The Healing Power of Cake.

My 11 year old daughter has just started secondary school and each day, with a huge amount of trepidation on my part, she takes the bus on her own to school. So I was actually quite relieved when she was off school a couple of days ago with a sore throat and temperature as this was an opportunity to have her at home all day and not have to worry about a thing, because rather selfishly perhaps, I still need to feel like she's my little girl who needs her Mummy.
So as I was making her favourite cold remedy hot drink with freshly squeezed lemon, grated ginger and loads of honey, I thought it would be a great idea to put all of those ingredients into a cake. What could be better than having a sweet treat and also feeling like it's doing you some good at the same time.

The cakes turned out really well. I decided on heart shaped mini cakes, because when you're feeling unwell, not only do you need a healing treat, you also need to know that you are loved.

Here is the recipe: (I decided on a basic sponge recipe, but substituted some of the sugar with honey, and added the fresh lemon and grated ginger also.)
8 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 or 3 tablespoons of honey( depending on how sweet you like things..)
4 eggs
Juice and zest of one and a half lemons (or one large lemon perhaps)
Fresh ginger (about thumbsize), peeled and grated. (you could use a bit more than that if you like a really strong ginger hit.)
One teaspoon ground ginger
8 oz self-raising flour. (maybe you could add half a teaspoon of baking powder also, because my cakes didn't really rise that well.)

Well I guess as for instructions, just mix the whole lot together, in the way that you would for any other cake, and stick it in the oven, in a cake tin, or individual ones, and bake for about half an hour at 180 degrees C.
For the topping, I used buttercream with lemon juice and zest.

Anyway, here are some more photos of my marvellous and delicious healing cakes. They worked, a little too well I should say, because she was back at school the next day and I'm back to being a nervous wreck!