The One Where I Bake Ginger Cake

When your 11 year old asks you to go out and buy ingredients to make cakes, make sure he is going to be around to actually help out and not bugger off to town all afternoon and then arrange to stop over at a friend's house at night.  Dear Reader, without supervision, I decided to carry on regardless and make the ginger cake anyway.  I hear some of you quaking already...

I hunted down what looked to be a very easy recipe for ginger cake and wrote out a shopping list.

That's a pretty basic list, isn't it (note the added ingredients for Shrove Tuesday... no pre-prepared mixture in this house *smug look*)? Normally a trip to the local supermarket would take about twenty minutes.  I trotted off to the shop and returned an hour and a half later after having three staff hunt down baking powder and cake cases for me and then a detour to another shop for the bakeware equipment. By now I was knackered and having second thoughts.  It was about this time that I found out that I was being abandoned by my sous-chef.  Oh well...

Approximately 6.00 pm

May I suggest that when baking as a novice, always have a contingency plan to hand.  And some wine that needs using up prior to opening the vodka.

MY HELP DESK!

I am very proud to say that I weighed out all the ingredients properly and started to read the instructions.  Oh, what's that?  My first hurdle!

Twitter helped by suggesting that I could do either or both.  So I did both.  Just to be on the safe side.  Onwards and upwards.

LETS...  MAKE...  CAKES!! 

I was going great guns - even with a bit of a golden syrup disaster -  until I had to "fold in the flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda and pour into the [..] tin".  The mixture looked like a great big pan of lumpy sick and have no idea what had happened.  I also had no sieve!  I had to improvise...

Yes, I am sieving it with a tea strainer!

The Twitterverse was worried about me, reminding me that my rising agents may not work.  Say what?  I have no idea what they were on about so tipped it all into the tin, threw it in the oven and hoped for the best.

*waits for 90 minutes with a glass of vodka*

I amused myself for the next hour and a half, Kev came downstairs and pronounced himself officially "off the diet" as the whole house smelt of cakes and then... the Grand Reveal took place...

I bet Nigella and Delia are shitting themselves.

21:44 : EDIT AND UPDATE

It looks and tastes AMAZING!!

I need my own show.  Now!