English Gingerbread Cake

Rose's Heavenly Cakes, Page 75: English Gingerbread Cake

I had to make little cakes again as i have been so busy since i came back from Tokyo. There's pile of work in office, then there are Christmas cookies to be baked..and now my kids are both sick! My teenage daughter is capable of taking care of herself but I'm worried about my son as he is not able to tell us how ill he is or if he is in pain, but usually, i just know...but i still get worried quite a bit esp. when he is extremely picky of what he eats so that includes any type of medication. Initially wanted to skip this week, but i just couldn't bring myself to do so. Thus, i decided to bake in souffle/paper-cupcake cups so i don't have to grease any pan or cut parchment paper to line it plus baking time is faster too.

I didn't realise that i needed whole wheat flour to bake this cake until i read up the recipe again and oh dear, i don't have whole wheat flour! I don't remember seeing any whole wheat flour in the supermarket but then, maybe i haven't been noticing. I googled to see if i could substitute whole wheat for anything else but i couldn't find anything. So i just took a chance and used bread flour instead as substitute since whole wheat four has high gluten content, so the next high gluten flour i have in my pantry is bread flour. Another 'mishap' - i ran out of Lyle's golden syrup 3/4 of the way...and added another brand "Taikoo" (Hong Kong brand?) golden syrup to top the difference.

The cake is extremely easy to make except that i find that the batter developed little flour pockets so i had to stir a long time to remove it..and also used my fingers to nib the flour pockets floating onto the surface. Probably it is because of the bread flour? *shrugs* Oh yes, i also added 1/8 tsp of nutmeg in addition to the cinnamon & ground ginger. The batter yield 16 cupcakes and i baked it for only 25-30mins.

I was expecting failure but surprisingly my little gingerbread cakes turned out really well! It tasted really well with the lemon glaze. It's light and spongy inside with a soft chewy texture to it and the spices blend in amazingly. I really like it and so does everyone in my family! This is definitely a keeper! :)