Friday Food: Apple, Pecan and Gingerbread Loaf

The GardyGardeners are ginger fanciers: fresh, glace and crystallised. This is a quick and easy loaf and I love the combination of soft apple, crunchy pecans and then the heat of the glace ginger. This will keep for about a week, wrapped in clingfilm, and the flavour will only improve. Which is a good thing as it was raining so much that there was no gardening on Wednesday and the loaf is stored away for the coming week!!

I pretty much followed the recipe, except I replaced the crystallised ginger with glace. Somehow the chewiness of the crystallised seemed wrong and the glace has proved perfect.

The recipe is in the apple section of the July Delicious magazine. I especially like it as it really is melt and mix.

 

Apple Pecan and Gingerbread Loaf    serves 10-12

• 150g unsalted butter
• 150g brown sugar
• 150g golden syrup
• 200ml milk
• 250g plain flour
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 1 tspn ground ginger
• 1 1/2 tspn baking powder
• 2 eggs beaten
• 75g pecans, roughly chopped
• 3 pieces of crystallised ginger, chopped -I used 9 pieces of glace ginger
• 2 green cooking apples, peeled, chopped into 1cm pieces
• extra butter for greasing

 

Grease and line a 1.5litre loaf tin, using the extra butter.

Put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup in a pan over a medium heat and stir until it is all melted and combined.

 

Stir in the milk and leave to cool.

Now preheat the oven to 180*C. Sift the flour, spices and baking powder together into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the cooled mixture. Mix gently together.

 

Fold in the chopped apple, pecans and ginger.

Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 50 minutes, or until the cake comes away from the sides of the pan and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.

Rest in the tin for 5 minutes and then cool on a rack. Slice and serve. They recommended marscarpone. I like it as is.

Comments

[RoseRed]

I have never really had glade or crystallised ginger - but I do love gingerbread and apples. This sounds like a winner!

[mrspao]

Looks and sounds yummy!

[Jan]

I saw this and forgot about it. Good idea with the glace ginger. It's easier to chop than the crystallised. I love ginger, one of my favourite flavours.

[monica]

YUM!

[Ann]

Looks good. I like recipes like this as it does not require all sorts of gadgets but I am not a fan of ginger. I may omit the ginger.