Baking for Nightshift- Stem Ginger Cake

I made this cake for nightshift last night. If this post is a little vague it's because I was last in bed at 2pm yesterday and it is now 9.30 pm the following night. It's amazing how frantic things get before Xmas and we are still a month out from it. My to do lists for each week are just ridiculous. Harry turns 6 in December as do a couple of his little friends so it all adds up to the busyness of the month for us. Hopefully there will be a couple of good posts for his birthday cake and the cake pops I intend to make. But more on that in the next few weeks....


I first saw this recipe on a program we had here called Nestle Hottest Home Baker which is a bit like a (much) cheaper version of Masterchef but for the baker. While the show itself was a bit unfortunate I felt compelled, as someone who likes to bake, to watch it. On the first show a woman called Emma made this cake which got rave reviews. It had stem ginger in it which it quite hard to find here and also is quite pricey. I had seen it in the more upmarket stores like Farro and Nosh but at a cost of around $15 a jar. NO WAY was I paying that!!! So I eventually found it at a Chinese store at a cost of $8.60 for 400 gms.

Of course the main reason for the purchase was to make this cake. I whipped it up yesterday after it was just too hot to sleep and it was very easy to make. It was well worth the half asleep effort as the cake it amazing. It's full of punchy flavour and is moist and light. the lemon drizzle icing totally complements it and cuts through the richness of the cake. Make this if you can find the stem ginger as it is a real show stopper. The girls at work loved it and in fact next time I'll make 1 1/2 times the recipe to make a 23 cm cake so it goes further.


Stem Ginger Cake


225 gm self raising flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
115 gm butter
115 gm dark muscovardo sugar
115 gm treacle
115 gm golden syrup 
1 c milk
1 egg lightly beaten
85 gm stem ginger, grated


Grease and line a 20 cm tin.


Oven to 180 C
In a food processor put in the flour and dried spices. Add the butter and pulse to form fine crumbs. Put into a bowl.


Heat the sugar, treacle, golden syrup and milk until the sugar dissolves. Bring almost to the boil. Remove from the heat and add the stem ginger. 


Add to the flour mix then add in the egg and beat well so it's combined.


Bake 50-60 mins.


Ice with a simple lemon drizzle icing which is just icing sugar, lemon rind (finely grated) and lemon juice.