I had a piece of home made ginger cake in my lunch box. I cooked it on Wednesday for Thursday evening's beekeeping meeting, since we'd decided to serve cakes to sweeten the pill of a lecture on beekeeping examinations (I did up to Module 5, before deciding I'd done enough exams for one lifetime). It was a large cake, and I wasn't anticipating a massive turnout, but told myself that I could donate the surplus to my colleagues. Then I ate a piece on Friday when I came in from gardening, and it was so nice that I decided that I'd keep it until after the weekend, so that I could have a slice myself each day, and they could have the last bit. And by now what's left looks too small to be anything but a stingy gift. And I want it. A slice of that with a cup of tea, coming in at dusk after a hard day spreading mushroom compost, is just the thing to tide you over until supper.
It is out of a book called Cakes: regional and traditional, by Julie Duff. It has been around for a while, and is published by Grub Street Press. I don't actually remember why I bought it. Obviously, I must have had a reason to, but it can't have been on the basis of a rave review in the papers, as it's not a new title. Maybe it bobbed up as an Amazon recommendation, and had good reader reviews. Or maybe I got it on the strength of Grub Street being good specialist food publishers, and me being interested in cake. Julie Duff is well qualified to write a book on cakes, as the jacket blurb says that she runs an award-winning cake business, but she has not been in the Great British Bake Off (which I don't watch. Just because I like making cakes doesn't mean I want to watch other people do it. In a tent). Nor has she got her own TV series, and as far as I know she is not a former model. Cakes was shortlisted for the Glenfiddich Prize, without actually winning it, and that's as far as it goes.
Anyway, it has a whole chapter on gingerbreads and ginger cakes. Julie Duff says in her introductory remarks that she is sorry not to include more ginger recipes (only thirteen) when it is a subject which could warrant a whole book. I'd buy it, if she wrote it. I went with Lancashire Gingerbread, because I wanted a big sticky cake, not a biscuit, and was too mean to use a recipe requiring a whole eight ounces of honey, since honey is subtle as well as valuable stuff, and easily masked by the flavour of ginger.
Lancashire gingerbread contains a vast amount of black treacle, plus golden syrup, plus muscovado sugar. It has sultanas, mixed peel and marmalade. It comes out very dark, very rich and very gingery, and like all ginger cakes the flavour improves with keeping, so that it is better now than it was on Thursday. I will give you the quantities presently, and my one tip is to make sure you stir the mixture extremely well. I was brought up to not over-beat cake mixtures, lest they rise too much in the middle, and my Lancashire gingerbread came out with a small amount of white speckling where the flour was still visible and not fully mixed. Be brave, stir it more than you would a normal cake.
You need to sieve 450 grammes of plain flour with two heaped teaspoons of ginger, one teaspoon of ground cinnamon, one of mixed spice, and one level teaspoon of bicarb. Stir the sultanas and peel into the flour. Melt together 225 grammes of butter (I said it was rich), 350 grammes (truly) of black treacle, 225 grammes of dark muscovado sugar, 115 grammes of golden syrup, 150 millilitres of milk, and a tablespoon of marmalade. Cool the mixture and stir in three large beaten eggs. Add the sweet goop from the saucepan to the flour, beat it thoroughly with a wooden spoon (she does warn you), and cook in a lined 23 centimetre square tin for around an hour and a quarter at 180 C. I put a rack on the floor of the bottom warm oven of a four door Aga and stood the cake on that, with a solid shelf on the middle rungs to protect the cake from overhead heat, and the cake took a little over the one and a quarter hour mark, and cooked all the way through without the outsides burning first. I didn't put greaseproof paper over it or anything. Cool it in the tin. It is a delicious cake, and it keeps for days. Definitely five stars.
Addendum Work was cr*p. That's why I'm writing about cake.
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