Bank Holiday Monday and I am determined not to spend any time in the kitchen doing any form of baking. It seems quite a nice day so I am intending to go out with the family. Before I do disappear for the day I am going to catch up with a few jobs on here and in the house. I have a couple more ingredients to add to my website ingredients page. As from tomorrow I will be changing my website by removing all the Easter information and adding some more recipes to celebrate “National Garlic Day” and “National Tea Day”. My Garlic meal is going to be something with chicken and my daughter’s idea which is garlic dough balls with a twist. I am wanting to eat garlic mushrooms now and it is only 9.15am. For my Tea day recipe I am going to make some sort of tea bread with the marzipan in the recipe. I am looking forward to this bake but I haven’t told the husband yet as marzipan is his favourite thing.
I am going to invest in a [amazon_textlink asin=’B01CU8JZPU’ text=’camera’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’wwwlovetobake-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’522806e1-2350-11e7-bf3e-558e67f03e2a’] for my photographs as I feel that using a phone does not really take the best pictures. Although some of them are okay I am going to re-do some of the recipes from ages ago and add them to Yummly but retake the pictures using a better camera. Also, [amazon_textlink asin=’B01JM68TFA’ text=’a lightbox ‘ template=’ProductLink’ store=’wwwlovetobake-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’2ca50f02-2350-11e7-8d8e-e356ff587ba6′]may be needed so that is another investment. I am finding since I joined Google plus and Linkedin that there has been more views of my blog and website so I will be adding more to those pages as well as my other sites. Pinterest is proving very popular so I am going to push with this during the week. After commenting on a few of my favourite blogs and receiving replies I am going to try a bit more of this and see how it goes, i.e., if anyone returns the favour and comments on my work. We will just have to wait and see. I have joined other sites which I haven’t even looked at properly yet so I must try this week. I am finding while the children are on holiday I am writing less and reading more. This last week I feel like I have learned quite a few things about blogging, seo, ranking, organic searches etc.
I have just seen my daughter make her own breakfast from the flapjack which I made the other day. She mixed the flapjack with greek yoghurt and strawberries and it looked really appetising. Quite a clever idea and in her own words “her take on granola and yoghurt”. However, she didn’t make any for me which I would have liked her too but you can’t have it all ways. At least she fed herself which is the lesson I have been trying to teach them this weekend.
I now have over 1000 visitors per week which I am so happy about but now I have to maintain them which is the hard part. So I have been looking through passed recipes which I shared months ago and that are not on Yummly yet and I am re-adding my Ginger Traybake recipe which my family enjoy. I don’t add black treacle to my recipe as my children don’t all like the strong mollasses taste – which I do but I would rather they ate what I baked rather than it go to waste. The golden syrup can be substituted with black treacle if you want to make the standard gingerbread which is very popular around Halloween and Bonfire Night. In the recipe, I add [amazon_textlink asin=’B005J3VUXY’ text=’crystallised ginger’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’wwwlovetobake-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’ca78877d-234d-11e7-88e9-1fda9a941f27′] as it intensifies the ginger taste and we all like ginger in my house. This can be omitted if you don’t like the strong ginger taste. I decorate the traybake very simply with glace icing or water icing and a sprinkle of crystallised ginger (optional). For the decoration you could use vanilla buttercream which can calm the heat from the ginger. Sometimes at the market stall, I would ice my traybakes with buttercream as they would look like I had spent a bit more time on them. The glace icing is perfect though if you want to make the traybake easier to transport, for example, on a picnic. This may be one of the recipes I add to my next recipe book – or something similar.
[lt_recipe name=”Ginger Traybake” servings=”16″ prep_time=”10M” cook_time=”30M” total_time=”40M” difficulty=”Easy” print=”yes” summary=”Nutritionally, one slice contains 286 calories, 11.9g total fat (15% daily total fat), 43.9g total carbohydrate (16% daily total carbohydrate), 0.4g fibre (1% daily fibre) (based on a 2000 calorie diet).” image=”https://www.love-to-bake.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ginger-cake12.jpeg” ingredients=”For the sponge:;10oz golden syrup;8oz light muscovado sugar;8oz soft spread;8oz self raising flour;1tsp mixed spice;1tsp ground ginger;2 eggs;4tbsp milk;1oz crystallised ginger;For the decoration:;4tbsp icing sugar;1tbsp water;1tbsp chopped crystalised ginger;” ]Preheat the oven to gas 4.;Line a 8 inch, rectangular baking tin.;In a pan, weigh out the syrup, sugar, soft spread and heat up to dissolve the sugar and melt the soft spread. Stir constantly.;Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.;Add the eggs, milk, flour and spices and mix thoroughly.;Transfer to the tin and bake for 30-40 minutes till springy to the touch.;Allow to cool, whilst making the icing.;In a bowl, mix the icing sugar with the water to form a smooth icing.;Spread on top of the traybake and decorate with the chopped ginger.[/lt_recipe]
Alternatives to this recipe are to add chocolate chips which is a really nice flavour that goes really well with ginger. Also apple or pear are really good fruits to add to this recipe. If you use fresh fruit in the recipe the moisture in the fruit helps to keep the traybake moist too. You could also add nuts, for example, walnuts to the recipe to give a bit more texture to the traybake. there are lots of different ingredients which you could use in this recipe some of which I have already tried so the different traybakes are endless. Just let your imagination run wild.
This recipe is soy free, but it does contain eggs, milk and wheat. You could use gluten free flour to make it suitable for a gluten free diet. The sugar and syrup are the problem for a diabetic diet but the alternatives here would be agave syrup which would give you the stickiness that you get with golden syrup and xylitol which is similar to sugar. these are things to think about when baking for specific dietary needs.
Hope you try this recipe and if you do drop me a comment below. Thankyou.