Up for a little lazy weekend baking?  

How does a stickily gorgeous double-ginger cake sound?   

This is the perfect recipe to make on a rainy Sunday afternoon, puttering around in the kitchen. There’s not much to it: a smidgen of melting, a teeny-tiny touch of chopping and then a little bit of mixing to finish off - that’s as strenuous as it gets, which suits me just fine on a day off. 

Plus it tastes great - spiked with stem ginger as well as the more usual ground stuff, it’s a plain cake with a slightly luxurious feel to it. I like to nibble away at a slice while slurping a strong cuppa and getting stuck into a good book (cake helps me concentrate) but it would also work beautifully while still warm with a scoop or two of your favourite icecream. Mmmmmmmmm….

And, if you have tremendous willpower, you can wrap the cake up in tin foil and leave it to grow even more wonderfully sticky over a couple of days. But if you have that kind of towering inner strength then you’re a better person than me! 

Have a lovely weekend everyone   

  

Double Ginger Cake from The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

You’ll need:

250g self-raising flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
200g golden syrup
2 tablespoons syrup from the stem ginger jar
125g unsalted butter
3 lumps stem ginger
2 heaped tablespoons sultanas
125g dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs
240ml milk

an 8-inch square tin, lined with parchment/greaseproof paper

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

2. Sift the flour with the ginger, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

3. Put the golden and ginger syrups and the butter into a small saucepan and warm over a low heat. Dice the ginger finely, then add it to the pan, along with the sultanas and sugar. Let the mixture bubble gently for a minute, giving it the occasional stir to stop the fruit sticking to the bottom.

4. Break the eggs into a bowl, pour in the milk and beat gently to break up the egg and mix into the milk.

5. Remove the butter and sugar mixture from the heat and pour into the flour, stirring smoothly and firmly with a large metal spoon. Mix in the milk and eggs. The mixture should be sloppy, with no trace of flour.

6. Scoop the mixture into the lined tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

7. Leave in the tin to cool and then tip it out on to a sheet of greaseproof paper. Wrap it up in foil and, if you can, leave it to mature for a day or two before eating.

Cook’s notes

It took about 10 minutes longer to cook in my oven, which I still haven’t got the full measure of after eight months of using the tricksy thing.

Don’t worry about the stem ginger and sultanas sinking to the bottom of the mix – it’s a very runny batter, so that’s just going to happen. Happily, this makes for a extra sticky, super ginger layer at the bottom of the cake, which is extremely tasty, so you can lie sweetly and claim it’s meant to be like that.