Ginger and Lemon Fruitcake

This is the recipe I developed for the body of my Christmas Cake Snowman.

100g unsalted butter, softened

100g dark muscovado sugar

2 medium eggs

130g plain flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp ground ginger

325g mixed dried fruit

50g crystallised ginger pieces

zest of 1 lemon

1 pint pudding basin

1.  Preheat oven to 140'C fan.  Grease basin and base line with grease-proof paper.

2.  Beat together the butter and sugar.

3.  In a separate bowl mix flour and spices together.

4.  Slowly add eggs to creamed mixture, alternating with the dry ingredients.

5.  Fold in dried fruit, crystallised ginger and lemon zest.

6.  Spoon into prepared basin and bake for approximately 1 hour & 45 minutes or until a skewer comes our clean.

7.  Allow to cool in basin before turning out.

Gingerbread Muffins

I found this delicious recipe via Pinterest and I'm saving it here as it was the best Gingerbread Muffin I have ever tasted!  I will definitely be making them again.  Here I have translated the recipe into English terms.  I had ran out of allspice so substituted ground mace instead and I upped the amount of ground ginger from 0.5 tsp to 1 tsp, because we like our ginger!

For the Muffins:-

0.5 cup/115g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

0.5 cup/100g dark muscovado sugar 

1 medium egg, 

0.5 cup/120ml milk, at room temperature or slightly warmed in microwave

0.5 cup/156g black treacle

1 tsp vanilla extract

1.33 cups/167g plain flour

0.5 tsp baking powder

0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

0.25 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

0.5 tsp nutmeg

0.25 tsp ground allspice

For the Buttercream:-

unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

icing sugar

milk

vanilla extract

Also:-

12 Muffin tin liners

Decorations

1.  Preheat oven to 180'C fan and line a muffin tin with 12 liners.

2. Beat together butter and sugar, either in a large bowl with a hand held mixer or in a food processor.

3.  Beat in the egg until combined, then add in the milk, treacle and vanilla on medium speed. Don't worry about it curdling as the mixture will not fully combine at this stage.

4.  Mix together in a separate bowl the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices.

5.  With the mixer/processor on low speed, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.

6.  Fill liners two thirds full and bake for approximately 20 minutes.

7.  Allow to cool on wire racks and then decorate.

The original recipe supplied a choice of frostings, but I used my usual vanilla buttercream recipe.  I don't measure my ingredients, but the usual ratio is 1:2 butter to icing sugar, although I use only a small amount of butter and soften the mixture with milk.