Ginger cake (also called gingerbread cake) is a moist, richly spiced dark loaf cake, perfect with a cuppa. It’s a bit sticky and glossy and an absolute delight. A combination of soft dark sugar, golden syrup and warm sweet fragrant spices make this simple cake so special – gingerbread man flavours in soft and squidgy form.
It keeps well and being non-crumbly is highly transportable - great for picnics and lunch boxes.
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This is the cake I use as one of the (six!) layers in my rhubarb, custard and gingerbread trifles. It is also wonderful served warm as a pudding with custard or ice cream.
20 minutes prep
Forget about some of the usual cake-making hassles. There’s no need to cream butter and sugar. No stand-mixer is required. There’s no need to bring ingredients to room temperature. We use melted butter. With just three bowls (two for wet ingredients, one for dry), a trusty handheld whisk, and a mere 20 minutes of your time to get it in the oven, you'll be on your way to ginger cake heaven. If you do a bit of baking, you’ve probably already got the ingredients. We need pantry staples, including the convenience of dried ground ginger – it's as easy as that.
You haven't made a mistake!
The batter is very liquid. This is part of the reason why the cake ends up so moist (sorry, but it is the best word here) 😊 The batter for other sweet treats such as banana cake and sticky date pudding are very wet too. These are also delicious for being soft and squidgy. A relatively low heat and long cook time help stop the cake from getting dry and crisp around the edges.
Honestly, don't use a stand-mixer
My initial attempts to make ginger cake involved a stand mixer, but I quickly discovered that less is more. Use of the mixer did not make this recipe easier, quicker or better. The batter is very loose, and we want to limit working it to incorporate the ingredients. Like buttermilk pancake batter, it doesn’t even matter if the mix is a bit lumpy when it goes in the oven. If you use a stand mixer, you’ll spend more time stopping and scraping thicker batter from the beater and base of the stand mixer bowl than you’ll save in mixing. Skip it.
😅 The hardest thing about this recipe
Give the ginger cake time to mature after baking, and it will reward you with by becoming even more tasty and sticky. It will keep for up to a couple of weeks if well covered at room temperature. If you still have leftovers (and I don’t think you will!), it freezes like a dream too!
Best served thickly sliced, with or without a generous slather of butter and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. You’ll get 12 generous slices from this loaf.
This recipe comes from New Zealand chef Al Brown. I first discovered it in Josh Emmett’s excellent cookbook ‘The Recipe’.
🥘 Ingredients
Soft dark brown sugar/muscovado – this damp and dense unrefined sugar still retains its natural molasses content. It has more moisture, colour, and complex flavour than normal brown sugar. It’s not simply sweet.
Nutmeg - whole nutmeg is an absolute bugger to grate. They look and feel like tiny smooth oval bits of wood. Grate on the smallest holes of a box grater. I recommend you do yourself a favour - save your knuckles (and patience) and invest in a nutmeg grinder. These are nifty little gadgets! Just put a whole nutmeg inside and crank the handle. The easiest way to measure it out is to grate onto a sheet of paper. This can then be folded to create a chute to easily pour the gratings into a measuring spoon.
Mixed Spice – this is a blend of sweet spices, like the pumpkin pie spice used in the United States. Cinnamon is the dominant flavour. Other sweet spices in mixed spice might include some or all the following: coriander, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cassia and clove. If you don’t have/can’t find mixed spice, don’t worry. Add a touch more ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon (or leave out entirely).
Golden Syrup- is a thick, amber-coloured form of liquid sugar. It has an appearance and consistency like honey but has a more neutral sweet flavour. I’m aware that golden syrup is not readily available in the US. I haven’t tried any alternatives but check out this link for substitution suggestions.
🔪 Instructions
We get the ingredients combined in three bowls – melted butter and sugar in one, dry ingredients in another, and eggs with milk in the third.
Tips for weighing golden syrup
- Do yourself a favour and buy it in the squeezy bottle if you can. That way you can squeeze it out and weigh it directly in the bowl. This is an (another) advantage of measuring by weight rather than volume.
- If you’ve got it in a tin or bottle, do as above (but it's a little harder to be exact).
- If you do want to weigh it first in another bowl, line whatever you’re pouring it into with a thin coating of oil (spray or wipe it on) to help the syrup pour out easily.
Why should I sieve the dry ingredients?
This helps to incorporate air. It also helps get rid of bigger bits of nutmeg that might have broken off.
Make sure the melted butter mix is not hot when adding the eggs to it. We can limit the risk of scrambling the eggs by combining the two slowly. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and pour into a prepared large loaf pan. Some lumps will not affect the finished result. You can even see some in the photo below 😉
Bake in a moderate oven for around 1 hour 20 minutes, until a skewer inserted through the middle pulls out cleanly with no raw batter attached.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- butter (for greasing)
- 225 g unsalted butter
- 335 g golden syrup
- 300 g plain flour
- Teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- Teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ Tablespoons ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon mixed spice
- ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
- Teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 200 g soft dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 250 ml milk
Instructions
- Preheat Oven - to 150°C
- Prepare Pan - grease loaf tin with butter and line across two opposite sides and the base with baking paper.butter
- Butter & Syrup - weigh the syrup and butter directly into a measuring jug/bowl and melt in the microwave. Allow to cool down a little while you get the dry ingredients ready.335 g golden syrup225 g unsalted butter
- Dry Ingredients – sieve straight into a large bowl, big enough to take all the ingredients.300 g plain flourTeaspoon bicarbonate of sodaTeaspoon baking powder1 ½ Tablespoons ground ginger½ teaspoon mixed spice½ teaspoon grated nutmegTeaspoon ground cinnamon200 g soft dark brown sugar
- Wet Ingredients – lightly whisk the eggs in a bowl and add the milk. Slowly pour this into the cooled butter & syrup mix and stir well to combine.2 eggs250 ml milk
- Combine Wet & Dry – set the bowl with the dry ingredients on a tea towel on the work surface to stop it moving around. Make a well in the centre. Pour in the wet ingredients. Working from the inside out, use a hand whisk to gradually incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet. This method will help limit lumps in the batter.
- Bake – pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin. Bake for about 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Cool & Store - allow to cool in the tin before lifting out. Wrap closely in baking paper, then foil. Keep in a cool, dry place (not the fridge) for up to a few days before serving.
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