This is one of my favourite cake recipes. I like it because it looks so modest; the kind of cake that not even the greediest child would bother picking up at a tea party. More fool them.
I got the original recipe from Kylie Kwong’s cookbook, It Taste’s Better. I love the addition of white pepper, which I had never seen before in a cake – it gives it a real kick.
So it gets top marks on the spice front, but the ginger flavour is quite subtle. For this reason, I have made some additions to the original recipe [in parentheses] - extra fresh ginger, some stem ginger and ground ginger too. These suggestions are optional, of course, but I highly recommend them if you really want to taste the ginger.
The cake is huge and takes forever to cook; much longer than the anticipated 45 minutes. I have tried it both in round and square 23cm tins, but in both cases it burns at the edges while you are waiting for the middle to cook. Just accept the inevitable and trim the edges when it’s done.
It’s worth making it ahead of time, as the flavours really develop after a few days.
Ingredients
175g butter
1 cup (220g) muscovado sugar or brown sugar
2 eggs
2cm piece [fresh] ginger, finely grated [I prefer 4cm]
3 cups (450g) unbleached plain flour
¾ cup (270g) golden syrup
½ cup (80g) chopped dates
[4 pieces stem ginger in syrup, chopped]
1 cup (250ml) milk
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 ½ tsp ground mixed spice [all spice]
[1 tsp ground ginger]
2 tsp ground white pepper
3 tsp bicarbonate soda
¼ cup (60ml) hot water
Method
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 23cm square loose-bottomed cake tin with butter and line with baking paper.
Cream together the butter and sugar using an electric mixer. Add eggs one by one, then add [fresh] ginger, blending until the mixture is smooth. Combine with flour, golden syrup, dates, milk, cinnamon, mixed spice, [ground ginger] and pepper in a large bowl and mix well with spatula. Lastly, mix the bicarbonate of soda with the hot water and stir into the cake batter.
Pour cake mixture into prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes [more like 1 hour] or until cooked – a skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean.