Cake One: Sugar And Spice (~jinghan)

I took half a cake in a lunch box to uni on Monday, and hadn’t handed out a slice by 12pm so I was feeling a bit desperately generous. By 1pm my desperate generosity had worked and I was running out of cake to give to the people I had promised cake to at lunch time.

This weeks cake is the Sugar and Spice Cake, a gorgeous cake that smells of ginger and cinnamon, and isn’t overly sweet, but definitely delicious.

Recipe from Jules Stranbridge’s novel Sugar and Spice, published in 2009 by Little Black Dress, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group

Ingredients

• 225g unsalted butter
• 225g dark muscovado sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 medium eggs
• 100ml milk

For icing

• 150g sifted icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• silver balls

Method

Grease and line a 20cm cake tin and preheat oven to 180 Celcius /350 Farenheit (160 Celcius for fan forced). Place all ingredients in food processor and cream together. Transfer mixture to tin, smoothing surface, and bake for 50-55minutes or until skewer inserted into centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin. When the cake has cooled blend icing sugar and orange juice together and spread over the top of the cake. Do not worry if it drizzles over the sides as this is how it should look. Scatter silver balls over and leave to set.

Jinghan says: I couldn’t find any dark muscovado sugar, being a mere supermarket-shopper, so I went with dark brown sugar and it worked out okay.