No 17 - Ginger Cake

Ginger Cake

Sunday this week was spent in a classroom.  I’d planned this some weeks ago so I knew that I had to do my baking on Saturday night if I was doing any this week.  It also meant the poor cake was going to be dragged about in a box in my backpack on Sunday which potentially was not going to do it any favours.  It was going to have to be a fairly solid cake and I decided on a Ginger cake.  This recipe came off the internet a few years back after a colleague had complained that my cakes inevitably had either fruit or chocolate – neither of which she was prepared to eat – and why didn’t I make a nice ginger cake instead.

So I did, and I used this recipe, and it was voted a great cake and it was only in sharing the recipe that I realized that I’d left out the leavening.  I never have self-raising flour about as very few of my recipes require it so I just make up my own.  On that occasion I’d forgotten to add leavening and only realized when I was copying the recipe out.  Oops!  Still no one noticed and the cake was voted pretty damned good actually.

Ginger Cake

225g (8 oz)self-raising flour

175g (6 oz) butter

175g (6 oz) caster sugar

4-6 pieces preserved stem ginger in syrup, chopped

3 large eggs

2 TB ginger syrup (from the jar)

2 Tb milk

1 TB black syrup (treacle)

1 Tb ground almonds

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

Pre-heat oven to 170C.

Grease and line a 15 x 25 cm tin (6" x 10")

Cream butter and sugar, add beaten eggs with a little flour.  Fold in the ginger syrup and black syrup.  Gradually add sifted flour and ground ginger.

Fold in the almonds, milk, and grated and chopped ginger.

Bake 40-45 mins.

Suggestion - iced with lemon icing.

Saturday’s ginger cake was a complete disappointment.  I remembered the leavening........ and it came out of the oven collapsed in the middle.  That never happens to me.  Ok it has happened to me once before and it was, now let me see, oh yes it was a ginger cake!  (Different recipe.)  In a phone call home I mentioned to my Mum how disappointed I was with this cake and she remarked that she never makes ginger cake because they always collapsed in the middle.  Now that is strange – either we have a genetic predisposition to messing up ginger cake, or ginger has a weird effect on cake.   I’ve got the answer of course – use a baking tin with a hole in the middle.

Here is another ginger cake recipe I have used.  Apart from the middle being slightly lower than the edges (my first ginger cake ‘disaster’)  it was exactly as described, crisp on top, beautifully light, moist and delicately gingery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/nov/23/foodanddrink.shopping