This is a lovely recipe for a Honey Ginger Cake – with Stem Ginger. So it has lots of honey in the cake batter. The ginger flavour is from two sources, ground ginger and grated stem ginger. The combination of honey and ginger works so well together.
The recipe is one I found on Baking Mad. That is a site that has a number of recipes which specify specific brands of various ingredients. For my version though I used whatever brands of those ingredients that I had on hand. So my version has minor adaptations to account for that.
It is actually a very simple recipe which takes less than an hour from start to taking it out of the oven. Most of the ingredients are the staples you might have in your cupboard already. But the stem ginger may be an extra purchase. So let’s look at the ingredients:
Ingredients
Honey – I find runny honey is the best, measuring purposes.
Self Raising Flour – This is common in the UK. But you can use plain/all purpose flour and add some baking powder to make your own version of Self Raising Flour.
Butter – Unsalted butter, it can be straight from the fridge since we melt it with honey and sugar.
Dark Brown Sugar – the original recipe specifies Dark Muscovado Sugar, but simple dark will be fine.
Eggs – Medium in the UK and large in the USA.
Ground Ginger – you can adjust the amount to suit your tastes.
Stem Ginger – grate this before adding to the recipe. You can also chop it very finely if you prefer.
Process for Honey Ginger Cake
The process is very easy indeed.
Simply melt the butter, sugar and most of the honey in a saucepan, and boil for a minute.
Sift the flour and ginger together into a large bowl and stir in the grated stem ginger.
When the hot honey mixture is cool beat in the eggs and stir that into the dry mixture until smooth.
Pour the batter into an 8 inch/20 cm square pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack and brush warm honey over the top, then allow the cake to cool.
My Cake
After 25 minutes a test confirmed the cake wasn’t quite done. So left it for a further 5 minutes, by which time another test was successful. I took the cake out of the oven and then out of the tin. Then I put it on a rack to start cooling. I brushed more honey over the top of the cake and left it to cool. Once the cake was cool I gave it another brush with some honey.
I cut myself a piece of the cake to taste. I must say it was very good indeed. The texture was so light and soft. The flavour of the sweet honey with the spicy ginger was simply wonderful.
This is a great cake to enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee. But it is also perfect to serve as a dessert, in larger portions, with some custard or ice-cream.
Another recipe with ginger is Gingernuts – Crunchy Ginger Biscuits.
Honey Ginger Cake – with Stem Ginger
10
servings20
minutes30
minutesKeep the screen of your device on
Ingredients
160g(7 1/2 tbsp) honey
200g(1 1/3 cups, based on scooping packed flour into 250ml cup) self raising flour – see note below for plain flour
150g(10 tbsp + 2 tsp) unsalted butter
2 medium eggs(large in USA)
60g(1/4 tbsp + 2 tsp) dark brown sugar
50g( 1 3/4 oz – 3 balls) stem ginger, dried and grated
4g(1 1/2 tsp) ground ginger
63g(3 tbsp) honey, for brushing over the top
Directions
- Grease and line an 8 inch/20cm square cake pan (or a 9 inch/23cm round pan).
- Place the butter, 160g honey and the sugar into a saucepan and place on the stove top.
- Heat the pan, stirring, until the butter and sugar dissolves then allow the mixture to boil for about a minute.
- Leave the mixture to cool until just warm.
- Sift the flour and ground ginger into a large bowl.
- Stir in the grated stem ginger until distributed throughout.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F.
- Beat the eggs into the honey mixture and pour that into the bowl with the flour in.
- Stir the mixture until the batter is smooth, apart from little pieces of grated ginger.
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and shake it a little to level it.
- Bake the cake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until it rises well and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the oven and transfer it to a wire rack.
- Warm the remaining honey and brush about 1/2 over the top of the hot cake.
- Leave the cake to cool and then brush more honey over the top.
Notes
- To use plain flour, instead of self raising flour, use the same amount and add 10.5 grams(2 2/3 tsp) of baking powder then mix thoughly.