It's a Mary Berry recipe called "mild ginger loaf" from her "Fast Cakes" cook book, and I baked it in my small oblong roasting tin rather than a loaf tin. This produces a slightly flatter cake rather than a tall loaf.
The recipe calls for 50g stem ginger and there were just two balls of it left in the jar in the fridge. On weighing it out, 50g turned out to be just 1½ balls so I decided to use the last half of the last ball, along with some of the syrup from the jar, for icing and decoration.
Nick declared the cake a hit. It was certainly delicately spiced and with a lovely, even crumb. Definitely a good one for when it's blowing a hoolie and you need an easy to bake, easy to eat, cake to go with your tea or coffee. I intended to use the last pieces as a pudding with some custard but when I looked in the tin, they had already gone........funny that!
Ingredients
For the cake
100g baking spread (I used Stork)
100g light muscovado sugar
2 tblsp black treacle
225g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
50g stem ginger, drained and chopped
2 large eggs
For the icing
½ a ball of stem ginger, diced
3 heaped tblsp icing sugar, sieved
ginger syrup from the jar
Method
After chopping the 50g (1½ balls) of stem ginger, preheat the oven to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (or small roasting tin) or use a paper liner.
Put the baking spread, sugar and treacle into a medium pan and heat gently until melted.
Put all the other dry ingredients into a medium bowl and stir together. Add the melted mixter, the chopped ginger and eggs and beat well until thoroughly blended.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake until done, about 45 minutes.
Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
To make the icing, put the icing sugar into a small bowl and mix in enough ginger syrup from the jar to make the consistency of double cream. Slather or drizzle this over the cooled cake as you prefer and dot with diced bits of the remaining piece of ginger.
Cuts into 8 - 10 squares or slices.