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!