provides the necessary kick. Due to the amount of ginger, I'd suggest that this is more of an adult cake, as it may be a little strong for children.

The cake developed as I was making a lemon cake, and came across my lemongrass and ginger cordial and thought I'd give it a whirl. It works well

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
3 eggs
175g self raising flour
half tsp baking powder
75g stem ginger in syrup finely chopped Reserve some of the syrup
1 tsp ground ginger
10 tbsp lemongrass and ginger cordial (I use Bottlegreen)
Zest of one lemon
125g sugar
1 stick lemongrass, bashed
50g caster sugar
2 tbsp water

Method
1 Preheat oven to 180oc. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin. Add baking powder to self raising flour and sieve. Set aside
2 Make the cake by using the creaming method, beating butter and sugar together until creamy, then beat in the eggs one at a time, adding one third of sieved flour with each egg.
3 Stir in the ground ginger and stem ginger and mix well. Finally add approximately 4 tbs lemongrass and ginger cordial.
4 Pour into the lined cake tin and bake for approximately 45-55 minutes, if using a fan oven check after 35-40 minutes. If a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean then its done.
5 Whilst the cake is still warm make the syrup. Pour the remaining lemongrass and ginger cordial into a saucepan, add the bashed lemongrass, lemon zest and approx 1 tbsp syrup from the stem ginger and sugar. You may wish to add 2 tbsp water. Bring to the boil and allow to cool for a couple of minutes.
6 Whilst the cake is still in the cake tin pour over the flavoured syrup and allow to cool. Once cool and the cake has absorbed the syrup, remove from tin and enjoy.
This is more of an adult cake than one for children. Leave the cake for 24 hours and the flavour intensifies.


Feel free to send over some of your cake recipes - I love trying new flavours

Cath

Smoking Food

For me, smoked food has always been a favourite. I'll happily pay a little extra for smoked duck breast, chicken, cheese and fish. Maybe its memories of campfires whilst in scouts as a teenager, but I jut can't get enough of that lovely earthy flavour. For Christmas, I bought my husband a day smoking course at Smoky Jo's in Shap (www.smokyjos.co.uk) , and managed to buy a place for myself and muscle in on his present. On saturday we visited Smoky Jo's not quite sure what we would learn, but certainly eager to pick up useful hints and tips. We'd tried smoking fish in a wok over tea but almost blinded ourselves, we own a smoker but our first attempt ended in a fire...so as you can see, we needed as much help as possible.

Visit Smoky Jo's and you'll be given a warm and hospitable welcome by Jo and Georgie who run courses in their beautiful home, complete with accommodation. Former owners of a local smokehouse in the area there isn't anything these two don't know.

Our day started with simple brining of chicken, designed to keep in moisture and ensure you have a succulent end result. After brining the chicken we flavoured some trout and salmon. The course allows ou to really let your imagination go wild, and experiment with flavours. The surprising element is that some flavours which may be pungent, barely come through once smoked, and some other subtle flavours are very evident in the end result.

After a few flavour attempts, we were introduced to the smokers...I say introduced as they have names, and each have their own character in the way they smoke, flavour and cook the food. Jo and Georgie obviously have some professional smokers (looking like large bbqs some with a separate hot box for cold smoking) but best of all is Freddy the filing cabinet - absolutely ingenious (check it out on their website), who can produce hot and cold smoked goods in each of his 4 drawers.

So what did we sample on the day? Well for me the absolute stars were the smoked sausages - important to use a sausage with a high meat content, but these were sublime. My husband liked smoked mushrooms, and is currently thinking of using portobello mushrooms and creating a smoked mushroom pate. We also enjoyed smoked trout, hot and cold smoked salmon, peppers, aubergines, nuts, scallops, prawns and mussels and cheese.

I'd recommend this course to anybody interested in finding out about food smoking, not only is the scenery breathtaking, the owners delightful and the food excellent but its a fabulous way to spend a day.

To Jo and Georgie, thanks for a great day

Cath