This is a favorite with Emma, my mate Derk, my ma-in-law Lynne, my nephew Oscar and my daughter-in-law Cordie.
I make this regularly, it’s become a lockdown staple. It makes the house smell amazing, especially when I was making 5 in one morning.
The ingredients required for this family favorite are as follows:
175g Plain flour
75g margarine or butter (I use margarine but not the cheap stuff).
75g dark brown sugar.
75g black treacle.
75g golden syrup.
1 pinch of salt.
1/2 teaspoon of bicarb.
2 tablespoons of milk.
75ml of water.
2 tablespoon of ground ginger.
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon.
1/2 a freshly grated nutmeg. If no fresh then half a teaspoon of ground but fresh is best.
1 fresh, free-range egg, lightly whisked.
1 loaf tin liner (2lb loaf tin)
Method.
Heat your oven to 180c or 350 if you have Fahrenheit, gas mark 4.
Take a loaf tin liner and place it the tin ready.
Over a large bowl place a fine-mesh sieve.
Weigh out the dry ingredients. Firstly the flour, the spices and the bicarb.
If your scales allow it then place a saucepan on them ready for the wet ingredients. Add the fat, the sugar, the treacle, the syrup and lastly the pinch of salt to the pan.
Once the weights are correct and in the pan, put on low to medium heat under the pan. Stir the contents and watch to ensure they melt but don’t boil. Just before they are fully melted, I add the 75ml of water and bring that up to heat again. Once fully melted, I take the mixture off the stove and allow it to sit.
Take the beaten egg and mix it with the milk.
Now that everything is measured, melted and mixed, we are ready to get physical !!
Pour the melted sugary mixture into the dry ingredients and using either a whisk or a spatula mix everything together very vigorously.
Once this is completely mixed together, add the milk and egg and again vigorously beat them together.
This looks like it has split but trust me it just needs convincing to come together. It has to be done quickly as the hot mixture might produce ginger scrambled eggs and that is not what we are looking for…not what anybody is looking for.
Once we are happy with this mixture and sure we are all mixed together properly then pour the mixture into the loaf tin liner.
Place the tin in the pre-heated oven on the middle shelf. Set your timer for 1 1/4 hrs or 75 minutes if that is easier. Check the cake with around 10 minutes left as ovens vary so rather safe than sorry.
Once we are happy with the cake then take it out and place it, still in the tin, on a wire rack. At this point, I add more calories as all that sugar and syrup isn’t enough.
I take 2 tablespoons of icing sugar and add a teaspoon of boiling water to create a thin glaze. I brush this over the cake whilst still warm and it creates a shiny and thin crust. I then place the cake back in the oven to cool off whilst the oven cools off, maybe even crack the oven door open to speed this up.
This can be eaten when cooled but I tend to leave a while and serve with custard. I like cold cake and cold custard, Emma likes warm cake and warm custard.