Ever since we finished the German gingerbreads I've been wanting more. My friend Katy has promised to try and procure a real German recipe for me but I am impatient and decided to experiment. I made these for breakfast this morning and they are so good. I added raisins, currents and peel to a gingerbread cake recipe I had, cooked it in muffin tins and added a glaze. They are not identical to the German cakes by any means but they have the same types of flavours. They're sweet but not too much and would be nice for tea or dessert and are a special treat for breakfast.


Glazed Gingerbread with Peel and Raisins

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs

2/3 cup boiling water
1 tsp baking soda

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup each of golden raisins, currents and candied peel.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.

Put raisins and currents in a small bowl and cover with hot water (if your peel is kind of dry you can soak it too). Cream shortening and sugar. Blend in molasses and beat in eggs.  Pour boiling water over soda and add, stir well. Add dry ingredients and stir to combine (it will be a bit lumpy - that's okay). Drain and add fruit.

Spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for about 25 minutes or until tops spring back slightly when pressed (this cake is actually best slightly underdone).

While muffins are baking combine juice of half a lemon with 1/2 cup icing sugar and blend well.

As soon as you take the muffins out of the oven brush tops with lemon glaze. Let the glaze set and then brush again. When the tops are dry carefully loosen muffin edges with a knife and lift them out of the pans. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 12 generous muffins.


If you leave out the fruit and cook this in an 8" pan (about 1 hour at 325, the centre should fall as it cools) it will be a cake my mum used to make. She always served it with a lemon sauce (heat up juice of 1 lemon and add sugar to taste).

Yet another new knitting project. Just a pair of socks this time. I needed something to carry around with me because I discovered that Abby had chewed one end of the circular I was going to use for the Scaruffle; not recently either - it must have been ages ago and I never noticed until I was going to use it - you can sort of see the teeth marks if you look at the picture very closely (it's the point in the book spine).

This brings my total of stalled knitting projects up to four; three because I need new needles and one because I ran out of yarn. I think February will be devoted to stalled knitting. (I've also got two projects that are just waiting for me to get back to them but we'll ignore that for now.)

I've had these two balls of yarn since I started knitting (roughly five years ago) and got them when I first thought making socks would be cool (but had no idea how). They come with nylon thread to reinforce the toes and heels. I wasn't going to use it but thought "why not, it must be there for a reason" and as I just found holes in the heels of two of my pairs of homemade socks I totally understand (and need to find my darning egg). I have one ball of pink and one of yellow and remember that my plan was to have a pair of matching opposites with contrast toes and heels. I've decided to stick with that plan because I still like it; I'll also do contrast ribbing at the tops.

(Note to self: Add short sock needles to needle order so you're not knitting with such a big spider all the time.)

Have you ever had these?

My friend Joyce pointed them out to me on Tuesday and they are so good! They're a German gingerbread but since I can't read the German on the package I only know that because Joyce told me. They taste like gingerbread but with candied peel and some other dried fruit flavours mixed in (they must puree everything - there are no lumps). They have a very thin layer of icing on top and a layer of chocolate on the bottom. I've been trying to decide if they are more like a small cake or a very large cookie. We had them for dessert on Tuesday night and then breakfast on Wednesday (desserts make wonderful breakfast).

Now I need to get some more.

p.s. February's Martha Stewart magazine has a whole article about cupcakes! So yummy.