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You will need:
For the loaf
Loaf tin (and liner)
150g caster sugar
150g butter (or good margarine)
3 large free range eggs
2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped out (or table spoon of vanilla paste)
150g self raising flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
For the icing
30g icing sugar
good shake of cinnamon (about 1 level teaspoon)
table spoon or two of water (or lemon or orange juice)
Method:
Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 degrees)
Cream the sugar and butter
Beat in the eggs and vanilla
Sift in the flour, cinnamon and ginger, and fold gently in
Spoon into tin (greased and lined with baking parchment, if not using a liner)
Bake for 45-55 minutes - it's ready when a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean
Leave in the tin, on a cooling rack to cool
While still warm, poke a skewer a good few times all over the cake
Make up the icing by sifting the icing sugar and mixing everything together
Spoon over the cooling cake and leave to set
Ingredients:
200g wholemeal or spelt flour
100g runny honey
100g sunflower oil
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp grated nutmeg (optional)
1 tsp ground ginger (optional)
Few grinds of black pepper (optional)
Makes about 12 – 16 cookies
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (Gas Mark 5). Oil a baking sheet with some sunflower oil
2. Put all the ingredients into a large bowl and combine into a soft dough.
3. Roll into walnut sized balls and place on oiled sheet, flattening slightly with the palm of your hand.
4. Bake for about 8 – 10 minutes.
5. Leave to cool on the sheet.
6. Make a cup of tea and stuff your face.
The lights came on at five a.m. no matter how bad your head was, or how tired you were. The first job was to warm the ovens, the sound of the fans inside might have been soothing at any other time, but when it’s gone five and you’ve not had much sleep they’re more like jet engines. Next I had to go to the chiller, drag the heavy, screeching door aside and pull two metal trays taller than me all the way to the ovens; check the LCD displays that the temperature is correct. The cakes and doughnuts only take about 10 minutes to cook, and when the huge oven doors open next the sweet smell explodes outwards.
The cakes have to cool while I tray up the frozen baguettes, scraping my fingers on the hard loaves. You have to be careful not to drop one, a frozen baguette shatters like nothing else can. Once they’re jammed into the bread ovens I have twenty minutes to ice the cakes and sugar the doughnuts, my least favourite job. I hate being covered in jam and cinnamon glaze, and I will spend the rest of the day cleaning sugar from under my fingernails.
