If you like the crisp edges of lasagne, the soaked croutons, the whipped cream that gets icy around the chocolate scoop - you’re in the right place.
Hi everyone. I hope you’ve been enjoying the freezing weather and all the opportunities it brings to ‘warm up.’ The ginger cake I’m sharing this week will give you a reason to embrace the cold walk home from the subway, turning it into an excuse to revive yourself on the other side. This isn’t ginger cake like you know it. It’s dense, chewy, and dramatic—something you’d expect to find in the Shire, being baked to fuel an odyssey.
It comes from a tradition of British cakes that suit British weather. The cake’s lineage is Constance Spry’s Belvoir cake—one of 12 ginger cakes in her 1956 book English Cookery—which she designed to warm and to last.
All of the ingredients I’ve chosen support that intention, too, but my version is more ferocious, befitting a New England winter. Three kinds of ginger—dry, candied and fresh—deliver three layers of heat. A jar and a half of molasses and a scant amount of raising agent make sure the cake won’t disintegrate when you travel with a square in your coat pocket, or when a scoop of ice cream melts on top.
The closed texture that keeps it from going stale also makes it ideal for Sundaes. Rather than crumbling and sogging like cake, it becomes brownie-like with a scoop. Eat this cake as it is, all week long, or right out of the oven with vanilla ice cream and marmalade warmed with whiskey poured on top.
Warming up
CHEWY GINGER CAKE
Consider this recipe a practical treasure for the month of December. Bake it as a gift, bake it for yourself, or bake it as the base of a celebratory sundae.
Makes a 13” x 9” cake
4 cups (480g) AP flour
1 tsp salt, Kosher
1 tbsp ground ginger
8 tbsp (½ cup, 112g or 1 stick) butter, unsalted
½ cup (100g) neutral oil, like canola
13⁄4 cups (550g) molasses (not blackstrap) or treacle
1 cup (213g) dark brown sugar
⅓ cup (75g) crystalized ginger, chopped into pea-sized pieces
2 tbsp (24g) fresh ginger, finely grated
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
Heat the oven to 325 F. Butter and line a 9” x 13” tin with parchment paper.
In a large bowl combine the flour, ground ginger, and salt.
In a large (larger than you think you’ll need) saucepan over low heat, warm the butter, oil, brown sugar, crystallized ginger pieces, fresh ginger, and molasses until the butter just melts and the sugar has dissolved.
Add the baking soda to this mixture and whisk until it begins to foam. When the mixture has a frothy head, pour it into the dry ingredients. Whisk just enough to combine. Add the milk and then the eggs, whisking until the batter is uniform.
Pour the batter into the lined tin and bake without moving it for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top has set and feels like memory foam when you press its center.
EAT WITH tea or coffee, or vanilla ice cream and marmalade warmed with a few shots of whiskey.
KEEPS in an airtight container for up to ten days.
Oh my gosh thank you for catching this! 1 cup brown sugar. I have made a correction to the recipe!
Can't wait to try this – is the dark brown sugar meant to be 2 cups? Curious because 213 grams would suggest 1 cup...