So, the time arrived to bake my competition cake for the Cake and Bake Show. As the Clandestine Cake Club theme was Sugar and Spice all things nice, I decided to cook a ginger and orange sponge,

My aim was to create a light and airy cake, not your standard dark, sticky. ginger cake made with treacle. So I decided to start with a standard sponge mixture (4 eggs, 225g each of butter, sugar and self-raising flour and 2 tsp baking powder). To the mixture I added about 2 inches of freshly grated ginger, the zest of one orange and a tablespoon of Cointreau.

The first time I made it (I had to make several in preparation)  I added marmalade to the mixture but I think it affected the rise slightly so omitted it from the final recipe.

I brushed the bottom cake with orange juice and the top with ginger syrup before filling it with Mum’s home-made marmalade and orange curd. The orange curd was made with 2 eggs, one cup of orange juice, one tablespoon of orange zest, 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 teaspoons of cornflour and a tablespoon of lemon juice.

All the ingredients are mixed together in a glass bowl and cooked over a pan of simmering water. I whisked it continually to stop it from going lumpy.

Over the top I made a glacé icing with ginger syrup from a jar of stem ginger and some orange juice. I decorated it using the feathering technique. This involves piping lines of a different coloured glacé onto the cake and dragging a cocktail stick through it so the lines draw into each other (resembling a party ring). On my cake I directly drew gel icing onto the glacé using a cocktail stick. This meant that I could dip it into both red and yellow at the same time, creating a gradient of colour.

I decorated the cake with chopped stem ginger and crystallised orange zest. It looked like a bonfire – representing the ‘fieriness’ of the ginger.

This cake has been a huge hit in my family, there were no complaints that i had to make it four times in preparation for the show!

I had such a great time at the Cake and Bake show even though my cake didn’t win. I’ve written a separate blog about what I did and all that happened on the day!

Lizzy 🙂