Ginger cake, sticky date pudding and cookies by mail!

Today is my Dad's birthday. He's usually pretty hard to figure out what to get, so this year I thought I'd put some baked goods in the post, since you can't go wrong with food, right?

I started off with another batch of peanut choc chip cookies, though this time with more peanuts and more chocolate. As you can see there was hardly enough dough to hold it all together! Made for deliciously chunky cookies, though.

And the recipe is pretty generous. Made enough for Dad and a few for our tin. ;-)

Then I made a batch of sticky date pudding. And we ate some, just to test. You've got to make sure your baking is fit for human consumption before giving it as a gift!

So I popped three puddings (these are pretty big puddings - I reckon each one is really two servings) into a plastic container to provide some protection on the trip south in a courier bag. I also poured some sauce into a jar I had saved, and packed that carefully. The cookies were wrapped as a pile, in a mass of waxed tissue paper.

Last on the agenda for a frenzied Thursday night of baking was ginger cake. Unfortunately, I suspect due to lack of concentration and focus being on the third recipe of the day I didn't take any photos of the ginger cake - if  I'm lucky Mum might have taken one when it arrived, and if she has I'll update the post with some pics later. I did take a photo of the packaged cake, ready for posting:

A good old empty cereal box and screeds of sellotape did the trick. Apparently all the goodies arrived intact, and sticky date pudding was dessert du jour for my folks.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Fresh ginger cake
Ingredients
125g butter
1 tsp grated lemon rind
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup golden syrup
1 egg
1 Tbsp finely grated root ginger
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Heat oven to 180 C. Line a 23cm ring tin (or 20cm round tin) with baking paper or grease well. Cut the butter into small cubes, then put in a saucepan with lemon rind and hot water. Heat until butter melts, but do not let the mixture boil.

Whisk in brown sugar, golden syrup, egg and ginger, then stand in a basin of cold water to cool. Add the sifted dry ingredients, and mix to combine well (but don't overbeat). Pour into your prepared pan.

Bake of 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Best served warm - but you can zap it quickly in the microwave if you need to rewarm a slice later on. ;-) I'm also willing to bet this would be great with the sticky date pudding sauce, if you're after a sweeter kick.