October Bake it! - Ginger Cake

I enjoy 'normal' baking too, i.e. with lots of sugar, and have been following a few blogs on the subject. There's so many out there but I do enjoy the blogs of the Great British Bake Off finalists, Miranda Gore Browne and the Pink Whisk. The Pink Whisk introduced me to the Bake It! club, recipes are posted each month and everyone has a go at the same recipe. So... I thought why not try and adapt a Bake It recipe to be free of refined sugar? The October recipe is Ginger Cake and here's my adaptation :-). It tastes good and looks just like the original really! The method is very similar, I just changed a few of the ingredients. The original recipe is here.

Ginger Cake
Ingredients
125g butter
80g granulated fruit sugar (I used Fruisana)
85g date syrup
85g apple and pear fruit spread
200ml milk
250g self raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
a little sugar-free apricot jam

Recipe
1. Grease a 2lb loaf tin. Preheat the oven to 160 degs C (gas mark 3).
2. Melt the butter, fruit sugar, date syrup, fruit spread and milk in a saucepan. Leave to cool for five minutes.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the melted ingredients.
4. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture. Stir well.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 45-50 mins til a skewer comes out clean.
6. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.
7. Brush with a little sugar-free apricot jam.

 I'm afraid I then cheated a little as I wanted to ice the cake but haven't figured out how to make icing without icing sugar. So I made a ginger buttercream icing (using 40g butter, 100g icing sugar, 20g finely chopped stem ginger and 1tbsp milk) and decorated it using slices of stem ginger. Here's the result (after a few slices were already eaten!):

Fruit and Nut Slice

Over the weekend I made (and ate most of!) this lovely fruit and nut slice. It is very easy to make in between looking after my lovely little daughter and tastes excellent! I would describe it as somewhere between a flapjack, a cereal bar and one of those nice Rawr bars you can buy. It uses pear and apple spread to sweeten it, which looks disturbingly like marmite but doesn't taste like it! The recipe is from Jane Sen's "Healing Foods Cookbook" which also has some other nice sugar-free cookies and cakes... looking forward to trying them soon :-).

Fruit and Nut Slice
Ingredients
150g (5oz) raisins
150g (5oz) nuts (I used hazelnuts but any would do)
4tsp pear and apple spread (or other fruit concentrate)
85ml (3fl oz) sunflower oil
75g (3oz) oats
150g (5oz) plain flour
85ml (3 fl oz) water

Recipe
1. Grease a 7" flan case. Preheat oven to 190 degs C (gas 5 / 375 deg F).
2. Blend the dried fruit and nuts til finely chopped.
3. Mix all the ingredients together til well combined.
N.B. the recipe calls for everything to be added to the blender, mine wouldn't have coped with that so just mixing it in a bowl worked fine! I guess you'd have a smoother mix if you blended everything.
4. Pour/press the sticky dough into the flan case.
5. Cook for 30 mins or until browned.
6. Cut in case and leave to cool before serving.

Sorry no photos... it got eaten too quickly!

Scones

Afternoon tea is a great English tradition and wouldn't be complete without some scones. I've never added sugar to mine, after all they are normally served with plenty of jam so why add even more sugar! And if you're feeling virtuous then you can stick with the sugar-free jams such as St. Dalfour or Meridian. I'm afraid we'd run out of sugar-free jam so I had to eat one with real apricot jam on, terrible! These also freeze really well and can be defrosted in a low oven so everyone thinks you just baked them!

Sultana Scones (makes approx 6 scones)

Ingredients
8 oz self-raising flour
1 1/2 oz butter
2 tbsp sultanas
1/4 pint milk
pinch of salt
Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 7 (220 degs C / 425 degs F) and grease a baking tray.
2. Add the salt to the flour. Rub the butter into the flour.
3. Add the sultanas and mix to a soft dough with the milk.
4. Knead a little til smooth then roll out (approx 1" thick).
5. Cut out scones using a round cutter.
6. Put on baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes til lightly brown.

Chocolate Brownies

Today I thought I'd try out this recipe I found on the Vegetarian Society website. It sounded simple enough but I admit I was dubious that chocolate brownies could be made without sugar. However, I'm now convinced, they taste lovely! Quite sweet, although as a bit of a chocoholic I'd probably like them a bit more chocolatey. We had some for desert with some nice thick plain yoghurt and they were delicious.

Chocolate Brownies 

Ingredients
8 oz\250g dates
4 oz\100g butter
1 egg, beaten
1 very ripe banana, mashed
2½ oz\60g wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp cocoa powder
3 oz\110g walnuts, roughly chopped
1 tsp\5ml vanilla essence

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (180°C / 350°F). Grease a square cake tin (about 18cm x 18cm/7" x 7").
2. Put the dates into a saucepan and add water to just cover them. Cook for 5-10 minutes or until softened. Puree the dates until smooth and allow to cool a little.
3. Cream together the dates and the butter/margarine while the dates are still warm, until light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg, the mashed banana and vanilla essence and mix well.
5. Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and add to the mixture.
6. Fold in the walnuts and turn the mixture into the prepared tin.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until the brownies feel fairly firm to the touch.

I used a 8" round tin as I didn't have a convenient sized square one. This took an additional 5 mins in the oven.