Chocolate ginger cakelings: experimental

[redbird]

This is an experiment based loosely on papersky's apple cakeling recipe, but all errors are my very own.

2 ounces butter (1/2 stick), melted
2 ounces sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 ounce Baker's chocolate, melted
1 large egg
2 ounces flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 400°F (sorry, I don't know the Centigrade or gas mark equivalents). Put paper muffin/cakeling cups into muffin tins.

Whisk sugar into butter. (This produces a thick, pale yellow substance). Next, whisk in vanilla, ginger, and chocolate.

Whisk in egg.

Fold flour into the liquid mixture.

Pour the resulting mixture into paper muffin cups, filling about 1/3 full. (I got eight cakelings). Dust top with cinnamon sugar.

Bake 15 minutes.

Evaluation:

It's a decent start. A little too sugary. A bit more flour, or less sugar, might help. More ginger is definitely needed: try a full teaspoon next time. Also, the cinnamon sugar might as well be omitted, since I can't taste the cinnamon.

Comments

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Gas ovens, at least the ones I've met, are also marked in degrees. The rangetop is a matter of judgement. As for conversion, that's easy enough now. Bring up Google and enter:

400 F in C

and Google with come back with... 204.4, so 200 C should do nicely. Google do a bunch of other conversions like that as well. It's part of the Google Calculator stuff.

The chocolate ginger cakelings sound good.

[snippy]

In my head I want to add chopped candied ginger and cut the sugar in half.

[redbird]

Tempting. Any thoughts on how much candied ginger?

[snippy]

Not much; the first time I'd probably do it by scattering a few pieces (small dice) in each muffin cup and see if that does it. More than that would change the texture a lot.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You're going to get muffins if you up the flour.

My general thing with cakelings is to do the sugar/butter and then egg as fast as possible, fold that air in, and then add whatever after, certainly if you put ginger in with the flour it'll fold in better. I've never tried melted chocolate with them, but I do them with cocoa, which is an ounce of cocoa in with the flour. I also do choc chips, in with the flour, and cocoa plus choc chips. I can't say how many. Um, some. Enough.

400 is 200 is Gas 6.

400 is one of the two F temperatures I know. The other is 350/180/5. Oh, and I think 70 is 25, for STP?

[redbird]

Okay, that all looks helpful, especially the warning about muffins.

Current thought is, next time, maybe some cocoa (with the flour) as well as the melted chocolate, and try chopped candied ginger.

70 F is 21 C, more or less (68=20, and I'm willing to round it off here). My mental stored equivalents are -40 (=-40), 0 C is 32 F, 16 C is 61 F (an amusing inversion), and human body temperature is 37 C or 98.C F.

Mmm, yum.

[to-eat-flowers.livejournal.com]

Was your Bakers the bittersweet kind, and were you happy with the texture? If so, I would suggest a partial substitution of cocoa and butter for the chocolate, so as to not mess with the texture too much.
The dosages I use, which were originally the Cake Bible's, and have simplified through years of experimentation and laziness are for each ounce of chocolate, 1 1/2 tbsp. cocoa and 1 1/2 tbsp. butter.
If you were using bitter chocolate to begin with, then it's only cutting down on the sugar that will help. Candied ginger sounds wonderful, and it makes me wonder about serving the cakelets with pear sauce, or fresh pears.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

My 2 cents: Don't eliminate the cinnamon sugar, put real cinnamon in with the ginger and flour.

FYI, I am a complete convert to Ceylon cinnamon for most things. I know it's the cinnamon most commonly used in Europe, but I'm not sure about Britain.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Can one of you nice people explain the difference between cakelings, muffins, cupcakes, and quickbread? And how they all differ from "cake," for that matter? I had been unfamiliar with the term "cakeling," until now.

[redbird]

Cakelings are just little cakes--I got the word from papersky (and her recipe), and it may be a Welsh usage. Cupcakes are generally iced, the cakelings aren't.