Ginger and Spice Cake (The Bake Off Box) By @Cinabar

Today we are having a go at making a Ginger and Spice Cake kit that I received as a Christmas gift, from The Bake Off Box. The kit was purchased online by mum and the delivery was slow, it was ordered in November and arrived jus before Christmas, but it did arrive. It is branded with the ‘Bake Off’ logo, and is the official product. I opened up the box and was a little bit worried by just how complicated the cake looked in the pictures! I don’t have those sort of skills! :-D I absolutely love that the kit has a Bake Off apron in the box, that is so smart and I put it on in the hope it would increase my baking skills.

There is a 34 section instruction manual to follow, again quite daunting, but I started at the beginning and decided to just follow it through. I have used baking kits before and up until now they all have one thing in common, everything is pre weighed out for you. Not in this kit, this kit requires scales to measure out the sugar, flour, spices etc, and every stage everything had to be weighed and sieved. I started off by making the sponge, weighing it all out and whisking and folding. 

This went quite well as I do bake cakes a fair bit. The sponge mix was split between two tins (not included) and put in the oven. Next up for the cake decorations was the ginger bread mix. I don’t make biscuits that often, and was a bit confused by only needing a tablespoon of egg white, which was a bit faffy to sort but I did. This went in the fridge to chill, while the sponges finished off.

The next step was the making of the buttercream (I ended up washing and reusing the bowls/whisk so often during this whole process). While the sponges cooled I traced around the gingerbread template on to greaseproof paper. I rolled the biscuit dough out and cut some gingerbread house shapes. I didn’t do Christmas trees as it felt like we have passed that point. The biscuits went in the oven to bake, while this was happening I filled the cake with buttercream, and make an attempt to smother the cake in buttercream all over. I’m not very neat, but it looked ok! Once the biscuits were cooked and cooled I decorated them and put them on the cake. 

I know my icing skills are basic, but it still looked ok! It tasted amazing though. Fluffy moist sponge, and loads of spice. It was stunning! This isn’t your usual simple cake to make, but it was worth it for a special occasion.