Dark Jamaican ginger cake

All ginger cakes are moist, but this one has to be the darkest, juiciest, tastiest most fragrant of them all! Two things attracted me to the recipe: firstly, the inclusion of evaporated milk and, secondly, the use of fresh grated ginger. When you grate ginger it seems to produce so much juice that I recommend grating into a bowl so you can capture all of this for your cake.

The CCM (Caked Crusader’s Ma) has a passion for ginger. Oddly, it can never be too hot for her. I say “oddly” because she doesn’t like spicy food – no chilli or peppers for her but, put a ginger cake in front of her and she can take it as strong as you like, usually commenting “I could’ve done with it a bit hotter”. So I’ve really stoked this one up! The original recipe only used fresh grated ginger but I have added some ground ginger too. If your tastebuds are more delicate then probably leave the ground ginger out. (Unsurprisingly, the CCM claimed she could have taken it hotter. Curses!)

You have to wonder about the great food discoveries in history. Ginger is a good example – I mean, who was the first person to look at this and think “yum, that looks tasty”?


This cake can be made either with or without the icing. Personally, I love the sweet white icing taking the heat out of the ginger – it’s a perfect combination.


One thing I did learn making this: as it is so squidgy and moist, I find that ginger cake sometimes sinks a little on cooling. It happened to me with this cake:


When the cake was still warm I turned it out of the tin and inverted it to cool – this was how I served the cake so the sunken bit was out of sight:


On cutting the cake the next day – lo and behold – the sunken bit had corrected itself. It must have been because I inverted it while it was still cooling. See, no sunken bit:


Ingredients:
225g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons ground ginger (optional)
225g unsalted butter
125g light brown sugar
2 tablespoons peeled and grated fresh root ginger
125ml evaporated milk
125g black treacle (or molasses)
2 eggs

Optional: white glace icing
125g icing sugar
2-3 tablespoons water (start with 2 – you can always add more)

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line a 900g loaf tin.
- Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, allspice nutmeg and the (optional) ground ginger into a bowl and mix together.
- Beat in the butter until well combined.
- Beat in the sugar and the grated ginger. Put to one side.
- Put the evaporated milk and black treacle into a saucepan and heat gently until the two have combined. Don’t wander off as the mixture shouldn’t be allowed to bubble. At first the liquids will stay separate even though you are stirring them and then, in an instant, they combine.
- Remove from the heat and pour into the cake mix. Stir until well combined.
- Beat in the eggs. The batter will be runny(ish) but don’t worry – ginger cake mix is always thinner than other cakes and this is what gives such a lovely moist cake.
- Pour the batter into the tin and bake for approximately 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly. Mine took exactly 50 minutes.
- Leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes as ginger cakes are particularly fragile on coming out of the oven. As they are so moist, ginger cakes do tend to sink a little on cooling. If this bothers you, invert the cake when you turn out onto the wire rack and no one will know! Leave to cool totally on a wire rack.
- If you decide to make an icing simply mix together the icing sugar and water and add more water if required. You are aiming for a thick, glossy consistency that will ooze over the cake but not run off. Spoon over the loaf as desired.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.