Ginger spice cake and excitement

The closer it gets to Christmas, the more excited I get. The more excited I get, the more I crave clichéd Christmas foods – give me pudding and rich spiced cakes, mince pies and roasts. It’s funny that Australians indulge in Christmas foods inspired by their northern hemisphere counterparts. Even though Christmas day can be stinking hot, we still want to have delicious cooking smells filling the house.

Christmas day is supposed to be humid and rainy this year, but that’s not going to stop me.

This cake is jam-packed with those clichéd Christmas flavours which should be out-of-place in an Australian Christmas, but are enjoyed all the same.

Ginger spice cake:

• 1 ¾ cups plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarb
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground mixed spice
• 115g butter, cubed
• ½ cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1/3 cup golden syrup
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp minced ginger

Icing:

• 1/3 cup thickened cream
• 200g chocolate
• 1 tsp liquid glucose
• 10g butter
• Hazelnuts, to garnish

Preheat your oven to 180°C. Grease a 22cm ring tin and line the base with  deep cake tin. Put the flour, bicarb and spices into a lar
ge bowl. Add the butter and rub with your fingers until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.

Put the sugar, molasses, golden syrup and milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to just below boiling point.

Add the egg to the flour mixture and mix to combine. Pour in the liquid, add the minced ginger and mix until smooth.

Pop into the oven for 45-50 minutes.

The cake is done when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

While the cake is cooling, pop a pan of water on the stove to boil and put a bowl over the top to melt your chocolate, cream, liquid glucose and butter together.

If you don’t have liquid glucose, vanilla is a perfect substitute, however, using vanilla doesn’t give you the same glossy sheen that liquid glucose does.

When the ingredients have combined, take it off the heat and set aside to cool.

When the icing has cooled, but hasn’t set, pour the icing over the cake and spread it around with a palette knife. Pop in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to set the icing.

Serve with cream – it’s Christmas, you’re allowed to indulge a little. 

(Completely unrelated to Christmas, naming this cake totally made me have childhood flashbacks.)