PRESERVED GINGER CAKE WITH LEMON ICING

PRESERVED GINGER CAKE WITH LEMON ICING

 This old Delia recipe was one of my Mum’s favourites.

She added 1oz of ground almonds (this was in the original recipe) but with a nut-allergic daughter I avoided them, and truthfully I think now that I actually prefer it without. I like it made in a square lasagne dish, or an 8inch round cake tin, as it’s a really substantial size of a cake.  I’ve brought this into work a couple of times and it’s always been a success.

 

One Christmas I never got around to making a Christmas cake, so me and my daughter made this really quickly on Christmas Eve and decorated it as you see above. It’s the first Christmas  cake of mine that never made it to New Year’s Eve!

As you can see from the pictures above, it’s a cake for all seasons – I make the same cake, and just change the decorations – what a fraud I am –  and now you know all my guilty secrets!

 EQUIPMENT:

• I use either a 12inch square lasagne dish or an 8inch circular tin, (both work very well) greased, and lined with baking parchment.
• Electric mixer
• A tablespoon
• A spatula

INGREDIENTS:

• 175g butter
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 225g Self-raising flour
• 2 tsp/10g ground ginger
• 2 tbsp./30mls ginger syrup (from the jar of preserved stem ginger – I buy mine in Sainsbury’s)
• 2 tablespoons of Black Treacle – use a buttered spoon to make it easier to transfer it from the tin to the bowl
• 2 tbsp./30mls milk
• 4-5 pieces of the preserved ginger, chopped

For the icing: The icing is optional, by the way, but we love it!

• 6oz/175g of sifted Icing sugar
• Juice of a lemon (you won’t need it all)

METHOD:

• Grease and line your chosen dish with baking parchment.
• Heat the oven to 160° fan.
• Put everything in the ingredients list, except the chopped ginger, into the bowl of your mixer and beat together until it’s all well combined. The treacle sometimes sticks to the bottom of the bowl, but just use a spatula to incorporate it.
• Gently fold in the chopped ginger.
• Pour into the prepared dish and bake for about 50 minutes or until the sides start to come away from the edge and the top bounces back when pressed gently.
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and allow to cool completely.

 When the cake is fully cold, make the icing –

• Left un-iced, I really like it with a bit of butter – just saying! 😉
• Sift the icing sugar into a bowl,
• Then add the lemon juice little by little until it reaches a firm consistency.
• Pour over the cake and use a warmed flat-bladed knife (see NOTES below) to spread it to the edges.
• Decorate with some more chopped preserved ginger or anything else you fancy – Christmas, Easter or birthday decorations, for example 😉 – whatever the season calls for!
• Allow to set and then serve.
• The picture below shows this brilliant cake wearing a summer coat!!

NOTES:

• It’s really easy to warm the knife to help spread the icing – simply fill a mug with hot or boiling water, set the blade of the knife in, then wipe it dry when you want to spread the icing. The warm knife spreads the icing like butter!