Sticky Ginger Spice Cake

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The single best thing about winter is all of the awesome comfort food you get to indulge in guilt free, at least until the start of spring! If you’ve been reading for a while, you may remember how much I love sticky date pudding. I’ve made it so many times i think it deserves to have its own category in my recipe index! Its something I make at least once every winter, topped with ice cream and cascading with warm butterscotch sauce.

But this year I’m taking a different route with this delicious ginger cake. I have been wanting to make it ever since I saw it on Jamie Oliver magazine a year or two ago. I finally found the required stem ginger in syrup in the David Jones Food Hall one day while browsing for something completely different and snapped it up.

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The cake is super easy to make either in the food processor or a stand mixer. Of course I added a few extra spices to the mix because its my spicy blog birthday week, but feel free to stick to ginger if you prefer. Jamie suggests dousing the cake in rum once it’s baked I added some to the batter instead.

The cake turned out a little differently to how I thought – a little less sticky and syrupy and more like a pudding, which is why ice cream and butterscotch sauce were my go-to accompaniments, but its also lovely as an afternoon tea cake completely unadorned, or topped with jam. And with a discovery as tasty as this, my old favourite sticky date might be on the back burner for a while…

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Sticky Double Ginger Cake
Adapted from Jamie Oliver
Serves 8-10

It’s easy to make this cake in a food processor but if you’re doing it by hand you’ll need to chop your ginger very finely and make sure you cream your sugars and butter very well.

• 8 pieces of stem ginger in syrup, drained, reserving 4 tbsp syrup
• 150g butter
• 200g golden syrup
• 100g brown sugar
• 250g self raising flour
• 1 tablespoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 easpoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons rum
• 2 eggs
• 200ml milk
• 100g raw sugar

Caramel Sauce
• 1 cup (250ml) pouring cream
• 60g butter
• 1 cup brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). In a food processor, pulse the pieces of stem ginger until roughly chopped. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside. Next throw in the butter, golden syrup, brown sugar and 4 tablespoons of ginger syrup. Blitz until pale and creamy, then add the flour and spices and blitz again. Add the vanilla, rum, eggs, milk and whiz it all up once more.

Pour the cake mixture into the bowl with the chopped ginger and mix well. Grease and line a 20cm-round loose-bottomed cake tin or a loaf pan measuring 20x10cm with baking paper.

Pour in your cake mixture, sprinkle over the raw sugar and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Check it at 50 minutes; it may need up to 20 minutes more, depending on your oven. If the cake is browning too much, cover the top with foil. When cooked, remove from the oven and let stand in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling before cutting.

To make the caramel sauce, place the cream, butter and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to high, bring to the boil and cook for 5–7 minutes or until thickened. Set aside and allow to cool.

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