Sticky gingerbread and orange cake...

My in laws live down near Bristol and every time we visit I bake my father in law a cake. He LOVES it! And this August bank holiday I had the challenge of baking a cake that I could bake on Thursday evening and that wouldn't be eaten til Sunday. I opened up my baking bible, and hey presto, under the headline Sticky Orange and Ginger Cake, the words 'this cake is even better if you wrap it in baking parchment and foil for two days before icing' (and I assume munching!).

So I got my apron on and started weighing out treacle and golden syrup and boiling it up with some water in a pan which felt quite strange. Then I spent some time lining both the sides and bottom of my tin. I followed the recipe to a 't' and it did appear to be quite a runny mix, aha that's why I had to line the sides! However, I persevered and Mary Berry has never let me down. 50 mins in the oven and it definitely looked and smelled like a cake! Although, as you can see it cracked on the top a little.

I left it to cool over night then wrapped it in parchment and tin foil and popped it in old chocolate tin and put it in the boot. 

Sunday arrived and I opened my tin. As I hadn't cut into it earlier I couldn't see if it was stickier or not, as it was promised to be, but it still smelled nice and I got on with making the icing. 150g of icing sugar and the juice of an orange. But only enough juice to make the icing, liquid but thick. I was a bit impatient and I think I ended up with about the juice of half the orange which was a touch too much, but it's a fine line, and it wasn't too runny. 

It tasted fine, I like ginger cake and this had a nice orange flavour from the icing. It wasn't particularly sticky as ginger cake goes, not sure if I didn't wrap it tight enough or maybe the car was a little warm for it for two days but it definitely tasted and looked pretty good! 

Pulled pork

Haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I made this last weekend! 

As a food lover, I love TV cooking/eating programmes, Diners, Drive Ins and Dives is popular as is Man Vs Food. I was watching a bit of a marathon of both these shows and had a really craving for some pulled pork so thought I'd give it a try myself. 

So on to google, and the always safe option of Jamie Oliver. This is the recipe I went for: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/southern-style-pork-slaw_1

However, as this is a recipe for 10-12 people, I had to scale it down a bit so I bought a MUCH smaller piece of pork ie. enough for two people and not bone in, I think it weighed less than a kg, so used a bit less of all of the spices but pretty much did it exactly as it stated in the recipe! I also made the home made coleslaw to go with it. 

After about four hours in the oven at about 150 degrees, my much smaller piece of pork looked like this: 

Really nice crackling, and luckily it was already scored when I bought it so I didn't have to get out a stanley knife. The meat was cooked all the way through, still juicy and very tender. I let it rest for about 15 minutes whilst I whizzed up the coleslaw in my food processor. The coleslaw is a breeze, a bit on the onion-y side but the apples add a nice fresh bite and sweetness that works well. I also prefer my coleslaw quite dry and without loads of mayonnaise so I only put in about 1 tablespoon that just bound it all together. 

I carved up the pork and ended up with this! Which we had with the coleslaw, (the coleslaw isn't particularly photogenic so I didn't upload the photo!) Then nice bread rolls and all this lovely pork with a scattering of fresh mint over the top! YUMMY!