Stem ginger fruit cake

This is another of those cakes that I lovingly make for others when I don't want to eat cake, I'm not one of those people who can make cake and leave it alone. So rather than gave up baking for a while I simply bake cakes that I don't like. It's logical really.


I am not that keen on fruited cakes, although they are growing on me rather rapidly. However fruit cakes are very popular with my loved ones, this cake is sort of made up on the spot, I started off looking at my regular fruit cake recipe (Bara birth), bored I decided to tweak it, I threw in a bag of mixed red berries (cranberries, cherries etc...) a dredge of cinnamon, mixed spice and nutmeg then the stem ginger hanging round the back of the cupboard caught my eye, I chucked in a couple of stems (grated) and a spoonful of the syrup from the jar.


The recipe (as I remember it) is


Stem ginger fruit cake:
300g s/r flour
300g dried fruit (I used raisins, currants and a berry mix)
2-3 stumps of stem ginger, grated.
100g soft brown sugar
1 tbsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
grating of nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten
100ml milk
2 tbsp stem ginger syrup.


Preheat oven to 180c/ gas mark 4. Grease and line a 8in loaf tin.
Mix the dried fruit, stem ginger, sugar, spices and salt in a bowl.
Beat in the egg.
Gently heat the milk, stir in ginger syrup. Pour into cake mixture and stir well.
Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1-1/4 --- 1-1/2 hours.
Cool, slice and spread thickly with the best butter you can find.




The aroma coming from the oven when this cake was baking was delicious, and reminded me of my Granny's house, ginger, cinnamon, mixed spices, perfect scent for autumn.


Maybe I got carried away with the cake, as for someone who didn't want to like it, I found it a little too delicious. It was moister than a lot of fruit cakes, probably because of the syrup, but as there was no fat in the cake it was hugely complimented by a thick smearing of butter.