Sticky Ginger Cake

Nic

This is a proper old-fashioned dark sticky ginger cake. Most of the moisture comes from the steamed, mashed squash but you’d never know (good for those people who hate the idea of vegetables in cake).

I’ve got two versions, one vegan, one not. I actually think the vegan one is better usually.

Ingredients

  • 250g of squash (milder flavours like pumpkin on butternut are best)

  • 80g black treacle (molasses would work)

  • 100g golden syrup (corn syrup does not work)

  • 140g soft dark brown sugar

  • 100ml of milk (or non-dairy equivalent - I use oat milk)

  • 100g of cold butter or margarine (I use Tesco vegan baking block) - diced 1

  • 2 large eggs (beaten)2

  • 225g self raising flour (how to make self-raising flour - for non Europeans)

  • 1 tsp sodium bicarbonate

  • 1 tbsp ground ginger

  • a couple of balls of stem ginger (the sort that comes in syrup) chopped until into small pieces (perhaps 0.5 cm))

  • (optional) some small chunks of crystallised ginger, chopped into thin slices

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan).
  2. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin.
  3. Chop up the squash into small (1cm or so) pieces. Add it to a microwavable bowl (you can use a steamer too) with a couple of teaspoons of water. Microwave for ten minutes so that it’s soft. Drain the water off and mash it thorughly (I use a ricer).
  4. Put the treacle, syrup sugar and milk into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Put to one side.
  5. Put the flour, bicarb, spices and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Add the chilled butter and rub with your fingertips until you get a mixture like breadcrums (just like making a crumble topping)
  6. Mix the squash into the liquid ingredients making sure you don’t get lumps
  7. Stir it into the wet ingredients.
  8. Stir in the stem ginger
  9. Pour into the loaf tin
  10. Sprinkle the crystallised ginger over the top if you are using it.
  11. Bake for 45 minutes, using a skewer to check if cooked - you want just moist crumbs when you pull out the skewer.
  12. Leave it to cool in the tin. It’s good to eat straight away but even better if you wrap it in foil and leave for a couple of days.

  1. Best way - take out of the fridge, dice into 0.5cm pieces, put back in the fridge until you use it. ↩︎

  2. I use egg replacer if I’m making this vegan; skipping it stops the cake holding together I found ↩︎