Dark Damp Ginger Cake

This has been on my mind all week.

Not this exact cake but the sticky spicy Jamaica Ginger cake of my childhood. Sunday night after Sunday night my mam would wheel slices of it in on our rickety little tea trolley (always in between Where in the World and Glenroe) and we would eat it in front of the roasting fire with our mugs of hot orange tea. It must have been something to do with the miserable weather we have been having and me craving it's comfort factor but I have been wanting ginger cake big time.

This BBC Good Food recipe  seemed a good place to start, promising moistness and stickiness. I halved the recipe again and ended up with the perfect amount of batter for this 8 inch round as well as two small loaf cakes. However, I found that when I had brushed the hot cakes with the syrup, I had none left for the glaze in the recipe and so instead made up a simple orange icing for the large cake with icing sugar and orange juice.

I wanted a total ginger hit so replaced the All-Spice with more powdered ginger. A full jar of stem ginger including the syrup also went into the cakes.

The result is a super moist and soft cake with an intense ginger hit. This is a much more grown up flavour than I remember Jamaica Ginger to have, probably due to the Muscavado sugar and treacle but it was just as comforting for me tonight.  It's damp and gingery and gorgeous. A keeper.