Fresh ginger cake

Andrea's birthday today.  Decided to make a cake to bring to lab tomorrow.  Last year she had ginger cake (not made by me), so I decided to make a ginger cake.  Had my eye on this recipe.

115g piece fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced (4oz)
250ml golden syrup (1 cup mild molasses)
200g sugar (1 cup)
250ml vegetable oil (1 cup)
350g plain flour (2 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
250ml water (1 cup)
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 6 tbsp hot water

icing sugar, lemon juice and crystallised ginger to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F.  Grease the bottom and sides of a 23cm springform or round cake tin with 5cm sides and line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper.  Chop the ginger until very fine, and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the golden syrup, sugar, and oil.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and pepper

In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil, then stir in the bicarbonate of soda.  Whisk the hot water into the golden syrup mixture, then add the chopped ginger.

Gradually sift the flour mixture over the golden syrup mixture, whisking to combine. Add the eggs and whisk until thoroughly blended.

Scrape the batter into the prepared springform or cake tin and bake until a skewer comes out clean, about 1 hour.  Leave to cool completely.

Run a knife around the sides of the cake to help loosen it from the tin. Invert the cake onto a plate, peel off the parchment paper, then re-invert onto a plate


I followed the recipe really carefully (apart from the egg substitution), as since I am going to share it with many people I wanted to try and avoid disaster.  Even down to tracking down golden syrup in Shaw's (no great hardship: now I can have porridge like it should be).  Then, while waiting for the cake to bake, realised that since the recipe author is American the original recipe was also likely to be American and this a British-ised version.  Yep, the original is here.  So I've added the original quantities above.  Crucially, I was wondering about the absence of treacle / molasses (the cake looked rather light with only golden syrup, and ginger cake without treacle seemed weird), and sure enough the original had molasses in it, and not the golden syrup.  So we'll see how this one tastes, but I think if I make this again it will be with some proportion of molasses.

The cake keeps well for a few days to a week.  I decorated it with water icing made with icing sugar and lemon juice (no water) on top.  I also made some crystallised ginger for decoration: boiled thinly sliced ginger (~200g) in water for 10 min, drained, repeated.  Added a cup of water and a cup of sugar and boiled til the consistency of thin honey.  Cooled a touch, then fished out pieces of ginger, spread on paper on a baking sheet and put in warm dry place overnight.  This kind of worked.  The sugar solution went a bit hard when it cooled, but the bits I'd spread out were OK, and looked quite nice when arranged.