Recipes for honey ginger cake and lemonade.
HONEY GINGER CAKE
250g plain flour
50g ground almonds
Pinch of salt
1 heaped tsp ground ginger
Pinch of ground cloves
1 lemon
125g soft brown sugar
100g butter
4 tbsp honey
3 tbsp of syrup taken from a jar of syrup-covered stem ginger
1 tbsp black treacle
3-4 lumps of stem ginger in syrup
2 eggs
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp milk
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees/gas four. Cut a piece of foil a little bigger than a 22-centimetre shallow cake tin and use it to line the tin. Put the flour, ground almonds, salt, ginger and cloves into a mixing bowl. Grate the zest of the lemon carefully (leaving behind the white pith) and put that into the bowl. Now put the soft brown sugar and butter into a saucepan. Add the honey, the ginger syrup from the jar and the treacle. Finely chop the pieces of stem ginger and add them to the pan. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add it, too.
Place the saucepan on the hob and switch the heat to low. Stir from time to time with a wooden spoon until the butter and sugar have melted. Switch off the heat.
Pour the honey mixture into the bowl of flour and spices. Stir well until you get a thick mixture. Break in the eggs, one at a time, beating them in well with a wooden spoon.
Spoon the bicarbonate of soda into a cup and add the cold milk and a tablespoon of hot water from the kettle. Stir well to dissolve the soda and add this mixture to the bowl, beating it in gently at first and then really well to get everything blended together.
Pour the mixture into the foil-lined tin. Oven gloves on. Put the tin into the hot oven and leave for about 30-40 minutes. Test to see if the cake is ready by sticking a skewer or knife into the centre - it should come out just clean, not gummy with cake mix. Remove the tin from the oven and leave for a few minutes, then lift out the cake in its foil wrapper and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
LEMONADE
750ml water
4 unwaxed lemons
100g caster sugar
Ice to serve
Fill the kettle with water and bring it to the boil. Meanwhile, using a vegetable peeler, peel all the yellow zest off the lemons in wide strips. Put the shaved lemons to one side. If there is a lot of white pith still attached to the zest, scrape it off. Put the zest strips in a heatproof jug.
Put the sugar into the jug with the lemon zest. When the kettle boils, measure out 750ml water and pour it into the jug with the sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar has completely dissolved. Put the jug to one side for a couple of hours until the lemonade has cooled.
When the lemonade is cold, fish out the strips of zest and throw them away. Cut the peeled lemons in half and squeeze the juice from them. Pour the juice into the jug and stir well. If you like, you can strain everything into a separate jug to remove any stray pips and fibres. Store the lemonade in the fridge. harnold@irish-times.ie