ginger cake with salted caramel sauce

ginger cake with salted caramel sauce

• 18 Aug 2016

I love all things ginger especially ginger cake. When I came home from Iceland the cake tin was bare and I was a bit too jet lagged to bake anything complicated. I found this ginger cake recipe from April Bloomfield and this Cider Five Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce recipe from Nigella Lawson and wondered what would happen if I combined the two recipes. This cake is the love child from those 2 recipes topped with some caramel sauce from the lovely Belinda Jeffery's book Mix and Bake.



It's an easy cake to make. You spend more time weighing and measuring the ingredients than you do mixing the cake. I've made the cake twice now, once in a bundt tin and I won't lie when I say it was a struggle to get the cake out from the tin. The second time I made it in a loaf tin lined with baking paper and of course getting that cake from the tin was a breeze.



I upped the ginger quotient so the cake does have a bit of a kick. If you're not so keen on ginger you could reduce the ground ginger by a teaspoon. The cake tastes great as it is or you could top it with a simple lemon icing. Or you could do as I did and serve the cake warm as a dessert topped with some stewed apple, caramel sauce and a dollop of Greek yoghurt. Absolutely delish.



Here's the recipe for you adapted from recipes by April Bloomfield and Nigella Lawson. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional gas oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C. 

Ginger Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce - makes a 16 cm round cake/small loaf or bundt cake.

Cake Ingredients

125 mls ginger beer

125 mls golden syrup or treacle

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1¼ cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 tsp ground ginger

¾ tsp ground cinnamon

pinch ground cloves

pinch salt

⅓ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup (50g) firmly packed brown sugar

3 tsps finely grated fresh ginger

1 large egg

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C°. Grease a small bundt tin or grease and line a 16cm cake tin with baking paper. Set the tin to one side while you prepare the cake.

Warm the ginger beer and golden syrup or treacle in a small saucepan or in the microwave in a microwaveable bowl until the golden syrup melts. Carefully stir in the bicarbonate of soda as the mixture will froth up. Set to one side to let the mixture cool a little.

Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves and salt into a medium size bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the oil, the brown sugar and the grated ginger. Mix in the egg and beat till smooth. Mix a third of the dry ingredients into the egg mixture alternating with the ginger beer mixture until you have added all the flour and liquid, beating as you go to make a smooth batter. Scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl well to make sure there aren’t any pockets of flour.

Pour the batter, which will be quite runny, into the prepared tin. Place in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes if using a bundt tin or approximately 50-55 minutes if you're using a regular cake tin. When the cake is ready, it will start to come away from the sides of the tin and a cake tester should come out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire rack for about 30 minutes before turning out. If you baked a bundt cake, you may have some trouble getting it to release from the tin. You can use your fingers to help prise the cake away from the edges of the tin and turn out. Leave the cake to cool completely before wrapping in baking paper and cling wrap as it tastes best if eaten the following day.

If you like, you can serve this cake with some salted caramel sauce (Belinda Jeffery recipe).

Caramel sauce

½ cup cream
110g firmly packed soft brown sugar
35g caster sugar
30ml maple syrup
30ml golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch sea salt

Method

To make the caramel sauce, put all the ingredients except the sea salt into a smallish, heavy-based saucepan. Sit the pan over high heat and stir the mixture just until the sugar dissolves, then stop stirring and bring it to the boil. Let it bubble rapidly until a sugar thermometer registers 108°C. Take the pan off the heat and leave it to cool for at least 20 minutes then add a pinch of sea salt to balance out the sweetness. You can use the sauce warm, or store it in the fridge in a tightly sealed container for up to 2 weeks. It tends to separate a little when it’s cold, but just give it a good stir and it comes back together. Makes about a cup.

If you'd like to make a large bundt cake or a 8-9 inch cake, double all the cake and the sauce ingredients. The cooking times will remain the same.

See you all again next week with some images from Reykjavik.

Bye for now,

Jillian