Ginger and Butterscotch

I've always thought of ginger cake as a very winterey sort of cake. Warm out of the oven, accompanied by a hot chocolate and a good book, mmmmmm. But, recently I had a request for a combination of ginger and butterscotch, and I thought; why not? So here we are. A blending of ingredients I wouldn't usually put together, but culminating in a deliciously rich, warm cake.

This recipe only makes about 8, seeing as I made half a batch this time. My sister isn't keen on ginger so the rest I made vanilla, the recipe for which can be seen on an earlier post.

Ingredients:

• 100g unsalted butter
• 90g dark soft brown sugar
• 1.5 tablespoons black treacle
• 75ml milk
• 2 pieces of stem ginger
  
• 1 egg
• 150g self raising flour
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• pinch of salt

Firstly you need to preheat the oven to 160C(fan)/180C/Gas Mark 4 and line a muffin tray with cake cases.

Put the butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan.

Melt over a low heat, stirring until smooth.

Allow it to cool briefly and then stir in the milk.

Beat the egg. Chop the ginger into small chunks and add to the egg.


Beat the egg/ginger mix into the butter mixture. Sift the flour, ground ginger and salt into the mixture and combine thoroughly.

Carefully spoon the mixture into the cake cases and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. They should look a lovely, rich amber-brown colour. To check they're cooked properly, insert a skewer or a fork into the middle of one of the cakes. If it comes out clean, it's cooked. I always think ginger cake smells fantastic when it comes out of the oven. Mmmmmmmm...


Now, once you've refrained from eating them all and they've cooled nicely on a wire rack, it's time to make the icing. Usually with ginger cake I would make a ginger fudge icing, but I'm using a butterscotch one this time.

You'll need:

• 60g unsalted butter
• 30ml milk
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 300g icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon butterscotch flavour (if you cant find a good flavouring, you can use something like angel delight, works just as well.)
  

Put the butter, milk, vanilla and half the icing sugar into a bowl and whisk until blended. Gradually add the remainder of the icing sugar and butterscotch, whisking well until smoooooooth.
Swirl onto the cakes. This amount makes enough for quite a lot onto each cake so dont be afraid of piling it on.


These would be exquisite just left as they are, but I had these nifty little chocolatey things I decided to sprinkle over them instead. Purely of course, because the colours just went fabulously. Yes they did.

So there you have it. Ginger and butterscotch. Happy baking!!