Another one suitable for making with a little person, I also picked this traybake because I know she enjoys the taste of gingerbread too. We had particularly good fun measuring out the golden syrup and the treacle, and the obligatory sampling of flavours went down well too. It was actually a great one for baking together, as we could both participate in all stages of the process and it was a real educational experience to watch the butter melting into the gooey ingredients in the pan. She liked smelling the mixed spice and the ground ginger and managed to retain most of the names of the ingredients when we spoke to Daddy about it later.
I was a bit worried about the volume of mixture in the tin when I poured it in, so for safety, I put a roasting tin underneath it in the oven, in case of overspill. It was good fun watching it rise quickly and a bit of nervous tension ensued as we waited to see if it would indeed escape!
I kept an eye on the time; timed it for ten minutes less than Mary suggests, and kept probing the middle to see if the skewer came out clean. The edges started to brown/blacken before the middle was done, but I just kept checking until I thought it was cooked. It immediately sank when I took it out of the oven, which I initially attributed to the amount of treacle (a previous recipe had said that if it sinks in the middle, maybe you've been heavy-handed with the treacle). More on that later.
After leaving it to cool, I mixed up half the suggested quantity of icing, as I intended
to drizzle rather than fully cover the cake (mainly owing to husband's lack of
sweet tooth). The
e
nd result was a bit messy, but I think it looked appetising and 'jazzy' nonetheless! It sliced really easily - to start with I just cut some from the edges for us to sample.
It was only the next day, when I started slicing the rest of the cake for distribution to colleagues, that I discovered the centre of the cake wasn't properly cooked. Oops! This explained the sinking, and also confirmed my worries that it wasn't completely done in the middle. Cue much cutting around the soggy bits and salvaging as much as I could. Sadly there was still a lot which ended up in the bin. I'm getting very frustrated with this oven business. I've ordered an oven thermometer (which we've since tried out, but it doesn't seem to be a very good one); as we suspect the oven is getting hotter than you
think it is. This would explain the frequently burnt edges, but lack of cooking through. Things are getting cooked to quickly rather than thoroughly. I really don't want to have to rely on guesswork, but I might experiment with dropping the temperature by 10 degrees, and see what that achieves.
Baker's verdict: easy and enjoyable to make and slice. Very nice texture and taste; went down well with my teaching colleagues!
Husband rating: 7/10 for the drier edge bit; 9/10 for the bit which was closer to the middle. Felt dry in the mouth at first, but then very quickly it wasn't. Lovely ginger flavour, not too strong. Not too sweet and went really well with ice-cream.
Visitors over for dinner meant that finally I could make one of the desserty things, which I usually avoid owing to my Mum being on a diet, and them being difficult to take into work. We fancied something of a cheesecake sort of nature, so I decided to have a go at this. It was superbly easy to make, although the recipe asked for 'large limes', which I've yet to see in the supermarket. They're all the size of ping-pong balls! 
Baker's verdict: really easy to make and delicious. Nowhere near as sickly as the banoffee pie, and really doesn't need the cream on top. Will definitely make this again.
