How To Make A Gingerbread Cake

Today, we are going to be making ginger cake. Our ingredients are 250 milliliters of water, 200 grams of crystallized ginger, 40 grams of butter, 160 grams of dark brown sugar, three eggs, 250 grams of self-raising flower, one teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate, one teaspoon of baking powder, and two teaspoons of powdered, ground ginger. Firstly, we are going to take our mixing bowl.

We are going to put in our dark brown sugar and our three eggs. Make sure that when you put your eggs in, you put them in one at a time just in case there is any blood in the eggs. Then, we are going to put this on a mixing machine with our whisk attachment.

We are going to whisk it on high speed until it has doubled in volume. Now that our eggs have doubled in volume and they should be nice and light, we switch off our machine and leave that to stand while we prepare the rest of our ingredients. We take our water, our butter, and our chopped stem ginger and we can pop these in the microwave on a medium heat for about two minutes.

We just heat that up. While that is heating up, we can sift our flour, our bicarbonate, our baking powder, and our ginger. When I'm sieving, I always like to use a travel sift and a large piece of greaseproof paper to make sure that I'm keeping it all nice and neat and that it is easy for me to transfer the flour into the mixing bowl when the time is right.

Pop all of our dry ingredients in together and give this a good sift. Now, this is finishing off heating up, I'm going to take our whisked eggs and sugar and now, I'm going to fold the flour in to the eggs. As you can see, using the big grease proof piece of paper is nice and easy to pour into the bowl.

Now, before we start to fold that through, we need to have everything ready and prepared. Here, I've got a nine inch square cake tin, which I have lined with grease proof paper. Also, I've got my ginger, butter, and water mix that is heated up.

Like I said, it is very important that you have everything ready before you actually start mixing, and I will explain why in a second. I am folding through the flour into the egg mix in nice large motions around the edge of the bowl and cutting through the middle. Now that that is incorporated, I am going to add the water, butter and ginger mix.

The reason why you have to have everything ready is because as soon as I add this hot water, it is going to react with the sodium bicarbonate which adds all the air. It traps all the air inside it. If you were to do it too early, all of the air would escape and change the texture of the cake when finished.

Straight away, pour it into our lined tin and spread out evenly, making sure that the crystallized ginger is spread evenly throughout the cake. This can go into the oven at 160 degrees for half an hour. I am going to prepare the ginger syrup to go on top.

In a small sauce pan add 40 grams of butter, 150 mils of double cream, 150 grams of dark brown sugar, and a teaspoon of ground ginger. Put this on the stove, on a medium heat, until it comes to a boil. I am going to check on the ginger cake now.

As you can see, it is nice and cooked, nice and firm and springy to the touch. Also, insert a knife. It comes out nice and clean.

What I am going to do is actually prick it all over so that when we pour our ginger toffee sauce on it, the cake will absorb it all. I am going to take our sauce and pour it all over the cake. Now, I am going to use the back of the spoon just to help it absorb into the cake.

It is fine to have some of the sauce left on the top like that. Then we are going to pop it back in the oven for ten more minutes. Take it out of the tin.

If it is sticking around the sides where the sauce is, just give it the knife. Personally, I don't think you need anything else. Just cut straight into it.

It is lovely to serve warm with custard to just eat as is. That is how you make ginger cake. .