ginger cake

Autumn is well and truly here and the weather is gorgeous! So gorgeous that I want to bottle it and splash it around like a favourite perfume on days when things are not so perfect.

But I think all who live in this part of the world agree that, weather-wise, we are well and truly spoilt. The days are sunny and warm, the air clear and clean, the skies azure blue. I feel like doing a twirl just to celebrate the beauty of it all!

But autumn also means cool, crisp evenings, starry starry nights - and ginger cake. Sticky, spicy, fragrant, moreish ginger cake that gets better and better as the days pass. Not that it lasts that long. But it's special and just about the best thing to eat on an autumn evening either with lashings of tea or surrounded by a moat of hot, vanilla custard. My ginger cake contains Guinness beer, black treacle and minced, fresh ginger which I think is superior in a ginger cake to the ground, powder form. And sometimes I like to add stem ginger pieces - glacéd nuggets of ginger, like topaz-coloured sea glass, to be discovered in every slice. Mmmmmm!